“Humor me,” he replied, voice deepening.
I shifted, drawing one leg over his shoulder, my bare foot brushing against his back.
“Please me,” I said softly.
His hands tightened at my hips, thumbs pressing gently into the curve of my waist.
He rose in one motion, guiding me back into the furs with careful strength. He did not rush. His palm slid along my thigh, reacquainting himself with the reality of my skin.
“My Solea,” he said quietly.
He moved lower, his hands sliding beneath me to lift my hips, tilting me toward him.
Talon yanked my undergarments down, tossing them to the side. He parted my legs wider and settled between my open thighs.
I felt the heat of his breath first, a warm current that made my skin prickle, and then the first brush of his tongue. I gasped, my head falling back into the soft furs as he began a slow, rhythmic worship.
His touch was not hesitant. He tasted me with a hunger that spoke of every second we had been apart, every moment he thought I was lost to the light.
I clutched at his hair, my fingers tangling in the silken strands as I arched toward him. The sensation was a vibrant, building pressure that made my breath halt in my throat.
“So needy, little flame,” he rumbled against my inner thigh, the vibration of his voice sending a new wave of heat through me. “You are drowning me.”
I let out a broken moan, my hips moving in a circle, chasing the contact. He responded by deepening his focus, his tongue swirling around the sensitive bud of my nerves while his fingers began to work within me. Two, then three, stretching me until he made me cry out his name.
“Talon,” I whimpered, my legs trembling as the tension in my belly coiled tighter and tighter.
He did not stop. He suckled the engorged point of my pleasure, his fingers twisting inside me until the world began to fracture at the edges.
“Give it to me,” he growled, his voice a gravelly command. “Let me taste you.”
An eruption of pure, blinding ecstasy racked through my body. A loud cry ripped from my chest, echoing through the chamber as my muscles spasmed in a long, rolling climax.
He did not pull away. He stayed with me until the tremors subsided into a soft glow. He lifted his head, his face illuminated by the bioluminescent moss, looking like a king who had finally found his throne.
“You are mine,” he whispered. “And I will worship you until there is nothing left of me.”
I pulled him up, my arms wrapping around his neck to bring his lips to mine.
I was home.
44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“You must imagine your hands physically touching the weapon, guiding the shadows to move it as your body would,” I instructed, my palms following the path of a pointed dagger in slow, circular motions.
“Whoa,” a chorus of young Veythar sang, their wide eyes fixed on the spectacle of shifting smoke.
I was back in the courtyard, the training ground for the younger Veythar.
The younglings, no older than human children, watched me with a mix of awe and trepidation. Their small forms were still soft at the edges—smoky, half-formed silhouettes that pulsed with a nascent power, eager to be unleashed.
They were the future, and a heavy weight settled in my chest, a mixture of protectiveness and dread. They were so fragile, so full of unmarred potential in a world determined to twist and break it.
Eladaria stood in the doorway, her pale form half-veiled in the drifting light that filtered through the high arches of the courtyard. She did not interrupt. Instead, she watched with that quiet, assessing stillness that made even seasoned warriors shift beneath her gaze.
The shadows responded to my guidance, curling around the hilt of the dagger as though invisible fingers had wrapped themselves around it. The blade lifted from the stone pedestal with a slow, trembling grace, smoke coiling along its edge before settling into a steady hover.