Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

Erix

T he silence as we rode was companionable, but Keera and I both eyed the charred remains of horses and other animals warily. The death in the trail of the lava wyrm only solidified my decision to come after her. I couldn’t let such a creature threaten all the clans, and I wouldn’t let Keera face it alone.

Of course, that meant I was leaving Lord Alasdar and the clans to face Kelvadan alone. I gritted my teeth and tried to force that thought down into darkness with the constant voice of the desert where I could attempt to ignore it. After all, defeating the lava wyrm would help the desert also. I could return to Lord Alasdar after, and we would still restore the Heart.

Then I might be able to convince Keera to come with me, when innocent lives were no longer endangered by the wyrm. I knew though, that I couldn’t watch her ride away again. Seeing her silhouette shrink on the horizon had caused an ache in my chest, deeper than the root of the string of magic that now connected us. Another week with her would give me the time I needed to convince her to stand at my side with Lord Alasdar.

“Tell me about crossing the desert.” Keera broke the silence, pulling me from my ruminations. I sensed she was trying to distract herself from the trial ahead, and I couldn’t fault her for it.

“It took months,” I admitted. “I lost count of how many days we had been riding less than halfway through. Lord Alasdar had done it once before, and he insisted I complete the journey too, to see the damage done by Kelvar.

“We followed the legend, setting off in the direction of the rising sun every morning. The tales say that crossing to the sea is the greatest of tests—that it will wear you down and put many obstacles in your path to break you and see if you are worthy to carry the magic of the desert in you. After all, she only deigned to let the clans live here after the first rider made the journey from the mountains and blessed their descendants with their power.

“Along the way we faced predators and storms. I was barely in my right mind to begin with after having run off into the desert on my own, and I was plagued by hallucinations and mirages. In the shifting sands, I saw myself losing control and all the people I had known struck down by my power. I watched the land crack apart before my feet to swallow all nine clans.

“But we kept going, and at last we saw the ocean.”

I hadn’t meant to say so much, but Keera stared at me as if transfixed. “Tell me.”

“It stretches as far as the eye can see, just like the sands except sparkling and bluer than anything you’ve ever seen. When we got there, my horse splashed straight into it, bucking and playing in foamy waves.

“And right there on the shore stood a temple, beginning to crumble, one corner of the roof caved in. Lord Alasdar said it was worse than when he had first come years ago. Inside was an altar, carved of the whitest stone I had ever seen and cracked down the middle. In it was a slot for a gemstone as big as my fist, and it was empty, the indent blackened as if burned.”

Keera looked over from where she rode beside me, a combination of awe and concern on her face. I swallowed thickly, not having shared that tale with anybody before. Lord Alasdar had insisted we keep the truth about the Heart to ourselves, lest any power-hungry lord or warrior try to take it for themselves. Instead, we fed the clans half truths about why the desert unraveled at the seams.

“I want to see the ocean,” Keera said, drawing me from my thoughts.

“It’s not an easy trip.”

Keera shrugged. “I’ve survived the elements enough already, and after spending so much of my life in one place, I want to see every inch of this land.”

I itched to tell her I would cross the desert as many times as she wanted with her, but I bit it back. Only yesterday, I had nearly been drawn away from her by Lord Alasdar’s call. Even now, my brain skirted around what would happen when I returned after directly disobeying his orders. The healing scars on my back itched.

“Look, we might be able to make camp there tonight,” Keera pointed at a greenish spot on the horizon.

I nodded. The horses could use the oasis, and both Keera and I could afford a bath. We hadn’t been able to fully wash since defeating the baby lava wyrm, and the smell of smoke still clung to my hair.

The idea of chasing water droplets across Keera’s golden skin with my tongue jumped to the front of my mind, and I hardened in my pants. I shifted my weight, trying to ease the sudden ache even as I looked forward to our bath.

“No,” Keera muttered in a disbelieving tone. The undercurrent of distress spilling out of her and stirring the desert around me snapped me from my fantasy. I looked back and forth, searching for the cause of her anxiety, only to find her eyes firmly fixed on the oasis, growing closer with every step.

“What is it?”

“I’m back; it’s my oasis.”

I squinted, and the shape of the palms and brush with a scattering of rocks off to one side niggled my memory. It was the same clearing I had found Keera in months ago—the first time I felt that calming stillness that only filled me under her touch.

She urged Daiti into a canter, racing toward the unassuming campsite where so much had changed. Alza and I caught up with Keera just as she dismounted near the rocky edge. She picked around it, me following at a distance, not sure if this was a private moment but unable to step back when she was so clearly upset.

