by Hotter Edge
He tugged his arm out of her reach. “I think I’m feeling better already.”
The instant his flesh left contact with hers, the qva’avaq blazed a protest. He cried out at the burn, hazily surprised the water didn’t turn to steam.
Rynn caught him as he collapsed, keeping his head above water.
The wave of his fall sluiced up over his chest, extinguishing the fire in his skin. No, it wasn’t the water, it was her hands on him, soothing the restless hurt of the crystal that called with no echo.
She held him as he fought for his breath. “It won’t last forever,” she said softly. “Let it go.”
“I can’t. It’s in me.”
“The liqueur—”
“Not that. The qva’avaq.”
“Let that out too. Just for tonight. Just while we’re here.” She leaned down to kiss his forehead.
But her touch kindled another sort of burn. He pulled her roughly over him and angled to catch her lips with his own. Her hand splayed across his chest, and she made a soft sound, somewhere between dismay and desire.
He whispered against her mouth, “Just for you.”
Chapter Nine
She shouldn’t. He wouldn’t even be here except for his quest. She wouldn’t be here except she had nowhere else she could go. Worse, the malac essence was no doubt clouding their judgment with its iridescent particles.
But in the empty cave, those reasons—reason itself—seemed far away. The candles and the silver-indigo glow of their own bodies cast a magical light over the warm waters that washed away coherent thought and left only sensation.
He had said he didn’t want to feel, but he seemed to have shed that reserve along with his gray tunic. From his half-submerged sprawl, his hands roamed her back restlessly from shoulders to hips, rippling the shallow pool as she surfed his chest while his tongue tangled with hers. With each stroke of his fingers and tongue, the cleft between her legs grew warmer and wetter until she thought she would come apart in the water, just another wave breaking over his body.
She clutched his broad shoulders, trying to anchor herself, but the soaked material of her shift betrayed her and she slid half across him. The slick friction over her skin made her gasp, tasting the mineral tang of the water around them and the musky sweetness of the liqueur.
He reached down to grip the hem of her skirt and pulled it high. The drag of his knuckles over her thighs was a rougher delight, and as his knee rode up behind to settle between her legs, she sucked in another breath at the bold pressure. Could he feel the rising tremor in her core? He must.
Breaking the kiss, he skimmed the shift over her head. The fabric floated for a moment, pale on the water like a cloud of a warning that she should probably not be forgetting herself like this. But then it sank out of sight.
He stared up at her, his eyes dark and almost savage in the flickering light. “Saya-Rynn. My siren.”
“I don’t sing any more than you do.”
“Then only say what I am and that will be enough.”
She touched his cheek. “L’auralyo.” She spoke the word softly, in a sort of awe that she held this unique being between her hands. And yet somehow, as thrilling as it was to make him hers, the word was not quite right. She tried again. “My lover. Mine.”
He made a low sound of satisfaction and surged up to kiss her again, rolling with her in the pool. She found herself under him this time, her legs wrapped around his hips, while he braced one hand on the smooth stone beneath them. His erection, hotter than the volcanic water, settled flush against her mound. Little waves lapped over her shoulders and whispered in her ears—not that she had any fear of drowning—but he held her up with one arm strong behind her.
He bowed her back over his arm so that her breasts thrust upward, sluicing water off her bared skin in a fiery reflection of the candles.
“Fire and water,” he murmured. “Dangerous and beautiful.”
She couldn’t help but arch under his fiercely hungry stare. In the relative coolness of the air, her nipples hardened, as if to taunt him.
But he apparently wasn’t interested in teasing. He dipped his head in one predatory swoop and captured the peak of her breast in his mouth. The flat of his tongue laved her tight and aching flesh, not soothing but provoking. She gasped as her pulse leapt. Her own excitement flashed back at her in the silver lines of the qva’avaq that curled at his temples and swept down the column of his neck.
She threaded her hands through his long hair. He had plaited it again some time after leaving her office with Luac and Ky, but she had undone the braid while he’d lain unconscious in the beach hut. Perhaps that had been presumptuous of her, but the look was too severe for a tropical island.
Now she looped her fingers through the golden strands and locked him in place.
Not that he seemed inclined to go anywhere, except to transfer his attention to her other breast. His lips trailed over the scars and faded stretch marks, and she flinched, her shoulders folding inward.
“Stop that.” He nipped at the inner curve of her breast. “Do not hide yourself from me.”
“That’s nothing anyone needs to see.”
“The marks of joy and pain, life and death, over your heart are what make you incomparably you.” He kissed the place where he had bitten before lifting his head to fix her with a heated glare. “And I am not just anyone.”
She wrapped one more loop of his hair around her fingers like an infinity ring. “How could I forget?”
“I’ll be sure you don’t make that mistake again.” With long, slow, circular licks, he tantalized her flesh. He sucked each nipple into a swollen, sensitive point until she grasped at his shoulders, moaning, and ground her hips against him. His heavy weight between her legs was like a moon’s gravity, empowering the rising tide of her desire.
