Drowning in Fire

by Hanna Martine

  The realization made her shiver, and her skin pebbled. Such an alien feeling.

  Griffin released her, his lips gently pulling away, his hands leaving her hips to skim lightly up her arms, trailing more gooseflesh in their wake. He was watching the path of his hands, his head tilted. “Am I doing that?” he murmured in wonder.

  Pressing herself against him, she opened her mouth on the hard column of his throat, loving the way he sagged under her tongue. “Yes,” she whispered into his hot, hot skin. “It’s you.”

  The vulnerability of that admission scared her, but that fear turned out to be a potent aphrodisiac.

  His big, graceful arms folded around her, and even though they were nearly the same height she felt enclosed and cherished, but also his equal. They merely held each other, her breath fanning warmly across the skin below his ear, his clutch on her intensifying with every second, a vise whose pressure was most welcome. Then his head drew back, her hands automatically sliding around his short, soft hair that felt so lovely in her fingers, and they were kissing again.

  A pure sweep of lips and tongues. A trembling of bodies.

  He pushed off the door, walking her backward. He led like a dancer, and her body followed without thought or stumbling, as though she’d anticipated his movements and already knew the steps. As though her desire had conjured them in her head moments before and he was reading her mind.

  And then he did something entirely unexpected.

  He bent down, wrapped one arm around the back of her knees, and picked her up. Cradled her.

  The Keko who belonged to the Chimerans would have fought this instantly, this blatant overtaking. The Keko who’d been general, and before that the highest ranking warrior, would have squirmed and kicked out, maybe thrown the heel of one hand into his nose or an elbow into his throat. She would have swept out a leg to knock him to the ground. They’d tussle, and maybe she’d let him pin her eventually, let him take her on the tail end of the fake fight, just to let him know she could win . . . if she’d wanted the victory.

  But the Keko who belonged to Griffin wanted none of that right now. She wanted to know how he would care for her, how he would tend to her on his own terms. She wanted to know what his control was like, what he desired from her. So she chose not to fight, and instead curled an arm around the back of his neck and stared into his eyes. Waiting. Issuing a challenge of the silent kind.

  He walked her toward the bed and she tensed, waiting to be thrown over it, like she’d done to him their very first time together. Like he’d done to her on their second. The corners of his lips, gone all soft and swollen, ticked up, because he knew she was thinking of that. Expecting it. Instead, his strong legs bent and he sat her on top of the green tropical bedspread. The cool polyester felt strange and wonderful against her skin that burned under the gooseflesh.

  A slow, soft hand passed over her shoulder to rest on her heaving breastbone. Just a shadow of the first time they’d touched, when she’d grabbed his hand and gave him no choice about how he was to touch her. Now the choice was all his, and her brain buzzed with this new kind of power—watching the way she affected him. And there was no mistaking it, because his hunger was sewn into his expression.

  The concept of being wanted that much, and to witness it in person, was more than overwhelming. This wasn’t just sex, a conquest, a physical need. For her, it was a kind of birth, and it was both painful and beautiful.

  He gave her a slight push. “Lie down,” he whispered.

  Scooting back on the bed diagonally, she slowly let her body arch backward, watching his face the whole time—a searing focus that declared he’d found his goal and would go after it with everything he had.

  She longed to ease the tortured expression that knitted his brow. With an arch of her spine, his lips parted and he came down to join her.

  Crawling, his biceps bulging out of the sleeves of his T-shirt, he straddled her thighs, towering over her. Her hands rested by her head, and though she was dying to reach for his zipper, to yank it down and have what was inside, she told herself that knowing his mind and what he wanted at that moment was far, far more desirable. This would be a lesson for both of them.

  His stare pinned her with an invisible strength. He sat on her legs, hands slowly rubbing up and down her thighs, then he reached forward. The tank top was a piece of crap and he had an easy time ripping it away from her body. Just shredded it down the center. Flipping back the halves, he stared down at her chest, his tongue making a slow sweep of his inner lower lip. With even less care, he swept his own T-shirt from his body.

  There was something about being underneath a man she’d never truly appreciated before. Something about reducing such a warrior—because that’s what he was, as she learned to redefine the title—to the wordless staring, to the mindless desire circling in those eyes, that made her feel more powerful than the Queen.

  Then he moved, shifting back, bending at the waist. Coming down over her.

  Closing her eyes, listening to her own breath rattle in anticipation, she awaited the lick on a nipple, the stroke of the generous curve underneath, maybe a full-on grab, tight and needy. She wasn’t at all expecting the feel of his torso, all that hard muscle and skin that she’d touched through his shirt, slide up over hers. There was a different kind of sensation on her nipples as his chest and heavy body covered hers. And then a familiar sensation on her mouth as he kissed her.

  Nothing what she’d expected, but everything she loved.

  She felt his hands on her head, smoothing back her hair, kissing and kissing her, his body growing heavier and heavier. Then his fingers drifted away from her head and slid across the bedspread to take her waiting hands. Fingers intertwined, palm to palm, they clenched each other. Held on to one another. Kissed like the Earth had stopped rotating and the moon would hang forever where it was and the sun would wait patiently for them to finish before rising.

