CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I PUSHED HIS shirt up, needing to feel his skin beneath my hands. Then I needed to feel more of it because that warm, muscled expanse was addictive. Within moments, his back wasn’t enough, so I plunged my hands beneath his waistband, reaching for the hard globes of his ass. I could grasp only the tops because the large bulge in the front of his pants combined with the formfitting denim meant there wasn’t enough room for my hands.
I made a frustrated noise and he responded with a low, throaty laugh that made things lower in me clench. I knew that laugh. It promised incredible amounts of pleasure.
I wanted him to make good on that promise now. I dragged my hands away from his ass in order to lock them behind his neck. Then I pulled myself up to wrap my legs around his waist. His arms immediately supported me, and our bodies met at exactly the right spot. When he ground against me with that thick, jutting hardness, I barely heard his moan from the sharp cry I made.
His arms tightened until I was plastered to him, then he dropped to his knees. I gloried in the weight and feel of his body as he pressed me against the soft grass, then I made a wordless sound of protest when he pulled away. That stopped when he drew his shirt over his head, throwing it aside to reveal his luscious golden-brown chest. I stared at him, all at once breathless for more reasons than passion.
He was so beautiful, he didn’t look real, yet he felt very, very real, especially when I tugged open the front of his pants to free the hardness straining against it. His breath caught when I wrapped my hands around him, and he briefly closed his eyes. Then he almost ripped my top and bra away. I arched beneath the searing warmth of his mouth as he sucked my nipples, and when he pulled my pants off and his fingers found my center, I couldn’t stop my moans. I was both desperate for more of his touch and desperate for him to stop so he’d be inside me. When his mouth left my breasts to slide down my stomach, I grabbed his head, shoving myself down until his face was level with mine instead of between my legs.
“Don’t. I want you now.”
I loved what he could do with his mouth, but I wanted him inside me more. He stared at me, the desire and intensity in his gaze as arousing as a thousand erotic strokes of his tongue. Then, with an arch of his hips that tore a cry from both of us, he thrust inside me, moving deeply and slowly, stoking the fire that already burned within me. Soon, those thrusts became faster.
My nerve endings sizzled, while my mind spun away from everything that wasn’t him. There was only his kiss, his taste, the feel of his muscles bunching in his back, the sounds he made and the indescribable ecstasy that each new thrust brought. The first time I came, I was breathless. The second time, I was shaking. The third time, when he finally came with me, I was screaming. I didn’t care, either. I’d lost the last of my inhibitions a while ago.
I grabbed him when he tried to pull out of me, wrapping my legs around him to keep him inside. He smiled, clasping me to him when he rolled onto his side. I kept my leg hooked around his hip and my arms around his neck while I waited until my breathing evened out enough to speak.
“You’re never leaving me again” were my first words. “I don’t care what you think about me being better off.”
He sighed, kissing me on the top of my head. “You would be, but even when I left you before, I couldn’t go far.”
“You shouldn’t have gone at all,” I said, adding quietly, “And I shouldn’t have threatened to leave you, either. I was so hurt by what you’d done, so angry... I wanted to punish you.”
“I deserved punishing,” he said, his voice equally quiet.
“You did,” I agreed. “But not that way.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I didn’t only hide what I’d done with Demetrius because I knew it was wrong. I also did it because I knew once I told you, I’d have to let you keep looking for the spearhead. And I didn’t want you to.”
He rolled onto his back, taking me with him. My hair fell around his face, haloing it in brown swaths as I stared at him.
“Don’t kid yourself about me, Ivy,” he said softly. “Even now, I’m as greedy for you as Judas ever was for silver.”
“I love you,” I said, and meant it to my soul. “And unlike your infamous ancestor, I know you loving me is why you did what you did. But you can’t keep taking my choices away from me, Adrian. If I was the type of person who’d let you, you wouldn’t love me, because you’re too strong willed to let anyone make up your mind for you, especially about really important things.”
“Even if that were true, in this case, I might make an exception,” he said dryly.
I let out a watery chuckle, then got serious again. “I was half-crazed when I thought you were dying in front of me. Right then, I would’ve agreed to almost anything to save you. And you agreed to terrible things trying to save me. I get why. I do, but no matter what, we have to be better than our instincts to protect each other at any cost.”
He stared at me, his gaze turning sad. “You can be that strong. I don’t think I can.”
