Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

I wasn’t sure why I had expected the kiss to be fierce and animalistic, but that first one was quiet, gentle. Sweet.

Vale’s lips were softer than I thought they’d be. His beard tickled my chin. At first, he just brushed his mouth over mine, like he wanted to start by knowing the shape of it, knowing the way I tasted.

Then, his lips parted, the kiss deepening, the touch of his tongue—shockingly shy—meeting mine. My head was cloudy and fuzzy in a way that had nothing to do with my exhaustion.

A serrated breath ghosted over my lips—and that, that one little sign of the intensity of his desire, lit something on fire inside me. Suddenly Vale’s closeness, the warmth of his bare skin, the taste of him, the smell of him, overwhelmed me.

A tiny, wordless sound escaped my throat, and I kissed him back this time. Harder. Deeper.

He met my fervor with enough enthusiasm to leave me breathless.

He held my face firmly, his tongue exploring my mouth, each kiss bleeding into the other. Gods, I had never kissed anyone like this—each movement so intuitive. I never had to stop and guess what he wanted. It was the kind of ease I thought other people must always feel.

One of his hands moved to the back of my head, tangling in my hair. The other wandered down to my waist, his thumb slipping between the buttons of my shirt, brushing my bare skin. That one touch made me gasp.

His tongue rolled against mine, then he withdrew. In my fervor, we’d both fallen back onto the bed.

Everything was hazy, distant.

“You’re injured,” I said softly.

His chuckle was low and thick. “Incredible how much better I already feel.”

But his smile faded, and he gave me a long stare—and I knew what this wordless silence meant, the question he was asking.

I parted my thighs, opening myself to the rigid press of his desire between us.

His eyes darkened, the desire in them so sharp it cut me open, and it occurred to me that maybe I should be afraid—that maybe the hunger I was seeing in Vale’s expression, feeling in the way he held me to the bed, was about more than sex.

I wasn’t, though. No, the fear came from somewhere else. Not from Vale’s roughness, but his tenderness.

He smoothed a strand of hair from my forehead.

“You’re shaking, mouse.”

I slid my fingertips beneath the waistband of his trousers, a light touch over the flesh of his abdomen—soft skin, hard muscle, trembling faintly.

“So are you.”

My voice was rough, low. Vale lowered his head a little when I spoke, like he wanted to feel the words over his lips—stopping just shy of meeting them.

Neither of us moved. Not meeting that almost kiss, not pulling away, our hands both at the buttons of each other’s clothing but not unbuttoning them.

I watched Vale’s face, the panes of his features outlined in blue-silver licks of light that reminded me of the outlines of the roses I gave him. Even with the wounds remaining, he reminded me of a statue—a work of living art, carved from stone, subject to none of the atrocities of time or nature. He was eternity while I was impermanence—a being that embraced the mysteries I spent my entire life stifled by.

How could a being look so similar to a human and yet so stunningly different?

And yet…

Yet…

The corner of his mouth tightened. It should have been a smile, but the expression was so sad it gutted me.

“I always wondered what you were thinking,” he murmured. “When you look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a formula to be solved, and you’re very intrigued about the answer.”

At this, I couldn’t help but smile. “Intriguing is the word.”

A wrinkle formed between his brows. “An acceptable one?”

The question struck me hard—struck me because I wasn’t prepared for it, for him to ask it that way, shy and tentative.

Like the answer meant something to him. Like the answer meant everything to him.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s remarkable.”

I could never solve Vale and his many mysteries, but I loved them all the same. And in these complexities, I saw a mirror held up to all the things that did not make sense within myself.

For the first time, I saw beauty in all the things I did not understand. And I knew that Vale saw beauty in all those things within me, too.

I slipped my palm up his abdomen and relished the way his muscles twitched beneath my touch.

“I’d like you to kiss me again,” I said. “And I’d like these clothes off.”

“Hmm.” He hummed feigned reluctance against my mouth, but only for a moment, because it was quickly swallowed by his next kiss—and this one was brutal, hard, demanding. He kissed me like we didn’t have any time. Like he was mortal.

His hand slid up my shirt, large palm flattening over my stomach, as if not sure whether he wanted to go up or down—gods, I wasn’t sure where I wanted him to be, either. I wanted both, and quickly.

