Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Erix

T he next two days passed in the same rhythm, thankfully absent of more storms or mythical creatures. Every morning we flowed through our forms together, riding until evening when I would help Keera practice with her magic. It seemed to be coming to her easier by the day, rocks and fire leaping to life at to her command. If she noticed that I took the practice as an opportunity to lay my hand on her shoulder or the small of her back, knowing that it helped her access her power with less fear, then she didn’t comment on it.

On the third night, we set up our camp in the divot between two dunes. We had leftover meat from our hunt that morning and Keera produced two pieces of fruit from her pack, making a fire or another hunt unnecessary.

I grabbed my sleeping mat and rolled it out a few feet away from hers. I sat down on it, cross legged, and unsheathed my saber. Keera looked up at the metallic slide from where she was devouring her meal with a single-minded efficiency. Fruit juice dribbled between her fingers, and she licked them clean.

The jut of her hipbones and shoulder blades against my arm as I tied her across Alza’s back all those months ago flashed through my mind. I made a mental note to send Zephyr out to hunt for us again. I would not let Keera go hungry.

Methodically, I ran the whetstone across the length of metal in my lap. I hadn’t used my sword today, but it was a habit I couldn’t break. I cared for my saber every night, and sleep would not come for me if I left the task undone.

“I’m a little sad I didn’t succeed in stealing that from you,” Keera said around a mouthful of orange.

“It was Kelvar’s,” I admitted. “It’s the only thing I brought with me.”

Keera looked at it curiously. On a whim, I offered it to her hilt first. She stood and walked over slowly, wiping her hands on her pants. Cautiously, as if it were a snake that might strike out at her, she reached for the hilt.

Upon taking it, she took a few stances with it experimentally. I knew from experience that there was no weapon as balanced or deadly, longer than any other sword I had ever encountered. I had never let another wield it, but it looked right in Keera’s hand.

“It seems like Kelvar was trying to compensate for something,” Keera commented wryly as she ran through a few stances.

“I wouldn’t know. Strangely enough, the statues and paintings in Kelvadan are all of him fully clothed.”

Keera chuckled, and I reveled in the sound, mixed with the swish of the blade as she swung it experimentally. Pausing, she pointed the tip of the weapon at me, tip angled straight toward the base of my throat.

I let her, not moving to defend myself. It wasn’t lost on me how we had been in this position before, roles reversed.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked. She didn’t need to elaborate.

“The whispers of my mind… the madness that threatens to engulf me when I’m not spilling blood on behalf of the desert—something happened when I touched you. I felt still.”

Keera nodded, as if she understood without further explanation. “With your hand at my throat, I felt alive for the first time since my clan left me to die. I had been fighting to survive, but I didn’t know why until something awoke in me. It took you holding your blade to my throat for me to realize that I still had a reason to be alive. ”

How odd that I had awoken her while she had settled me.

“Why don’t you kill me now?” I asked.

The saber tip inched forward, resting against my collarbone. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to die, looking up at the one person whose power might be able to match mine. Still, I found myself hoping she wouldn’t. After so long being ambivalent about my own existence beyond my purpose in restoring the Heart of the Desert, it was a heady feeling.

“You know me,” was Keera’s simple answer. She let the saber point drop and handed it back to me. I set it at my side.

Hesitantly, giving Keera a chance to pull away if she wanted to, I reached out to where her hand dangled at her side. Instead, she met me halfway, our fingers intertwining. It was the first time I had initiated contact between us without the guise of training, and something I didn’t know had been tight in my chest loosened as she responded.

Before I could react, she stepped forward and fell to her knees in my lap. Her thighs bracketed mine and the sudden warmth of her pressed against me initiated the same reaction as before, as if Alza and I were galloping at full tilt but also, I was sitting completely still for the first time in too long.

Extricating her hand from what had become a death grip on my part, she slowly reached up toward my mask. She gave me the same chance to pull back as I had when I reached for her hand. Like her, I let her continue.

Her fingers found the leather straps at the back of my head, fumbling a bit as she undid them. I didn’t move to help her, instead focusing on keeping my breath even as I voluntarily let somebody see my face for the first time since Lord Alasdar had given me the mask ten years ago. It was my most important piece of armor, and I was letting this wild, gorgeous thing in my lap peel it off with her gentle fingers.

