14. Lexa

Chapter 14

Lexa

I rose to awareness, feeling well-rested. A warm caress over my belly woke me, and I knew instantly that Arim lay beside me. Light streaked through me, the flare of passion not as surprising as my desire to feel him inside me again, despite the tension between us.

Scared at how much of myself I'd revealed to the Killer of Shadow, I'd taken refuge in silence the past few days. While secure in my silence, a larger part of me was disappointed that Arim seemed content to accept my isolation. Loneliness, a concept I'd lived with my entire life, had never felt so encompassing as I spent day after day so close, and yet so far, from the only man I'd ever truly loved.

Oh, I'd loved Esel and Sercha, but with affection and familial joy. Arim occupied another part of my affections entirely.

"Blue, you're finally awake." Arim's touch warmed my body, his hand passing under the swells of my breasts. His breath brushed the side of my neck, and I shivered with uncontrollable need. "I've been waiting for you."

As if our recent discord had never happened, the connection between us intensified. I tried to move and found myself unable to do so. He'd tied both my arms above my head to the bed frame and spread and secured my ankles to the footboard.

He answered my unspoken question, "I split the length of Dark-hide." He showed me the burns on his hands. "It hurt, but you're worth the pain."

I paused, startled at his affection. I'd never seen him so aware of me, or so open about his desire. "Arim?"

"We're long past the time for talking, Blue." He kissed me hard, plunging his tongue through my lips with a decided stamp of ownership. He caressed my breast, teasing my nipple with stabbing arousal.

Arching into his touch, I sighed in response to the strength of his need — and his Darkness — pulling me in.

"That's it, Blue." Arim ran his lips over my cheek to my ear. His warm breath made me shiver. The slow-moving slide of his inner Light worked its way over my body, a painful burst of pleasure I was helpless to resist. "Need me the way I need you. I've missed you so much."

Shocked at his confession, I didn't know what to say. But he was kissing me again, his touch melting me from the inside out. The desire between us had yet to abate. Instead, it had grown during our days apart. Though I wished I could ignore what I felt for him, I was helpless against the onslaught of passion making me crave him with mindless obsession.

I wanted so badly to touch him, to feel his warmth under my palms, but the tug of Dark-hide held me fast. Bound and helpless before Arim — both a skilled lover and an extremely powerful man — my inner shields crumbled.

The knowledge that I was defenseless under his control should have scared me. Perversely, being bested by Arim shattered the last of my resistance. Dark need slammed through me. I knew he felt it when he tensed and stared down at me with a sexual haze of satisfaction.

"You're just what I need," he said thickly, his eyes so black it was like looking into true Night. "Darkness and Light, I could love you for an eternity and still not get enough."

I couldn't help tingling when he said "love," though I knew he meant "have sex." Despite all I'd been through, some stubborn part of me longed for the past, to feel cherished and loved again. The need for such weak emotion worried me, but I soon lost all train of thought when Arim trailed his lips over mine.

His kisses moved lower, and he bit my throat, startling a gasp out of me before soothing the mark with his tongue. The small prick of pain made the pleasure that much sweeter. Arim's hot mouth continued its foray over my skin, lingering over the curves of my breasts.

"I love how soft you are, how full you get for me." Arim took one hard nipple in his mouth and sucked.

I moaned, helpless to stop from arching into the wet suction of his lips. I couldn't spread my thighs any wider than they already were and wished he'd put himself inside me already. His mouth would surely be my downfall.

Arim teased with his hands and mouth and reduced me to a writhing pile of want. All while I cursed my traitorous body, desperate for him. A physical ache throbbed between my legs. I would have done anything, given him anything, to quench the hunger I had for him.

"Arim, please," I gasped and cried out when he suddenly thrust a large finger inside me. He continued to suck my nipples, stabbing them with hot blasts of his breath and tongue as he thrust his finger in and out of me in a steady, maddening rhythm.

He pulled up to whisper, "You taste so sweet, Blue. Like honey melting all around me." He groaned and sucked me into a near-orgasmic state. The hard feel of his arousal intensified my desire, and I put everything I had into breaking the bonds holding me down, so that I might force Arim to take me.

Unlike the warrior on top of me, I didn't have the physical strength to break free. And that feeling of helplessness to his power thrilled that Darkest part of my fantasies.

"I've waited for you for so long." Arim continued to kiss and caress me, finally moving down my belly to my settle between my thighs. The moment his mouth covered my clit, I cried out at the sensation of ecstasy firing my blood.

