24. Ella

Chapter 24

Ella

Laya had requested that Ella tuck her and Jarion into bed. Before heading upstairs, Laya quietly scurried over to Kellen and folded her arms around his waist, burrowing her cheek in his stomach.

“I’m sorry, Kell,” she whispered. Kellen enveloped her in a tight embrace.

“Nothing to apologize for, my love.” He kissed the top of her head, then looked up to find Jarion slowly approaching.

“I’m sorry too,” Jarion murmured, which was a far more necessary and meaningful declaration than the one Laya had uttered.

Kellen lifted one arm off Laya to yank Jarion into their hug. He buried his nose in Jarion’s curls.

“I fucking love you both,” he croaked, tears gleaned on his lashes. He crushed them together without even realizing, though neither of the twins seemed to mind, finding the closeness consoling after such a harrowing evening.

When he felt ready, Kellen relinquished them to Ella, literally passing his siblings into her arms, where he trusted they would be safe.

“I’ll be down soon,” she promised him, spinning around to escape the intense way he’d been gaping at her, like he was trying to strip her jacket off with his eyes so he could stare into her soul.

Ella loitered at the doorframe of their bedroom as Jarion and Laya got ready for bed. All Jare needed was to throw on a hoodie and a pair of sweats, but Laya spent intimate time washing her face in the bathroom, strutting out in a matching pink button down and pajama bottoms that had white polka dots speckled across the fabric. By the time Laya crawled into bed, Jarion had already fallen asleep.

Ella took a seat at the foot of Laya’s bed and helped drape her comforter over her curled-up body.

“Thank you, Ms. Rose. Not just for this.” Ella cocked her head.

“For what else?” Laya gulped.

“For telling us about your mom.” Ella sucked in a harsh breath. She hadn’t intended to tell the twins, especially Kellen, about her mother, but in the moment, it had felt like a vital instance for self-disclosure. That was further confirmed when Laya said, “It helped me…to hear that you really understood.”

“Oh, sweet girl,” Ella sobbed, cupping the side of Laya’s face, smudging Laya’s tears with her thumb. Choking back her own tears, she whispered, “I wish I didn’t understand.” Laya gave the hand Ella had on her cheek a squeeze.

“I wish you didn’t either,” she whimpered.

“Gods, you are so beyond your years. You have the heart and mind of a forty-year-old. I mean that as the biggest compliment.” Laya giggled, resting her head on her pillow. She called out to Ella before she successfully exited the room.

“Ms. Rose?”

“Yeah, Lay?” Even in the dark, Ella felt Laya’s adoration seep out from her soft stare, shelling her in the face.

“I know he makes it difficult sometimes…but Kellen is someone worth loving.” Ella blinked in surprise. “Just some food for thought,” Laya tossed over her shoulder before she rolled her body away from Ella.

She descended the staircase in a purposefully slow manner, dragging out the time between now and when she would reencounter Kellen. As she grew closer, Ella’s heart started to race, drumming a brutal tempo in her ears, and her palms dripped with perspiration. To her surprise, he wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. She forced her feet to move to the bedroom, where she found him waiting on the bed, long limbs sprawled out atop the eiderdown quilt, back propped against the headboard. His eyes flew to her the moment the door creaked from her weight leaning against it.

“Hi,” he said in greeting, in a voice analogous to silk.

“Hi,” she answered in a more gawkish manner, her hands weirdly shaking. She busied them with removing her coat, folding it into a square to rest on the wardrobe. Kellen’s eyes stalked her every movement.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. For some reason she didn’t understand, this made her irrationally angry.

“Talk about what, Kellen?” Ella snapped, turning on him. “Talk about how my mother used to beat me? How she was so drunk most nights that she didn’t even know what she was hitting me with? That she once shoved me down the flight of stairs in our apartment building because I asked her why she didn’t hug me like all the other moms with their children? That in a drunk stupor, she beat me with a broom so hard she cracked my skull open, and if my sister hadn’t walked into our apartment at the exact moment my mother was folding me into a cardboard box to toss me in the trash, because she thought she killed me, she might’ve thrown me in the dumpster and I would’ve died? Is that what you want me to talk about?” Kellen, for the first time since Ella had known him, was stunned into silence.

