Page 26 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 26

Aubrey

Kiss.

Kit.

Kit kiss.

In a second, everything else became a distant notion, unimportant and just...rain? What was that? Stone bonding? Who cared? The volcano could have erupted, and I’d have barely noticed.

Kit was kissing me.

His lips were hot and just a little bit dry, but inside his mouth, that wasn’t dry at all. His tongue pressed between our lips and into my mouth, slick and claiming and...

He wrenched himself away from me, panting. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—shouldn’t have?—”

No no no no no, that wasn’t what I wanted.

That wasn’t right at all.

I ignored Slate, who was still in the back of my mind and painfully curious about what was happening, grabbing Kit around the waist and pulling him against me. I plunged my fingers into his hair, holding the back of his head and pressing his lips against mine once more.

This time, I was the one with the questing tongue, demanding entry into his mouth. He opened to me without a second’s hesitance, and it was perfection itself.

We shuffled into the alcove made by the enormous slab of stone over our heads until his back hit the end of the space, and I kept pushing. I pressed him up against the stone, our mouths still fused together, hot and constantly moving, as though if I tried hard enough I could get even closer to him. Our bodies were pressed together from forehead to toes, but I needed—I needed more. Needed to be closer. To be in the same space as him. To bond Kit like I was bonding Slate. To be one person.

I finally pulled back when my throat constricted in rebellion, breathing in deep gasps, finally realizing that I hadn’t been getting enough air. If his own desperate breathing was any indication, Kit was in much the same situation, but he wasn’t complaining.

His arms were wrapped around my neck, and he was leaning up into me, like he wanted this.

Wanted me.

“We shouldn’t,” he said, and my instinct was to pull away at the implicit rejection. To tell him that fine, if he didn’t want me, then I didn’t want him either, and in fact, he could just leave me there and I’d manage on my own.

Because it was what I’d always done. I’d only ever had Mother and Grandmother, and no one else had ever wanted me, not for real.

For some reason, this time, I didn’t jerk away and isolate myself.

No, it was because of Slate.

How weird was that, from every angle? The mountain was in my head, and he thought Kit and I were cute together.

But it was that. It was because of his constant, reassuring presence. Slate was beneath me, next to me, above me, and he was telling me this wasn’t a rejection. He didn’t know what it was, but he was sure that Kit liked me as much as I liked him.

Maybe more than like.

So I reached up with one hand and cupped his cheek. “Why the heck not?”

“I...” His cloud-gray eyes clouded over, and he squeezed them shut. “I’m not a good person, Aubrey, and maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I don’t think you’ve done this before. I’m no good. I’m a demanding, frigid asshole, who fucks people and then gets the hell out before the sheets even cool. I shouldn’t be anyone’s first.”

I pushed him harder into the stone and grinned down at him. “In case it’s escaped your notice, we don’t even have sheets, and unless you want to abandon your plan completely, you can’t leave me alone.” He tried to open his mouth, to protest more, but I leaned in and sealed our mouths together again, stealing his self-hate and trying to fill him with myself.

Sure, it wouldn’t work for good, and it sounded like he needed a ton of therapy, but I was starting to realize that Delta Moonstriker had been perhaps the worst mother of all time, short of being abusive.

Her intentions had probably been (mostly) good, but she was truly terrible.

But I couldn’t give him decades of therapy in this moment. All I could give him was this. I pulled back, both of us panting again, and shook my head. “You’re not what you think. Yeah, you’re an asshole, whatever. You’re also good. Because you care about that. About what I deserve.” I pressed my forehead against his and stared into his eyes, distorted as they were by the proximity. “But Kit, I get to decide what I deserve. And I don’t know if I deserve anything in particular, but what I want? That’s you. Arrogant, stubborn, imperfect, whatever you want to call yourself, I don’t care. You’re also gorgeous, and more important, you’re good. And kind. And you care more about everyone than most of them realize. I think the only people back at the chalet who really saw you were your father and Frost. Maybe Fawn Dawnchaser. The others, they all buy into this duelist persona you’ve built. The asshole who only cares about himself.”

“I am an?—”

“Don’t even try it,” I said, and pushed in for another kiss. When I’d managed to stop him again, I pulled away and looked down into his eyes. “You’re here. You spent the last ten years trying to save the whole world, when you could’ve chosen a different path if you were really all that selfish. You can play the arrogant, selfish asshole with everyone else, but I’m never going to believe it. I see you , Kit.”

