Page 65 of Heart of the Desert

My words were confident, but there was still a hint of a question there. My magic called, and I held my breath as I waited for him to answer.

Carefully, Erix reached out and laid his own hand in mine. My breath caught as a spark jumped between our fingers, magic igniting in our touch. The desert seemed to revel in our renewed connection. The threads of the new bond between us bloomed like flowers after a desert rain, even at this barest of touches.

Erix’s eyes widened and his breath quickened as he felt it too.

“I choose us. I always will,” I murmured.

His fingers tightened around mine, firm and strong. “I could forget my own name and still I would remember that I was made to love you in every lifetime. I will choose you every day until my death and beyond.”

I leaned in and kissed him. So often recently, Erix had been feral and overwhelming in his intimacy. He had touched me as if he couldn’t get enough of his skin on mine, and I had reveled in the way he needed me.

But now, he kissed me as if I were precious. Not fragile, but worthy of all the time and attention and care in the world. He let me take what I wanted from him as I parted his lips and swiped my tongue into his mouth.

He made a broken noise as I threaded my fingers into his hair—sands, I loved his hair. The way the silky curls wrapped around my fingers, as if they too itched to hold me close.

I clambered into Erix’s lap, and his hands came to my hips, first caressing them before his fingers began walking lovingly up my spine. It reminded me of the first time we kissed, when I had writhed in his lap as he brought me to pleasure with his hand for the first time. He had looked at me then as if he was drunk on my skin.

Now, I pulled back and looked down at him as I ground down on his cock, hardening in his pants. He somehow looked even more wrecked now, his lips swollen and hair mussed. Just like the first time we had learned each other’s touch, threads of our magic started knitting together. Where the first time we joined, some of the fibers that joined us were gnarled and twisted with years of hurt we faced together, now they were all golden and bright and hummed with life.

If the tether between us was a plant that had been pruned while the roots remained, now it was allowed to grow back even more vibrant than before. We had chosen each other, and our magic reveled in it.

I screwed my eyes shut and whimpered as I circled my hips once more, positively aching with the need to dive further into this feeling of oneness. Erix’s hands drifted up my arms with a featherlight touch and came to cup my cheeks.

“Take whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you desire from me—it will never be too much for me to give. You deserve it all, and I will not leave you.”

A whine escaped my throat. I hadn’t known those words were exactly what I needed to hear until they wormed their way into my brain. I was drunk on the idea of demanding all the love and connection I had ever craved and not being denied. There was not even any fear of him thinking I wanted too much.

It was somehow just as heady as the times he touched me fast and desperate, to hear him offer to give me everything I could possibly demand.

“Your mouth. I want your tongue on me,” I demanded brazenly.

Erix smiled against my lips as he kissed me. “I’ll lick you until you scream yourself hoarse, if that’s what you desire.”

His hands slid down my sides to my hips where they helped me unlace my pants and push them down my legs. I shed my vest and tunic as well. I made to push off Erix and lie in the sand next to him, but he surprised me by laying back. He pulled me up until I straddled his face, a thigh on either side of his ear.

My breath stuttered as I looked down at him, and his eyes flashed. “I wish I could give you a throne to sit on, but all I have is my face.”

A stuttering breath escaped me. It was the closest I could get to a laugh with the raging heat now tearing through my body. I cut off in a gasp as he leaned up and licked straight up my center.

“You’ll always be my queen. My lord. My goddess.” With that, he pulled me down, and I lowered my weight onto him. Any of my lingering concerns about suffocating him flew out the window in response to the enthusiasm with which he took to his task.

My thighs shuddered and clenched, and I threw my head back with an extended moan. His tongue explored every inch of me before he sealed his lips around my most sensitive point and sucked. I wasn’t sure anymore if the sound in my head was the crash of waves on the beach or the rush of blood in my ears.

All I knew was I wanted more, and Erix would give it to me. I ground down on his face, and he moaned against me. His hands tightened on my hips, pulling me further against him, as if he couldn’t get enough either.

The tether in my belly pulled tight as if Erix held on to it for dear life and feeling him in my mind and magic was all it took to send me plummeting into the pit of pleasure. I gasped and shuddered, nearly collapsing on top of Erix as sparks danced through me. He licked my sex thoroughly and gently as I did, as if his need for air was simply an afterthought.

I hadn’t even realized I had closed my eyes until they fluttered open. The sight that greeted me made me gasp anew, this time in awe.

The sun had set completely as we talked, but instead of turning black in the dark, the ocean was alive with lights. Tiny glowing specs of blue and green dotted the waves, dancing in starbursts and flowing in beautiful swirls and eddies.

I scooted down Erix’s body, straddling his chest and pointing. “Look, it’s beautiful.”

“The most beautiful thing I could ever imagine,” he said. I glanced down to find he wasn’t looking at the ocean in all its luminescent glory, but straight at me.

I scoffed. But then I was struck by the way the blue-green lights reflected in his own eyes and the way his mouth still glistened with my release. Every muscle in his hard and lethal body was taut, but his gaze was soft and desperate.

And I understood.