AllFreeNovel
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I can barely speak in the aftermath of our bliss. Somehow, I manage to form words. “I summon your magic?”
He nods. “I can feel the effects of it with you. Feel your pleasure as well as mine. I’ve only ever used it on other people, but I’ve never felt it on myself.” He lets out a laugh. “That’s some pretty powerful stuff.”
I kiss the top of his chest. “No kidding.”
“I can’t believe you resisted me as long as you did,” he says with a smirk.
“Well, you were incredibly vexing when we first met.” I roll my eyes. “In fact, I’m not really sure at what point I fell for you, in between the parts where you were driving me crazy.”
“Oh, come on. It wasn’t love at first sight? Admit it, Ven.” He kisses my shoulder, sending a spark of magic across my skin.
“It definitely wasn’t.” I think about it for a moment. “It might have been taming the black stallion and delivering me unto a luxurious garden party at sunset. That was pretty suave.”
“It wasn’t at first sight for me either,” Ryder says with a shrug. “It was probably fifteen minutes later.”
Another eye roll. “Just because I turned you down? Please. That was just lust.”
“No, I’m being serious.” He locks me in his teal gaze, the same color as the ocean beyond, and my heart flips. “It was something about you. A complexity. A kinship. I don’t know. I fought it, quite vigorously, until the end.” Another kiss, this time up the side of my neck. “I’m not sure it needs to be defined,” he murmurs, “It just fits.”
“It does,” I whisper, guiding his lips to mine.
Ryder kisses me until my heart is racing again.
“So,” I say, when we finally pull apart several minutes later. “Where do we go from here?”
“Well,” Ryder says. “I suppose my villa would be a good place to start. Or should I say, our villa. Seeing as how your place was ransacked by hell hounds.”
“You have a villa?” My eyebrows shoot to the sky.
He shrugs. “Of course I have a villa. Oceanside. All the super sexy lust demons do.”
I laugh and he kisses me again.
“I can’t ever get enough of that,” he moans against my mouth.
“Me either,” I say breathlessly.
I can’t believe that after everything I’ve been through in my life leading up to this, just when I’d given up on ever finding love, it had fallen right into my lap. In the strangest of ways.
Ryder helps me to my feet and we walk down to the waves, hand-in-hand.
“We rescued Luciana, we beat the bad guys, and we found each other,” Ryder says, kicking a spray of water up with his toes. “I’d say that’s the perfect end to our first adventure.”
“First adventure.” I smile up at him. “I like the sound of that. And countless more to come.”
Ryder pulls me against him. The wind wraps around us and the saltwater swirls around our ankles. My heart feels free for the first time in as long as I can remember.
“And countless more to come,” he says.
