Chapter 3

3

HELENA

“ I ’d say that has to be the best ‘first time’ anyone has ever had,” Rhonin whispers.

I sit draped over him like a cloak, lifeless and languid. He’s still inside me, filling me even as his erection softens.

“I think we need a second time tonight,” I reply, feeling absolutely ravaged. “And a third.”

I smile against his shoulder and glance up at him, knowing that repeat rounds aren’t likely to happen. I’m also a little stunned. I’ve never felt like this with anyone. Granted, I don’t have a long line of lovers, but I never imagined this —being so intimate with someone that I ache to be with them or near them constantly. Love was a distant thing meant for dreamers or people like Finn who wanted a spouse and a home and babies.

Instead of that life, I held dreams of joining the Northland Watch. Of learning to fight and maybe take to guarding the seas. I never imagined anything else, but now I find myself wondering how I could ever leave Rhonin behind. In truth, it worries me a little that I feel this way. That I feel like I need him.

“It’s abnormal for me to ask for more,” I tell him honestly. “I used to only want the release. Then I was gone.”

He brushes the back of his hand across my cheek. “That’s a good thing, I think. That you want me. I have a good feeling about you and me.”

“It doesn’t terrify you?”

He smiles. “That you want me? Should it?”

I shake my head, wondering if I’m broken in some way to think that it could.

We sit there for a while, holding one another, warmed by the fire, listening to the emptiness of the desert beyond. Much to my surprise, Rhonin hardens again, without the slightest provocation.

“Round two?” he asks, and I flash a giddy smile.

As though I would decline.

This time, Rhonin lays me back on the blanket and settles between my legs. I’m already sore, but I want the ache of having been with him. I want him imprinted on my bones.

When he kisses me, it’s with a softer edge, his lips warm and lush against my own. “My turn. Are you ready?”

I am. Not just for tonight. But for whatever lies ahead for us. Something inside me has always screamed that I was meant for more, and tonight, I feel like a part of that destiny has completed itself, as though Rhonin and I were meant to meet for a reason, as though our unity means something far larger in this world than a night of passion, wonderful as it might be.

“More ready than you can ever know,” I answer him.

Even if it scares me a little.

“Good,” he whispers. “Because you’re in for the ride of your life, Helena Owyn.”

Feeling certain that I am, I close my eyes and hold on tight.