Page 58 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
“And I make good on my promises,” I said. “But first, I want to make sure I feel every inch of you I can with these gloves that apparently you dreamed about me touching you with. I want them soaked in you.”
With that, I finally dipped my fingers into the dark curls at the apex of Keera’s thighs. The leather slipped over the wetness there, and I parted her folds easily.
She gasped and her back arched. A rush of sensation crashed down the tether in my mind—a frisson of pleasure and the forbidden foreignness of my gloves against her flesh. The way the stitching added delicious friction that made her hips buck up involuntarily against my touch.
Slowly, I circled her already dripping entrance with the tip of my finger, and a high-pitched whine escaped her lips—an uninhibited plea for more .
The thread of control inside me snapped. In one movement, I leaned forward to cover her sex with my mouth as I pressed my finger inside her. Instantly her hands flew to my hair, her fingers pulling at the strands to urge me on, but I needed no encouragement.
My world narrowed to the taste of her coating my lips and the way her thighs clenched and shivered around my ears. I had broken too many promises in my life—to lead the clans, to heal the desert, to not fall to the same weakness as my great-grandfather.
But this promise to make her come apart on my tongue? This one I could keep.
I pumped my fingers deeper as I licked her, reveling in the way her breath came in sharp pants, each one a choked off moan. She tried to lift her hips to grind against my face, but I placed my other hand between her hip bones, pinning her down so I could devour her as I pleased.
The air in the tent began to shiver and shudder with magic, but I did not abate, driving Keera toward the cliff of pleasure I felt through the tether in my mind.
Just as she reached the precipice, a shuddering groan escaped her lips.
“ Erix . ”
I growled in satisfaction against her center, and she tipped over the edge. I continued to work my fingers inside her and trace circles with my tongue even as the sensations barreling from her into my mind made me dizzy.
Finally, she pushed my head away from her core, and I didn’t resist, pulling my fingers from her sex with an obscene noise.
“You certainly know how to make me feel like a queen,” she panted. A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin, making her look like she was glowing in the dim light of the lantern in the corner. Her eyes were hooded in pleasure, but a smile danced at the edge of her lips.
“And I’m not done,” I promised, reaching for the ties of my pants. She didn’t hesitate to help me as I unlaced them, shoving them over my hips and down my thighs. I kicked them off impatiently, and my cock sprang free, nearly painful with my desire for her.
I took it in one hand, hissing as I spread the wetness that coated my gloves over it. Then, I fell forward on my elbows, caging Keera between my arms as I ground my length against the heat of her sex.
She lifted her hips to meet me, and I slid inside her waiting heat.
I dropped my forehead to her own as I took a shuddering breath, desperately trying to keep ahold of my sanity as the lines between us blurred.
The magic of the desert swirled between us and danced in the air as I drew out slowly only to plunge in again.
Wildness bubbled up in my veins, the same wildness I felt in Keera as she lifted her hips to meet mine.
“Maybe you aren’t a queen after all,” I said, gritting the words out as I propped myself up on one hand to get a deeper angle. “You’re so much more than that. A goddess. A pure force of nature.”
I punctuated each statement with a punishing thrust, making Keera throw her head back and cry out.
“Sands, Erix,” she breathed.
She might have said more, but I couldn’t hear it over the rushing of blood and magic in my ears as I drove into her harder. Keera threw her arms around me, her nails digging into my shoulder blades as I thrust faster .
All semblance of rational thought escaped me as my hips slammed against hers.
I plunged into her one final time as the threads of magic snapped taut around us, and I buried my face in her neck as my release barreled through me, clawing up my spine and out my lips forcefully enough I feared I might breathe fire.
Keera shuddered and gasped in my arms, as magic poured off her skin in waves, strong enough to make the lantern in the corner sputter and die. In the darkness, the only noise was our ragged breaths as we panted in unison.
Carefully, I rolled over, bringing Keera with me and pulling her into my chest. We laid there in satisfied silence for long minutes, the bond between us humming gently.
Keera’s breath evened out, and she was quiet for so long, I thought she might have drifted off to sleep in my arms. I bent to press a kiss to the top of her head when she startled me by speaking.