“I meant talk about us,” he murmured. Horror bashed Ella in the gut, clouting her to her knees.

“Oh , fuck ,” she sobbed into her hands. Kellen crawled across the bed to meet her on the floor.

“Noella,” he gasped, pulling her into his lap, burying his face in the crook of her shoulder, stroking the back of her head as her fingers curved around his biceps and she wept violently into his shoulder. “Oh, baby. I’m so fucking sorry. Fuck.” Her cries bled into dry heaves, scraping painfully through her throat. He swept her hair to the side, his lips brushing her ear, and whispered, “It’s okay to feel it. To not always have perfect words. You give so much of yourself to making sure others are okay. It’s okay to not be okay sometimes. You can be not okay with me.”

She clung to him harder.

His fingers threaded in her hair, framing her cheeks so he could gently guide her face back. Her eyes crawled up his chest to snag with his, green and grey crashing together in kaleidoscopic wonder.

“I have so many things I want to say to you.” He kept his voice low in case the twins were straining to listen. “So many things, but I’ll start with two words that hold a great deal of meaning. Two words I should’ve said a long time ago. I’m sorry.” Ella heaved a gasp. “I’m sorry, Noella, for everything. For the way I’ve spoken to you. Spoken about you. All the times I threw you into walls. For threatening to kill you more the once. For the pool. For not warning you today when I took off or when I dropped you. For not recognizing sooner how essential, how kind, how wonderful you are. So sorry, sweetheart.”

Ella could have kissed him.

She thought about it. She was close enough. His breath tasted like burned marshmallows. But there was so much more to say, to see, more to understand, before she felt ready for that, before she could fully lay down her arms. Receiving the words she’d longed to hear was refreshing, but once she had them, she realized they weren’t enough—the words would mean nothing without action to follow.

“Thank you,” she whispered, then retreated from his lap, scooting back on her knees to create distance between them.

“I should be the one thanking you,” he said, not seeming to mind the fact that she’d separated herself, or privately minding a great deal and expunging all his efforts towards masking it for her benefit. “For what you said to the twins. For all you’ve done for them. For coming with me today. For tolerating me when I’m a fucking dickhead. The list could go on forever, really.”

“You don’t make it easy.” His shoulders sunk with regret.

“I know. I’m sorry. I want to be better. I want to treat you the way you deserve to be treated. I will give everything to prove to you how much I want you, even if all you can give me in return is just a morsel of your time. If there’s only a small space for me in your life, I’ll make myself small to fit. Even if all you can offer is friendship, I’ll take it. Whatever allows me to be near you.”

Ella sat stunned by the fervor of this declaration, by the groundswell of emotion that gushed out of him, almost palpably slapping her in the face. “Since when have you felt this way about me?”

“It’s been brewing for a while now, but it solidified the last few days, since you saved Jarion from his dragon. I’m in awe of you, Noella Rose. I’m in complete fucking awe of you, of your mind, your heart, your courage, the way you are with my siblings, how you’ve gotten them to open up, fucking everything. I know I need to work for this. I don’t expect you to hear all this and forgive me that easily. I don’t want this to be easy, because nothing worth having is easy.” Kellen sloped forward and set his hands on either side of her, his face hovering over hers. All Ella could do was lean back and bear the brunt of his ardor. “I want to earn you, Noella. I want to deserve the honor of calling you mine.”

Kellen tipped down and gently, lovingly, devotedly, kissed away the tears gathered on her cheeks. He trailed kisses up from her temple to her forehead, and she didn’t stop him, her fingers fisting his shirt.

“You would be okay with just being my friend for now, until I feel ready to trust in us being more?”

“Yes,” he swore. “Whatever it takes. Whatever you want. Whatever you can give is more than enough. I’ll give you anything if you just ask for it, Noella.”

Ella blinked. “And if I ask for a star?” she quipped, not expecting a real answer.

“I’ll shred the galaxies apart to find you the biggest one,” he responded without hesitation.

Ella was knocked breathless. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in her mind that he meant every word, that if she genuinely asked, he would find a way to rip the sky in half and secure for her a chunk of the constellations.

