Oleander

XVIII. Chosen (part three)

He tasted like rain, his mouth molten against hers.

He had kissed her before. He had kissed her to control, to taunt, to promise. He had never kissed her like this, wild and meaningless. A dark fire only seeking to satisfy itself. Despite the danger of it, Yalira pulled herself to him, longing for something she could not name.

Numbness retreated in the wake of his touch. Andar's hands had found their way into the abused creases of her torn skirt, into the wet tangles of her hair. Softness against wildfire, he traced circles against broken skin as soft as a butterfly's wing, light as the rain he shielded her from. In tempered control, he pushed her back into the storm-sodden earth.

His whisper, rough wind over water, stirred a wave of gooseflesh across her arms and threatened to wake something far deeper. "Is this what you want?"

The question cut sharp and brutal against the painful restraint, the helpless pleasure. Andar had destroyed Antalis and would destroy his own city, he reneged on their blood promise, he had eight other wives. Yalira met the night-shadowed gold of his eyes. And she remembered he taught her the secrets of letters, that he came for her, that he faced flame-hewn death because she asked.

That he kneeled.

Arms trapped within his grasp, the near-wild edge to his burning eyes, the question forced her lips into an ironic curve. As easily as he sparked this foreign passion, he drew her into their familiar game, their circling dance.

"And if I say no?"

At the flash of her wry smile, the breathiness of her whisper, Andar growled. But for his frustration, though he remained above her, knees planted aside her hips, his grip loosed at her wrists. Yalira traced her fingertips along his jawline, the muscle that clenched there, and spread her hand against his chest. Against her touch, his heartbeat matched hers in hungry cadence. His fingers returned to their hold around hers, pulling her with him as he fell to his back. So it was her body over his.

Her hair spilled in a wet veil around them, pooling in dark waves as she leaned to press her lips to the corner of his mouth. She felt clumsy and uncertain, but in each of his muscles that twitched, each of his stuttered, violent breaths, gave her a thread of confidence.

"Would you stop," she whispered against his neck, murmured against his skin, "if I asked?"

"Would you, Yalira?" In euphoric agony, he answered between breaths, between her touches. "It is I who is at your mercy."

Andar of Tyr, gentle as a lamb.

This unwelcome offering of truce, this threat of shifting their careful balance, did not settle the burning hollowness, did not distract from the conflicting thoughts in her head. She did not know what she wanted from him, but it was not gentleness.

In protest, in desperation, Yalira fumbled with the stays on his armor, forced her mouth to his so she might steal his breath, slipped her hands beneath the bronze and leather. Her fingertips clashed against the bare skin of his chest, traced the springy golden hair and long-healed scars that rested there.

The hungry sound that escaped him awoke something hungry in her too.

In his brutal swiftness, Andar seized her in his arms, and forced the world to fall around her. His knees returned to their place beside her hips, his body above hers in promising eclipse: a submission short-lived. He tore away his armor, the padded undergarments, with practiced efficiency, determined haste.

There was no moon to see him by, nor cloudy starlight, but Yalira could make out his wide shoulders, the sharp contours of his arms against the night sky. Misty rain created a strange vibrating halo above his skin and ran between each naked plane of muscle in his chest, abdomen, hips.

She could see the faintest smile before he returned her exploration in kind.

Where she had guessed in clumsy passion, he coaxed each trembling nerve. As if his thoughts had found hers, he followed those searing paths until her breaths answered in echoing melody. The rain did not chill her, so fevered was her skin beneath his. And as if to prove she was not too flickering, too insubstantial, to hold, Andar forced her wrists above her head, pressed his rough jaw to the base of her ear. His breath echoed in shivering warmth, drugging her into thoughtlessness.

His mouth against her skin burned scalding marks until all that was left of her was aching fire.

"Please," she breathed in a tortured whisper, in a question whose answer she craved and feared.

Any restraint in him was washed away by her plea, by the rain that could not touch them. One hand keeping her captive, Andar's clever fingers trailed past the worn edge of her skirts, teasing the skin of her calf, her knee, as his mouth continued its honeyed assault. Any attempt to move against him, to increase that feather-light pressure, was met with punishing retreat.

Her second plea echoed with frustration, as his stoking hands drove her to breathy cries and wordlessness. She closed her eyes, determined to lock away her escaping voice, to control the current that ran through her. It was worse in darkness, each touch hidden lightning.

But her shivering determination to not fall to him invigorated his efforts. His fingers traced the juncture of her thighs, to her most intimate center.

"Look at me."

Yalira's dark eyes met ochre. Gazes locked, he resumed his careful attention. Just as he had shown her a new world, letters in the sand, he drew foreign shapes against her, pulled a strange language from her. Anchored to the earth beneath him, and yet higher and higher as he pushed her. Caught in gold and bronze, he watched the effect in hungry satisfaction.

The final plea was wordless, her breaths jagged. A breath held. A step from a fall into the sea. Her body begged. Andar obliged.

Loss of control. Full submission. Instead of the cold fear of Antala, Yalira felt ecstasy in freefall. Even bound beneath him, her body disintegrated into pleasure and light, it was somehow still hers completely. And when her mind returned—the prick of mist on her skin, the ache of air in her settling breaths, the burning warmth in her sated nerves—his mouth teased. Lips against her chest, her throat, her mouth, she felt the words before she understood them.

"Is this what you want?"

Yalira stiffened, inventoried her languid muscles, his taut posture over hers. She weighed each sin, each tally, that lived between them, to find that the balance did not matter. Not when death lived around them, not when they had so barely escaped it, not when his touch burned her without fire. She would live with the consequences.

"Yes."

Andar released her arms to pull her closer, growled in relief as his hips pushed forth. His body claimed hers, fell into a rain-slick rhythm that spun thought into noiselessness. Sheltered by storm, bound by desire, she surrendered all of herself to the man who demanded nothing less, who gave just as much in return. 

A/N:

I originally planned on a fade-out, but this scene felt too important to the narrative to leave it as a secret writing exercise. Let me know what you think! 

And for my real-life readers, please don't judge me forever.