On the far side of the rocks, a ripped piece of canvas fluttered in the breeze, torn free of the propped-up stick structure of a lean-to. Keera fell to her knees in the sand, reaching into a gap in the rocks that formed one wall of the ruined structure.

When she sat back, she held a battered pack in her hands. She dumped the contents on the sands, revealing a tattered sling, dented cookware, and a few mismatched pieces of clothing. She brushed her hands over the odds and ends, a sad, stricken expression twisting her face.

“This was where I lived,” she said. “This was all I knew.”

My knees buckled, hitting the sand next to her. The anger that was always close at hand snapped against its tether. However, the blinding heat was tempered by a bone-deep sadness.

“How long?” I asked.

“Almost ten years.”

My hands shook with barely controlled rage at the evidence of how narrowly Keera had survived, barely more than a girl when she was turned out into the desert to survive alone.

“It wasn’t the hunger or the thirst or the constant danger of predators that got to me in the end,” she said as if she could hear my thoughts, running the nearly disintegrated straps of the sling through her fingers. “It was the isolation. Knowing that there wasn’t anybody in the world who cared if I lived or died.”

I knew what it was like to feel alone, but it paled in comparison to what lay before me now. I had been isolated by my power and the distance caused by the overwhelming weight of expectations piled onto my shoulders. Out here in the wilderness, Keera had been truly alone.

My arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her to me. She came willingly, turning into me and burying her face in my chest—a far cry from the feral woman I’d encountered at this very oasis. I clutched her to me so tightly, it was as if I could press her shape into my very soul.

“You’re not alone anymore,” I murmured into her hair, burying my nose in the tangled strands and taking in the acrid smell of smoke that couldn’t quite hide Keera’s warm earthy scent. “And I cared whether you lived or died the moment you spit in my face.”

Keera snorted into my chest but wound her arms around my waist. “I think you landed firmly on the side of wanting me dead.”

I shook my head, my lips brushing back and forth over the top of her head. “From the moment I saw you, feral and defiant, you started weaving yourself into my fate. After you rode off into the night, I kept seeing your face in my mind, even if I didn’t know why then.”

“Do you know now?”

Keera tipped her face up to look at me, reddened from the heat and the sun, and a single tear tracked down her cheek. I cupped her face and wiped that salty drop away with my thumb. “I think the desert was telling me something. Normally, the whispers of power in my head are distracting at best and maddening at worst, but this time, they wanted me to know that you were the one person who could be my equal—who could understand my loneliness and crack through the hardened shell I had isolated myself in.”

With a flutter of her eyelids, Keera blinked away the wetness clinging to her lashes. “Let’s take a bath.”

I drew back at the non-sequitur, and the ghost of a smile tugged at her lips.

“I want to make a good memory here to drown out the bad.”

I stood, scooping Keera up into my arms as I went. She looped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, only letting go when we got to the edge of the water.

There, she toed off her boots, the rest of her clothes falling to the ground with soft swishes. I had to tear my eyes away from every inch of skin she revealed to turn my attention to my own clothes. I unstrapped my sword from my back, laying it gently in the sand before turning toward the rest of my clothes. By the time I finished undressing, Keera had already started wading into the water, water lapping at her muscular thighs.

I hurried to follow her, stopping only to grab a lump of soap out of my packs. When I joined Keera, she stood in water up to her waist, proudly displaying sun-kissed curves that did nothing to detract from what had quickly become a warrior’s body. More than that though, what made my mouth suddenly dry, was the look in her eyes as her gaze raked over my bare chest and shoulders before moving lower. After so long hiding every inch of skin, the intensity of her focus made me dizzy.

She stepped toward me, meeting me halfway before plucking the soap from my fingers, hanging limply at my side.

Then she began to wash me. She dragged the soap over my chest and abdomen, taking her time to run her fingers over every bit of my skin, investigating the dips and valleys of my muscles. I itched to return the favor, but I seemed to have lost agency over my body, overwhelmed at the sensation of being explored so thoroughly. Different than our coupling before, which had been hot and intense and spontaneous, Keera’s touch was slow and intentional, leaving me utterly exposed.

She walked around me, continuing her attentions on my back. She worked the soap through my hair, and I shivered as she rubbed her fingers where it curled at the nape of my neck. She moved her lower, her touch heartachingly gentle as it skated over the brands on my shoulders, alternately sensitive and numb where my nerves had been burned away. I began to tremble in earnest.

“What’s wrong?” Keera asked, close enough that her breath tickled the back of my neck.

“I’m afraid.” I squeezed my eyes shut against the admission.

“Of me?” The warmth of her skin began to pull away. but I shook my head quickly. My hand shot up to trap hers where it rested on my shoulder.

