Page 40 of Heart of the Desert

“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I can’t… I don’t know if I can be gentle.”

“I don’t want you to be,” I admitted, my own voice raw with anticipation. With the nerve-searing intensity of his own feelings ricocheting through my mind, all I could think about was how I needed him close. I needed him to press each kiss like a brand into my skin, sealing the promise that we would not be parted, even when his own mind tried to tear him away from me.

Even if such promises were not in his power to keep, perhaps if he took me hard enough, we could force them to be true.

Erix ducked his head between my legs and sucked hard on my flesh without further preamble. Sparks danced over my skin as I keened. He didn’t relent, ducking down further to plunge his tongue inside me and lap at the wetness already flowing freely from my sex.

He hummed, as if it were the most delicious thing he had ever tasted, before licking his way back up to my most sensitive point. He traced tight circles around it with the tip of his tongue, as his fingers drifted down to join his mouth. Two fingers slid inside me with little resistance, quickly joined by a third, and I bucked as he stroked my inner walls.

In response, he placed his other hand flat between my hipbones, pinning me to the ground and leaving me helpless to do anything but mewl and whimper as my legs trembled next to his ears.

He worked me higher and higher as my fists curled in the sand, grappling for a hold on reality as the magic of the desert began to sing beneath my skin. Just as lightning started to flicker at the edges of my consciousness, a storm about to break free with my release, he pulled back.

I keened in protest, but he shook his head, even as his fingers continued to move inside me—enough to keep me at the precipice but not to tip me over the edge into oblivion.

“Not yet,” he insisted, his voice nearly otherworldly and laced with the wildness of the desert. “Not until I say so.”

My breath caught in my chest. Sharing my body with Erix was always powerful, but this was new—almost torturous in its intensity and full of dark promise. He didn’t lower his head again until I nodded, my movements jerky with muscles still twitching from my imminent release.

Then, he lowered his head, and I was lost in the heat of his lips and tongue again. The fire beneath my skin built and thunder rumbled in the distance. Before lightning could strike, though, he pulled back again. This time, tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I thrashed, chasing the pleasure that burned just at the tips of my fingers.

Erix exhaled heavily in satisfaction as he peered up my body at me, his silver eyes almost luminescent in the moonlight. They looked like something from another world.

“Sands, I wish I could keep you like this forever,” he hummed. “But I am weak, and I need you too desperately.”

Before I could find my voice again to tell him that he was far from weak—that strength permeated every line of his body and spirit, and I would gladly put my life in his hands—he crawled up my body and captured my lips with his again.

My essence coated his tongue, sweet and earthy. I became so distracted trying to lick the taste from his mouth that I gasped in shock as he drove his hard length into me all at once. My head dropped back to the earth, as my jaw went slack, but Erix already cupped the back of my head, protecting me from the impact as his teeth found my jaw.

Before I could adjust, he pulled out almost completely before sheathing himself to the hilt again. I struggled to breathe, every inch inside of me taken up by Erix and the searing fire pouring down the tether between us.

He grunted against my neck as he drove into me again and again, and I found my hands wrapping around his shoulders, clawed fingers raking at his back.

The flow of my magic mixed with the threads of his, pulling so tight I feared they might snap, but still, it didn’t seem close enough for Erix. He sat back on his heels, hooking one of my legs over his shoulder so he had unfettered access to thrust as deep as possible.

His thumb found my center once again, stroking hard and fast. I cried out wordlessly, my release barreling down on me.

“Not until I say,” he reminded me, his voice sounding in my mind as well as in my ears. I tried to nod, but my muscles seemed to be out of my control. It was all I could do to grip his forearms and dig my nails into his flesh as I tried desperately to hold on. Scars and welts rubbed against my fingers. I must be hurting him, but Erix didn’t seem to care. He thrust relentlessly, as if driven forward by an invisible force.

My vision blurred, but I could just make out his face in the moonlight, his dark curls falling across his forehead as his jaw clenched with the intensity of it all. The light of the stars accentuated the dips and valleys of his muscles and reflected off the silvery lines of many scars dotted across his shoulders and chest.

Pleasure that wasn’t my own began to crest in my mind, and I shook so violently it was a wonder Erix was able to keep his hold on my leg, pinning me open.

“Now. Come for me Keera.”

This time, I wasn’t sure if he said the words out loud at all, or if the command just came across the tether between us. Either way, I shattered, the shock of his own release mixing with mine in waves that seemed too large for my body to contain.

I threw my head back in a wordless scream as my awareness blurred into nothing but heat and pleasure and the endlessness of the desert’s magic.

It was only Erix’s warm breath on my neck, intermingled with gentle kisses, that reminded me I had a body at all. I wiggled my fingers, having to check that they still responded to my command, before wrapping my arms around his shoulders and digging my hands into his hair.

With a satisfied grunt, he rolled, pulling me on top of him so I could lay with my head pillowed on his chest. I rested my ear over his sternum, listening to the wild pounding of his heart gradually slowing in time with my own.

He ran his fingers through my hair, and I hummed gently in satisfaction, before he let his fingers scratch over the side of my head where it still grew back, each hair barely two inches long.

“Better?” I asked.

Erix sighed and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Yes.”