“I have an easy capacity to love others,” she found herself telling him. “Believing they love me in return doesn’t come as easily.” He didn’t need to ask why—he now knew where that insecurity stemmed from.

“Let me prove myself to you, Noella Rose. Make me work for it. Give me your worst, so I can give you my best.” Kellen extended his hand out to her, like this was a business proposition he’d tendered to her.

Ella sputtered a strangled laugh, then slipped her hand into his. When she tried to pull it back, he gripped her tighter with a naughty, handsome grin. She narrowed her eyes at the unfair brandishing of his dimples.

“Can I have my hand back, please?” Kellen’s fingers fell away. “So he does know now to listen,” she jested, rising off the floor and smearing her tears with the end of her sleeve. Kellen stood with her.

“You can say no…but it would make me the happiest bastard alive if you slept in here with me tonight.”

Ella’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. “In here?” she stammered. “With…you?”

“Platonically, of course.” There was nothing platonic about the way he looked at her, about the way her heart somersaulted in her chest, vibrating against her ribcage while screaming at her to eliminate the space between them.

“I don’t think you know what platonic means,” she mocked, but surprised even herself when she climbed onto the bed and situated her back against the headboard. Kellen didn’t rush to immediately follow her. “What’re you doing?” she asked when he lingered a few feet away with a reverent glow in his eye.

“Taking a mental picture,” he answered, Ella’s cheeks burning.

“For your spank bank?” Kellen tipped his head back with a gorgeous laugh before he finally crawled onto the bed to meet her. Ella braced herself for him to climb on top of her, but instead, he maintained a respectful distance by simply sitting beside her, only their shoulders connected by touch.

“I have a question for you,” he announced when he’d gotten comfortable.

“One I possibly have an answer to, depending on the question,” she joked, beaming at his pretend scowl.

“What do you dream about?” The corners of his lips twitched before he tossed in, “Besides me.”

“Besides you,” she giggled with an eye roll, hugging her knees to her chest. “What do I dream about? My father, actually. Ever since I’ve been in Cavale, I dream about him every night. Aside from that one night with you.”

Kellen lifted a lock of her hair to twist around his finger. “Tell me about him. Your dad.” Ella gulped.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything about him, not really. He left when I was five. Just took off in the middle of the night. My mom never recovered from the loss of him. I have my mother’s eyes, but the rest of my features are all my dad’s. She couldn’t separate me from him. She couldn’t look at me without seeing him. She couldn’t love me because she hated him so much for leaving. I was the closest thing she had to him, so she took all her anger at him out on me. I was the substitute, but I didn’t play the part right, which only made her hate me more.”

Kellen’s expression darkened. “How old were you? The night…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“Twelve,” she answered. “Rylee, my sister, was eighteen. A freshman in college. We didn’t have any other family apart from our mom…Rylee has a different dad than me, but he died from cancer when she was a baby, so he wasn’t in the picture…which left Rylee to become my legal guardian. She didn’t even hesitate. Adopting me was never not an option for her. She gave up so much to take care of me. She’s the only person I consider to be my parent. I’ve never considered Annalise to be my mom.”

“She does not deserve the privilege of that title,” Kellen proclaimed. Ella’s lashes fluttered. “Neither does your father for abandoning you. They don’t deserve any credit for the person you’ve become.”

Ella found her body shifting to face him, keening to be closer. Her hand inched towards his, her fingers falling through the spaces between his fingers before she asked, “What about your dad?”

What she knew about Kellen’s father, she’d learned second-hand from Jarion during one of their sessions. She wanted to learn everything from his mouth, delivered in his voice with his words, with his emotion attached to it.

“He died when I was sixteen,” Kellen answered, his tone of voice bland, lacking any flavor. He sounded removed from the thought of his father, like he hadn’t considered him in years. “He was quiet. Submissive. He had no issue letting Miya lead. A man of very few words, content to blend into the background. Quite unimpressive. He took Miya’s last name because in Cavale, you claim the name of the stronger bloodline, and the Kilic line is the strongest dragon-shifter lineage in the kingdom. Miya never intended for the marriage to last. She was just biding her time with him until she found her Cavalisha.”

“Why did she marry him if he wasn’t her mate?”

