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Chapter Twenty-One

THALIA

I woke to Vaarin’s rumbling voice, and memory rushed in to crowd my mind and tense my limbs.

“You’re safe,” he said softly. “It’s all right.”

I blinked up at his handsome face, no longer pale. No longer dying. There was color in his cheeks now, and his sapphire eyes burned with fire. “You saved my life, but I am at a loss to understand how.”

“You’re not the only one.” I was on a bed, propped on real pillows. Vaarin sat at my hip, his keen gaze assessing me. “Where are we?”

“On a boat home.”

“You swam me out to the boat?”

“No, we took a second boat. I’ll have both returned to the Yarissa eventually.”

I plucked at the oversized shirt that covered me. “You undressed me?”

He nodded curtly. “You were soaked, and I didn’t want you to catch a chill. Don’t worry; I was quick. I did not linger on the task.”

I wasn’t shy about my body by any means, but I found my cheeks heating regardless.

He studied me with sharp intensity. “What happened, Thalia? What happened on the Yarissa ?”

“I’m…I’m not entirely sure.” I filled him in on my almost drowning and the woman who’d saved me, then on the fight with the Obsidian Pearl and how I’d been able to wield his trident. “She told me to take the sea with me, and so I brought it to you.”

A slight frown marred his forehead. “A mortal cannot wield a relic without being burned to ash. The fact that you did…it means you are no mere mortal.”

“You’re wrong. I’m human and?—”

“Maybe, but you also belong to the sea. It is in your blood. There is no other explanation.” His eyes narrowed. “There is sea fae in your bloodline. An ancestor maybe?” He chewed on his cheeks. “It is the only explanation.”

But his words spawned a different understanding inside me. Because I wasn’t who he thought I was. I was an orphan found at sea and adopted by a human king. Was my mother a sea fae, then? Coupling between female sea fae and human males always resulted in half fae offspring unable to live beneath the waves, while the offspring of sea fae males and human women produced pure sea fae. Had my mother abandoned me because she couldn’t raise me beneath the waves?

It was time to tell him the truth.

“Vaarin, I?—”

He cupped my face and spoke in a rush of words. “I want you to be mine.”

Heat rushed up my chest to hug my neck. “What?”

“Marry me, Thalia. Be my queen.”

Was I hearing him correctly? The penetrating look in his eyes told me that I was. “I…but…”

“I know what I said about not being able to love you, but I was wrong. I realized it on the Yarissa when I thought I’d never see you again. I finally understood what I’ve been feeling all this time. The heat and turmoil, the longing to touch you…” He stroked his thumb back and forth against my cheek. “To be close to you, to hear your voice…” He let out a tremulous exhale. “My bloodline is cursed, Thalia. We were doomed a long time ago to never find our heart’s desire. But I’ve always denied the curse’s validity, all this time. Hoping…praying…but I felt nothing. Nothing until you.” He dropped his forehead to mine. “I love you, Thalia.”

His words were like a key in a lock opening the door of acceptance with a click, and I knew him to be right. Had felt it from the first time he’d held me in his arms.

The sense of belonging.

The sense of coming home.

“Thalia, will you have me?” The vulnerability in his tone grasped at my heart, and the part of me that wanted to tell him the truth was overruled by my own desperate yearning.

I wanted him. I needed him. Even if it would only be for this one night. “Yes.” I tipped my chin up and captured his mouth, tasting the sea on his lips. He let out a ragged groan and sank into me, fingers threading into my hair and forming a fist to hold me firm. My pulse spiked, and I gasped into his mouth.

He drew back a fraction, lips ghosting mine as he spoke. “I won’t hurt you, Thalia. Surrender to me, and I can make you feel so good.”

I’d taken the helm all my life, been the person in control, and why? Because there’d been no one I could trust to relinquish that control to, but now, here with Vaarin, I knew I could finally let go. That I could be vulnerable. This male who could persuade a storm to give us safe passage, this king who could call a vortex from thin air and who had been willing to give his life to save mine would never hurt me.

I relaxed in his grip and surrendered.

VAARIN

I’ve known my fair share of females. A sea fae’s body is not much different from a human female in the places that arouse. But I’ve never wanted to please a woman as much as I want to please Thalia.

I peel away the fabric guarding her silken skin, noting the flush that stains it, and how her nipples peak beneath my gaze.

