Page 69 of The Curse of Gods (The Curse of Saints #3)

Will busied himself with setting up their camp, keeping his eyes averted as Aya dried off with a spare shirt and redressed. The silence of the lake no longer felt peaceful. It was heavy with unasked questions and a lingering tension that he tried to shed with a roll of his neck.

It didn’t work. He felt too aware of everything: the cotton shirt clinging to his damp skin, the crunch of the bedroll as he laid it on the shore, the crackle of the fire as he coaxed the flames to catch.

“I’m sorry,” Aya whispered. Will turned from where he was crouched by the wood to find her standing a few paces away, toying with a loose thread on the hem of her shirt.

He pushed himself up, his brow furrowing as he shook his head. “Aya. You never have to apologize for not wanting—”

“I do want,” Aya cut him off. “I want you so badly I can’t breathe .”

Will’s breath caught in his chest. Gods, he wanted to go to her. But he forced himself to stay where he was. “I would understand if you didn’t,” he reasoned. “After what they did to you, taking your power from you like that, I would understand if you—”

“It’s not that,” Aya interrupted again, frustration swirling in her tone.

She tilted her head back, her teeth digging into her bottom lip as she searched the sky.

“It’s not about what they did. It’s me .

I…” She trailed off, her hands curling into fists at her side, her knuckles white with the tight grip.

She blinked hard as she tucked her chin, her gaze boring into the ground. “You don’t understand.”

He didn’t.

He wanted to help, but he didn’t know how . He felt thrust back in time, as if he were once more a scared ten-year-old standing on her doorstep, waiting for her to break and knowing he could do nothing to help her.

In fact…

That’s exactly what she looked like: the Aya from thirteen years ago. The clenched fists. The locked jaw. The tear-lined eyes.

Aya was trying not to fall apart. He just didn’t know why .

After everything they’d been through together, after all they had seen and experienced, what was it that she couldn’t tell him?

“I don’t understand,” Will agreed. He wasn’t so proud that he couldn’t admit that aloud. “Explain it to me?”

He would not leave her like he did then. She was not alone, not this time. Not ever again.

Slowly, he crossed the scant distance between them, stopping just out of reach. A bead of water rolled down her temple, and he resisted the urge to reach out and brush it away as it trailed down her cheek to her jaw.

Will didn’t balk at the storm stirring in her eyes.

“Let me in,” he murmured.

She’d whispered those words to him once, her affinity a tender caress against his shield as she tried to ease his pain.

He kept his tucked away. It would be easy to use his power to sense what she was feeling.

Godsknew he had done it before. But he wanted her to trust him, to tell him the things she did not think he could handle.

Will extended a hand slowly, his palm cupping her cheek. “It’s just me, Aya,” he assured her. She had already seen every dark corner of him, and she loved him anyway. Chose him, anyway.

She had to know—she had to know—that it would be the same for him.

“Let me in. Please.”

Aya’s face shuttered, and something in Will’s chest went with it. But then she was sucking in a breath, and when she met his gaze once more, it was with grim determination.

“She threatened to take you from me,” she whispered.

Will cocked his head, confusion pulsing through him as his thumb rubbed a soothing arc across her cheek.

“I’m right here, Aya love.”

But Aya shook her head, her teeth digging into her bottom lip so hard, he expected she’d draw blood. He tugged on that lip with his thumb until she freed it.

“You don’t understand,” she repeated, her voice cracking on the last word. “Evie was going to…to manipulate my mind. She could have made me forget you. Just like…like Andras made Tova…”

Her inhale was so sharp, it sounded painful.

“She could have,” Aya stammered. “I felt it. She could have made it so I never…”

Again, her words dissolved into a choked-back sound, but she could not stop the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Will brushed them away as they came, his brow furrowing as he cradled her face in his hands.

“I begged her not to,” she gasped, her eyes wide and pleading as she peered up at him. “I begged her not to, but I—”

“Aya—”

“I felt relief.”

The confession came on a broken whisper, as if her breath had tugged it from the depths of where she’d tried to bury it. Her face crumpled, her eyes slamming shut as her shoulders slumped forward, like she couldn’t bear to look at him as the words continued to spill out of her.

