Page 38 of Darkness Births the Stars #1
We descended into a storm of sensations, so overwhelming we unconsciously shifted through dozens of forms. A sharp beak nipped at my ear.
The flap of mighty wings tangled her long red hair.
Curved claws raked over my skin. A furry tail wrapped firmly around her shapely calf.
It wasn’t until many years later that I grasped the irony of the form we both returned to, as if by unspoken agreement: soft mortal flesh, so terribly fragile yet so warm, so receptive to every touch .
“Curse it, Baradaz, I need to have you.”
With this form came the instinct of what to do, the urge to spread her legs for me, the urge to claim her in the most primal way possible.
I quickly discovered the unimaginable pleasure in this.
The incredible sensation of pushing the hard length of me inside her, of conquering that wet, tight heat inch by delicious inch.
“ Lyr , yes. Don’t stop.” Baradaz’s eyes met mine, a frenzied expression in them as she canted her hips in a desperate plea for more.
Deeper. Harder. I was all too eager to give her what she desired, my hand closing around her thigh, moving it up my hip to thrust inside her as far as I could go.
The needy sound it drove from her lips was perfection.
I wanted to hear it again. And again. A thousand times. And then a thousand times more.
Sliding out of her, even just a little, felt like the most devastating loss.
Pushing back inside her made it worth it, though, her body meeting mine in such sweet surrender that the blissful intensity of it nearly undid me.
She gasped against my mouth as I set a firm pace with my thrusts, an undeniable need growing between us.
If there had ever been a moment where we could have stopped, we were long past it.
I could feel her desire as intensely as my own.
Our magic a storm around us, rivaling the one raging in the Abyss, light and darkness mixing, every shield crumbling beneath the onslaught.
Baradaz captured my lips in another fierce, biting kiss, her tongue licking inside my mouth in the rhythm of my thrusts, her fingers tangling in my hair.
There was something fascinating about her pleasure. A heady power that pulsed through me in wild satisfaction. Here, finally, was the means to master her. To prove once and for all that I was her better, my brother’s better, in every way that counted.
I went about unraveling her as meticulously as I had previously planned her demise.
Attentive to every groan and tremble, I followed every sigh with my touch, one of my hands sneaking down between our bodies, stoking each spark of her desire into a firestorm until she writhed beneath me with need.
She looked both more beautiful and more flawed: her sweaty hair plastered to her temple; her full lips drawn back in a pitiful whine.
Her entire face contorted as she fell over the edge, little pinpricks of light rising all around us in a mesmerizing dance.
My shadows soon joined them, the way she clenched around me bringing me to completion as well, the pleasure surprisingly sharp and overwhelming as I spilled deep inside her with a groan, wiping out all my thoughts of victory and domination.
At least for a while. For my hunger was far from sated, and I reached for her anew before our breaths had slowed down.
Baradaz came without hesitation, mounting me, my hands leaving muddy prints on her full breasts as I roughly groped them.
A little cruelty harshened my touch as I twisted one rosy nipple, her head going back with a hoarse moan, exposing her soft, vulnerable throat.
My hand closed around it instinctively, guided by my lingering resentment, by the realization that I was more affected by this than I liked.
Gleaming silver met my gaze, the expression in her eyes telling me she was well aware of the threat behind the deceptively gentle hold.
“How foolish,” I chastised her, my voice mocking. “To open yourself so recklessly to the dark. What if it devours you whole?”
In response, Baradaz rolled her hips against me, eliciting a groan from me.
My hand on her throat spasmed, her pulse underneath my fingers drumming fast. Her fiery hair danced behind her in the icy winds of the Abyss, the lights of the withdrawing storm gilding her naked skin.
I had never seen a sight more beautiful .
“Do you truly believe,” she gasped out, our bodies straining against each other, the friction so wonderful her words took a moment to reach my mind, “I do not know you contemplated letting me die? That you have planned to kill me for some time now?”
I froze at her revelation. “Then why,” I hissed, uneasy with her casual exposure of my plans, “did you risk coming here with me?”
