Page 35 of Starfall

Ari lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “He said he wasn’t the Eternal, but he could be tricking me for all I know. Regardless, I sensed the power he exuded, Elias, and while it hummed like the magic from Maldia, it also felt different. Angrier, somehow.”

Just last week, I was adamant that magic didn’t exist, and yet, I couldn’t deny Ari, who sat before me, clearly shaken by what she’d witnessed.

“Did he hurt you?” I asked, my jaw ticking. An image of Ari being harmed swarmed my vision, of a man cornering her in a small room, scaring her. I didn’t care if the man was the Eternal. Immortals and people alike could be evil. I shoved my hand beneath the table and closed it into a tight fist.

Ari’s shoulders slumped, the defeat she wore foreign. “He might as well have hurt me…”

The red that had clouded the side of my vision spread, casting everything in the color of rage. The room around me grew blurred, Ari’s face and her words growing muted as she continued speaking. Like a disease spreading in my veins, red became my entire world.

A pool of blood.

My mother weeping as she held his body.

My father’s cold skin, the shade of the sickest gray.

I wanted to help him so badly. To turn back time and warn him about the attackers. If I’d been bigger or stronger I could’ve saved his life. But, no. His rigid body lay across my mother’s lap, his eyes closed, never to open again.

Somehow, it felt like my fault.

And in the background, the steady drip, drip, drip of blood falling from his head wound landed on the wooden planks. Death’s twisted pulse.

My body shook, pain digging into my arms. I deserved it. I deserved so much worse than that.

The trembling grew fearsome, jerky and frantic, just like the emotions I swallowed.

“Elias.” My name sounded far away while something pressed into my forearms.

The left side of my face stung for a moment. Then the right side. It didn’t matter. I was lost to the red. So much fucking red. It would devour me. Rip me to shreds. Those dead eyes would watch as I broke …

Ice grazed my lips in a hesitant brush.

The scent of jasmine filled the air as softness pressed against my mouth.

Instinctively, I parted my lips, delving into a divine sensation of floating.

I opened my eyes, finding that those lips belonged to a goddess without a face, the mist of red cloaking her features.

Yet while I couldn’t see all of her, I felt sparks of pleasure shoot into my blood, and I knew…

I knew with startling clarity who’d enchanted me.

This time, my eyes were actually open. This time, when I blinked, the scene before me shifted into reality.

Ari .

She straddled me with those lusciously thick thighs, both of her hands grasping my face.

Her tongue slid across the seam of my mouth invitingly, and I opened, chasing after the high.

Forgetting who I was. Forgetting the rest of the world.

I grew adrift in a new way; the single thing holding me to this plane was the woman in my arms who kissed my inner monster. The failure.

A raspy moan left her, the sound going straight to my cock. Fuck, that noise was beautiful. And I wanted to hear it again.

“S-sorry,” she whispered against my lips. “You weren’t here, not really. I couldn’t seem to get you to w-wake up, so I tried…well, this .”

Like a magnet, her lips fell back to mine, and while the rational part of me cried out in alarm—screaming to stop the madness that had overcome us—a simple kiss had never made me feel this way before.

It was addictive. A ravenous hunger. Maybe I was still stuck somewhere in-between reality and my past, but I needed more.

Eternal below, my body grew hot, and the stark contrast of her cold skin scalded me in the best way possible.

The way she climbed higher in my lap, seeking friction against the hardening bulge in my slacks. It drove me wild.

“I…I need something…” she whimpered, unable to seek her release.

The pained noise drove me to tug her closer, one hand gripping her long silver strands, and the other moving lower and lower.

I knew exactly what she needed, what she yearned for.

Ari gasped when my fingers reached into her trousers, followed by a soft “Please.”

Her hands slipped into my hair and she yanked me closer. I groaned at the roughness, at her desperate desire for me, and bit her bottom lip, eliciting a moan, which I greedily swallowed.

“Lower,” she demanded, her voice far away. “Elias. Lower .”

She arched backward, eyes closed in complete bliss as I obliged, drunk off her pleasure. Drunk from the pure animalistic longing she brought out in me. At this point, I’d turned into a beast, more animal than man.

“You want me to make you feel better?” I asked, my free hand roaming her body, slipping around her waist and slowly easing up up up .

She jerked when my thumb brushed the underside of her breast, her breathing labored.