“When she threatened to make me forget you, I felt relief.” Her grip on his shirt tightened as she let her head fall against his chest, a full sob finally breaking free from her throat.

She swallowed down the next, her jaw locking.

Will’s hand slid to the back of her head, his throat burning as Aya tried to contain her cries.

“I knew what I had to do, but gods, I didn’t want to do it. Not if there was a possibility of seeing you again. So when she threatened to take you from my mind…I felt relieved. I-I w-wouldn’t have to dread dying anymore.”

A heaving, heart-wrenching sob ripped from her throat as she finally let herself succumb to her tears.

It took everything in Will not to reach for his power—not to ease this pain.

But Aya needed to break. It was clear in the way the tension seeped from her muscles, her weight leaning heavily into him as she cried. Will wrapped an arm around her waist.

He could carry the weight with her.

“I am so sorry,” she cried.

Gods, no. He didn’t want to hear those words. Not from her.

His eyes squeezed shut as he pressed his forehead to the crown of her head. “You have nothing to apologize for,” he assured her, not quite able to keep the tremor from his voice.

Aya shook her head, and Will…

He could not allow this. He could not be another source of guilt for her. He refused. He pushed her back slightly, his hand sliding to her cheek so he could tilt her head to meet his gaze.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“You would have come, and I wouldn’t have even—”

“Aya.”

Her lips trembled as she blinked up at him through her tears.

Will’s thumb swiped away her tears once more, rather uselessly, but he couldn’t help himself.

His eyes darted across her face, desperate to commit each bit to memory.

Every freckle that dotted her nose, every scratch and scar, every clump of her wet lashes.

“I love you,” he told her. “Enough to understand the agony that comes with it for people like us.” People caught in a cruel war—in a cruel world. “And yet I would not trade it for anything.”

“Nor would I,” Aya breathed, like she needed him to believe it.

“I know .”

And it was, truly, as simple as that. Will knew Aya loved him, just as he knew exactly why Evie’s threat would bring her a moment of relief. Just as he knew Aya would have never let her go through with it, even if it did.

Aya’s grip loosened in his shirt, yet she pulled him closer anyway. Her teeth found her lip again, but this time, she released it herself.

“I don’t want to die.” Another confession, but this one wasn’t ripped from her on a sob. Instead, it slid from her on a whisper.

Broken.

Vulnerable.

Trusting.

“I don’t want to die, Will.”

Will felt his jaw lock as he stared down at the love of his life. He wanted to scream. There was resignation in those words, as if she already saw it as a certainty.

“Listen to me,” he demanded as he tugged her closer. “If I have my way, you are going to live far beyond this war. You are going to die old and happy in a cottage in the mountains of Tala, away from all of this.”

Aya’s laugh was wet and aching. “And you’ll be there, too?”

“Wherever you are, Aya love, is where I will be. In this life, and whatever lies beyond it.”

Will did not need his affinity to sense the love pouring out of her.

He could see it clearly in her water-lined gaze, could feel it in the way she rocked up onto her toes and crashed her lips against his.

His arms wrapped around her waist, steadying her as they staggered back a step.

He let himself get lost in her kiss, her mouth fierce against his.

Fierce, and passionate, and alive .

His stomach tightened as she nipped his bottom lip, and it was hells, hells , pulling away from her, but he had to be sure.

“Aya,” he breathed. Her eyes had darkened, her pupils eclipsing the blue of her irises. He forced himself to breathe, to focus . “Are you sure?”

She kissed the words from his mouth, and Will couldn’t stop the groan of longing she pulled from somewhere deep in his chest as she did.

“I want this,” Aya murmured against his lips. “I want you.” She paused, her breath brushing across his mouth as her eyes flicked up to his, something vulnerable written in her gaze. “Do you?”

Will’s fingers slid through the wet strands of her hair and tugged. “You are all I have ever wanted,” he confessed, a rough edge to his voice that he didn’t bother to clear.

Aya smiled as she slipped her hands beneath his shirt, his muscles twitching beneath her featherlight touch. “Then have me,” she whispered.

There was something playful dancing in her voice, a teasing dare curling around the command in a way that was so typically Aya, Will’s knees nearly went weak to hear it return.

He needed no further confirmation.

