Drowning in Fire

FIFTEEN

By the time they got back to the B and B, the rain had started up again. A teasing spatter this time, thrown about in the wind. They walked side by side along the quiet road—the first time one of them had not led or been chased. They did not speak. Keko fought the urge to reach for his hand.

Griffin opened the door to their room, and this time the slow inward swing of the door didn’t scare her. Didn’t confuse her. Because she’d made her decision and got what she needed from him.

And now she just had him. For tonight, at least.

Still standing on the porch, she peered inside. “It’s nice. A bed and everything.” Her laugh was quiet and nervous, and she didn’t recognize the sound of it. Hated it, even. “Haven’t slept on one of those in a while.”

Slowly, so slowly, he pulled the key out of the lock and turned around to face her. She loved the way he moved, had loved it from the first moment she’d seen him in that parking garage. Loved it even more as she remembered how he’d selflessly vaulted himself off that rock to attack the treeman.

She’d gotten spooked when she’d stood in this exact spot earlier, weighted down by choices and feeling buried in her revived feelings for him. So she’d headed down to that bar, ordered two burgers to go, and sat down to have a good think. A small part of her had hoped he wouldn’t come looking for her.

But the vast majority of her was glad he did.

Brave Queen, she wanted him. In ways wholly different than she was used to. In ways that challenged her reasoning and her culture and the rules laid out by the Senatus. It felt okay to admit that now, standing there on a rainy porch in Hawaii with him staring expectantly at her. They’d each surrendered something. They’d each received something in return. They were going into tonight carrying a tenuous link of trust. It was something new for them, and like a bulky item of clothing she was unused to wearing, she was still shifting around in it, trying to get the fit right.

“When was the last time?” Under the sprinkle of rain his voice was as rich as coffee.

She blinked. “Sorry?”

As he quirked the tiniest of smiles, his expression turned soft and sublime. That was what she’d glimpsed in him years ago, that wonderful, brief moment when he’d told her he thought they should try to be together. She wanted more of that.

“The last time you slept in a bed,” he added.

A vision of crumpled hotel sheets, throw pillows kicked all over the floor, the bedspread stuffed somewhere in a corner, came to her with vivid clarity. “With you.”

A lift of those eyebrows. “Three years? And before that?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“In my house, the one that Bane lives in now up on the bluff, I put in a hammock so I could sleep and feel the breeze all around me. When I lay in it I could see the whole Chimeran valley through the front door. I used to sneer down at the Common House, thankful I didn’t have to sleep on dirt and grass mats like them.” She ran her hand down the door jamb. “And then I was made to.”

He was still standing just inside the room, a hand on the doorknob, as she lingered out on the damp porch. Everything about him screamed an invitation to sex. It unnerved her, this role reversal. She should be the one beckoning him inside. She should be the one with the salacious glint in her eye. Shockingly, for the first time ever, she couldn’t deny enjoying being on the receiving end.

Griffin, the beautiful man, gave a gentle nod for her to enter. She did, and he softly shut the door behind her. The sound of the rain shifted from wet plops on wood to a light drum on the roof. The smell of cotton and cleaning disinfectant replaced that of the rain. Darkness enveloped them, the only light coming from the balcony sconces that shone through the lighter colored pattern pieces on the tropical-themed drapes. Yet she saw him—oh, how she saw him—standing there in the center of their rented, temporary world for however long they could keep it wrapped around themselves.

She would not think about what she didn’t or couldn’t have, but instead vowed to take joy in who and what she had with her now.

His hands were in his pockets, stretching the T-shirt across his flat abdomen. She went to him.

Not a lunge. Not a physical body throw. Not an attack. A careful, deliberate advancement.

She felt everything, listened to the song of every sensation. The rough nap of the throw rug beneath the soles of her feet. The steady pound of her heart. The pull of his stare as his eyes locked with hers, dark upon dark, matched in desire.

As she came to within inches of him, his body this incredible magnet to her senses, his absolute attention on her a sensual potion she was absorbing through her pores, nothing else existed in the whole world.

He removed his hands from his pockets, a soft shush of fabric.

She pressed him against the door. No, he was pulling her. It was impossible to tell. All she knew was that his hands—those things that wielded an element she’d been taught to hate, to fight—had closed around her waist, pulling up her tank top and sliding over her skin. All she knew was that their mouths were together again, and it was the slowest, softest, wettest kiss she’d ever experienced.

She’d never known that you could kiss like this. That the slower you did it, the more you wanted it. The more you wanted it, the deeper the need rooted in your system. And the deeper the need, the more desperate you felt to have him now. Only it was the holding back that made everything that much more brilliant.

All she could taste was Griffin. He invaded her, surrounded her, and she knew, without a doubt, that she’d been waiting for this moment, to find this level of connection. With anyone. It wasn’t something she could force with Chimeran-taught brash words or bold actions, or by opening her legs for whomever she desired back in the valley. This is what her soul had needed, and it had been waiting for Griffin.

