He picks me up, wrapping my legs around his hips. My hands are still in his wavy hair, and my magic is moving about us. It’s at my back, and though I can’t see it, I sense it swarming around Memnon’s hands. It tugs at my shirt, then—
Riiiip. My power tears the back of my shirt in two. It falls in tatters between us, and I pull away enough to shrug out of it. Memnon uses the moment to cast a silent spell of his own, his magic taking the weight of my body to free his hands.
The sorcerer reaches out, wiping the wet locks of my hair out of my face.
“Hello again, my love. It has been an age.” We look at each other, our torsos bare save my bra and his tattoos, and the two of us laugh.
In that moment, there’s no division between who I was as Roxilana and who I am as Selene; the past and the present are here, all at once.
“It worked,” I say softly. My fingertips graze his face and the puckered skin where his scar is. “I never truly lost you.”
He shakes his head. “No, my queen, this is just the beginning.”
Memnon carries me inside. We’re dripping from head to foot, and the sorcerer’s shoes are making hilarious squishing noises until one of our spells removes them from his feet. The rest of our clothing gets peeled and ripped away by our power as we move through his foyer, then down the hall to his bedroom, each discarded garment hitting the ground with a wet slap until the two of us are naked.
I shiver in Memnon’s arms, my legs locked around his waist. I can feel his erection brush against the curve of my ass.
“I don’t need a bed for this,” I say.
“I do,” Memnon says with too much fervency. He leans into me and nips my lower lip. “There will be time to make love like the heathens we are. But tonight, I want to savor your skin and the look in your eyes. They hold my whole universe in them.”
I swallow, growing serious. We’ve done this many times in the past week, but I’ve always, always had my guard up. But when I woke this morning, fresh from an evening of hell, all those guards I put in place to keep Memnon out were ripped apart.
The sorcerer’s eyes drop to my throat, and he presses a gentle kiss there. “My fierce queen, who battled death to save me, who gave up much so that we could be here in this moment.” His gaze flicks over me, and I think he sees that I’m ready for the slow sex he’s been promising and all the intimate connection that comes with it. “My exquisite mate, who has been exceedingly patient with me.”
He lays me out on the bed, then follows me onto it, fitting himself into the space between my thighs.
Despite the patter of rain, the world has grown very, very quiet.
“Let me show you how I love you,” he breathes.
He grabs my legs, sliding his hands down my thighs like he can’t help but touch me before spreading them obscenely apart.
Memnon dips his mouth to my core. “I promised you I’d feast on your pussy,” he says against my sensitive skin, and I moan at the way even that casual brush of his lips sets my nerve endings on fire.
He kisses my pussy then, his tongue slipping inside me briefly.
I arch off the bed, nearly coming undone from that alone.
Memnon groans, leaning his forehead on my pubic bone. “You’re dripping.”
I’m breathing heavy, though he’s hardly touched me. I run my hands over his shoulders, reveling in the roll of his muscles.
Memnon dips his head to press a soft kiss to my clit. I nearly yelp at the sensation.
“I hate to break my earlier promise,” he says, “but—” Another roughened kiss to my clit that sets me alight. Memnon lifts his head, and our eyes meet across the expanse of my body. “I did not imagine you would look at me tonight the way you have been or say the things you’ve said.”
With that, he drags himself up the length of my body until his hips are cradled against mine.
My hands glide up the rippling muscles of his abs, then circle around to his back.
The sorcerer stares down at me. “Don’t look away,” he says. It’s equal parts command and plea.
“Don’t you look away,” I say, turning the command back on him.
“I won’t,” he vows.
He reaches between us, adjusting himself until his cock is right at my entrance, and I’m about to glance down at where we touch—
“Eyes on me,” he reminds me.
I inhale shakily.
Watching my every movement, Memnon shifts his hips and begins to sink inside me.
I suck in a breath as the head of his cock stretches me. The sensation is intoxicating, but I’m still caught up in his face. That face I first saw in Rome all those years ago. It’s grown hardened and more rugged since then, but for the first time in this life, I realize it’s not just a handsome face, it’s a beloved one.
That makes my heart pound all the faster.
Once he’s fully seated in me, he goes still again, and the two of us remain locked in each other’s gaze.
“You can look away now,” I say softly. I don’t honestly know if my orders hold any power over him.
“I don’t want to,” he admits.
I don’t want to either.
“Please, est amage. Explore me,” he coaxes softly.
I’ll have to look away, I admit down our bond.
Memnon runs the tip of his nose down the bridge of my own.
“I don’t mind,” he breathes against my lips as his cock moves in and out of me. My eyes flutter a little at the sensation, but his thrusts are slow, measured.
My palms skim up his back, and I feel goose bumps rise along Memnon’s skin in their wake. I pause when I touch the seam of an old scar several inches from his armpit. A barbed arrow had embedded itself here, though it happened before we met. This was the day when Memnon’s voice first called out down our bond.
My hands continue up until my fingers graze the curling ends of his black hair. I play with a few strands of it. Then, because I cannot help myself, my touch migrates to his scar, tracing it up the side of his face and over to his eye, remembering when I first touched it—
“This looks like it hurt.”
His eyes are closed. “It did, but I am grateful for it.”
“Why is that?” I ask. I cannot imagine being grateful for something so heinous.
“Because it made you stroke my skin.”
Down my hands move, to the column of his throat, where the inked image of my panther rests. Then lower, to the pectoral tattoo of a dragon—his family crest. His mother had the same tattoo, as did his sister.
As did I, once, long ago.
I feel his whole body shudder as I run my hands over it, and the sensation somehow heightens the drag of his cock inside me. I ache a little at the absence of my own tattoos and scars. They didn’t make the journey through time with me.
My hands move lower, over Memnon’s abdomen before they seem to drift of their own accord back to his face.
I hold that face, the two of us watching each other.
“I love you, my Roxi, my Selene,” Memnon murmurs.
Deeper he drives himself, though his speed is punishingly slow.
I want to beg him to go faster, but even that would be an order wrapped in a plea, and I’m afraid my order will work—and equally afraid it won’t.
The corner of his lip curls as he studies me, and his eyes blaze with intensity. “Your face says what your lips won’t.”