  He pulled away with a groan and a great gasp. She exhaled with loss as his body lifted off hers, silently crying for his return. He was looking at her, his gaze dropping to her jaw and chin, then shoulders and chest. He dragged his hands down her arms, finally—finally—to her breasts. But it was a tease, just a light scrape across her nipples that had her arching up like she’d been zapped with beautiful electricity. Then he did the most incredible thing . . . he turned his touch to water.

  A cool, delicate, sharp, wet drag of liquid, up and around and down and across her sensitive, heated flesh. Her body responded immediately, igniting her fire magic. Steam rose off her, circling him, enveloping him.

  She knew she was wet before, but with their magic mixed, she got absolutely soaked. She felt almost too swollen and tuned up to be touched, gone shaking in her need for him.

  The water swirled over her nipples again, and this time, with the shock gone, there was only intense pleasure. She cried out, chin thrown back. She thought she heard him chuckle, triumphant, and then the water was gone. He eased off her, the absence almost hurting, until she felt his hands at her jeans. Pulling them off, under her hips, sliding them down her legs.

  Barely a second passed after the last piece of her clothes disappeared before he was on her again, this time with his knees pushing hers apart, and this time with him whispering against her mouth in light teases, “So beautiful. So fucking beautiful.”

  Her arms came away from the bed to wrap around his neck. Her legs lifted and entwined around his lower back. Her heels shoved at the loose waistband of his baggy shorts, and then they were off, too, his body twisting, his hands scrabbling to make himself naked. It was a short burst of energy, all frantic and desperate like so much of their sex had been before, but then, as he leaned back and she caught a glimpse of his hard stomach, tense thighs, and raging erection, he slowed. Covered her body again.

  “Please.”

  Who had said that? Him? Her? Some ghost in the room or t
he very energy between them?

  “What do you want?” His voice against her lips, tugging at the softness.

  So it had been her to speak, to beg like that. How wonderfully freeing, to be able to do that and not to be judged or thought weak. On the contrary, energy raced through her, exploding out of her skin in ways the fire never had. The fire was part of her, yes, but the magic was something inside her body, something given to her, something she could manipulate. This desire that was making her crazy and blind and deaf . . . that was hers. She owned it. And she would give it all to Griffin of her own volition.

  “Touch me,” she whispered. “Make me come. Please.”

  With a low animalistic sound, he slid down her body. All that friction blazed through her from the outside in. An entirely new, reverse kind of heat—his heat, and he was giving it to her.

  On a delay, she realized that he hadn’t moved in order to penetrate her. Instead his head was between her legs, his eyes focused on where she was desperate for him, his intent so very clear.

  “The fire . . .” she began.

  He shook his head, his eyes flipping up to meet hers. “I want to feel it. On my lips, in my mouth. I’m not worried. You won’t hurt me.”

  But you’ll hurt me, she thought. And not physically.

  He licked her, right there where all emotion and sensation had spiraled and made her aware of the entire universe. Her hips bucked off the bed, but he clamped his hands around her thighs. Held her down. She had no strength, no fight left. Had she ever truly had any when it came to him?

  His mouth closed over her, a soft fastening of the lips and a deliberate swirl of the tongue. She got lost in it, in its aching pace, in the shivers he was drawing out from her again.

  Then she did a dumb thing. She opened her eyes, lifted her head and looked down. Looked at the roll of his mouth over her flesh, the way he ate her as though he were savoring his last meal, the smooth, even bob of his head between her legs. It was dumb because she’d never be able to forget the squeeze of his eyelids, or the appearance of his tongue as he dragged it up the sensitive seam of her body. Dumb because she knew she would think of and want this every day up until the moment she died, and she had no idea what was going to happen to either of them after tomorrow.

  A sob wracked out of her as she came. She was crying and coming, her chest heaving with sorrow and pleasure, and she didn’t know which to trust in more.

  When she came down, when her body ceased its tremors and there were paths of wetness from the corners of her eyes to the bedspread, Griffin still had his mouth on her, only this time it was everywhere: her inner thighs, her hip bones, the divots between her stomach muscles. When he clamped his lips over her nipple again, a strange heat coated his tongue. Spicy, zinging. Her own.

  He rose up to fill her vision again. “Your fire is delicious.”

  On his elbows above her, staring into her face, he nudged his cock inside her at last. Her vision winked and blurred, and she blamed the look in his eyes, that pure bliss shooting back at her, that something she was so afraid to voice but could name with the snap of her fingers.

  And then he was fully inside her. Griffin Aames was inside her. Filling her from spirit to heart, soul to mind. She felt she might split apart from all that consumed her, and she had no idea what to do about that. As his forehead came down to touch hers, she gripped his short hair. Right before she closed her eyes against the intensity of his nearness, she knew she was lost. And this new place—a state of mind she’d never known before and was wandering through with little to no direction—was truly blissful.

  Then he withdrew and pushed back into her with renewed power. Somehow larger, somehow deeper. The sounds that flowed up and out of their throats gave voice to indescribable feeling. Fire and water, combining inside her body.