And here he was. Touching her, pulling her into him with such exquisite, nearly painful gentleness.

Slipping her hands between their bodies, her palms rested on his chest. There was something about the cool, smooth cotton stretched over him, that delicate divider between her fingers and his skin, that made a starburst of longing explode in her mind. The force of it pressed thought and rationalization into the deepest recesses. Filled her only with the awareness of him and the various places they were connected.

Lips.

Hips.

Hands.

Hearts.

They’d never shared this kind of innocent, covered, slow touch. Why did it drive her this crazy when she’d already seen him naked, when she knew firsthand what beauty was underneath?

Time had never been in their favor, but now it seemed like they had forever. The clock and all the minutes and seconds in the world belonged to them. She’d bundle them inside her and keep them always, every single one of them packed with memories of their mouths together, the wet press of their tongues, and the low sounds that echoed the movement of their bodies.

Beneath her palms his pecs tightened, and she lost control of the tenderness of her touch. Her fingers curled, her ragged nails digging into the cotton, searching for the skin underneath but only getting his heat. His hands gripped her tighter, sliding down from her waist to her hips to her ass. He hiked her body harder against him, and she could feel his restraint, the way he was holding back, too.

She wanted to stretch this out, wanted to know every single molecule of him. She wanted to learn everything her heart hadn’t already felt. There was so much of it, she realized. So much she’d never opened herself up to. Because she’d never wanted to with anyone but him.

The realization made her shiver, and her skin pebbled. Such an alien feeling.

Griffin released her, his lips gently pulling away, his hands leaving her hips to skim lightly up her arms, trailing more gooseflesh in their wake. He was watching the path of his hands, his head tilted. “Am I doing that?” he murmured in wonder.

Pressing herself against him, she opened her mouth on the hard column of his throat, loving the way he sagged under her tongue. “Yes,” she whispered into his hot, hot skin. “It’s you.”

The vulnerability of that admission scared her, but that fear turned out to be a potent aphrodisiac.

His big, graceful arms folded around her, and even though they were nearly the same height she felt enclosed and cherished, but also his equal. They merely held each other, her breath fanning warmly across the skin below his ear, his clutch on her intensifying with every second, a vise whose pressure was most welcome. Then his head drew back, her hands automatically sliding around his short, soft hair that felt so lovely in her fingers, and they were kissing again.

A pure sweep of lips and tongues. A trembling of bodies.

He pushed off the door, walking her backward. He led like a dancer, and her body followed without thought or stumbling, as though she’d anticipated his movements and already knew the steps. As though her desire had conjured them in her head moments before and he was reading her mind.

And then he did something entirely unexpected.

He bent down, wrapped one arm around the back of her knees, and picked her up. Cradled her.

The Keko who belonged to the Chimerans would have fought this instantly, this blatant overtaking. The Keko who’d been general, and before that the highest ranking warrior, would have squirmed and kicked out, maybe thrown the heel of one hand into his nose or an elbow into his throat. She would have swept out a leg to knock him to the ground. They’d tussle, and maybe she’d let him pin her eventually, let him take her on the tail end of the fake fight, just to let him know she could win . . . if she’d wanted the victory.

But the Keko who belonged to Griffin wanted none of that right now. She wanted to know how he would care for her, how he would tend to her on his own terms. She wanted to know what his control was like, what he desired from her. So she chose not to fight, and instead curled an arm around the back of his neck and stared into his eyes. Waiting. Issuing a challenge of the silent kind.

He walked her toward the bed and she tensed, waiting to be thrown over it, like she’d done to him their very first time together. Like he’d done to her on their second. The corners of his lips, gone all soft and swollen, ticked up, because he knew she was thinking of that. Expecting it. Instead, his strong legs bent and he sat her on top of the green tropical bedspread. The cool polyester felt strange and wonderful against her skin that burned under the gooseflesh.

A slow, soft hand passed over her shoulder to rest on her heaving breastbone. Just a shadow of the first time they’d touched, when she’d grabbed his hand and gave him no choice about how he was to touch her. Now the choice was all his, and her brain buzzed with this new kind of power—watching the way she affected him. And there was no mistaking it, because his hunger was sewn into his expression.

The concept of being wanted that much, and to witness it in person, was more than overwhelming. This wasn’t just sex, a conquest, a physical need. For her, it was a kind of birth, and it was both painful and beautiful.

He gave her a slight push. “Lie down,” he whispered.

Scooting back on the bed diagonally, she slowly let her body arch backward, watching his face the whole time—a searing focus that declared he’d found his goal and would go after it with everything he had.

She longed to ease the tortured expression that knitted his brow. With an arch of her spine, his lips parted and he came down to join her.