Arim gripped my thighs as he feasted. His tongue burned and stroked, pushing me to respond despite my attempt to stave off my orgasm, to wait until he shoved his thick cock inside me.

I struggled against my bonds, moaning his name as he drove me out of my mind with desire.

"Tell me, Blue. What do you want?" He feathered another kiss over my clit and pumped a finger deeper inside me before pulling away, leaving me empty. "And how much are you willing to pay?"

"Anything, everything." I was mindless with need. "I need to feel you inside me. Come in me."

"I will." He swore and rose over me, claiming my lips in a kiss that reached deep into my heart and held tight. I tasted myself on his mouth, excitement flaring along my skin with tingles of Light. His position put his shaft in direct contact with my clit, and he rocked against me, a burst of pleasure making me ride the edge of climax. "You're hungry, aren't you, Blue? So tight and wet for me."

I was on the verge of coming. Arim fused his mouth to mine and stabbed deep with his tongue. The motion added to the combustion brewing between us, and the pleasure detonated as I arched up against him.

He wasted no more time and thrust hard, claiming me as his own as he pounded into me.

As he rode me, I felt the bliss of his Light beginning to overtake me. I continued to come, greedily accepting his seed as he came as well. Our inner magic mixed and held, Darkness and Light meeting and melding, and making us both something more than we were when apart.

To my amazement, I could feel him pulsing inside me, could feel both the flow of lust and something more filling me up.

When he finally ceased, I realized he'd easily overridden my efforts to maintain a clear head. Good night, but I'd promised him anything if he'd just make love — have sex — with me. Before I could even think about gathering the energy to reject our closeness, Arim disarmed me.

He leaned up on his elbows, still joined as intimately as we could be. And to my surprise, he still felt hard. He caressed my cheek with a rough finger, his touch gentle.

Then he closed his eyes and nuzzled my cheek with his, a familiar closeness we used to share so many years ago. "I've missed us so much, Blue."

I hastily blinked back tears, horrified to feel my mental and emotional shields all but gone. Arim opened his eyes and stared down at me, and his sad smile shook me to the quick.

"One terrible event shook our worlds. You were ripped free from everything you held dear, and you took my heart with you when you left." He wiped at a tear I hadn't managed to blink away. "I have to know the truth. Tell me why. If you didn't do it, why did you attack me? Why try to kill me when all I wanted was to help you?"

Normally, I would answer his accusations with something glib before lobbing a ball of blue flame his way. But our shared passion brought back how much I'd loved him, and how much I might love him still had I the courage to look deep within myself.

Unfortunately, the weakness in my soul wouldn't tolerate any more frailty. I forced myself to speak without delving too far into the reasons behind my willingness to finally answer. "I didn't kill my family."

I paused, staring up at the face that haunted the dreams I thought I'd said goodbye to long ago. "I loved Muri, Esel, and Sercha as much as I loved you. With everything I was." It hurt to remember, to see the happiest days of my life and know they were all gone.

Arim slowly withdrew from me — our physical joining, another link to the happiness that was ours — now lost.

"As I loved you."

"Then how could you think I was capable of such evil?" Anger stirred, that bone-deep resentment he'd planted in my hardened heart. "I would never have harmed my family. I was hurt, traumatized, and in shock. I tried to revive them. I called upon every ounce of magic I had inside me, but nothing worked. They were dead, and I couldn't help them."

Arim caught the angry tears gathering at the corners of my eyes and leaned close. He kissed me with tenderness, yet the expression when he leaned up from me was impossible to read. "In the hundreds of years since, I've wanted to know. I think maybe I did know, but I still couldn't equate the girl I'd loved to the Dark Lord bent on killing me in that house filled with death."

The question in his gaze forced me to respond. "I couldn't think past the smell of blood. My entire existence was thrown, and the Dark energy surrounding their deaths sparked a reaction I'd never had to face."

Arim's gaze narrowed. "I hadn't considered that."

"You have no idea what it was like. I'd lived for years happy, loved, and cherished by a mother and father who weren't rightfully mine. I always feared it might be taken away from me some day. Oh, I heard the things others said when they didn't know I was around. Churchmen and staunch Light Bringers who hated the idea of a Dark Lord changeling in their midst. But Muri always told me I belonged.

"And then they were dead, and you looked at me as if I'd done it." I stared at him, feeling his betrayal as keenly as if it had happened yesterday.