With a breathless laugh, she moved downward, pleasure flitting over her face as I buried deep inside her again. “Aramaz refuses to see your true nature. I thought I could prove it to him by catching you at something as vile as trying to kill his bride.”
Stark disbelief flashed through me as I realized she had played me while I assumed I was playing her.
I shoved her off angrily, her hair obscuring her face as she landed on her hands and knees.
She was devious. As devious as I was. Though she did not look it, kneeling in the mud beside me, all disheveled locks and luminous skin streaked with dirt.
She looked like the very image of defiled innocence.
“Are you furious that I am not a gullible fool, easily falling for your manipulations?” A wildfire flickered in her eyes as she looked at me through strands of her tangled hair. Her power raged around us, shards of light burning my skin.
“But you are a fool,” I growled, my own magic rising in retaliation, dark and furious. “I could have destroyed you.” I laughed coldly. “So easily.”
I had only needed to let go. But I had not.
Her silver eyes fixed on my face as she hissed through the miasma of our clashing power, her expression challenging. “Why didn’t you?”
I had no answer to it. Not then, and at no point later in my age-long existence. I only knew it must be a terrible weakness, this inability to do what had to be done.
“Why are you still here?” I asked in return, frustrated beyond measure that she had found a way behind my defenses. “You should run to my dearest brother right now and tell him of all my dreadful deeds.”
The mention of Aramaz fell between us with a heavy weight. We both knew she wouldn’t discuss anything that had transpired here in the Other with my brother. Nor would I.
A strange look entered Baradaz’s eyes, her light slowly gentling.
She didn’t shrink back when my shadows closed around her, now less aggressive, whispering over her bare skin like a caress.
Instead, she reached out, bridging the space between us with warm, searching fingers.
I didn’t resist when they found my jaw, pulling me toward her.
“You said I need to touch the darkness to understand it,” she said, and then her lips were on mine again.
Our kiss held none of the early hesitation of the first ones we had shared. It was all hunger from the beginning, ravenous and consuming. When I broke it, I saw confusion flit over her flushed face. Before she could speak, I sent her back to her hands and knees with one sharp, calculated shove.
“Not touch it,” I said hoarsely, giving in to the primal urges pounding violently in my blood. “Be devoured by it.”
A gasp escaped Baradaz when my hand buried into that mass of glorious hair at her nape, tilting back her head. My heart beat hard and fast when she did not protest, only threw a wild-eyed glance at me, her breath catching visibly.
“Well, enlighten me now, little queen,” I murmured into her ear, enjoying her every shivering intake of air. “What is my true nature?”
“You deem yourself better than all of us,” she answered readily, as if she had contemplated the matter.
My lips whispered over the ridges of her spine.
So warm, this mortal flesh, and so terribly fragile.
I could tear this body apart with nothing more than a thought.
“You think you are the most clever, the most powerful among us, when in truth…”
Her words trailed off into a helpless moan as I sank my teeth lightly into the spot where the swell of her buttocks began. Her hands buried into the mud.
“When in truth?” I purred against her skin when she did not continue. She gasped in surprise when I decisively parted her thighs from behind. The sight of her bare before me, eager for my touch, awakened such need inside me that I could not keep back a groan.
“When in truth you are only the most arrogant and selfish.”
Insolent little vixen. I smiled. I should teach her a lesson.
“Not completely selfish,” I said, before putting my mouth to the place between her legs.
It earned me a kick against my shoulder with a bare foot, her voice shocked. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Finding out how to pleasure you,” I chuckled, amused at how innocent her mind was in this regard. Mine definitely wasn’t. I could easily imagine dozens of ways to take her. I was not sure she would like all of them, though.
“I don’t think—”
A shivering sigh replaced her half-hearted protest as I nibbled on the soft skin of her thigh. Then, I finally allowed myself to taste her, rendering her completely silent as I explored her with my tongue. At least for a while.
Her sounds, if not her words, returned to her as I found the little bud holding the center of her pleasure.
Satisfying moans escaped her, hoarse and breathless after a while as I tirelessly teased her with lips and tongue.
Her whole body tensed up in rapture, a sobbing little scream torn from her lips at the deliberate use of my teeth.