A chuckle broke over my sob, which turned into a loud honk.
“Oh, abiwoojin . . . Remo’s coming back for you.”
I tried to believe her, but with each heartbeat, my confidence frayed. What if he didn’t return? How was I supposed to face a world in which he didn’t exist? Anger welled inside of me at the girl who’d told him she wished he’d never been born. How could I have said such a thing? He’d always been such a huge part of my life back in Neverra. Hardly a day went by when we didn’t have some form of interaction . . . mostly unpleasant, but the fact remained that we’d always orbited around each other. Now I wondered why. Was his presence deliberate or coincidental? Had I sought him out or had he?
Gottwas believed the Great Spirit placed souls within each other’s paths for specific reasons. Had She placed Remo in mine so that he’d save my life in this world, or had She done it because we were meant to be together?
“Will you continue seeing each other once we get home, or is this some . . . holiday fling?”
“Holiday?” My lips quirked into a pitiful smile. “Some holiday we’re all having.” I drew a heart in the wet sand.
Giya laughed softly. “Yeah . . . next time I’m picking the destination.”
A splash sent a wave hurtling over my sketch, erasing the curved lines. Holding my breath, I stumbled upright. And then I waited. When the popping bubbles were replaced by a head crowned with dark amber hair, my breath left me in a shallow burst.
Giya stood too, dusting the sand off her wet suede leggings. “Who’s always right?”
My pulse scudded against the lining of my throat.
“What took you so long, Farrow?” she asked.
A smile made his eyes sparkle like the iridescent fall behind him. “Just being thorough.”
I scrubbed the incessant flow of tears, but the act was pointless.
His shoulders broke the surface of the water, the cream fabric ensconcing them stretched as tight as my inhales. And then the pillar of his torso emerged, slabs of muscle visible behind knitted skin and torn fabric edged in the pinkish ochre of old blood. “Patience is a virtue.”
Giya hooked her thumb toward me. “Not one of hers.”
When the water cinched his trim waist, I finally moved. I sprinted toward him and threw myself into his arms, and like always, he caught me.
“Don’t do that again,” I growled, gorging on the mud-and-musk-scent of his skin. “Don’t die and don’t make me wait.” My thunderous pulse lashed at my skin. At his, too.
The circle of his arms firmed. After dropping kisses along the frame of my face, he set me down. A fearsome scowl ripped away his smile as he took in my ruined face. “I almost wish he’d resuscitated.” At my frown, he added, “So I could gut him—slowly—like the swine he was.”
Instead of repulsing me, his evocative thirst for vengeance seduced me. Perhaps I should’ve mourned the death of my innocence. Perhaps I would, later.
He traced the edges of my bruise with his eyes, and then with his thumb. In a voice roughened by emotion, he asked, “Why were you worried I wouldn’t come back?”
“You used the machete on the apple and then on yourself.”
“Ah.” He raised a brazen smile. “Remember what I told you about the effectiveness of pens?”
My breaths tangled, and I choked on my exhale, nausea battling with relief.
“Don’t picture it.” He leaned over and smoothed his mouth over my own as though to root out my distress. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No secrets. Ever.”
He kissed me harder, and I answered him with a deep, debilitating hunger. When my split lip began to throb, sense knocked into me, and I jolted away, darting my tongue out on the hunt for fresh blood.
His chest turned to marble beneath my heaving one. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. I was just afraid to get blood—”
“Your blood doesn’t scare me, Trifecta.”
“My blood might not scare you, but it’ll hurt you.”
“You forget.” A smile softened his body and expression. “I’m a big strong man.”
A smile cracked my defenses as I recalled the moment I’d teased him with those words. “I forget nothing, and apparently, you don’t either.”
He nudged my nose aside before aligning his smirk with my smile. “Besides, you’re no longer bleeding.”
“Get a room. Or a cave, or whatever, but my last meal—which was days ago by the way—is starting to come up.” Giya’s voice eased our heads apart.
