Chapter Thirty-Eight Pax

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Pax

I jolted awake, pulled from sleep—by what, I wasn’t sure, though my soul hammered in unrest.

Something wasn’t right.

I’d waited in Tearsith for her, my hands continually curling into fists as my spirit had roiled with this sticky, unsettled feeling that had taken me hostage. It had swelled and grown, and by the time our family had completely descended into Faydor, it’d become a frenzy that beat through my veins.

Whatever it was, it’d shocked me upright from where I was on the floor of the shitty motel.

The room was dark, save for the wedge of light coming from the bathroom where I’d left the door open an inch and the bare flashes that lit up behind the drapes in the window.

The floor was hard beneath me.

Aria was on the bed.

Asleep.

Which wasn’t fucking right, since she hadn’t been in Tearsith.

Only she wasn’t still. She was flailing. Her arms and feet frantic as her body jerked and twitched. The mattress squeaked with her frenetic movements, and her breaths were nothing but these gurgled, strangled sounds.

Panic jumped straight into my bloodstream, and I was on my knees on the bed just as her name ripped from my tongue. “Aria.”

She thrashed, and my hands shot out to grab her by the shoulders. Confusion bound me the second I touched her.

She was soaking wet.

What the fuck?

Teeth gritted, I shook her. “Aria. Wake up.”

She writhed, arms swinging, and her inhale was filled with the rattle of pain.

Horror kicked in, fear a thunder that raced through my manic heart, and I rushed to climb over her. I straddled her at the waist, my weight on my knees as I shook her harder. “Aria, you have to wake up! Listen to me. Follow my voice. Open your eyes.”

Desperation poured out with the words.

Only the gurgling in her throat increased, and her body tremored in these spasms that made me terrified she was losing her life. Dread clutched me in a fist, and I shook her even harder, lifting her up and slamming her down onto the mattress when she still didn’t open her eyes.

“Please, please open your eyes. I won’t let you leave me. I fucking won’t.”

They couldn’t have her.

I wouldn’t let them.

The thought of it cut through me, flaying me open wide, deeper and more brutal than any wound a Kruen had ever inflicted.

This world needed her. I needed her. Fuck, I needed her.

“Aria, please, baby, please.”

Frantic and shaking, I splayed my palm over her chest, fingers stretching wide, the single word haggard. “Please.”

Then I pressed down.

Hard.

Her body bowed beneath me as I compressed her chest.

I did it again.

And again.

Desperate. Pleading.

“Please, Aria. Please.”

Her head rocked back, and her chest stretched for the ceiling before she suddenly bolted upright.

Her pale eyes were wide with terror as water gushed from her mouth.

And she was wheezing. Deep, jagged breaths clamored from her lungs as she tried to draw the oxygen she’d been missing into the wells of them, anguished and full of fear as a sob erupted from her throat.

At the sound of it, relief pummeled me so hard I could have sworn that my ribs cracked.

I pulled her shivering frame against me, my arms shaking like a bitch as I wrapped her in them.

And Aria ... Aria cried against my chest. Deep, guttural moans that bled from her spirit.

“Pax,” she sobbed.

I kept one arm looped around her waist as my free hand wound in the dripping tendrils of midnight locks, which were drenched and stuck to her face. I pressed my lips to her crown, my voice the roughest scrape as I murmured, “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

She cried harder at my words, and her fingers curled into the fabric of my tee as she clung to me, like I could be a buoy.

Her safe place.

It was the only fucking thing in this world that I wanted to be.

“Pax.” She wheezed it, my name a riddle in the middle of her horror and shock and disbelief. She rose up on her knees and pressed her freezing body against mine.

“I know. I know.”

Except I didn’t fucking know. I had no clue how any of this was possible.

A ferocity beat chaos into my blood, my devotion and fear so intense that it pounded through my bloodstream.

So loud I could hear it booming in my ears.

So hard I could feel it booming in my spirit.

But it was Aria who had always boomed in my soul.

“Tell me what happened.” Getting the question out was close to impossible.

She gave a harsh shake of her head, and she pushed her face up into my neck, her fingers digging into my shoulders to draw me closer, her breaths panting against my flesh. “I don’t want to talk about it. Right now, I need you. I need you.”

Her plea filled my senses.

Sweet and intoxicating.

“You have me, Aria. You have me, just like I have you. I won’t let you go. I won’t let them have you. I won’t let them hurt you.”

Our connection screamed. A howl that echoed through the room.

We began to rock where we were, both on our knees on the bed, taken on a wave, set out to sea. Her lips rolled up my throat and over my jaw until she was panting at my mouth.

Her eyes were open wide.

Eyes that scored on me like the haunting of a dream.

