I tilted my head to kiss him, but he inched back, so our lips were only barely brushing.
“You don’t come yet,” he growled.
Weaver damn him.
I moved defiantly against him, making both of us let out hitched moans.
“I feel how much you want it, too.”
As if in agreement, I felt his length twitch inside me, like he had to physically hold himself back from fucking me with those final few strokes.
There was nothing sweet in his smile, sharp with hunger.
“I dreamed about this,” he murmured. “What you might look like, unraveled and desperate, in the seconds before I let you go. I want to savor it.”
Our words were harsh, playing into the game we’d started—that this was about hunger and desire and lust and nothing more. But I felt something else stir deep in his presence then, right around the word savor. Something I felt echoed in mine.
It was almost enough to break through the feral desire with just a hint of fear.
Almost.
“Ravenous,” I ground out. “That’s what you said. Ravenous people don’t savor. We take.” I jerked my hips against him, and his entire body went taut in response. “So take me, Atrius. Take me.”
I meant for it to be a command, just as harsh as his. At first it was. But those last words, that last “take me,” turned into a plea.
I felt it in Atrius’s whole self the moment his self-control snapped.
There was no snarky retort, no flirtatious response. Just a sudden, dark wave of his determination—
—And then movement.
He withdrew slowly, agonizingly, and then thrust back into me.
Again, faster. Again. Again.
If he was vicious before, this was downright brutal, fierce and unrelenting. Moans and sobs and curses and prayers tore, mangled, from my lips—not that I could hear them. Not that I could hear anything.
Nothing except Atrius’s voice, rough in my ear:
“Now you come for me, Vivi.”
A commander’s order.
I had no choice but to follow it.
My climax hit me with the force of a tidal wave, an explosion, something that ripped me apart and left me in pieces. Desperately, I clung to Atrius, my muscles contracting around him—my magic, too, reached for him in those final moments, letting his pleasure meld with mine, reaching deep into his threads and immersing myself within him.
He came as I did, his lips grunting my name as he buried his face against my throat. He clutched me tight, muscles trembling, and that embrace was the only piece of the physical world that remained constant as everything else fell away.
Aftershocks of pleasure surged through us in clenched muscles and shaky breaths.
And then, peace.
Atrius’s head sagged against my shoulder. His arms now encircled my body to hold me up rather than restraining my wrists.
The nature of the embrace shifted, from something primal to something… else.
Slowly, my awareness came back to the world. It was silent, save for the sound of our heavy breaths and the sea, lapping around our ankles. The mist was warming with sunrise—
Sunrise.
“Atrius,” I said, panicked. “The sun—”
But Atrius simply lifted his head and kissed me.
It wasn’t frantic or lustful. Not angry. Not hurt.
It was sweet, tender, his lips soft against mine and tongue gently caressing my mouth.
Then he stepped back, finally withdrawing from me, leaving me feeling oddly empty. The water was a shock of cold against my feet.
Without a word, he pulled his trousers back up, retrieved his discarded shirt from the rocks, and slid it over my shoulders.
And then he scooped me up, cradled my head against his chest, and carried me back to his tent—leaving my nightgown crumpled in the water, discarded there with my broken vows.
36
Atrius and I both slept easily. We crawled over his bedroll, curled up in each other’s arms, and tumbled immediately into a river of exhausted slumber.
I dreamed that night of a little girl standing before a stone keep in the mountains, and her amazement at seeing the ocean for the first time. But even in my dreams, I could not remember what it had looked like then, to those eyes. And even in my dream, that upset me—I just kept staring at the sea and weeping, even though I didn’t know why.
The Sightmother pulled me away, cradled my face, and wiped my tears away.
“The Weaver demands sacrifices of her chosen few,” she said. “Isn’t it a small thing to give up, to earn the love of a goddess? To earn the love of a family?”
In my dream, I watched that little girl. I had no body. I could not speak.