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“Here,” I instructed, and positioned his fingers where I wanted them. “Touch me here.”

“Only here?”

“Mostly here. Like this. Softly.”

A sharp moan escaped me as his fingers pressed down against me.

“I need you on me,” I told him, and pulled his body closer to mine. Kalcedon shifted, pressing his torso against my chest as his hand kept moving. My body moved of its own accord, seeking him out. I wrapped a leg desperately over his, then moved back when I realized it ruined the angle of his hand against me. But I needed him. Needed to be touching him. My arms snaked tight around Kalcedon’s neck. His lips were against my cheek, my nose, my mouth, my jaw, desperate and hungry as his hand kept moving, pressing, not so much teasing pleasure from me as flooding me with it. I cried out and he groaned against me, teeth to my neck.

“God,” I whimpered.

“No. Me,” he breathed, his voice strained and desperate, pushed to his limits. “Kalcedon.”

“Kalcedon,” I agreed, and he kept the rhythm I’d shown him, even as I ground and bucked and whimpered in his arms. His touch ravaged me. The weight of his power undid every facet of my existence until my very bones sang his song.

I had to grab his wrist to tell him to stop, after I broke open and then broke open again. When my fingers sought out his trouser joinings, Kalcedon groaned, and helped to shove the fabric down over his hips.

The hard length of him came free, a drop of cum beading at the tip. With one firm stroke I had him falling back against me, his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth parted in ecstasy. I pulled him into place with my legs wrapped around his thighs; lined his shaft up and guided him into me.

I do not claim to know the intricacies of how time operates. I do know it stopped in that moment. The whole world took itself apart and put itself back together again, better than before.

The word bliss does not begin to describe it. Nor paradise, euphoria, rapture.

Only Kalcedon. Burning through me. On me. In me.

“Meda,” he groaned. I locked my mouth to his and tangled my hands into his hair.

He did not love me well, or elegantly, or with any form of finesse. He loved me like a man half-starved who had no idea what he was doing and was tortured by need.

I could not have begun to improve upon it.

And when he came, he removed himself so slowly from my body—and I confess the pain of it, of everywhere our skin split back apart, was exquisite and terrible and perfect.

He lay beside me, one arm behind my back, chest rising and falling rapidly. I was in a daze, drunker than drunk, my body numb from carrying so much heat. When I slowly turned my head to look at the profile of his face, sharp lines softened by shadows, Kalcedon was grinning.

“What?” I murmured, my whole body exhausted and limp.

“Nothing,” he said, the smile just as wide. “Nothing. Nothing.”

He pulled me tighter against him, rolling me on top of his chest.

I rested there, cheek pressed against the beautiful beat of his heart. And there we stayed as the world around us grew perfectly dark, and a handful more stars emerged to pierce the blur of the Ward’s veil, each dim light more lovely than the one before.

Chapter 42

In the morning—once we finally managed to pull ourselves out of bed—we were greeted with more Temorian hospitality. Oraik didn’t answer when I knocked on his door, but I was hungry, so Kalcedon came downstairs with me to inquire about food.

We each carried a new lock of the other's hair in our pockets. We didn't plan to part ways, but we were lovers now, Kalcedon had informed me gravely when I woke. He needed to be able to find me, and I him. He'd added that if I ever risked going cold to call him again he'd not let me out of his sight for so long as I lived.

Breakfast was already laid in the private room where we’d taken our meals, baked eggs that had gone cool and thick slices of sourdough bread, mashed beans drizzled with oil. In the center of it all was a covered basket.

“Supplies,” Kalcedon said when he tilted up the lid. “Food enough for a few days at sea.” Peeking furtively at the closed door to the room, he took a piece of bread and raised his mask.

He let the mask drop as the door swung open. Oraik sauntered in.

“You’re awake,” I said. I pushed the bread towards him as he dropped into one of the chairs. He shook his head, holding up a hand. “You’ve already eaten?”

“I couldn’t resist one last walk around the city,” he explained. “But I suppose we’ll be leaving soon.” He gave me a meaningful look, one eyebrow raised.