Our bodies quaked and writhed, and her nose brushed mine, and she whispered, “I will never believe that loving you this way is wrong.”

At her words, the last threads of my restraint snapped, and there was nothing I could do but take her mouth in a kiss.

A fucking fire erupted at the contact, and Aria opened on a gasp. Her nails sank into my skin, and our tongues tangled in a fit of greed that I wasn’t sure could ever be sated.

Desperation billowed between us. Tendrils and flames that wound and claimed.

“Aria,” I murmured against her lips, never breaking the kiss, which had turned frantic.

“I need you” rushed out of her in return, and she was clawing at my tee. I edged away so she could pull it over my head.

My hands slipped under her shirt, and I splayed my palms across the silken flesh of her back. I was singed by the cold that clashed with the heat.

“Please.” She fisted my hair as she pushed herself closer.

And there were no boundaries left between us.

No veiled rules that could stand in the way.

No walls left to climb.

Because she was right. This was the way we were supposed to be. I was created for her, and she was created for me.

Our connection was bigger, more profound, than we’d been led to believe. There was no stopping the feeling that swept through like a windstorm, the impact of this touch that glided through our veins.

I dragged her soaked shirt up, and we broke apart long enough that I could pull it over her head and toss it to the floor.

A sharp breath punched from her lungs before she threw herself back at me. She pressed her bare chest flush against mine. Her nipples were pebbled and hard, and fuck, I thought I might die just from the feel of her like that alone.

I groaned, and her name left me on a prayer. “Aria. You’re every dream I’ve ever had. Every vision in the day. Every hope that I’ve dared to have. All of me, it’s yours.”

Chills rolled through her, and she curled her arms around my neck while I threaded my fingers in the drenched locks of her hair, my other arm looped around her waist as I kept her close.

She kept kissing me and kissing me, just as fiercely as I kissed her back.

Sweet hands explored. Riding over my shoulders and down my sides. Nails raked my chest, sending pleasure shooting through my body, and every inch of me was trembling when she reached far enough between us to slip them under the waist of my sweats.

I hissed, and my stomach tightened. “Is this what you want?”

“You, Pax. I want you. All of you, like you promised me. I don’t know how long I have. How long I can run. But I do know that if I get to have one wish, it would be to experience this with you.”

There was only a faint voice at the back of my mind warning me that this was wrong. A voice warning that I was crossing a line that was only going to bring more destruction.

The rest of me knew there wasn’t a chance on this godforsaken Earth that I would deny her this.

So I carefully scooped her up and slipped off the bed. Laying her on the thin sheet on the floor, I stared down at the girl who stared up at me.

She searched me, like she might find the answer to this life written in the scars that marred my flesh. Find it hidden in the lines that dented deep in my brow.

I searched her, too.

Gaze tracing.

Exploring.

The sharp angles of her face were so striking. Unforgettable. This woman who was carved into every recess of my being. I got the sense right then that my heart had been woven with the fabric of hers.

I brushed my fingers through her hair and let my thumb stroke her cheek. “Are you sure?”

She reached up and set a trembling hand on my cheek. Right then, her pale eyes were the warmest thing I’d ever seen. “I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

Inhaling a shaky breath, I leaned back on my knees and hooked my fingers in the band of her leggings. Slowly, I peeled them down, revealing her inch by inch.

I edged back enough so I could wind them from her ankles, leaving her completely bare and exposed.

A needy sigh pilfered from between her lips.

I took her in through the dim, hazy light. Her body was littered in scars, and I leaned in and started to brush my lips over each one.

Her legs.

Her thighs.

Her right hip.

I kissed up her abdomen where the bulk of them were engraved, the battle scars of the life we lived. Our fate. Our hope. Our demise.

She writhed and gasped with each gentle brush of my lips, and those fingers wound in my hair as I went.

As I adored her.

Worshipped her.

In it, I prayed she knew what I meant. This woman who made me recognize my true purpose in this twisted, messed-up life.

The one who’d become my reason.

I let my nose wander her collarbone, inhaling her scent.

Coconut and goodness and this power that I couldn’t come close to comprehending.

Then I dragged it up the delicate column of her neck before I planted both hands on either side of her head.

I gazed down at her in the wisping, murmuring night.

She never took those eyes off my face as she reached between us and started to push my sweats over my hips, and I shifted so I could unwind the rest of the way out of them, kicking them free of my feet.

Sparks licked across our naked flesh, and the energy that dragged us through two realities crackled in the space between.

I dropped to an elbow, careful not to crush her but wholly covering her with my body, wishing it to be a shield. Her protection. Her pleasure. Her everything.

Cupping her cheek, I murmured my one single truth: “I love you.”

Then I pushed deep inside her.

And Aria?

I swore she fucking glowed.