Remo and I smiled at each other, and then we smiled at her. She winked as she tossed the apple between her hands.
“Shall we go back to our cave, Trifecta?”
His hushed proposition tightened every nerve ending in my body. “I could use another nap,” I said, bringing my eyes back onto his.
“A nap, huh?”
“Isn’t that what you had in mind?” I tried to slide down the column of his torso, but he braced his arms beneath me, keeping me in place.
“We’ll sleep. Eventually.”
I tightened my koala grip on him as his long strides ate up water and sand. Once we breached the arc of panem and aloe, Giya falling into step beside Remo, I asked him to put me down; he didn’t. He carried me through the jungle and over the threshold of the grotto as though I were his most delicate and prized possession. And perhaps I was, for he had certainly become mine.
42
Firsts
After Giya wished us a pleasant nap and vanished into the cave across from ours, Remo finally set me down and then proceeded to attack his damp locks, beautifully disheveling them. Even though a part of me found his distress both charming and fascinating, I clasped his fingers and towed them away.
“We don’t have to”—the hand I didn’t hold rose to his neck and rubbed the spot that had cleared of the bruise from the cupola—“do anything”—he cleared his throat—“you don’t want to.”
An onslaught of love—yes, love—rose in time with my smile. How could I not love this man who’d protected me fiercely before I’d become lawfully his to protect? “Although I’d terribly enjoy watching you try to make me do something I don’t want to, Farrow, right now, I’m in the mood to do many things.”
Shock and amusement stilled his distraught fingers, and then he squared his shoulders and laughed, the beautiful sound spooling over every stony crevasse, grain of sand, and cell inside my body.
“You are such a contradiction.” I rose up on tiptoe, kissed his birthmark, then drew him through the coiled passageway that led into our little haven before I lost my own nerve.
“A contradiction?”
“So smug and so shy.”
“Shy?”
Of course it wasn’t the smug part that gave him pause. “Yeah. Shy.”
He made a sound at the back of his throat, then smiled cockily and rolled the hem of his tattered Henley over the stacked bricks of his stomach. He shoved the fabric over his head and tossed it against the wall where it landed in a wet heap, and then he took my hands and set them on the hard planes of warm skin. “Still think I’m shy?”
I shook my head, trying to come up with something smart to say but failing spectacularly at the sight of so much whittled magnificence. I drew my fingertips into every dip and across each muscled hill. His nipples hardened under my tentative strokes, which had me leaning in and flicking one with my tongue, tasting brine, musk, man.
His eyes slid shut, and his breathing hitched. “Fuck, Amara . . . ”
“Is that your plan?”
Shock made his lids snap up.
My cheeks warmed. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
I tried to avert my eyes, but he trapped my face with his palms and forced my gaze up to his. The way he stared at me made me feel like a fly caught in a spider’s web. In a good way. I supposed that if I’d been a real fly, and he’d been a real spider, and his intentions were to eat me—
“I can’t decide if you look
frightened or excited.” The raindrops of light seeping through the rock ceiling cast his intent expression in sharp relief.
Probably because I was a lot of both at that moment.
He skated his palms down my arms until he reached my wrists. Slowly, he raised them over my head. When his fingers settled on the hem of my sopping gray T-shirt, he asked, “May I?”
I gave a jerky nod.
He peeled it up and up and up, his blistered knuckles scraping up the seam of my ribs, the knolls of my breasts, the hollow of my bones, raising pockets of fire over my damp skin. My shirt ended up on top of his.
His gaze, which had remained on mine, wandered low, taking me in one curve and goose bump at a time. “Perfect. Exquisite.” He skated his calloused palms over my skin, and I shivered. Bringing his eyes back to mine, he rested his hands on my waist and drew me close, my nipples hard, his pecs harder. “Amara Wood.”
“Yes?” I croaked.
His hands moved again, tracing each one of my fluttering ribs. “When we get out of here, will you go out on a proper date with me?”
Yes, I screamed but said, “It depends.”