“In the Kilic dynasty, they don’t care about Cavalishas.” Kellen unconsciously squeezed her hand at the word Cavalisha . “Miya’s father wanted her to marry for profit, not love. My father, Nerian, may’ve been a dud, but he came from a Cerebri family with a shitload of wealth. He had three brothers, and Miya got to pick between them who she wished to wed. She chose my father. No one understood why, but it’s always made sense to me. She married the safe option, someone who would never dare to outshine her. Someone without ambition of their own who would view marrying her as their greatest accomplishment. Someone no one would miss when they eventually disappeared.”

Ella dissected his facial features for any hint of emotion.

All she could garner was long-standing disappointment and acceptance of his father’s limitation.

“How did he die?” she dared herself to probe.

“In his sleep. They told me at the time it was a heart attack, but I was given no proof of that by any doctor. Miya killed him. I feel it in my bones. In my soul. She wanted Nerian out of the picture so she could marry Ciaran, her true Cavalisha.” Kellen rested the back of his head against the wall. “I think the only reason she had me was to keep her ties to Nerian’s family. Without me, if Nerian died, she would preserve no claim to any of their wealth. I’m supposed to inherit a large sum of money in two years, when I reach the age of thirty, but I suspect she has plans to ensure I never see a dime of it. I don’t give two shits if I do or don’t. I don’t care about the fucking money. She can have all of it if she promises to stay away from the twins forever.” Warmth swarmed Ella’s chest. His love and devotion to his siblings would never not leave her weak in the knees.

“That’s very noble of you.” Her thumb stroked his knuckles.

“Maybe I should offer it to her,” he joked with a bitter laugh, which blended into a heavy sigh, followed by a soft, tormented groan.

“What’re you thinking about?” she mumbled, noting the frown wilting the corners of his perfect mouth.

“The night I got Jarion and Laya out.” Kellen’s tone was teeming with anguish. “I’d been reading Jarion and Laya’s thoughts. I typically try to stay out of their heads, but during that time, it was the only insight into the house I got. My mother wouldn’t let me see them, so all I could do was hover above the estate, cloaking myself in the clouds, and read their thoughts from above to check on them. I heard Jarion…” Kellen swallowed. “I heard Jarion think to himself, she’s going to die. She’s going to die if no one gets her help.” His gaze glassed over, haunted by the memory, plagued by the sound of Jarion’s voice echoing in his ears, thrusting him back to that night. “I couldn’t…” He looked over at Ella, his fingers clawing at his chest. “There was nothing in here anymore,” he told her, patting his chest, where his heart was. “Everything of me belongs to those two, so the thought of losing one of them…I didn’t think. I flew with every ounce of my strength pushing me the fastest I’ve ever gone right to Avatia, where I slammed my tail into the gate until the Gods finally sent someone down to speak to me, intending to send me away. I told the envoy, ‘If someone doesn’t send aid to my mother’s home and get my siblings out of there, I will rain fire down on the entirety of Cavale. I will rip this world to scraps and dance over the remains of your precious people, over the ashes of the golden empire you’ve placed above the welfare of your citizens. If you don’t help me save my siblings, the Sireres and Edar Lantarian will be the least of your problems.’”

Kellen chuckled to himself, the sound infectious, making it hard for Ella to fight a smile in return.

“A fucking reckless idiot I was,” he chortled, “but somehow, instead of landing myself in Terminus, I got through to them. They sent the Avatia army through the gate, and they followed me back to my mother’s house in Yorkdill. They arrested my mother, and Ciaran, on sight. They saved my sister.”

“ You saved your sister,” Ella corrected. “Don’t give the Gods that credit. You protected them.” She caught his chin when he tried to dip his head, then breathed, “I know they seem angry, but Jarion and Laya feel so lucky to have a brother like you. A brother who would go to war for them. You want to know how I know that?” Kellen bobbed his head in a nod. “Because I have a sister who would go to war for me. Who did go to war for me. Who rescued me from a terrible situation exactly like Jarion and Laya. So I know from personal experience that Jarion and Laya, whether they say it or not, are forever indebted to you. That’s not a small thing, Kellen. That’s the whole fucking world.” Ella wondered if anyone had ever drowned in someone’s gaze before.

