As he drove back inside, they made twin gasps. When she arched back, pushing herself onto him, he’d been a fool to think that she’d ever been at his mercy, to think that she would willingly give up any measure of control. Because with just that little movement she’d turned the tables and made him hers.
Had it really been so long since they’d done this? Been together like this? How come he remembered everything so clearly and still felt like she was brand new?
Digging his fingers into the base of her neck, using her as leverage, he took her in the hard way he knew she liked. The way he’d been dying to . . . this time.
Because even as he was driving hard into the most stunning, most desirable, most frightening woman he’d ever met, his thoughts of her were soft. Next time—next time, he vowed—he would touch her and have her in a way that echoed how he’d never stopped feeling this whole time apart.
She was growing warmer, the Chimeran blood reacting to the animalistic, human part of her that responded to sex. Which meant she was getting closer to the wonderful place they both wanted her to be.
Keko dug her heels into the stone and lifted her ass. With only her feet and hands for balance, her body took on an incredible roll and swing as he thrust into it, a free, breathtaking thing that alternately swallowed him and rocked him away. The heat in her was building to a point he’d been craving for years—a point that had scared the shit out of him the very first time, but which had quickly transformed into a dangerous kind of high.
A blast of heat emanated out from her core—a sharp shard of pain that licked along him, then instantly shifted to a rippling, searing form of pleasure the likes of which he would never be able to describe in either English or Ofarian. His water people from the stars didn’t have words to adequately relate how it felt to be inside a Chimeran woman when she came.
He remembered not to stop as her fire and her orgasm crested, her body trembling madly. Her pleasure lasted for a long time, and he wanted to drain out every drop, to know fully what he’d given her. To watch her.
Still on hands and heels, her body made shaking, colliding undulations that reminded him of waves on the most tortured, lovely, storm-addled sea. Through the slit of her eyelids he saw the brilliant spark of her orgasm.
The sounds she made were completely unlike anything he’d ever heard. Soft and high and broken free from the toughness she was so good at portraying. It was those sounds, the unchained moans and feminine pleas, that undid him in the end. Set in time to his thrusts, to the collapse of her hips and the quivering of her thighs, the end of her orgasm brought on the beginning of his.
Her body refused to let him go. Her spine resumed its delicate and deadly arch, pulling out the intensity of his pleasure. The sight of her—the sound and scent and feel—scraped out every last molecule of lust inhabiting his body and sent them all shooting toward the scorching, wonderful place where they were joined.
Her body started to sag but he loved—needed—the position so much he couldn’t let that happen, so he slipped a hand under her ass and lifted her up. Kept her body in perfect alignment to his. Let the wet slap of their bodies take over everything.
He couldn’t see her anymore behind the black of his closed eyelids. Couldn’t think about anything but this.
When he came, it was with a force that rivaled their first time, when sheer surprise and the thrill of discovery and the allure of forbidden fruit had heightened everything. That moment when he’d first realized that he wanted this woman in a way that he’d never wanted anyone else. He could hear his own gasps, but they were mere echoes of the pulsing euphoria that surged through his body.
The whole world shifted, and when it realigned he realized he’d collapsed against her body, pressing her into the rock. Her ankles were locked around him again, his face against the soft slope of her neck. His skin had pebbled with a chill, and he could feel the tender waves of heat she was doling out. Warming his body. And his heart.
TWELVE
A Chimeran should never take happiness from warming someone who was not one of their own, least of all an Ofarian, but as Keko wrapped her arms and legs around Griffin’s body and sent a steady, low stream of heat into him, she couldn’t help but love how it made her feel in return. To give that gift to someone. To him.
He didn’t lift himself off her and she refused to unwrap him. Until all of a sudden it got to be too much. His breath on her neck, the light sifting of his fingers through her hair, the precious weight of him . . . everything in opposition to the urgency they had just given in to.
Sex changed everything. And nothing.
They were still the same two people who had formed an undeniable connection three years ago. Today that connection had been cemented, tied up tight with lock and chain, and tossed into a safe with six-feet-thick walls. Absolutely unbreakable, no matter the tool or weapon.
They were still the same two people with vastly different, conflicting goals.
Keko needed space. More time to think. Control over her emotions.
“Well. Now that we got that out of the way.” She nudged his shoulders, and after a pause, he pushed up over her. She wriggled out from underneath him and rolled away. The space between them was invigorating. The space between them was empty and useless.
“Ah.” He blinked, his insanely thick lashes clumped together with wet. “I see.”
He pulled himself out of the pool with impressive strength, water streaming off his body.
She got to her feet. “What exactly do you see?”
He waved a vague hand in her direction. “How it is with you. I’m still not going anywhere.”
“Not trying to drive you away. Just need to think. To process all this.”
“Like I said, I get it.”
She opened her mouth for a retort, for argument, but he watched her serenely and there was no fight in him. No challenge. He was letting her make her choice and giving her every means to do so.
The vow he’d made rang in her ears. The speed with which he’d given it still made her reel, pressing her to believe that he truly wasn’t here for the Senatus. That she should just tell him about the Chimeran disease and get the Source’s location.
Sex changed everything. And nothing.
It was dumb to stand there and moon about it. She was a woman of action, and if she stood next to this waterfall too much longer with Griffin, she’d be tempted to persuade him to get back into it with her.
She cranked up her inner fire and let the heat take care of the water droplets still clinging to her skin. A thin layer of steam coiled off her body, swirling around her limbs. As she pulled her hair over one shoulder, wrung the water from the mass, and then raked heated fingers through it to get it dry, Griffin watched.
The weight of his stare struck her hard in the heart, right where she couldn’t afford to feel him. But she couldn’t look away from him either.
Holding her gaze, his lovely mouth filled with even lovelier Ofarian words. Water wicked away from his skin, the droplets pulling away as though tugged by invisible strings. They grew fainter and fainter the farther they drew away from his body, until they dissolved altogether and he was standing there, naked and dry.
It was then she realized he’d managed to uphold the veil of mist above and around them the whole time they’d had sex. How much power and control he must have, to divide his magic like that and still make her feel like she was his sole focus when he’d been inside her.
Space, Keko. You need space.