His thumbs perched on my nipples, and I let out a little mewl. “On what?” he shot out gruffly.
How I enjoyed incensing him. “On who breaks us out. If Joshua’s the one—”
A storm blew across his face, lit him up with such animosity I worried Remo would seed the Neverrian soil with the Daneelie’s ashes the second we made it home.
“I’m kidding.”
He let out a low grunt like he wasn’t sure that I was.
I kissed his sandwiched lips, pried them apart. Slowly, his anger receded, his lips softened, and his thumbs stopped pressing my nipples as though trying to turn them inside out. One of his hands spiraled up to the back of my head while his other ventured south, his fingers gliding under the waistband of my belted shorts, coming to rest on my bare ass.
He gave it a possessive squeeze. “Lawfully, you’re already mine. You do realize that, Trifecta? Mine,” he repeated, walking me backward.
“You sound like a caveman.”
“Perhaps because I am a man inside a cave.” When we hit the wall, one hand cushioning the back of my skull while the other pillowed my tailbone, he asked, “May I get rid of your shorts?”
“I don’t know, can you?”
His lips curled against mine, and then the hand on my lower back grabbed on to the stretchy sleeve stuffed through the beltloops and shoved it, and my shorts, down.
A fevered rush of blood raced around my bared body, doing zilch to warm me up. “I guess you can.”
Pleased, he took a step back. I started to cross my arms, but he caught them and pressed them apart. “Let me look at my wife.”
My heart stopped. “I’m not your wife.”
“You will be.”
I hiked up an eyebrow and skewered him with a look. “Oh, really?”
“If you think I’m letting Josh or anyone else near that Cauldron when it reappears, you’re highly delusional. There will be an electrified laser fence. And a fleet of armed guards, all of whom will answer to me.”
“Sounds like a lovely ceremony.”
That just made his eyes sparkle more wickedly.
“Are you sure you want this, Remo? That you want me?”
“I’m a thousand percent sure.”
“You can’t be a thousand percent sure. That doesn’t make any mathematical sense.”
“You really are a math fiend, aren’t you?” His mouth lowered to one of my breasts, and he struck a peaked nipple with his tongue, causing pleasure to swell my veins.
“You swear you’re not settling for me, because”—I gasped as he blew on my wet skin, before kissing his way to my other breast and flattening his tongue there—“because you feel like”—I held my breath, let it out, held it again, moaned—“like you should?”
He released my nipple with a pinch of teeth and rolled his neck until his head leveled on mine. “Like I should?”
“Out of duty to the Cauldron and your kingdom.”
My reminder spirited away his wickedness, replacing it with stanch solemnity. “Amara Wood, I am not settling for you out of necessity or obligation. And I am a hundred percent sure I want you and will keep wanting you until you turn wrinkly and gray.”
I grimaced. “Let’s not talk about graying.”
His eyes delved into mine. “Are you having second thoughts about us?”
“No.”
“Are you a hundred percent certain?”
“I’m a thousand percent certain.”
He grunted.
To prove my point, I shifted my hands to the only piece of clothing between us—his pants. I undid the button, then lowered the zipper, my pulse blasting from my boldness. After killing a man, undressing one surely shouldn’t have been so terrifying, but damn if I wasn’t one giant jumble of nerves. In timid increments, I swept my gaze over the buffed expanse of golden skin that tapered into an abdomen so ridged and trim it seemed soldered from sheets of metal. My fingers shook, which was all it took to nudge the waistband off the sharp indents at Remo’s waist.
As the wet jeans tumbled, my fingertips jolted off his skin, and I blinked, first at his bared flesh, then at his hooded eyes. “Why did you—why did you assault Kingston when he . . .?”
His forehead furrowed in confusion.
A blush crawled up my neck. “When he said you were . . . um . . . not—”
His frown smoothed, and his lips quirked. “Well-endowed?”
“Yes.” I was tempted to fan myself. “That.”
