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His fingers danced up the inside of my thigh, and I wanted so badly for him to move them to my center. To feel him inside of me again so we could forget all the pain the world drove between us and just be in this moment.

Maybe if neither of us had ever been hurt, we could have.

Cypherion watched as his fingers drifted closer to my core. My breathing quickened with anticipation. Just as he reached the apex of my thighs, his stare met mine, searching.

I didn’t know what he saw, but whatever it was had his eyes falling closed. His hand retreated, and his lips dropped to my forehead.

“Go to sleep, Stargirl,” he muttered.

And though my heart clenched in my chest at all the possibilities slipping through our fingers, I tried my best to sleep.

At some point, his arm found its way back to my waist, pulling me tightly against him, and we woke still like that in the morning.

Chapter Thirteen

Cypherion

It had been a mistake. Vale and I in the same bed. Waking up with her ass pressed against my cock, the slightest shift driving me wild.

That thing that had relied on her and trusted her woke up with the dawn this morning, and I’d spent the entire walk to the blood orange grove on the southern border of Lumin trying to banish it again.

Though, I was beginning to doubt it ever truly left.

“We can’t wait much longer,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning back against a tree.

Vale stretched up for an orange, dancing on her toes to reach the lowest branches, and swore in a hard voice, “He’ll come.”

“He might not,” I said. “And perhaps that’s for the best. We need to figure out what that reading meant and get moving.” I’d allowed us both to get distracted last night, but I couldn’t do that anymore.

Vale stiffened. “We?—”

“Careful,” a voice I’d much rather not hear echoed around the trees. That Starsearcher—Harlen—rounded the trunk, tucking his hands into his pockets. “She has a rather nasty bite, from what I recall.”

“Hi, Harls,” Vale said softly. A selfish part of me hated the hope in her eyes when she said his name. I stifled a groan.

Why was she trusting him to know we were here?

He strode over to her, plucking a blood orange from the tree and tossing it up with a cocky smirk. “Hi, Vale.”

“You got my note?”

“It found me.” He grimaced, holding up the slip of parchment crumpled in his hand. A smug satisfaction warmed my chest.

“Not a fan of Mystique ink?” I asked.

“It’s…invasive. That sort of magic is unnatural to me,” Harlen retorted, tucking away the parchment. “But I suppose it did me a favor today.” His eyes found Vale’s again, and when he beamed, I couldn’t stifle my scoff.

Vale cut me a harsh glare. “We made a deal,” she reminded me.

I grumbled beneath my breath, regretting my agreement to make this detour to discuss whatever it was she wanted with Harlen before we carried on with Ophelia’s mission.

This Starsearcher hadn’t seen Vale in sixteen years, and though they’d been friends as children, he looked at her like she was a prize. And Vale was a prize, in a way. But she was something to be cherished, not something to be won.

Stop thinking like that, Kastroff.

Harlen wrapped an arm around Vale’s shoulders, tucking her to him, and all I could think about was my hands on her hips last night. Her in that nightgown and how easy it would have been to slide the straps down. The feel of her breasts through the fabric and the heat between her thighs.

I’d been so close to shoving aside the last scraps of lace and silk and diving into her.