“You’re a beautiful person, Noella Rose,” Kellen declared, cradling the side of her face in his palm.

“You think so?” she whispered in a barely audible voice. He nodded and began tracing her bottom lip with his thumb, sliding his finger back and forth over the plump skin. “Then why haven’t you treated me like you think so?”

Kellen’s finger skated off her face. He shut his eyes. Ella waited patiently for him to reopen them, to clue her in to the thoughts barreling through his head. She didn’t know how to wield the connection between their minds to hear his thoughts, so she had to rely on him sharing them willingly.

“I don’t have much experience with kindness,” he told her when he finally opened his eyes and looked at her again, marshaling his thoughts into an order that made sense. “Kindness was nonexistent in the home I grew up in. Miya wasn’t abusive to me the way she was to the twins, but she was neglectful. My father kept to himself, so I didn’t have much guidance in my life. I was very isolated. When kindness did appear in my life, it was conditional and attached to a bunch of strings. I don’t understand how someone can offer it unconditionally and mean it. When I don’t understand something, it makes me angry. That’s an emotion I’m more comfortable feeling, so I latch onto it.”

Ella took a moment to process his meaning. “So you get angry with me because you don’t understand me?”

“Exactly. I don’t understand how you can be so good all the time. It doesn’t make sense to me. I spend an inexorable amount of time trying to figure it out, and that makes me angrier, that so much space in my head is taken up by the thought of you. I’ve felt like I’ve been going mad the past few months.”

“You think about me, Kilic?” she whispered, unsure if he even realized what he just admitted.

“All the time,” he confessed, his gaze scorching through her skull, like he was trying to drill a hole into her forehead to mark her permanently. “It never ends. I don’t want it to end.” Ella’s breaths turned labored. As Kellen trickled the tips of his fingers down her face, he whispered, “You remind me of a painted masterpiece that could drive the artist insane with the realization they will never accomplish anything as perfect as you again.” Ella struggled to remember how to breathe.

“That doesn’t sound very platonic,” she blurted in a nervous rush. Kellen’s lips settled into a subdued smile.

“I’m trying, sweetheart,” he chuckled, his laugh more hoarse, garroted by the desire he’d been actively shoving down, “but now you’re making things difficult with the way you’re looking at me.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like you want to rip my clothes off. Not that I would mind if you did,” he added, bumping the tip of his nose against hers. “I’d frame the scraps of clothing on my wall.” Ella squinted her eyes in an artificial glower.

“I’ll leave if you can’t control yourself.”

“Don’t go. I can be good.” Kellen scooted away from her as further evidence, gliding under the duvet and pulling the comforter up to his chin to completely shroud himself, only his head poking out.

Why are you fighting this? the female voice that both sounded like her and also didn’t chastised her.

Yes, why ARE you fighting this, Noella? Kellen agreed with the voice.

“I’m going to sleep,” Ella announced, crimping her legs into her stomach and rolling onto her side so she was no longer facing him. She stretched across the mattress and flicked the lamp switch off, bathing the room in darkness.

“Goodnight, Rose,” Kellen whispered affectionately into the ether. His eyes sketched lines down her back.

“Goodnight, Kilic,” she murmured, then closed her eyes and drifted off into a heavy slumber.

Ella awoke in the middle on the night still coiled atop the comforter, though her body had rotated in her sleep so she now faced Kellen. His succulent lashes fanned out over soft cheeks, drawing strips of shadow onto the dark brown flesh. He looked so beautiful lost in slumber, so serene, so innocent.

How was this the same man who just a few weeks ago had tried to drown her in a pool? She’d clearly misplaced her morals, but for the time being, she didn’t really care to go looking for them. Her mind had made peace with the fact that she’d been wrong about Kellen, now finally aligning with her heart’s desire. She’d spent the past twenty-six years seeking a home, searching for a safety net beyond what her sister offered. Lying in this bed with him was the closest she’d ever gotten to the feeling she always envisioned finding. Maybe this right here was where she was always meant to be.

Did that feeling fucking terrify her?

Absolutely. Would she let that fear control her? She would try not to, for no one’s sake but her own.

