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“It’s me,” she repeated.
His hardened gaze slipped to meet her eyes. For the first time, he recognized her. Saw the woman she was, the mate that he’d claimed in that townhouse back in Alandria. The whole thing came crashing down like a tidal wave. His shoulders drooped. His hands relaxed. His face dropped the mask he must have been holding every day for the last six months. Survival. That was all he had been doing for so long. Just enough to get through every day. While he’d seen her at the party, the pain of the tournament, of being who he’d had to be around his father, had taken its toll.
“Kerrigan.” He said her name like a prayer.
Then, he pulled her against his body, heedless of the sweat and sand between them, and his lips crashed down on hers. She gasped at the first brush of his lips. The saltiness on his tongue. The pressure of those perfectly pouty lips as they claimed her once more.
She scrambled to get closer to him. Her hands going around his neck, her chest pressed hard against his. His hands tangling in her red hair, he groaned deep in the back of his throat.
“Please,” she begged.
He lifted her up by her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he walked her backward. The gladiator rooms that had been too small and stale yesterday vanished in her mind as he brushed a hand against the water and food. The pottery shattering as it hit the ground and the wall beyond.
He set her down on the table, never pulling away from her mouth. Their bodies ground against each other. This was far from the first time that they had been together. Yet they yanked at each other in desperation, as if it might be the last.
Anyone could walk into that room as they clawed at each other, aching for what they had been long denied. They were on the other side of a portal, in a foreign world with none of their old agency. All they had was this moment. And it was the only one that mattered.
Her anger over the tournament was forgotten as she traced the lines of his powerful chest. Her fear for what lay before them barely a flicker in the back of her mind as he bit down on her bottom lip and drew it into his mouth. Not an ounce of wondering about the future as she reached to release the black pants from around his hips.
He rucked her white dress up high around her hips and jerked her bare bottom to the edge of the table. “Mine,” he said as if it were the only word running through his mind. “All mine.”
“Yes,” she whispered, suddenly desperate for him.
“Mine.”
She drew the length of him out of his pants and stroked it up and down. She was as much his as he had always been hers. They had hated each other for so long—too long. Even reluctant allies had been a stretch. His people hated and defiled half-Fae, and he’d considered her mere presence an insult. Until that had changed, until they had become friends and then lovers and then mates. And she would give up this entire world to feel him for just a few more minutes.
“Mine,” she agreed.
He entered her with a thrust that sent her reeling. Their bodies moved to a rhythm of their own making. A knowledge so deep that even with the mating bond broken, they still remembered each other as if they were tattooed upon each other’s heart.
Their speed picked up. Both desperate for the release that was owed to them. His lips found hers again, coaxing her mouth open with his tongue and delving inside of her. She dug her hands into his shoulders, pulled his hardened body against her. The world rocked and tilted, and she wanted all of it.
The build crested. Suddenly, she was shaking as wave after wave of euphoria spread through her body. She clenched down hard, feeling her climax trigger his own. He roared to the sound of his victory. More enthusiastic in their combined release than he had ever been when the entire world had been cheering his name.
It was only as they both came down, panting from exertion and sated, that he returned entirely to himself.
“Oh, my love,” he said, his hand coming to her cheek, preparing to wax poetic, as he so often did on paper.
“I love you,” she told him simply.
“And I love you.”
She kissed him again once to let him know she was still there. Then, he withdrew, and they both spent a few silent seconds rearranging their clothing. Perhaps it was obvious in their flushed cheeks and messy hair what had happened, but Kerrigan couldn’t regret it.
“You’re in the tournament,” he said finally.