Crawling, his biceps bulging out of the sleeves of his T-shirt, he straddled her thighs, towering over her. Her hands rested by her head, and though she was dying to reach for his zipper, to yank it down and have what was inside, she told herself that knowing his mind and what he wanted at that moment was far, far more desirable. This would be a lesson for both of them.

His stare pinned her with an invisible strength. He sat on her legs, hands slowly rubbing up and down her thighs, then he reached forward. The tank top was a piece of crap and he had an easy time ripping it away from her body. Just shredded it down the center. Flipping back the halves, he stared down at her chest, his tongue making a slow sweep of his inner lower lip. With even less care, he swept his own T-shirt from his body.

There was something about being underneath a man she’d never truly appreciated before. Something about reducing such a warrior—because that’s what he was, as she learned to redefine the title—to the wordless staring, to the mindless desire circling in those eyes, that made her feel more powerful than the Queen.

Then he moved, shifting back, bending at the waist. Coming down over her.

Closing her eyes, listening to her own breath rattle in anticipation, she awaited the lick on a nipple, the stroke of the generous curve underneath, maybe a full-on grab, tight and needy. She wasn’t at all expecting the feel of his torso, all that hard muscle and skin that she’d touched through his shirt, slide up over hers. There was a different kind of sensation on her nipples as his chest and heavy body covered hers. And then a familiar sensation on her mouth as he kissed her.

Nothing what she’d expected, but everything she loved.

She felt his hands on her head, smoothing back her hair, kissing and kissing her, his body growing heavier and heavier. Then his fingers drifted away from her head and slid across the bedspread to take her waiting hands. Fingers intertwined, palm to palm, they clenched each other. Held on to one another. Kissed like the Earth had stopped rotating and the moon would hang forever where it was and the sun would wait patiently for them to finish before rising.

He pulled away with a groan and a great gasp. She exhaled with loss as his body lifted off hers, silently crying for his return. He was looking at her, his gaze dropping to her jaw and chin, then shoulders and chest. He dragged his hands down her arms, finally—finally—to her breasts. But it was a tease, just a light scrape across her nipples that had her arching up like she’d been zapped with beautiful electricity. Then he did the most incredible thing . . . he turned his touch to water.

A cool, delicate, sharp, wet drag of liquid, up and around and down and across her sensitive, heated flesh. Her body responded immediately, igniting her fire magic. Steam rose off her, circling him, enveloping him.

She knew she was wet before, but with their magic mixed, she got absolutely soaked. She felt almost too swollen and tuned up to be touched, gone shaking in her need for him.

The water swirled over her nipples again, and this time, with the shock gone, there was only intense pleasure. She cried out, chin thrown back. She thought she heard him chuckle, triumphant, and then the water was gone. He eased off her, the absence almost hurting, until she felt his hands at her jeans. Pulling them off, under her hips, sliding them down her legs.

Barely a second passed after the last piece of her clothes disappeared before he was on her again, this time with his knees pushing hers apart, and this time with him whispering against her mouth in light teases, “So beautiful. So fucking beautiful.”

Her arms came away from the bed to wrap around his neck. Her legs lifted and entwined around his lower back. Her heels shoved at the loose waistband of his baggy shorts, and then they were off, too, his body twisting, his hands scrabbling to make himself naked. It was a short burst of energy, all frantic and desperate like so much of their sex had been before, but then, as he leaned back and she caught a glimpse of his hard stomach, tense thighs, and raging erection, he slowed. Covered her body again.

“Please.”

Who had said that? Him? Her? Some ghost in the room or the very energy between them?

“What do you want?” His voice against her lips, tugging at the softness.

So it had been her to speak, to beg like that. How wonderfully freeing, to be able to do that and not to be judged or thought weak. On the contrary, energy raced through her, exploding out of her skin in ways the fire never had. The fire was part of her, yes, but the magic was something inside her body, something given to her, something she could manipulate. This desire that was making her crazy and blind and deaf . . . that was hers. She owned it. And she would give it all to Griffin of her own volition.

“Touch me,” she whispered. “Make me come. Please.”

With a low animalistic sound, he slid down her body. All that friction blazed through her from the outside in. An entirely new, reverse kind of heat—his heat, and he was giving it to her.

On a delay, she realized that he hadn’t moved in order to penetrate her. Instead his head was between her legs, his eyes focused on where she was desperate for him, his intent so very clear.

“The fire . . .” she began.

He shook his head, his eyes flipping up to meet hers. “I want to feel it. On my lips, in my mouth. I’m not worried. You won’t hurt me.”

But you’ll hurt me, she thought. And not physically.

He licked her, right there where all emotion and sensation had spiraled and made her aware of the entire universe. Her hips bucked off the bed, but he clamped his hands around her thighs. Held her down. She had no strength, no fight left. Had she ever truly had any when it came to him?