Ella sunk her teeth into her fingers to keep them from stretching out to touch him, then slid off the bed and scuttled to the bathroom. She stripped off her clothes, leaving them in a crumpled pile by the toilet, and climbed into the shower, closing the glass door behind her and twisting the valve to warm. She’d just stepped under the deluge when suddenly, the door to the bathroom opened.

“Rose, what’re you—” Kellen froze at the threshold.

The glass door hadn’t yet fogged up from the tepid water, so nothing of her naked frame was covered from his vision. She did nothing to conceal her body from him, squaring her shoulders instead. Fire erupted in his irises, replacing his pupils with diminutive, boiling flames. Neither of them moved for several minutes, the air moistening around them, spirals of humid mist twirling within the ether.

“Tell me to go,” Kellen demanded, his voice akin to minced gravel from how rasping it sounded.

“What?” Ella spluttered in a wheezy gasp.

“Tell me to leave this room right now, and I will go. If you don’t, I’m joining you in that shower, and you can’t stop me. You have ten seconds, Noella.”

Producing words took her longer than it usually did, her brain muddled by the heat and his penetrating stare.

“Ten,” he began the countdown, his chest rising and falling at a rapid pace. “Nine. Eight. Seven—”

Stop fighting this, Noella, that older, feminine voice pleaded with her.

“Join me,” Ella pronounced, cutting through his succession. Kellen’s eyes almost fell out of his skull.

“You’re sure?” He needed to hear her say it.

“Yes. I’m sure.” He wasted no more time after that.

Kellen kept her gaze as he grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked it over his head, revealing his sharply demarcated network of abs. He moved slowly, watching her facial cues to determine if he should keep going or stop. Her breaths came out as deep, burning pants when she watched him pull his pants and boxers down to the floor, then straighten back up, revealing himself in full.

Holy shit, she gasped in her head.

“Wow,” she blurted out, in a trance. He was perfect. Composed of taut sinew, immaculate brown skin, and an impressive cock, you couldn’t find a single physical flaw on that man.

He was the Gods’ gift to women. The Gods’ gift to her.

“I’m worth a wow,” Kellen taunted, but his grin was filled with affection more than humor.

Ella opened the door to the shower to welcome him in. It was quite cramped with the two of them inside, which had them pressing up against each other, his hands on either side of her head as she leaned against the wall, the downpour torrenting over both of them. It turned his black curls into sopping ringlets adorned across his forehead like tufts at the end of a blanket, his hand lifting to brush the tendrils back. A second later, Kellen’s breath feathered over her face before he tipped her chin up and consumed her in a kiss, devouring her soul along with her mouth.

Ella never knew it was possible to make love to someone with just your mouth, but Kellen was proving her wrong. She coiled her fingers in his hair and stood on the tips of her toes to twist around him, wishing she could curl into him, could melt their skin together so they’d never disconnect. His hands slithered to her waist, then glided up her back, splaying out over her spine and wrenching her even closer. Desire thrummed aggressively through her veins, especially when he nipped at her lower lip, then soothed the ache he’d left in his wake with his tongue.

“Gods, your surrender tastes like heaven, sweetheart,” he groaned into her mouth. His hand crawled its way up her thigh to reach the juncture of her thighs, where he slipped his middle and index finger inside her at once, his thumb applying individualized consideration to her clit.

“Who said I’ve surrendered anything?” Ella reached her hand out and grabbed his erection.

“ Fuck,” Kellen hissed, tipping his head back. “Noella. Yes. Please.”

“What was that?” She began to stroke him from the base of his cock to the top, her grip light, careful not to squeeze too tightly. She dragged her tongue up the column of his throat to reach his ear. “That sounded awfully like surrender to me.” When Kellen’s thumb massaged her clit with more friction, the two fingers inside her sliding in and out at a devious tempo in answer to her challenge, her knees buckled.

“Fuck,” Kellen growled, unable to maintain eye contact, his lashes trembling across his cheeks when he screwed his eyes shut. “You win. You win, Noella. I surrender everything to you. Every fucking piece of me.”

“Oh yeah?” Ella tugged down on his earlobe. She enjoyed being in control like this, the dominance almost hallucinogenic. “Prove it.” Kellen spluttered a strangled moan, then slammed his mouth into hers.

