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“Let me make it feel better. Let me take care of you.” I lifted a crystal vial hanging by the entrance to the enclave and poured the smooth balm it held on my palm .

“What’s this?” she asked.

“The balm we use when we have to touch the Source of Joy. Its exact recipe is a closely guarded secret only known to those who gave the vow of a Joy Guardian. But I can tell you the main ingredients. They are moonflower oil, cactus butter, emerald beetle cream, and the liquid silk of the first starlight, with a few others added in to complete the magic formula.” I dipped a finger into the oil and brought it to her chapped lips. “May I?”

She nodded, and I gently brushed her full bottom lip with the balm, remembering how wonderful her lips felt when she kissed me. The aroma of the oil drifted through the air. It struck me how pleasant it smelled. Of course, the pleasure came from Ciana.

“You like the smell?” I asked, bringing my finger closer to her nose.

“It’s nice.” She didn’t smile this time, but at least her tears had dried up for now.

I leaned closer. With our noses nearly touching, I inhaled the smell of the balm with her. Another wave of subtle pleasure rose inside me, coming from her.

“It’s marvelous, Ciana. It’s simply magical to experience the world through you.”

“But you’ve smelled it many times before, haven’t you?”

“I have. I just never realized how pleasant this smell could be, until now. You’re teaching me wonderful things about my own world.”

I wanted to give her something in return, to repay her somehow even if the true miracle of pleasure could never be fully repaid.

“Would you like to see the Source up close?” I asked.

“Am I allowed?” She seemed surprised.

I was surprised by my own offer too. It was against every rule of the temple. Ciana wasn’t a Joy Guardian. She wasn’t even a shadow fae and had no tendrils to connect to the Source. Yet I felt that she belonged in the enclave more than any one of us did .

“Give me your hand.” I turned it with her palm up and dropped a little balm on it. “Now you can touch the crystal cells.”

She rubbed her hands together, spreading the balm on her palms, then tilted her head to take in the entire height of the Source.

“I love this light.” She squinted in the magical glow. “It’s warm and gentle. Comforting.”

“It has brought me comfort for many years,” I agreed.

I’d never been in the enclosure without connecting to the Source.

To do it now, however, I’d have to break my connection with Ciana, which would harm her.

For once, I entered the enclosure while connected to a human instead of the Source, and I didn’t regret it, fully experiencing Ciana’s curiosity and wonder with her.

Lifting her hand, she brushed the transparent wall of the closest cell.

“It feels warm, but I’m afraid I don’t feel its magic. I feel nothing at all.” She dropped her hand.

“One has to be connected to the Source through their tendrils to experience its Joy. But you don’t need it. You are a source of your very own joy, Ciana.”

Bringing my hands to her face, I spread the sacred balm over her cheeks and forehead, then took more from the vial to treat her shoulders and arms.

The golden glow of the Joy cast a shimmer on her warm-brown skin, making it appear magical, as if she rightfully belonged to this sacred enclave, to be revered and worshipped to as a goddess.

I massaged the fragrant balm in the tender skin of her neck, then leaned over to kiss it.

“One thing the royal court failed to understand…” I murmured between my kisses, “is that humans aren’t just Joy Vessels.

They are the creators of it.” I spread the balm along her delicate collarbones and over her chest above the band that concealed her breasts.

“And if the Joy is divine in its nature, then you, my dear Ciana, are a deity too.” I sank to my knees at her feet, spreading the balm over her belly.

“I thought my affection for you was a sin, but I should’ve always been free to love you without guilt.

Because you are a goddess at whose feet I worship. ”

I kissed the skin above her navel. The muscles of her abdomen quivered with her trembling breath. The most exquisite kind of pleasure teased me through the tendrils. The tantalizing need rose in her, and this time, I knew exactly what to do about it.

Sitting back on my haunches, I slid my oiled hands under her skirt, then up the sides of her legs all the way to her hips.

She inhaled deeply, leaning into me as I kneaded her buttocks.

With my forehead pressed into her lower belly, I breathed in her scent mixed with the fragrance of the sacred balm.

Need and longing filled me. I no longer knew whether it was hers or mine.

Our emotions had been mingling for so long, it was hard to untangle them now, and I didn’t know if I ever wanted to separate anything of mine from everything of hers.

