But I couldn’t wrangle whatever I was feeling into words.
So I choked out, “Raihn,” against his lips, a question, an answer, a plea.
Because that name was all those things, wasn’t it? Raihn. My downfall and my most valuable supporter. My weakness and my strength. My worst enemy and the greatest love I had ever known.
All of that in one name. One person. One soul I knew as well as my own, just as confusing, just as flawed.
Pleasure built, spiked, in the place where we were connected.
I wanted to feel him everywhere. Give him everything.
“Raihn,” I whimpered again, not even knowing what I was asking.
“I know, princess,” he whispered. “I know.”
And then, just as I knew we were both rushing to the precipice, he broke our kiss and pulled away.
I let out a small sound of protest, starting to move after him, needing to taste him in that moment of climax.
“Let me watch you,” he murmured, voice rough. “Please. One last time.”
And Mother, the way he said it. Like it was the only thing he wanted out of his life before he let it go.
I couldn’t deny him even if I’d wanted to, because then he reached down and guided my thighs wider, opening me more for one final push, touching the deepest parts of me.
My back arched, pushing myself against his chest. I didn’t mean to cry out, but the sound escaped me anyway, uncontrollable. My fingernails dug into his shoulder, clutching him through the wave of pleasure—clutching him so I could feel him straining too, riding with me into the end.
But even as we lost ourselves, neither of us closed our eyes. We watched each other, gazes locked, bare and exposed through the most vulnerable parts of our pleasure.
He was so beautiful. Lips parted, eyes sharp, his focus fixed entirely on me. Every angle of his face, every scar, every flaw.
Perfect.
The wave melted away, and with it, so did the tension of our muscles. Raihn rolled off me, and I settled easily into the crook of his arm, surrounded by the cadence of his breathing.
We didn’t speak. There was nothing more to say. I kissed the scar on his brow, and the upside-down V on his cheek, and finally, his lips, and then I settled back into his embrace, welcoming our final oblivion.
64
RAIHN
Oraya and I lay together for a long time, eyes closed, but neither of us slept. I wondered if she knew that I always knew it when she was awake—I knew it when she was a room away from me, and I certainly knew it now, with her bare body against mine and my arms around her, feeling the cadence of her breathing against my chest.
Maybe some might’ve thought it was a waste to just lie there like that, in the hours before our potential death. Hell, the last time I’d faced death with Oraya, I’d wanted to spend every sleepless moment of that day inside her, working my way through a list of pleasures.
But this… this was different.
I didn’t need to collect more carnal moans. I wanted the rest of it. The way she breathed. The way she smelled. The exact arrangement of her dark lashes over her cheeks.
What it felt like, just to be next to her.
Maybe that was why, despite all we had to face come nightfall, I was glad I never fell asleep, not even when Oraya finally—finally—slipped off into a light, fitful rest.
Instead, I watched her.
Before the end of the Kejari, two hundred years ago, I had lain beside Nessanyn on a sleepless day not unlike this one. It was hours before Vincent would win the final trial, kill Neculai, and throw my life and the House of Night into chaos. Hours before I would beg Nessanyn to run away with me, and she would refuse.
That day, I’d watched her sleep, and I’d been so certain that I loved her. The fact that I loved her was, actually, the only thing I was certain of.
I was desperate to have something to love. Something to care about when I didn’t give a damn about myself.
But so little of it had anything to do with her. It was never frightening to love Nessanyn. It was a survival mechanism.
Loving Oraya was terrifying.
It required me to see things I didn’t want to see. Face things I didn’t want to face. Allow another soul to witness parts of myself I didn’t even want to acknowledge.
I now felt like such a fucking fool that I had never thought of it in that way, with that word, until this moment.
Of course it was love.
What else could it be, for someone to see that much of you? To see so much beauty in the parts of someone that they hate in themselves?
I almost wished I hadn’t had the realization, because it made what loomed ahead that much more devastating. Easier to have nothing to lose.