Gently, I cupped her in my hand, my thumb and forefinger squeezing the aching bud, dragging out another moan.

I did it again, harder, and she thrust herself forward, begging for my cruel ministrations.

I didn’t hold back with her. For the first time, I didn’t need to.

Ari called out my name, and when I paid her other breast the same attention, her thighs squeezed me, the scent of her arousal flooding the air.

I groaned, needing to feel her warmth more than my next breath.

With my other hand, I slipped my finger into her aching core, watching as her lips parted, as she trembled. “Shit, Ari. You’re dripping for me.”

The apartment could go up in flames and I wouldn’t have noticed. Not when I felt her hot and ready for me . The same siren who’d wormed her way under my skin turned to putty in my hands, melting into my embrace, trusting me to take care of her.

Ari leaned forward, her lips seeking my neck as I filled her. “This can be my dream,” she said against me, nipping at my skin. My cock hardened painfully. “Just a dream, Elias.”

I read between the lines, and yet?—

She grabbed my face, holding me captive in her gaze. “I want to feel something,” she begged. “Just once.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, torn. I was a horrible person for touching her, even if she’d begged. We had a plan to fulfill—to win and find Grace.

Then why did Ari turn me into this creature of need?

I forgot everything else but her when I was in her presence.

Since the moment she had opened her mouth, my thoughts strayed to her.

To how she made me feel alive with her words and the way she battled me.

Enticed me. Made me want to pull out my hair and then kiss her at the same time.

I’d just been too much in my own head to admit it.

“R-right there.” Ari ground her hips downward, her exquisite eyes shut, her cheeks and neck flushed. She looked so fucking pretty in my lap, using my body for her own pleasure.

I sought Ari’s clit, my fingers rubbing gentle circles that had her bucking in my hold.

Slowly, I slid another finger into her aching center, watching with amazement as her eyes shot open and held me, refusing to let go.

She gasped my name as I pulled back and thrust back in, curling my fingers to find her most sensitive spot.

All the while, she rubbed herself on my cock, the friction both ecstasy and torture. Her low moans became the best music I’d ever heard.

“Come on my fingers, Ari,” I demanded, gripping her hair with my other hand to keep her in place. She whimpered at my command, yet she pushed her body up and down, using my fingers to please herself while I worked her clit with my thumb.

Beautiful .

So fucking beautiful.

And I was so fucking fucked.

Her inner walls clenched around my thick digits, gripping me tight enough that I imagined my cock in their place. Something that could never happen.

This was a dream, as she said.

Ari shattered, her walls clamping down, spasming around me. A soft cry filled the room, her body convulsing as she dug her nails into my scalp.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck .” She rode my hand, wetness dripping all over my fingers as she came, cursing like a sailor.

“Good girl, Ari. That’s it.” I nuzzled her hair, allowing myself to seek comfort in her scent. In how this act, even without finding my own release, had felt more intimate than?—

“Shit.”

Ari slowed, eyeing me as I cursed, as my muscles tensed. I shouldn’t have thought about her like that. This moment with Ari being more than what it was. It would be a slippery slope, and one without a happy ending for either of us.

“Elias?” She eased to a halt, even as the aftershocks of her orgasm made her tremble. “What’s wrong?”

Everything. Everything was wrong.

“I—” I searched the tiny apartment, seeking an escape. “I need a moment.”

Because what she’d just made me feel? That could wreck me. It would wreck me, and I couldn’t fall apart now. Not ever.

Ari winced a little as she removed herself from my lap, her big eyes questioning. Lifting her pants back up, she retreated until she brushed the wall, her palms flush against the surface as she caught her breath.

“I…I shouldn’t have done that.” My throat tightened, my hands itching to grab her and throw her on my bed. To show her all the many ways to deliver pleasure. But this was wrong .

“I asked you,” she argued, her voice small.

“And I wanted to?—”

“But you can’t,” she finished. “Not in the way you want. Not if there’s still a chance with her .

” She straightened her shoulders, and a stony mask slipped into place that wiped the stunning post orgasm bliss from her delicate features.

“I completely agree.” I stilled, my heart dropping even while I’d been the one to end things.

“What happened was a one-time thing. Nothing but a stolen moment we will forget.”

My head nodded, but the muscles strained. I should be glad she said those words, but…

And but nothing , you idiot.