Page 29 of Returned to the Vissigroth (The Vissigroths of Leander #6)

The silence that followed was warm—golden like the firelight curling between us.

I reached out and placed my hand over his.

He looked down, then up at me. He didn’t move at first. Just let our hands rest there, side by side, skin to skin.

His palm was rough with calluses, warm from the fire.

Steady. The kind of steady I hadn’t known I needed until that exact moment.

He shifted slightly, angling toward me. His other hand lifted, slowly—so slowly—and brushed a lock of hair from my face. His knuckles grazed my cheek, featherlight. A breath caught in my throat.

His eyes searched mine. “May I?” he asked. His voice was raw, as if it cost him a lot to say the words.

I didn’t answer with words. I couldn’t. My body answered for me, trembling with the weight of a memory it didn’t have—but wanted, desperately.

I leaned forward, only a little, and that was enough.

His gaze dipped to my mouth. His hand cupped my jaw.

And then he closed the distance, achingly, torturously slow.

The question of whether I wanted this burned hot in his gaze, he gave me time to change my mind, but I knew I didn't need it. I wanted this as much as he did.

His lips brushed mine like a vow remembered. Breaking my heart wide open, in recognition so deep and ancient, it lived in bone and blood. A sound left me, a gasp, maybe, or a sob. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. Because I was kissing him.

The kind of kiss that rewrote the silence between us. That breathed color into the world. That filled all the hollow places inside me and made me whole, even without memories. His hands framed my face, pulled me closer.

When he pulled back—just barely, just enough to breathe—his voice was rough with something like awe. “Daphne…”

“I know,” I whispered, resting my forehead against his. My hands were on his chest now, his heartbeat thudding beneath them. “I don’t remember. But I know.”

He exhaled, and I felt him shudder.

“I’ve always been yours,” I said, voice unsteady. “Haven’t I?”

His lips found mine again. And this time, there was no hesitation. Just fire and devotion, wrapped around something bigger than time.

He kissed me like a male starved, but reverent. Like he’d been waiting lifetimes.

I lost track of time after that. There was only the rough tether of his breath and the hush of the fire.

My hands explored the map of scars across his wide, muscular shoulders, most of them old and faded, some new and jagged.

I memorized them with my fingertips, as if I might anchor myself here, to this body, this moment.

He lifted me onto his lap, a show of strength so sure and easy I felt for one heartbeat like something precious.

His voice was just above a whisper, each word shaped with awe and restraint.

“I wanted you from the first time I saw you. You looked at me like I was the only thing standing between you and the end of the world.” His lips drifted along my jaw, finding the hollow beneath my ear.

I wanted to say something clever, or at least something true, but all that came out was a breathless, “Show me, then.” The words made him smile, and his arms cinched around my waist. I leaned into him, struck by how right it felt to let him hold all of me.

My legs wrapped over his thighs, drawing us closer together.

He made a reverent, almost prayerful sound when I pressed my forehead to his.

He stroked my face, tracing the line of my brow, the shell of my ear, as if reminding himself I was real and here.

His hand splayed against my back, a broad, warm anchor, while the other cradled my skull, fingers threaded through my hair.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said once, his voice shaking at the edges.

“Don’t,” I breathed, and that was all.

He shifted so I straddled him fully, our bodies pressed together chest to thigh.

The heat between us was new and old all at once; my body recognized his in ways my mind could not.

Every touch, every press of his skin against mine, struck a chord I didn’t know I had.

He kissed me again, open and hungry, a map of all the wanting and waiting stitched inside him.

His hands found the lacing at my waist, and with a Leander’s patience, all slow work and reverence, he undid each knot and tie methodically, as if to savor the anticipation.

He peeled the tunic away from my shoulders, drawing a line of fire as he bared my skin.

Goosebumps rose on my arms, but I wasn’t cold.

Mallack’s hands were everywhere, following the lines of my ribs and the slope of my back.

He filled his palms with me and groaned, a low, unguarded sound that left me dizzy.

I felt stripped bare, not just of clothing but of everything that wasn’t this: the need, the ache, the pull toward him that had been there all along.

His mouth mapped the length of my throat, my collarbone, the dip above my heart.

When he pressed his lips there, something inside me splintered and reassembled.

I clung to his shoulders and let the world fall away.

It wasn’t careful, or flawless, or anything like a story.

It was a collision, a hungry, tender, aching reminder of who I had once been—maybe who I still was.

He touched me with reverence, zyn, but also desperation, as if he’d run out of time to prove to me, to the world, to anyone who ever doubted it, that I belonged to him and him alone.

His palms, his rough, calloused palms, cupped my breasts, and the friction of his coarse skin against my soft flesh made me cry out in longing for more.

He lowered his head, and his tongue teased my nipple relentlessly.

I grabbed his shoulders to hang on to something because the sensations of his tongue circling that little bud were so sharp, so sweet, it bordered on pain.

My hips arched off his lap, chasing a pressure I couldn’t name.

He murmured something under his breath—half curse, half prayer—and the sound of it lit a spark in my blood.

It spread like fire through dry grass, until the ache deep inside me swelled, thick and sweet, and my body answered in the only way it knew how: my pussy was dripping wet in anticipation of him.

I was dizzy with need, unmoored, and his hands were the only thing keeping me here.

He devoured me as if I were the air he needed to breathe.

His mouth trailed lower, across my ribs, tongue flicking every sensitive ridge and hollow along the path.

He knelt, lifting me bodily so my knees straddled his strong legs, and set to worshipping the softest parts of me, as though reacquainting himself with every inch.

I cradled his head, fingers sinking into his thick hair, silver and black all stormshot, and pulled him tighter against me.

Each nip, each slow drag of teeth made my body clench in helpless answer.

He looked up at me once, those black, dark abysses, sweat standing out along his brow, and I saw it: the ache, the longing, the worship.

All the rotations he’d been without me, every unholy second he’d dreamed of this, mapped onto his face in raw hunger.

“Daphne,” he rasped, voice stripped to the bone. “Tell me what you want.”

I could barely remember my name, let alone form words, but I answered the only way I could, “Everything. I want everything. I want you to remind me of everything we ever did and didn't do."

A groan escaped him, "Querilly, you'll be the death of me."

He pulled my clothes all the way down, until I lay naked on the furs, and he looked at me like a feast spread out just for him.

With amazing grace for a male his size, he moved between my legs, his rough hands moved up my inner thighs, and I thought I would die from the exquisite feelings spreading through me.

I was fully bared to him, but I didn't feel any embarrassment; it felt…

right. Like we had done this a hundred times before.

With sudden clarity, I knew that we had, and yet, this was like the first time.

He bent and pressed his lips to the inside of my knee, then the other, as if blessing every inch.

He worked his way reverently upwards until his mouth hovered a heartbeat away from the place I needed him most, each breath against my wetness a silent, private benediction.

I shivered, a soft gasp escaped me, and I curled my fingers in the fur.

He looked up then, catching my gaze from beneath his tumbled hair, and the expression in his dark eyes undid me completely: devotion, reverence, want.

He parted me with his tongue, slow and exploratory, pausing between strokes to learn how I responded, what made me tremble or arch.

His touch was calculated, patient, hungry.

Like he didn’t just want to make me come, he needed to, as proof, as a promise.

Each flick and circle sent a bright shock up my spine, and I realized, dimly, that it wasn’t just pleasure he offered, it was solace, worship, an assurance that I was still here, still real, still me.