His mouth closed over her, a soft fastening of the lips and a deliberate swirl of the tongue. She got lost in it, in its aching pace, in the shivers he was drawing out from her again.

Then she did a dumb thing. She opened her eyes, lifted her head and looked down. Looked at the roll of his mouth over her flesh, the way he ate her as though he were savoring his last meal, the smooth, even bob of his head between her legs. It was dumb because she’d never be able to forget the squeeze of his eyelids, or the appearance of his tongue as he dragged it up the sensitive seam of her body. Dumb because she knew she would think of and want this every day up until the moment she died, and she had no idea what was going to happen to either of them after tomorrow.

A sob wracked out of her as she came. She was crying and coming, her chest heaving with sorrow and pleasure, and she didn’t know which to trust in more.

When she came down, when her body ceased its tremors and there were paths of wetness from the corners of her eyes to the bedspread, Griffin still had his mouth on her, only this time it was everywhere: her inner thighs, her hip bones, the divots between her stomach muscles. When he clamped his lips over her nipple again, a strange heat coated his tongue. Spicy, zinging. Her own.

He rose up to fill her vision again. “Your fire is delicious.”

On his elbows above her, staring into her face, he nudged his cock inside her at last. Her vision winked and blurred, and she blamed the look in his eyes, that pure bliss shooting back at her, that something she was so afraid to voice but could name with the snap of her fingers.

And then he was fully inside her. Griffin Aames was inside her. Filling her from spirit to heart, soul to mind. She felt she might split apart from all that consumed her, and she had no idea what to do about that. As his forehead came down to touch hers, she gripped his short hair. Right before she closed her eyes against the intensity of his nearness, she knew she was lost. And this new place—a state of mind she’d never known before and was wandering through with little to no direction—was truly blissful.

Then he withdrew and pushed back into her with renewed power. Somehow larger, somehow deeper. The sounds that flowed up and out of their throats gave voice to indescribable feeling. Fire and water, combining inside her body.

They’d done this before, but the frenzied nature of their previous sexual encounters had masked the intensity of the two elements truly coming together. Now, with every centimeter of movement creating a mile of sensation, she was wholly aware of how warm her body was growing, how it was taking him in and wrapping around his element, combining with it. Intensifying it. He was water and ice and steam, and she could almost see that steam rising from the mountains of his shoulders, trickling through the lines made by his flexing muscles.

Another thrust, slow and hard. She discovered she did not want to demand speed this time. She did not want a fuck like they’d already had. No, she wanted more of this—this protective, intense, claiming penetration that locked their eyes as firmly as it joined their bodies.

His hips were heavenly, the way they scooped up and into her. He moved like water itself, smooth and flowing, its power deceptively beautiful and innocent looking. And then . . . suddenly . . . just for a moment . . . it seemed like he was water.

His whole body went translucent and shimmering at the edges, like he was losing control of who he was and who his body longed to be. Then he was back again, his olive skin as solid and lovely and taut as it had always been. The thought that she might have sparked that in him made her insane with lust.

She wanted to carve a stone prayer to the Queen asking if she could keep this man inside her forever and ever. That she could just keep this man, period.

Griffin’s chin jutted out, his face reddening, his teeth clenching. She could feel her inner fire starting to release, which meant that he could, too. Little pinpricks of orange and sparkling gold turned her vision into a dreamy wonderland, and she loved the way Griffin appeared to her through it. Her water elemental, overlaid by flames.

They’d been together enough for him to remember what got her off, and he did it without prompting. He shoved a hand under her ass and hoisted her up, tilting her into the delicious angle that had him stroking the most perfect place inside. He held tight to her, not letting her drop, driving into her with increased force. Increased speed.

She rode it out, arms thrust to the side, hips high in the air, legs holding on to the man driving into her. She felt utterly powerless, a slave to the fire and the man who held her body so perfectly . . . and it was the greatest feeling in the world.

When she came again, the fire rolled through her with such force she thought she might ignite. She’d take the bed and the B and B and all of the Big Island with her, and not even the great Fire Source could match the way he was making her feel.

Her throat went raw with the sounds she made. Fire licked behind her eyelids, because she couldn’t keep them open any longer. The conflagration at last began to peter out, but the experience wasn’t over, because Griffin roared as he came. She distinctly felt him tighten and swell, the stroke of him turning into a wonderful rhythm.

Then he was cool inside her, a splash of water. An ocean of peace and power.

When at last he withdrew and lowered her ass back to the bed, she was numb to everything but the gentle rub of his skin against hers. Maybe it was hours later—maybe it was minutes—but she was still lying there, held in his arms, one of his hands stroking down her hair, one leg thrown over her thighs, claiming her.

Despite her best intentions, despite her wishes and dreams and all that she knew she must do tomorrow, she let herself be taken.