I broke away from his kiss just long enough to tear my shirt off over my head. A rush of cold air hit me as Vale pulled slightly away, despite my rough exhale of protest.

Those amber eyes moved over my body, taking in my bare skin. The hunger in them was unmistakable now.

You should be afraid, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.

But I’d never been afraid of death.

No, that hunger just fueled my own. My breasts were peaked with desire, begging to be touched—my core slick, begging to be filled. His eyes drank me in for what felt like an age and an instant.

Then, like his own desire had overwhelmed him, he reached for the buttons of my trousers and yanked them open. I lifted my hips to help them off, and I had barely kicked off the fabric before his hand was between my legs.

Pleasure sparked up my spine. A whimper escaped me. My fingernails dug into his back, and my body, of its own accord, jerked to be closer to his—even though he held me down to the bed.

He let out a low groan.

“I was right that night.” His mouth curled into a smirk against mine. He sounded satisfied with himself. “You do want this.”

He’d been right then, and I wasn’t even ashamed of it. I’d wanted him for a long time. That night had been the first time I thought of him when I found my own pleasure in bed, imagining my own hands to be his, and it had only gotten more frequent since then.

Now that his hands were there, circling in on the epicenter of my desire… gods, it was better than I’d imagined.

It was hard to speak, hard to think. He teased me like he knew it, too, though I could see that he was also having a hard time focusing on anything but that, see it in the way his eyes hooded when my breath hitched.

“You’ve been thinking about it for a long time, too.” My hand slipped farther beneath the waistband of his trousers, slid over smooth skin and coarse hair and settling at the rigid length of his cock straining against the fabric, responding immediately to my touch.

I took a moment—just a moment—to run my palm up and down that beautiful length, just softly enough that I knew it would be a little torturous. Just to make sure he knew we were on equal ground.

He smiled into my kiss like he knew it, too.

But then I kissed him hard and ripped the buttons of his trousers open.

Time.

We didn’t have time.

And that realization seemed to crash over him at the same time it did me, because he pressed me to the bed, our kisses frantic and messy, his tongue exploring my mouth, fingers sliding into me—the sudden press of them coaxing a choked moan from my throat, my thighs opening wider for him, though he held me still when I tried to chase the friction my body wanted.

His kisses moved from my lips to my cheek, pausing at my ear—his breath rough against the sensitive skin there, teeth catching my earlobe, something I never thought could feel as good as it did in this moment—then moving down, to my throat. He paused there, tongue pressing against my flesh.

His breath was ragged. My heart pounded. I was sure he could feel my pulse there. Smell it.

For a moment, I thought maybe he might do it.

For a moment, I thought maybe I wanted him to.

But he just skimmed his mouth up my neck, my jaw, moving back to my mouth and kissing me hard. His thumb pressed down at the core of my need, and that, combined with the penetration of his fingers, sent a wave of pleasure through me that left me gasping.

Time.

I pushed him off of me, my eyes meeting his in a way that communicated all of my demands, and started to roll over onto my hands and knees. I wanted him as deep as I could have him.

But he stopped me.

“No,” he said. “I want to watch your face.”

I hesitated, and my uncertainty must have shown in my expression, because Vale smiled—smiled fully, to reveal those deadly fangs.

“All this time you’ve gotten to study me. That isn’t fair.”

And strange how having him at my throat, teeth one heartbeat from my blood, didn’t frighten me, but the idea of letting him do that—the idea of looking into his eyes when I was so exposed—gave me pause.

But his fingers circled my bud, and I let out a strangled moan, and he smirked in a way that said he knew he had me.

And he was right. He could have me however he wanted.

I let him push me to the bed. My thighs opened around his hips. He kissed me languidly as I reached down to position him at my entrance—even the first pressure of his cock there making us both groan.

He yanked my hand back, pressing down on my forearms to hold me beneath him, and thrust into me.

I was so wet, so ready. It took just one single thrust. He was bigger than anything I’d had before, and that first thrust almost—almost—hurt, in every wonderful way.

I didn’t even realize I’d made a sound until he reacted to it, a hiss of pleasure as he buried his face against my hair. He worked at me slowly for those first couple of strokes, my hips rolling and pressing against his movements. Forcing him deep, gasping at every new angle that he hit inside of me.

He pushed himself up enough to look at me, and my impulse was to turn my head, to look away. But he grabbed my chin, held it—held it, so that he was looking right into my eyes.