“What if I’m not meant to be queen? Then what? Would you be the king if that was what was needed?” She spoke the words into my chest.
My arms tightened around her. I opened my mouth, ready to say I would be what she needed me to be, but a cold tendril of fear worked its way into the warm haze of contentedness that blanketed me—a single whisper of the desert in my mind, taunting me with the thought of repeating history, when I was supposed to be undoing the sins of the past.
I could not stop loving Keera any more than I could stop breathing, but I would not let myself follow Kelvar’s footsteps in dooming the desert, even as I felt myself being pushed down the same path as him at every turn.
“You will not fail,” I promised. “I will fight and kill and do everything in my power to see that you do not.”
It was not an answer to Keera’s question, but it was a promise I would die to keep. For it seemed easier to die than to be a king.
The sun was not fully risen over the horizon as we rode away from the encampment. Lord Dhara led the way on her dun gelding as Keera and I rode side by side behind her.
I flexed my gloved hands where they rested on my thighs, and I didn’t miss the way Keera’s gaze flicked to them briefly before a flush darkened her cheeks.
While usually I reveled in her shamelessness, I couldn’t help the dark possessiveness that reared its head at knowing she grew flustered thinking about how these gloves had touched her last night.
I might have to start wearing them more often again.
We rode for two days.
Lord Dhara was a pleasant riding companion.
Even Daiti, who liked no one, seemed to tolerate her presence as we crossed the ever-changing sands.
She only spared Keera and me a cursory glance when we rolled out our sleeping mats side by side, close enough that I could interlace my fingers with Keera’s as she slept.
As night began to fall on the second day, I found myself lifting my face to catch the wind, which carried a familiar scent on it: wood smoke, like the bonfires that dotted every clan’s encampment.
The others smelled it just as I did, and we all signaled our mounts to halt.
“We must be close,” said Dhara. “Do you know where in the encampment the artifacts you seek may be?”
I grimaced, letting Lord Dhara see the expression, as I had ridden the past two days without my mask. I had worn it with the clans to be the symbol that Dhara and Elion told me the riders needed, but after weeks in Kelvadan without it, it grated to wear it when it was not necessary.
“Lord Alasdar would have kept them in his chests in his tent. If they are still with Clan Katal, then they are likely in the lord’s tent,” I said .
“Izumi’s tent.” Dhara sighed in resignation. “It will be in the center of the encampment, meaning we will have to sneak past four whole clans to get to it.”
“We could create a distraction,” Keera suggested.
“It would have to be enormous to distract the whole encampment,” Dhara pointed out.
Keera shrugged. “I seem to have a way of causing rather large disturbances.”
I considered her for a long moment. “I can shield Dhara and myself from some unfriendly eyes if you draw the majority of the attention, but we cannot afford for you to get caught. Izumi will recognize you, and she is consumed by her anger and her need to destroy Kelvadan. She will want you dead.”
“She would want any of us dead if we were caught.” Lord Dhara’s tone was flat.
“I won’t be caught.” Keera lifted her chin, looking exactly like the exile that had dared me to slit her throat at a faraway oasis. “I spent ten years slipping in and out of encampments unnoticed to take what I needed. They won’t even know what caused the disturbance.”
A smile tugged at my lips, despite the direness of the situation.
We needed the missing pages of Kelvar’s journal to uncover what Lord Alasdar had known about restoring the Heart of the Desert.
The weight of the responsibility lay heavy on me, and the whispers chattering in my skull threatened to carry me away on their unending tide, as if they tried to impress on me the importance of our mission.
With Keera’s fierce determination bolstering me though, I was able to keep the madness at bay.
“I’ll set out for the encampment first,” Keera said. “Wait five minutes, and then follow me.”
She dismounted her horse, and before I could tell her to be careful or ask what she had in mind, she was slinking off into the sands like a caracal setting out on a hunt.
Dhara and I did as she asked. I gripped my hands tightly on my thighs as I compelled myself to wait for long minutes, even as sitting still became more difficult the further Keera went from me.
Even as I grew tense, I could feel her alive and well on the other end of our tether, and I let it calm my worry.