Drowning in his kiss, Ella accepted that she was no longer in control.

Their tongues wrestled for dominance, her hips propelling closer to his hand between her legs while his hips rocked forward so his cock thrust further into her palm, their movements frenzied and synchronized. Her orgasm slammed into her suddenly, annexing her entire being, her body quaking as she came again and again and again, the undulation never-ending. Ella swirled the pad of her thumb over the tip of his cock when she sensed him approaching an orgasm, drawing out his climax.

“Holy fucking shit, Noella,” he gasped, then let go and yielded to her.

Kellen spasmed in her hand before he loosed a rasping cry, falling into the vortex of her orgasm.

Noella? a voice hummed from a remote plane.

It sounded like Kellen. It was Kellen, the real Kellen, not the Kellen in her dream who was kissing her neck.

Noella, wake up. Ella jolted upright with a startled gasp, nearly tumbling off the bed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kellen assured her, extending his hands to touch her shoulders, but she sprung away from him without thought. She could hear her heartbeat thundering, its frenetic beat echoing with his.

“You saw that?” she stammered, trying to get control of her stupid heart and the ache that lingered between her legs.

“Yeah. I did.” Kellen’s tone was tight, curbing his desire because ensuring her well-being was more important.

“Was that my dream, or yours?” she asked.

“I honestly have no clue. Could’ve been either one of us.” He scratched the back of his neck. Ella’s eyes descended over the balled-up quilt on the floor, where she found evidence of his arousal within the crumpled folds. She pressed her thighs together to soothe the throbbing. “We need to get this mind connection under control,” he declared.

“We?” Ella spluttered, then accused, “It’s your fault! Just take back the power you left in my head, and we’ll be good to go.”

Kellen blanched. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he exclaimed. “What power in your head?”

“A couple of days ago, I asked Akio to put up a wall in my mind to block you from entering.”

“You what?” he snarled, plumes of smoke dripping from the sides of his mouth.

“It was after the first dream. Akio said he found…tendrils of your power lingering in my head. That must be what’s keeping our minds connected like this, why your dragon is able to speak to me. Akio assumed you left your power there so you could see into my head whenever you wanted.”

“Absolutely not,” Kellen refused. “Yeah, I might’ve peeked a few times into your thoughts when you first got here, but I never left any piece of my power in your head to create a permanent door.” Kellen edged closer to her, squinting his eyes as if he were trying to see into her mind. Maybe he was seeing into her mind. “Akio said there were pieces of my power in your head? Mine? ” Ella nodded. “That’s fucking weird. It must be why I hear your voice in my head all the time.”

“Wait.” She moved back. “You hear my voice in your head even when I’m not speaking to you?” Kellen hesitated, leading her to believe he hadn’t meant to admit that. “What does the voice sound like?”

“It sounds like you…” He paused a moment, then amended, “but also—“

“Doesn’t?” she guessed. Kellen nodded. “I’ve heard that voice before too. Me, but older sounding.” She’d heard it twice tonight, both times pushing her towards Kellen. “What do you think that voice is?”

“I don’t know. Maybe your subconscious?”

“Do people usually have different voices for their subconscious?”

“How the fuck would I know? I don’t usually go looking into someone’s mind and accidentally create a conduit between my brain and theirs.” Ella dropped her chin between her knees.

“You’ve never heard of something like this happening?”

“No.” Kellen crossed his arms. “Never.” She sensed he had hypotheses brewing in his mind about what could be causing this.

“What do you think it means?”

“I really don’t know, Rose.” She didn’t believe that. She wished she knew how to use their conduit to see into his mind. She wished she wasn’t the human at the other end of this bargain, so she could manipulate this power and give him a taste of his own medicine by reading his thoughts for a change.

“Well, until we figure this out or until I feel ready, I don’t think it’s safe for us to share a bed.”

Ella hopped off the side of the mattress. “Wait, you’re leaving?” Kellen pleaded, “Don’t go, Noella.”

“I’m going to sleep on the couch.”

“Rose—”

“Goodnight, Kilic.” Ella shut the door to the sound of Kellen growling fuck me into his pillow.