“Kelvar nearly tore this desert apart out of love for his wife. But I—” My breath escaped me in a shudder. “The world will not survive the way I feel about you.”

Keera’s forehead landed between my shoulder blades and suddenly I needed to be touching more of her. It was agony not to.

I spun around, plunging my hand into her hair to tilt her head back for a kiss. With a splash, the lump of soap fell forgotten into the water at her side. Her mouth opened to me easily, even as her tongue challenged mine. In this fight, as in all others, she was bold and intoxicating. The need to win this battle hit me nearly as intensely as the desire pooling at the base of my spine, and the pressure building in my cock.

I wanted to best her. And I wanted to surrender .

Without breaking the kiss, I walked her backward toward the far edge of the water, bordered by a series of flat rocks. The back of her knees hit the ledge, forcing her to sit as I followed her down, falling to my knees in the water with a splash.

She gasped in surprise as I sat back on my heels, grabbing her thighs and pulling her to the very edge. I looked up at her from between her legs, my fingers trailing up her inner thighs. The muscles jumped under my touch.

“Yes?” I asked, pressing a kiss to the inside of her knee.

She nodded. “It’s always yes with you.”

I dragged my mouth up her leg, mouthing and nipping as I went. As I moved toward her center, I pulled her legs over my shoulders. Opened up to me like this, her musky, intoxicating scent overwhelmed me, and I could wait no longer.

At the first drag of my tongue up her center, my eyes rolled back in my head both at the taste and the breathy whine it pulled from Keera. I worked her slowly at first, remembering how she liked to be touched, working her up until her hands wound their way into my hair.

When I added my fingers, sliding them slowly inside her, her litany of moans and whimpers raised in pitch. The fingers against my scalp changed from scratching lightly to pulling. Her legs trembled near my ears, and I knew she was close to the peak of her pleasure. I redoubled my efforts, pumping my fingers inside her in time with relentless swirl of my tongue over her most sensitive spot. I craved her release, needed to feel the way I made her come apart.

With the most beautiful cry I had ever heard, she shattered, pulsing around my fingers, coating my tongue in her release. That, combined with the way the flow of her magic shuddered through me, was enough to make me groan, the echoes of her pleasure ripping through us both. I kept licking her through it, so entranced I kept going just to feel it again.

Keera tried to pull me up her body, but I shook my head. “One more.” My voice broke as I said it. I had intended to conquer her, but now I was the one begging.

She generously obliged, loosening her grip on my hair so I could lower myself to her center once more. By the time she shook through another release, I was drunk, ready to keep drawing pleasure from her with my lips and tongue until I couldn’t breathe.

Keera had other ideas though, pulling me up onto the rock beside her and pushing me onto my back. My mind, already sluggish, skidded to a halt as she crawled on top of me, rubbing herself up and down my neglected cock. I pulsed against her as she coated me in her wetness, grabbing at her hips. My fingers dug in so hard I feared they would bruise her, but Keera didn’t seem to care, just lifting to notch my tip into her entrance.

As she lowered herself down with aching slowness, I hoped my fingertips would leave bruises, so I could look at them and know this was real, not just an illusion sent from the desert to tip me over into madness. After all, as Keera began to roll her hips, I felt like a man possessed. I pushed up against her, and together we found a pace that threatened to shred what remained of my sanity.

“This”—I rubbed my fingers around where I entered her, sliding easily through the obscene wetness there—“is going to drive me mad.”

At that she tightened around me more than I thought possible, and I nearly swallowed my tongue. Still, I managed to lean forward and growl in her ear. “And I never want to be sane again.”

Keera threw her head back as she rode me, and I remained mesmerized by every move that she made, every shudder and twitch that came over her beautiful body.

“Look at you,” I murmured, my voice a broken rasp that I barely recognized as I traced my hands up her sides. At that Keera looked down at me, a smile forming on her face even as she looked dazed with pleasure.

“Look at you .” She pinned me there with her gaze as she rolled her hips with increasing speed, and I was helpless as my release barreled down on me. How could I not be struck dumb by the way she looked at me—like I was something miraculous when that was clearly her?

We came together, her name tearing from me in a roar. Our releases rippled through the magic between us, so intense that I was sure the entire desert could sense the shuddering that never seemed to end. I hoped they did.

When I finally drifted back to my body, Keera smiled down at me, more brilliant than the setting sun behind her. I reached out to push back the dark hair that clung to her sweaty temples. She leaned into the touch, a slight laugh racking her body, the movement making me gasp with aftershocks of pleasure.

“What?” I asked.

“I think we might need another bath.”