The small cave filled with his intoxicating laughter. I didn’t know how long it lasted, but actual tears formed on his lash line by the time he sobered up.
Grin still intact, he said, “I punched him because he was an ass, and because, like you said yourself, I’m prideful. Not because my manhood felt threatened.” His teeth flashed. “Were you worried?”
“No.” Hot. Skies, I was so damn hot.
He caught my chin between thumb and forefinger and levered my face. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For still wanting to be with me in spite of thinking I would be . . . underwhelming.”
My nerves loosened, and my blush tempered. “It’s your heart and mind I’m after.”
“Good thing you’ll get both, and so”—his hand fell from my face but didn’t leave my body—“so so much more.”
I tried to roll my eyes at his overwhelming confidence, but he stepped into me, his edges denting my curves, and my brain broke, ceasing all commands, reducing me to a single, highly receptive but uselessly static, nerve ending. His fingers began a slow voyage down the frame of my body, drawing tantalizing arabesques over my skin, coaxing whorls of goose bumps to the surface.
He lowered his face to mine, his tousled hair fluttering over his brow, and breathed my name against the tip of my nose and then again against my parted lips. I could still only stare, only feel, only gasp when his mouth dropped over mine, taking great care in not angering the tender skin. He licked and caressed, his tongue dancing into my mouth, lunging before withdrawing.
When his fingers stopped roaming my body, frustration welded onto my anticipation. I must’ve sounded my displeasure, because he released a low chuckle that vibrated against my teeth.
“You really are an impatient woman,” he murmured, before pressing my lips apart and sheathing his tongue inside at the very same time he slipped a finger across my slippery folds.
I gasped, and he groaned, his kiss hardening along with the rest of his body. My limbs finally stirred, and my palms skated up the taut sinews of his arms to perch on his shoulders.
He stroked me slowly, and although I craved a faster pace, it was such exquisite torture that I let my head roll back against the wall and closed my eyes. In the back of my mind, it occurred to me that perhaps I should tell him I’d never been with anyone before, but his fingers magicked away my ability to spe
ak. Besides, it didn’t matter to me and shouldn’t matter to him.
He nosed the side of my neck, peppering it with kisses that turned sloppier as he worked me harder, slickening me further. Seeking my pleasure turned him feral, the noises he made against my flushed skin more animal than man, fanning the gathering heat until my release sparked and set my entire body aflame. It wasn’t my first orgasm, but it put all the ones I’d given myself to shame.
Before I’d even started to come down, he gripped my thighs and lifted me clear off the ground. My lids flipped open. I hooked my feet behind his back and my arms behind his neck.
“Trifecta . . .” My nickname was a rush of warmth against my neck.
I decided I didn’t hate it anymore.
He banged a fist against the wall and let out a growl that startled the dregs of my orgasm right out of my system.
“What is it?”
“Our Infinities don’t work!”
I frowned. “But your manhood does, right?”
He froze, and then his mouth twitched as though he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or to roar some more. The smile won out. “My cock works fine.” He pecked my lips. “But we don’t have protection.”
Before he could put me down, I did something completely reckless, which I supposed fit the girl I’d become. I slid my hand between our heaving chests and wrapped my fingers around him.
His breath caught. Held. And so did our eyes.
“Wouldn’t be the first time we behaved irresponsibly, now would it?” I kissed the corner of his mouth and stroked him, marveling at his silkiness and bulk, reveling in his ramping breaths. “But you don’t need to worry. I had a shot a few months ago. It lasts two years.” I didn’t explain that it was because I had weird cycles and not because I was sexually active, although I did wonder if Nima suggested it for the latter.
The exhale that escaped him was so substantial Giya had probably felt its tailwind. “Thank fuck.” His fingers crimped my ass, lifting me a little higher, until we were so perfectly aligned that when he lowered me back down, he slid right in. Well, the tip of him did; the rest of him encountered resistance that made him gasp my name, and not in a sexy, throaty way, but in a shocked and slightly horrified way.
Reckless Cruel Heirs Page 34