He withdrew slowly, then pushed back into me, deeper, until my hips were lifted off the bed with the force of it. Sparks shot up my spine, pleasure spreading through my core. My one free hand reached for something, anything, to hold onto, finding his shoulder and clutching so hard that surely I was leaving marks on him.

He held that pressure for a few agonizing, incredible seconds, watching me as each minuscule shift made my breath quicken.

“Yes?” he said, softly.

“Yes,” I answered.

Gods, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

He withdrew again, painfully slowly.

His next stroke was harder still. My moan came out ragged, ripped from me without my permission.

Another stroke. Faster. Forceful.

He was still watching me, his face serious and focused, and I wanted to look away, wanted to hide myself, but I couldn’t—his eyes, the amber gold of a wolf in the woods, transfixed me.

Again.

He was slowly increasing his speed, his pressure. His free hand, the one that was not holding my forearm to the bed, traced the curve of my hip, my waist, circling the peaked hardness of my nipple just as he pushed into me again.

This time, my moan became a cry.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Yes,” I gasped.

Still, we didn’t look away from each other.

He was decoding me, solving me, the way I had solved him. I was being projected onto the wall like I had projected his blood, and I knew with a strange, terrible kind of certainty in this moment that he found me just as remarkable.

He wasn’t the only one. Because even though he had let go of my chin, I didn’t look away from him, either.

No, I barely blinked as he continued fucking me, every carefully measured stroke loosening in control. He was a quick study. He learned fast what I liked, what angles made my moans loudest. Learned what to give me when desperate, nonsensical pleas tumbled from my lips, even when I myself didn’t know.

Every muscle of my body, every shred of awareness, rearranged around him. The pleasure was unbearable, agonizing. I wanted to throw my head back and scream his name—I wanted to bury my face against the smooth expanse of his skin and breathe him.

I didn’t. Because I couldn’t look away from him, watching him watching me, memorizing each other.

And gods, he was beautiful. More beautiful than his blood. More beautiful than his admiration. All of it was dwarfed by the way he looked slowly unraveling, losing himself in his pleasure the way I lost myself in mine, tethered only to each other.

I clutched his shoulder now, and his fingers were tight enough around my arm to leave marks on me. My legs folded around his hips, urging him into me faster, harder. The headboard banged against the wall, an increasing rhythm that echoed my heartbeat.

His lips found my cheek, my throat, my mouth, stifling my cries. And yet he pulled away again, right as he rushed to that pinnacle, his cock driving into me so hard that he had to clutch my waist to keep from sending me against the headboard.

He met my eyes. And I knew he wanted to see the conclusion of this experiment—as much as I did.

“Yes?”

His voice was strained, like it took a lot of concentration to form even that small word.

I took his next stroke with equal force, pushing against him, contracting around him.

“Yes,” I choked. “Yes.”

And he pinned my shoulders down as I lifted my hips to receive those final thrusts, and we watched each other’s faces as we came together. I had to fight to keep my eyes open through the explosion of pleasure that left sparks of white over my vision, that tore a cry from my throat that must have echoed down the ancient empty hallways of this house.

But gods, it was worth it to make sure I saw him, eyes both distant and sharp with ecstasy, looking as if he had seen his goddess herself.

He pushed deep as he came, and I wrung myself around him as if to make sure I gave and took every last shred of pleasure.

The world went quiet. Reality came back in blurry pieces.

Vale’s head dropped, his forehead pressing against mine. His muscles trembled a bit, which I noticed with a pang of guilt. He’d strained himself more than he should have so soon after his injuries, magical potions or no.

He rolled off me and, as if it was nothing other than instinct, his arms folded around me, pulling me onto his chest.

I had never liked being held much. I found it too hot and restrictive. But Vale’s body was just the right amount of warm and cool, just the right balance of soft and firm. It felt like it was built to accommodate the shape of my own.

I let him hold me, and as my eyelashes fluttered with a sudden wave of exhaustion, a terrible dread settled over me.

Vale had been my experiment, my question to be answered. I thought it would be easier to let go of him if I could understand his every unknown. But he was a question that had no answer. And every answer.

Vale wasn’t a cure for anything. He was a whole new disease, one I’d carry with me to my inevitable end.

I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t like goodbyes. Easier to be the first one to go.

But they come for us all, anyway.