At the tightening in her core, she shuddered. As if sensing the change in her—of course he did—he eased his kisses up the column of her neck, first nipping then caressing so that her pulse stuttered in tempestuous waves and she thought she might come apart in his embrace like some silly girl with her first lover.
But she didn’t want to go there alone.
Crossing her ankles behind his buttocks, she pulled him closer, even as she slipped one hand down between their bodies. When she found the hot, hard length of him, he arched his back and bucked against her, driving his erection into her clenched fist with a groan.
She gazed up at his tight face, the qva’avaq standing out in brilliant swirls against his blood-darkened cheeks. “This is your first time.” She stroked him once, softly, and he thrust again with another groan. “I want to make it last.”
“I won’t last,” he said fervently. “Not another moment.”
She hushed him and trailed her fingers in a spiral along his length and girth. The sensual measuring made him tremble. And made her smile. “Another moment?”
“Maybe one more.”
Their bodies were pressed too tightly together to see anything past his heaving chest as he struggled to catch his breath, but the flow of the roused qva’avaq and his own quivering flesh rippled under her fingertips. She closed her eyes, the better to imagine that rhythm inside her.
But she didn’t have to imagine. She tightened her fingers at the base of his shaft.
His blood and crystal surged. “Your moment is over,” he growled.
He leaned into her and she opened to him, guiding the blunt head of his cock past her slickened folds and deep inside her.
In the same instant, he slanted his mouth over hers. The kiss went deep, past her teeth, past her defenses. She lifted her hips to take him.
He gasped into her mouth and plunged deeper yet. The heavy friction against delicate tissues made them both writhe, twisting into each other. With both hands, he framed her face and kissed her as if he’d never let her go.
Without his braced arms behind her, she slipped backward into the water. The liquid rush engulfed her, inside and out, but he
followed her down inexorably, his kiss ruthless, each stroke of his tongue echoing the relentless crash of his cock and the glorious rush of her burgeoning orgasm.
She clenched her inner muscles around him, matching him thrust for thrust, as their breath ran short. Under her grasping hands, his broad chest heaved with his need, for air, for completion. Though her own altered genetics made life from the dark water, still she needed more, needed him. She reached for her own climax and drove her heels into the backs of his thighs, forcing him flush with her throbbing center. The grind of their heaving bodies tossed the waters. She opened her eyes underwater to see the concentric waves expanding and refracting across the pool to lap at their skin like another hundred hungry mouths.
He skimmed both hands down her shoulders and over her hips. His long fingers locked on her hipbones, and he settled his thumbs at the crease of her groin. He pressed a point she had not known about on her own body, so that her legs splayed open to him, along her whole awareness, as if she’d thrown open the castle gate, and he speared her with a desperate ferocity. He touched her so deeply, she cried out as she came. Silken water rushed down her throat even as his orgasm flooded her within.
He threw his head back with an answering roar. The pale whip of his long hair flung fiery droplets in an arc across the cavern.
To her submerged senses, his cry and the scintillating lights were something from a dream, a dream from which she never wanted to awake.
She floated for a long, shuddering heartbeat, and then he hauled her up into his arms.
Water streamed from the tiny shells in her hair and her mouth as he clamped his lips over hers.
She shifted her grasp around him to let the water she’d inhaled seep from her gills, the warm trickle down her ribs as much a pleasure—almost—as the slowing pulse of his cock deep inside her. She had forgotten how much the soft, mineral-laden water soothed her. Never again would she go so long without a visit to her island.
And she had this man to thank.
Something else she would never forget.
She touched his cheek, gentling the kiss. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he lifted his head. The slosh of water around them stilled, until only their breathing sent out delicate rings of gentle swells, each ring highlighted with the silver-indigo glow of their bodies and each trough as black as the far-away, dying storm.
Icere’s eyes were an unsettling mix of the light and dark. As he stared down at her, the glimmer of his qva’avaq faded with the same rhythmic pulses as his softening cock, but his arm behind her shoulders was unyielding.
She knew even his young knees must be starting to ache on the pebbles beneath them. Still, he did not move.
She cleared her throat, the harsh sound awkward in the dream-like setting. “How are you feeling? The aphrodisiac essence should be dissipating.”
“It’s gone.”
“Well then. Good.” There was an undertone in his voice that made her try to struggle farther upright despite his grasp. “Between the mineral water and the release of your…tension, I’d hoped this would be enough.”
“It’s not.”
“No?” She stilled, floating beneath him. “But you said—”
“The malac essence is out of my system. But there’s something else.”
She frowned. “There shouldn’t be anything in this water except—”
“You.”
The pool was too shallow to sustain a tidal wave, but she felt the breath slam out of her. “The liqueur doesn’t leave any lingering sensitivities.”
He flexed inside her and she gasped at the eager answering twinge in her core.
His smile was harder yet and just a little smug with no hint of his dimple. “Oh?”
She gritted her teeth. “That is something else.”
“Yes.” He hauled her up against his chest. “You.”