I’m painfully hard almost immediately. “Lie back.”

She obeys, and I touch her, feather light at first, accustoming myself to the sensation of her soft skin beneath my calloused fingertips, then firmer as I explore the dips and planes of her body. She heats for me, her breath coming faster when I skate close to her pubic bone, then stopping as I trail over her sex.

“Vaarin…”

“Hush now.” I lie beside her so that I can watch her face as I slide a finger along the seam of her cunny. She lifts her hips and I stop, arching a brow in warning.

She glares at me but obliges by going still.

I touch her again, and she bites her lip, holding still as I trace her wetness to its core. She is silk around my fingers, tight and hot, and tides, her moans leave me aching to replace my fingers with my cock.

“Open your legs wider, Thalia. Open for me.” I can hardly breathe. Barely think past the ache in my soul and the throb in my groin.

She obliges, and I go deeper, curling my fingers inside her. She sucks in a sharp breath. “Vaarin. Yes…Oh please, don’t stop.”

She grabs at my arm, fingernails digging in as she lifts her hips to meet the thrust of my fingers. She swells around me, gripping me tightly, so fucking tight. Tides, how will I fit? I push a third finger into her, and her body shudders. She cries out, body milking me as hot wetness washes over my hand.

Her scent fills the room, fills my lungs. I bring my fingers to my mouth and suck them clean, and the sweet taste of her scrambles my thoughts.

I need her.

I need her now.

THALIA

Blood pounded in my head as the knots of needing unraveled in my chest. My cunny throbbed with the aftershocks of release, and yet there was a sweet ache that made me yearn for more.

Vaarin brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean, his gaze locked with mine. His pupils dilated, and a primal growl vibrated his chest. He cupped my throat, hauling me up to claim my lips in a crushing kiss that was a clash of teeth and the rasp of tongue.

I was drowning in him, defenseless against the assault of his mouth as it tore from my lips to settle on my throat before moving to my breasts. He cupped me, laving my nipple until it ached, then pinched it. I let out a cry as a flush of heat shot to the juncture of my thighs, tipping me over the edge once more. My hips jerked, and I grabbed hold of his shoulders.

“Vaarin?”

He kissed me again, fingers threading through my hair, fisting and holding me captive as he shifted to lie between my thighs.

I looked down between us, down the smooth expanse of his muscled torso to the V that pointed to his cock, and my breath stalled.

He was thick and long, the head wide and ridged. My cunny throbbed, eager to take him even as panic clawed at my chest because how would he fit?

“Do you trust me?” Vaarin said.

I licked my lips and lifted my gaze to his. “Yes.”

“Then relax.” He slid his fingers between my folds and found the nub of nerves that always set the pace of my desire. “Yes…that’s right, Thalia, look at me.”

I groaned, rolling my hips against his fingers, gaze locked with his, heart thump thumping as the desperate need for him to fill me grew.

“Please…Vaarin, I need you.”

He pressed the head of his cock to my entrance, his fingers still working me. The sensation of his ridges as he inched into me was a minor explosion in my head. I forgot to breathe for a moment, and when I did, each breath was a pant. My hips jerked up to meet him, to accommodate him.

More, I wanted more. I needed it. All of him. “Yes, oh tides, yes.”

He rocked against me, inching deeper and deeper. The burn of the stretch, the delicious invasion was tempered by the ridges that woke sensations that I didn’t know existed. Ribbons of inexplicable longing formed in my chest, twisting and reaching for him.

He pressed his lips to mine as he withdrew, leaving me momentarily empty, only to fill me with a thrust that sent a cold fire spreading out from my cunny to my thighs. He did it again, and again, each thrust faster, deeper, timed in a way that sent heat rushing up my body, tightening it, preparing it for the ultimate pleasure.

My chest ached with a spiraling heat I’d never experienced before.

“Fuck, Thalia.” Vaarin’s eyes swam with flecks of silver that seemed to glow, and a soft blue glow bathed his features as the trident pendant around his neck began to glow.

I dug my nails into his arms, thrusting up to meet him, wanting to be closer, to take him deeper. To keep him.

Oh Luna, I wanted to keep him.

Pleasure claimed my body in a flood of sensations, tipping me over the edge and whiting out my vision, and in that moment, I knew that one night would never be enough.