I hiked up her skirt, exposing the place between her thighs that gave us both such exquisite pleasure when I’d touched it before. Ciana sucked in a sharp breath as I nuzzled it. Weak on her legs, she leaned back against the column of the source, splaying her hands on the clear facets of the cells.

Was it sacrilege for her to lean on it like that, with her skirt up, and my face buried in the tight dark curls between her legs?

Maybe.

But I didn’t care.

Bathed in the golden glow, filled with both expectation and vulnerability, she looked like a true goddess, and I wished to worship her and only her.

I massaged the healing balm into the tender skin of her thighs. Lifting her leg over my shoulder, I spread her open and found the epicenter of her pleasure.

“Come to me,” I murmured, bringing her closer, then swirled my tongue around the bud above her opening.

Need pulsed in her with new urgency. She whimpered, pressing herself into my mouth. I sucked and licked, chasing the pleasure that teased us both.

Her slim fingers flexed in my hair as she rode my tongue with needy moans.

More …

She needed more.

I slipped a finger inside her, delighted at how wet her arousal had made her. Sensing her pleasure at being filled, I added another finger, then another.

She gasped at the intrusion, but I felt her satisfaction at being stretched like that as I pumped my hand, fucking her in earnest.

“Harder…” she moaned.

I hardly noticed how I rose to my feet, lifting her on my shoulders, her back sliding up the column of the Source, and my face pressed to the sweet spot between her spread legs.

Magic bathed us in its golden glow. Ciana’s braids spread between the cells, some dipped inside them, looking like tendrils soaking in the Joy.

Only to me, it looked like she wasn’t taking but giving it.

It felt like the pleasure radiating through her was refilling the cells—not polluting it but rejuvenating it by giving it new life.

Rolling her head over the transparent crystals of the cells, she moaned my name like a benediction. I pressed my lips to her lower belly over her womb inside. Pumping my fingers harder, I rubbed her with my thumb on the outside, finally releasing her pleasure.

It showered on us with a waterfall of bliss. Her fingers flexed in my hair as her hips spasmed with waves of an orgasm that rocked us both.

My knees gave in, and I slid to the floor, cradling her in my arms. A shudder of pleasure rushed through her as she pressed her legs together.

“Oh, it’s always so good with you, Kurai,” she moaned softly, hiding her face in my shoulder. “So, so good…”

I pressed my lips to the crown of her head. “It’s all you, sweetheart. The pleasure is all yours. I’m just incredibly grateful to you for sharing it with me. ”

She shifted in a more comfortable position on my lap as I sat on the floor with my back against the Source. Her pleasure still coursed through my muscles in a soft, receding glow. It relaxed both my mind and my body, making the whole world feel like a better place.

“You know…” she said hesitantly, tracing my pectoral muscles with the tip of her finger. “I never came with a man before.”

I opened my mouth in shock, too lost for words to reply.

“At the beginning, I would just sneak into the bathroom after he’d fall asleep and…um, finish on my own. Later in our marriage, sex got so quick that it didn’t even matter. I stopped getting excited during it at all.”

I’d known some stupid men in my lifetime, but having a true treasure for a wife and failing to recognize it and to appreciate her was beyond stupidity on her ex-husband’s part.

“He wasn’t worthy of your affection,” I said tersely, mindful not to criticize her life choices too harshly.

Ciana was a smart but vulnerable woman who worked through her past experiences and tried to make sense of what they’d taught her. I knew she blamed herself enough already without an added judgment from me.

She looked up at me. The glow from the Source lit her eyes, turning them into golden stars.

“It’s different with you, Kurai. You know exactly where and how I want to be touched, and you don’t stop until I come. You make sex entirely about me. But I guess it should be expected, since my orgasm is also yours.”

We shouldn’t be having this conversation inside the sacred enclave.

If the Master Guardian returned and found us here, I’d face a severe punishment for using the place of worship so casually.

But nothing about being with Ciana felt casual or trivial.

As far as I was concerned, she had every right to be wherever she damned pleased.

She straightened in my arms, searching my eyes. “What does all this mean to you, Kurai? Sex? Joy? What am I to you? ”

I couldn’t separate her from the joy she created. Neither could I envision separating myself from her. We’d been so close for so long, I could hardly tell when she ended and where I began.

I kissed her temple, then her cheek, and finally her lips, savoring every touch.

“For better or for worse, Ciana, you and I are one. One life force, one sorrow, and one joy.”