He kissed her again, this time without restraint or hesitation, his tongue slipping into her mouth. He relished the breathy sound it pulled from her, his blood roaring with desire as her hands continued to trace the shape of him beneath his shirt.

He pulled back just long enough to rid her of her own top, and then his lips were back on her, kissing and nipping and tasting the skin of her neck down to her collarbone. He cupped one of her breasts, his thumb tracing her peaked nipple, while his other slid down to the ties of her pants.

Gods, he was desperate to touch her, to feel her, to taste her. He wanted her so badly he could hardly think straight, his hands moving across her skin frantically, as if they couldn’t decide where to settle.

Aya’s were equally as fervorous. He could feel her touch everywhere—his hair, his abs, the waistband of his trousers.

She tugged them open effortlessly, her hand sliding beneath them to cup him. Will groaned, his hips bucking into her hand. He could taste her grin.

“This is going to be over very quickly if we don’t slow down,” he ground out. But Aya merely wrapped her fingers around him and dragged her hand up, drawing another desperate sound from him.

“I don’t care,” Aya breathed, her eyes bright as she glanced down to where her hand was stroking him. “Want to feel you.”

Right—that’s what he had been trying to accomplish. But his hand had stilled, his mind having gone blissfully blank the moment he felt her palm against his cock.

He slipped his hand beneath her pants, his fingers skillfully searching. Aya gasped as he began to circle that sensitive spot between her thighs, her muscles tensing as she tipped her head back in pleasure.

He kissed the skin beneath her ear before resting his lips against her.

“And how do I feel, Aya love?” he murmured as he increased the pressure on her clit.

He wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her, his fingers sliding back until he could slip one inside her.

Aya moaned, her hands scrambling for purchase against his shoulders as he worked that finger in and out.

“More,” she panted.

“Like this?” Will teased, slipping in another finger. His thumb toyed with that bundle of nerves, and Aya whimpered, her head falling forward against his chest.

“Will,” she pleaded.

He steered them back toward the bedroll, his fingers continuing to stroke her with every step she took. He could feel her trembling, her nails digging into his biceps as she let him maneuver her.

A broken whimper fell from her lips as his fingers left her, and Will shushed her gently.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured as he laid her down on the bedroll. He tugged off her pants, his hands caressing every inch of skin revealed to him. His lips followed, his heart hammering as Aya writhed and pleaded beneath him.

He pulled away to tug off his own trousers, tossing them aside and sitting back on his heels. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare at her.

Beautiful was too small a word to describe the vision of her laid out like this, hair tangled, eyes bright, cheeks flushed red with want.

Aya pushed herself up onto her elbows, her breath slowing as her gaze raked down him. And then she was crawling across the bedroll and climbing into his lap, her arms locking around his neck as she pressed her lips to his.

“Like this,” she requested, her fingers sliding into his hair.

Who was he to deny her?

Will gripped her hip as he positioned her above him, a moan punching out of him as she slid onto his cock.

Aya’s breath hitched, a soft laugh dancing within it as she met his gaze.

“How do I feel?” she teased as she swiveled her hips.

It was impossible to answer with anything other than the truth.

“Divine,” he groaned through clenched teeth, his head tipping back as she moved on top of him. Will rocked up into the wet heat of her, his abs tensing with his thrusts. His lips found hers again, and he swallowed down every noise of her pleasure greedily.

“I love you,” Aya panted against his mouth, her forehead pressing into his as she moved. “Gods, I love you.”

“And I love you,” Will murmured. His voice snagged on the thickness in his throat, but gentle understanding shone in Aya’s eyes. He felt the caress of her affinity against his shield, and he dropped it without a second’s hesitation.

The crash of her emotions against his stole his breath. It was an effort to keep his eyes open, to watch her face as his love and pleasure mixed with her own, tangling them so tightly together it was impossible to tell where he ended and she began.

Not that it mattered. He would gladly stay lost in her forever, woven in her magic and heart and soul.

“I love you,” she whispered again, her eyes wet.

“I—” Her words cut off as her body tensed, her lips parting in pleasure as she came apart above him.

Will smiled as he watched her, savoring the way she trembled and shook.

And then he flung himself off that cliff right after her, content to follow her as he always was.

No matter how far the fall.