She might have protested again but he kissed her, and his tongue in her mouth precluded protests or talk of any sort. Rational thought was the next to go, washed away as he moved against her. His cock throbbed with renewed life, like a returning tide, shimmering with the flow of qva’avaq under his skin. Certain advantages to having a l’auralyo lover, and a young one at that. And she would always be able to find him in the dark.
She clung to the hard muscles of his biceps, her legs folded around his lean flanks to pull him closer yet.
Each thrust took them closer to the edge of the pool, and at last he was able to lay her shoulders above the reach of the water, though every plunge of his hips sent waves to lap at her breasts. With both his hands free and air to breathe, he found her pleasure points with his long fingers and clever tongue. The sounds he drew from her were almost a song as her yearning cries echoed through the cavern.
They came together in a concerted rush, his deep voice underscoring hers. He shuddered against her and collapsed.
She held him tight as his shaking eased or he might have slid off into the water so bonelessly had he slumped. The weight of him—as clumsy a gesture as he’d ever committed in her presence—made her laugh. Silently, since he’d squashed all the breath out of her. Just as well her dive reflex left her able to function without renewed air for prolonged periods.
After awhile, he kissed the crown of her head. “You,” he murmured for the third time.
She wriggled out from underneath him. He did not argue, not even when she tucked him under her arm in a rescue hold and towed him deeper.
They crossed the pool toward the splash of falling water.
He roused at the touch of cooler droplets. “Go ahead and drown me again. I won’t even care.”
She chuckled. “I thought you might like something more bracing.”
“No, not really. Not at the moment. Even a l’auralyo can only brace himself so many times.”
“Rinse. It feels good.”
“I already feel good,” he grumbled. But he shook himself out of her grasp and paddled with steady if inefficient strokes toward the stream cascading over the dark rocks. He must have found one of the submerged ledges because he stood suddenly, angling himself under the waterfall.
She treaded back, clear of the spray, her gaze fixed on his long, lean body. He arched his back to let the stream sweep his long hair off his shoulders, and as he swept his hands over his face, the muscles in his abdomen pulled taut. Despite the cooler water and their recent activity, his cock hung with a decided heavy prominence, as if it awaited only her word—or touch—to rise again.
She swallowed, still tasting the tang of salt and malac essence and that other elusive flavor—bright and shining as crystal—in the back of her throat.
He was none the worse for wear, she decided.
As if he sensed her stare, he straightened to meet her gaze. The waterfall parted in a hundred rivulets over his body, like questing fingers.
She felt a little jealous so she swam toward him. She rested her hands on the ledge between his feet and looked up at him through the shimmer of spray.
She had to angle her head to one side to see around his rapidly thickening shaft. She smiled, his eyes widened, and she boosted herself onto the ledge between his legs.
Reaching up, she cupped his sac. “How are you feeling now?”
The muscles in his neck jumped as he swallowed. “I’m still a little tense. All that aphrodisiac, you know.”
“I suppose you should let it out.”
“You’d better show me how.”
When she took him in her mouth, his head tipped back until she thought he might have to learn to breathe water. Maybe they both still had something to learn.
***
Later, feeling as if he’d been washed clean, wrung out, and left to drape limply awaiting his next use, Icere lounged in the hot pool behind the waterfall, his head tipped back into the relatively forgiving bed of pebbles that ringed the hot tub. The contrast of the cool spray mixed with the steaming water would have brought his skin to tingling life. If he hadn’t been so wrung out and limp.
At the sound of off-key humming, he rolled his head along his shoulder and watched though half-lidded eyes as Rynn splashed in the waterfall. She’d brought a few candles into the grotto behind the sheeting water, shielding the tiny flames with her hands and losing not a single one to stray droplets. She was just that kind of woman; even fire and water obeyed her commands.
In the flickering candlelight, with the silvery water bouncing off her upturned face and the upper curves of her breasts, she looked like an elemental being, powerful and elusive, complete in herself, needing nothing.
Though the effects of the malac liqueur had worn off, having her so far away made his muscles tighten, as if his body would throw off even this delicious languor to go to her.
He must have made some noise because she straightened, meeting his gaze through the falling water.
She smiled at him, and he glanced down, glad to note that the soft, heated waves gave his cock at least the semblance of alertness.
With a splash, she dove into the hot pool and disappeared below the surface. He lost sight of her below the ripples and reflections until she popped up between his legs. She surfed his chest, her skin still cool from the waterfall, and he found that he wasn’t so limp as he’d thought.
Wriggling to one side, she hooked her arm over the edge of the pool and nestled against his shoulder while she combed his unbound hair over the pebbles.
“I haven’t told you of the sea wyverns,” she murmured. “It rare to see one, much less get close. You remind me of them, so sleek and beautiful. Unique.”
For some reason, her words annoyed him. Yes, he was those things—he’d been molded to be so—but she made him sound…untouchable.
He twisted gracefully within the curve of her arm and pulled her closer. She squeaked as he snugged one knee up between her legs to ground her like a boat on the shore of his chest.
He smiled down at her, deliberately deploying his dimple. “Unique? Are you saying I was like your first?”
She stared at him, her mouth set in a serious line as if to counter his flippancy. “My first l’auralyo.”