He shivered against me, like he truly understood what I was saying. Like he was naked in front of me, and it was a completely alien concept, being so bare before another person.

It probably was. He’d spent all those years being the terrifying Kit Emrys, best duelist in the Summerlands. The way he’d talked about it, with no art or pride or even interest, I didn’t doubt it was the truth. He was the best at his plan-chosen profession, which was now entirely outlawed.

Frankly, it sounded terrible. At least hard physical labor as a profession would never be against the law, even if eventually my body wouldn’t be able to handle the abuse.

Right now, though, duelist and laborer didn’t matter. We were just Kit and Aubrey, in an alcove on Mount Slate, in the middle of a random afternoon rainstorm. I reached up to the clasp on his backpack rig-thingamajig, and opened it, pushing the packs to the floor behind him, then taking mine off and setting it against the back of the alcove as well.

Then I pulled Kit against me, lighter for having shed all that weight, and kissed him again.

When I went to pull him down to the rocky floor, he shook his head and turned to the packs, fumbling with some of the straps on top of them. “The sleeping bags,” he said, his voice rough and smoky from all the kissing. “Not just going to have sex on the ground, with rocks cutting into my ass.”

I grinned at him. “Aww, are you trying to make my first time special?” He looked up at me sharply, and I stepped in, putting my hand on his to still it for a moment. “It is. It...will be. But that’s okay. I choose that, Kit. Choose you.”

This time when I leaned in, the kiss I laid on his lips was soft, almost chaste, but it somehow managed to leave both of us breathing hard anyway. He just knelt there like that a moment, his cloudy gray eyes shut, lips slightly parted, breathing.

So I unlatched the sleeping bags, untied them, and flung them both out, one atop the other, to give us the cushiest possible base to start with. It wasn’t much, but he was right, and it was better than the hard, rocky ground.

“Don’t imagine the plan included condoms, or?—”

He snorted, shaking his head with annoyance. “Nikka suggested it, but I...we’re hiking up a mountain. This is ridiculous. Plus I had decided to hate you.”

I smiled, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him onto the sleeping bags with me. “I decided to hate you too. Funny, how that didn’t quite work out. But I’m not . . . I mean, we can go without, if?—”

“I’ve never gone without before,” he admitted, biting his lip, but then he offered that sly grin of his. “But I’m willing to give it a shot, here and now. With you.”

I nodded, my words failing me, and then I lowered my lips back to his.

Long moments of kissing, while the rain pounded against the rock above us, were exactly what I’d wanted. What I’d never realized they would be, just this silent perfect communion with another person. With Kit, whom I’d never really hated at all.

I’d hated what I had thought he symbolized to me, but that was just an image that had never been him. Just like the terrifying “best duelist in the Summerlands” wasn’t really him either. It was what he was capable of, sure, but it was an armor he wore to avoid anyone seeing the squishy, vulnerable inside of him.

When I rolled atop him, he didn’t roll off the sleeping bags trying to take control back. Didn’t protest, or even tense beneath me as though being under me was uncomfortable. No, he arched into me, pressing his achingly hard cock up into me, his whole face slack with lust.

He liked it.

Wanted me there, above him.

I ground forward, pressing my cock into his, and groaned at the sensation, even with multiple layers of cloth between us.

I had to get his clothes off. Had to see him, had to touch him. He let me strip him, and my fingers, while clumsy with the rush to get him naked, managed the task well enough. His skin was perfect everywhere, just as smooth and blemish-free as the ass he’d bared to me that morning.

I felt ungainly by comparison, but when he slipped my shirt off over my head, he ran his fingers over my chest and the light dusting of hair there, staring as if transfixed. “Fuck,” he muttered. “You’re so gods damned gorgeous.”

Me, gorgeous. Plain old brown-haired, blue-eyed Aubrey Sagara, the poorest kid at school, who didn’t even have a bonded stone.

Except now I was bonding a whole mountain, and the most beautiful man in the world was looking up at me with admiration. With naked lust. It was even more surreal than finding out I was Oberon Gloombringer’s heir had been.

I leaned down and kissed him again, then left a trail of kisses down his neck and chest, laving his nipples, then nipping them lightly with my teeth, making him cry out and buck up against me.

When I reached his groin, I had a moment of indecision. I could try to suck him, but I had literally no experience with that, so what if I wasn’t good at it? I licked my lips, looking up at him, and he groaned, his head falling back against the packs behind him. “You can’t look at me like that. I might die before we get to the main attraction.”

“Like what?”