  They’d done this before, but the frenzied nature of their previous sexual encounters had masked the intensity of the two elements truly coming together. Now, with every centimeter of movement creating a mile of sensation, she was wholly aware of how warm her body was growing, how it was taking him in and wrapping around his element, combining with it. Intensifying it. He was water and ice and steam, and she could almost see that steam rising from the mountains of his shoulders, trickling through the lines made by his flexing muscles.

  Another thrust, slow and hard. She discovered she did not want to demand speed this time. She did not want a fuck like they’d already had. No, she wanted more of this—this protective, intense, claiming penetration that locked their eyes as firmly as it joined their bodies.

  His hips were heavenly, the way they scooped up and into her. He moved like water itself, smooth and flowing, its power deceptively beautiful and innocent looking. And then . . . suddenly . . . just for a moment . . . it seemed like he was water.

  His whole body went translucent and shimmering at the edges, like he was losing control of who he was and who his body longed to be. Then he was back again, his olive skin as solid and lovely and taut as it had always been. The thought that she might have sparked that in him made her insane with lust.

  She wanted to carve a stone prayer to the Queen asking if she could keep this man inside her forever and ever. That she could just keep this man, period.

  Griffin’s chin jutted out, his face reddening, his teeth clenching. She could feel her inner fire starting to release, which meant that he could, too. Little pinpricks of orange and sparkling gold turned her vision into a dreamy wonderland, and she loved the way Griffin appeared to her through it. Her water elemental, overlaid by flames.

  They’d been together enough for him to remember what got her off, and he did it without prompting. He shoved a hand under her ass and hoisted her up, tilting her into the delicious angle that had him stroking the most perfect place inside. He held tight to her, not letting her drop, driving into her with increased force. Increased speed.

  She rode it out, arms thrust to the side, hips high in the air, legs holding on to the man driving into her. She felt utterly powerless, a slave to the fire and the man who held her body so perfectly . . . and it was the greatest feeling in the world.

  When she came again, the fire rolled through her with such force she thought she might ignite. She’d take the bed and the B and B and all of the Big Island with her, and not even the great Fire Source could match the way he was making her feel.

  Her throat went raw with the sounds she made. Fire licked behind her eyelids, because she couldn’t keep them open any longer. The conflagration at last began to peter out, but the experience wasn’t over, because Griffin roared as he came. She distinctly felt him tighten and swell, the stroke of him turning into a wonderful rhythm.

  Then he was cool inside her, a splash of water. An ocean of peace and power.

  When at last he withdrew and lowered her ass back to the bed, she was numb to everything but the gentle rub of his skin against hers. Maybe it was hours later—maybe it was minutes—but she was still lying there, held in his arms, one of his hands stroking down her hair, one leg thrown over her thighs, claiming her.

  Despite her best intentions, despite her wishes and dreams and all that she knew she must do tomorrow, she let herself be taken.

  SIXTEEN

  Regrettably, the sun rose.

  Griffin opened his eyes to find Keko already awake. She lay on her back naked, her long, strong legs crossed at the ankles, fingers interlaced over her belly. Her dark nipples rose and fell as she breathed, and he found that he could still taste them on his tongue.

  Her head was turned on the pillow toward him, a thick chunk of black hair swooping over her ear and under her chin to make a dark line across her neck. Despite the new light coming through the curtains, her eyes were somber and shadowed, and they absorbed everything. No amount of water magic could save him from drowning in her fire, and it did not frighten him. He reached out and covered her hands with one of his,
giving her a mild tug, a subtle hint that he wanted her arms around him. On him. It had the opposite effect.

  Instead of Keko rolling into him, she yanked away from his touch. Throwing her legs over the edge of the bed, she pressed her hands to the mattress. He stared at her back and triceps, at the shadowed lines between her muscles, at the sexy dimples above her ass.

  Then he noticed the way she was almost gasping for breath. “Keko?”

  So many things had happened between them last night, many of which he’d never be able to name, nor would he ever want to. They were singular occurrences, precious seconds and moments that could never be repeated. He’d distinctly felt, in a triumphant instant, when all the walls between them had been completely demolished, crackling into a zillion pieces. Even that final wall had come down—the one he’d been trying to remove slowly, brick by brick—and he’d nearly shouted with relief. With her body surrounding his, he sensed that she’d decided to turn back from her quest. He’d drifted into sleep holding on to that final thought, that he’d succeeded in keeping her alive. Keeping her with him.

  But now, with daylight striking the tension in her back, he knew she’d reconsidered. In her own sleep she’d rebuilt that last wall and had awakened with renewed purpose. No matter what had happened between them, she was going to head for that island. She was still going to try for the Source.

  And he couldn’t be the one to stop her.

  Sitting up, he positioned himself behind her but didn’t touch her rigid body. He feared what he might say, so he didn’t speak.

  When she finally opened her mouth, she spoke to the floor between her knees. “I don’t want to be the Queen anymore. And I don’t want to die.”

  He couldn’t help it; his heart soared. The stars seemed to blink all around him, sparkling motes in the daylight, as though they’d answered his prayers to make her change her mind. They would figure out another way to both help her people and mollify the Children of Earth. They would—