It fell to the mat beside my saber with a gentle thud. This time, Keera traced her fingers along my hairline, toying with a curl that fell onto my forehead. Over the initial shock of human contact, I found myself wanting more than her fingers on me. I wanted to rub my face on her cheek and at the crook of her neck. Between her breasts.

As if she had heard my thoughts, Keera’s gaze snapped to mine from where she had been engrossed in the examination of my hair. Slowly, hesitantly, her gaze drifted down to my lips, tracing the same path with her fingers. Gently, but without hesitation, she pressed her thumb against my bottom lip, parting them slightly. As my increasingly ragged breath tickled her fingers, I found myself itching for the same thing she was clearly considering. Her touch had unlocked a torrent of want within me, and I exercised all my control to hold myself still as she made her decision.

Her lips collided with mine, and my blood surged when I found out she kissed just like she fought and rode a horse. There was nothing tentative in the way her mouth moved against mine. She was wild and hungry and utterly untamed. Both of us were clumsy and unpracticed, but the smell of sun-warmed skin and the comforting earthiness of the desert engulfed me.

Her fingers plunged into my hair, and a noise I would never admit to being capable of tore from my throat as her blunt nails raked my scalp. I took it as permission to touch in return, and a hand drifted to her face before tracing the tendon of her neck with my thumb. I found my other hand at her hip of its own accord.

A low growl of pleasure rumbled through me at the feeling of soft flesh over taught muscle, a far cry from the boniness of the woman I once captured. She had been beautiful even then, though I hadn’t been in a mind to see it, and it warmed me to know she was no longer at risk of starving to death.

Keera squirmed in my lap, causing a shudder to run through my whole body. The taste of her mouth overwhelmed me. I knew I could kiss Keera for hours without complaint, but the friction of her hips against mine made me hunger for more. I walked my fingers inwards from her hip to the front of the waistband of her pants, waiting for permission. She responded by rolling her hips against mine enthusiastically.

I slipped my fingers beneath the linen, inching downward until the leather of my gloves slipped against the slickness already gathering between her legs. I groaned, realizing what a travesty it was that I couldn’t feel this with my own flesh.

I withdrew my hand and pulled back from where her lips and tongue had begun an enthusiastic perusal of my jaw and ear. She made an angry noise of protest that made my pants tighten even further, but I shushed her in a tone I normally only reserved for Alza.

“I want to feel you,” I admitted, before pulling the fingers of my gloves off with my teeth. My eyes nearly rolled back into my head as I tasted her on the leather, my tongue seeking out the flavor of honey and musk.

I wasted no time getting my hand back to her core, anxious to feel her soft slickness against my bare skin. When I did, Keera ground against my fingers, seeking her own pleasure determinedly. I pulled back to look at her face. The rising flush against her golden skin as she panted, tendrils of dark hair clinging to her sweaty temples, sent a frisson of pleasure through me. She wore my hunger reflected on her face.

She threw her head back with a shuddering groan when I stroked a particular spot, and it suddenly became a goal of mine to make her react like that as often as possible. I repeated the motion relentlessly.

“Erix.” My name escaped her lips in a breathy shudder. It was a name I had distanced myself from as much as possible, but I would relish being reminded of it every day if it was in that voice.

“I want to see you lose control,” I murmured.

A husky laugh escaped Keera as she continued to ride my hand in my lap. “I haven’t been in control since the moment I met you.”

Neither have I.

Unable to help myself, I palmed my own hardness through my pants with my free hand, not willing to deny Keera her pleasure for even the moment it would take me to untie my belt.

I stroked myself in time to the high whimpers and cries from Keera. As much as she didn’t fill silence with meaningless chatter, she didn’t shy away from vocalizing her pleasure. As her volume increased, the sands began to dance around us, and I couldn’t say whether the magic was mine or hers. I was too overwhelmed with the red-hot pleasure that had taken root at the base of my spine and the way the sunlight shone off Keera’s sweat-soaked skin.

I felt the moment Keera came apart, in the shudder of power that ran through me as much as the rush of wetness dripping along my wrist. So fixated was I on the woman in my lap, I didn’t even recognize my own pleasure bearing down on me until a bolt of lightning ran up my spine, and I gasped my release against Keera’s neck, gulping down the earthy scent of her warm skin.

Sands , I was utterly lost.