“Like...all innocent and fucking lustful. Like that.” He shook his head, pushing up and pressing me onto my back. I wondered if he’d been waiting for the chance to take control, but instead of shoving me down, he...he...oh?—

“Kit,” I managed to squeak out when he swallowed my cock whole. He looked up at me, amusement in his eyes as he licked his way around me. The sensation was almost more than I could handle, his mouth and tongue and the movement and...and then I realized that one of his hands was moving behind him. For a moment, I thought he was working his own cock, but no. No, he was pressing fingers inside himself. Just the image blew my mind, and almost ended the whole encounter quite prematurely. “Kit, what are you doing?”

He pulled back, taking a deep breath and grinning at me. “No lube,” he managed to say after catching his breath. “Gotta get you nice and wet, so nobody gets hurt.”

Get me wet.

Was he saying . . . ?

Yes he was. He was opening himself up, and getting my cock wet and...Kit wanted me inside him. Cue another desperate moment of holding back my impending orgasm. Our eyes met, and his drifted shut as he moaned around my cock, the vibrations zinging through my whole body.

I shoved him back, pushing him down on the sleeping bags again and climbing atop him.

“Are you ready for me?” I asked, and though my voice was hoarse with want, he understood, and nodded.

“Please.”

It was the sweetest thing I’d heard in my whole life. I might be inexperienced, but I’d seen porn before. Read romance novels. I knew what I was doing. I lifted his legs up and open, splaying them over my knees and nudging my cock into place at his entrance.

Impatience personified, he shoved his body toward me, trying to impale himself on me, so I lunged upward, grabbing his hands and holding him down, forcing him to wait for me. I was trying to keep from coming before I even got inside him, but the action seemed to drive him even higher. He moaned, wriggling against me as I held him in place, sliding into him inch by inch.

He was so hot, so tight inside, I could have entirely lost myself in the feel of him. But instead, I found myself mesmerized by his face, eyes scrunched shut, lips hanging slack, every bit of his expression ecstasy.

I’d thought he was beautiful before, but like this...well, it was absolute perfection.

He was perfect.

I bottomed out, and he wrapped his legs around my waist, pushing his whole body against me. Like he wanted what I wanted—to get closer than we could even get. To push together until there was no Kit and Aubrey, but just one person, forever entwined.

Reluctantly, I pulled back, eliciting a whine from him, but when I shoved back in, it turned into a gasp and another moan. “Aubrey. Fuck, Aubrey.”

“Mmm,” I agreed, and leaned in to nibble at his neck again. He tasted of salt and sweat and probably a bit of dirt, since we hadn’t showered for over a day, but no part of me minded it. It was just Slate, and he was a part of me now.

We were all a part of each other, I realized. All stones and all humanity, intertwined inextricably. There was no such thing as separation, it was an illusion created by free will and variable distance.

But we were all still made of the same star stuff, and all went back to it eventually, even Slate.

I moved inside Kit, as he was already firmly inside of me, in so many ways. I thrust forward, making him moan, and felt the connection between us. Our bodies, our minds, our souls.

I pulled up, towering over him, squeezing his hands tight in mine as I fucked him, over and over. “You’re mine, Kit Moonstriker.”

His eyes shot open, wide with shock, but he didn’t deny me. He gasped for breath and writhed against me as I kept pounding into him.

“Mine,” I reiterated. “You were made for me. Perfect for me. Found me and got me here. Pulled us all together. And now you belong to us. Forever.”

He continued to stare at me, gasping for breath, but he pushed back into every stroke of my cock. Finally, he gave a short nod, a tacit agreement. Then he tightened his legs around my waist and added, “Mine.”

“Yours,” I agreed immediately, without missing a beat or a thrust into his perfect willing body.

I shoved hard into him, and he gasped, reaching down to grab his own cock between us. It started spurting before he even wrapped his fingers around it, thick strands of sticky come spattering across his chest.

And that was enough for me. The image of him coming on my cock, agreeing that he was mine—nothing in the world could have held off the orgasm any longer. I shoved hard into him as my cock pulsed, balls drawing up tight, and I came, marking him as my own deep inside.

I knelt there above him for a moment, panting, before letting myself wilt down onto the sleeping bags beside him, turning us both on our sides so that I didn’t have to slide out of him. I wanted to stay there, a part of him, forever.

While part of me understood my earlier epiphany meant that I would always be part of him, and him of me, it was still more this way. More intimate. Closer.

All I wanted in the world was to be as close to Kit as I could.