“I know you can. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have torn your own throat out to take Obsidiana down. Or bluffed Demetrius with a cracker, or had Brutus fly me and Jasmine away so you could face a horde of minions alone, or any of the other countless things you’ve done. I want both of us to stop lying, but that’s changing a behavior. I don’t expect either of us to change who we are.”
“I should. You shouldn’t.” His voice roughened. “Tying yourself to my darkness might have given you some bad habits, but it can’t touch who you are. You’re the girl who should have crumbled when you lost your parents and your sister within two weeks of each other, but you shoved your grief aside to start your own search for Jasmine. Even when you found out you’d have to go through minions, demons, strange realms and an unwanted destiny to get her, you never wavered. Then you tried to help others by repairing the realm walls despite demons dogging your every step. Now you’re back to going after a weapon that’ll kill you the moment you touch it, yet you’re not letting that stop you, either.”
I dropped my gaze. “I need to find the spearhead before demons do, but I haven’t said that I’m going to use it—”
“Ivy.” My name was a sigh. “Yes, you will. You won’t be able to stop yourself, and that has nothing to do with you being the last Davidian. It’s because you’re you. That new darkness might have stalled you, but in the end, it will never stop you.”
I looked back at him. His sapphire-and-silver gaze reflected torment, then icy determination, then torment again. Not a muscle on his body moved, but I could practically feel the fierce battle within him.
“But if I’m there,” he said softly, “I don’t know if I can let you. I want to swear that I’ll respect your decision, but I don’t trust myself not to try to save you, even if that’s not what you want.”
I opened my mouth to argue over his surety that I’d use the spearhead if I found it, but no words came out. It reminded me of when I’d been unable to promise Jasmine that I wouldn’t use it, either. Was he right? Despite all the good reasons why I shouldn’t wield it, deep down, had some part of me always intended to?
I sighed. “I don’t know if you’re right. So what if neither of us promises the other anything right now? That way, you don’t have to worry about lying, and I won’t have to feel sorry if I hit you over the head later to stop you from doing something against my wishes.”
“If it comes to that, better make sure you hit me hard,” he muttered.
“I’ve done it before,” I replied with the same grim humor.
A dubious truce, but an honest one, at least. I rolled off him, finally disengaging the most intimate parts of our bodies. Then I smiled when his arms shot out to keep me close.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Nature calls,” I said, pushing him away.
I donned his shirt because it was the closest piece of clothing in the grass around us. Then I trotted off in search of a bush. There wasn’t one nearby, so I settled for going out of eyesight while I tended to my bladder’s needs. When I came back up the hill, Adrian was no longer alone.
Zach, Jasmine and Costa were now here. The Archon politely glanced away, but Costa raised an eyebrow as Adrian hastily put on his pants. Jasmine gave me an incredulous look.
“Seriously? You two were alone here for five minutes!”
“Your time,” I said, buttoning Adrian’s shirt as fast as my fingers could fly. “It was, uh, a couple hours on this side.”
“Oh.” Jasmine’s expression went from shocked to mildly censuring. “Better, but still means you’re easy.”
I snorted. “Get me an Easy Ivy T-shirt, and I promise I’ll wear it.”
“Speaking of T-shirts, I’m still in soaked jammies,” Jasmine said, turning to Zach. “Got anything other than fig leafs for me to wear here?”
“I’ll attend to that after I return with Brutus,” Zach said, and disappeared.
“With the time difference in this realm, he won’t be back for hours,” Adrian said, handing Jasmine my discarded shirt. “Here, wear this. Ivy can keep mine.”
Jasmine took it, turning her back to discard her soaked top and replace it with my turtleneck. She gave a pointed look at me when she fingered the rip up the side of it. I just shrugged, still too filled with afterglow to be embarrassed.
“Take my pants, too,” I offered. “Adrian’s shirt is like a dress on me, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Jasmine said, this time using Costa as her shield when she doffed her sodden pants in exchange for my dry ones.
Adrian came over, handing me something he’d kept out of sight. My underwear and bra, I realized, and gave him a smile of thanks while I darted back down the hill to put them on.
Costa was hanging Jasmine’s wet clothes on the branch of a manna tree when I came back. He’d taken his shirt off and hung that, too, but must have resigned himself to staying in the wet long underwear bottoms he still wore.
“You could take those off to dry, too. Promise I won’t peek,” I teased him.
Costa gave me an arch smile. “Ah, but if you did, then you’d leave Adrian, and I couldn’t do that to my best friend.”
Adrian laughed and said something in Greek. Grinning, Costa replied in the same language, and Adrian laughed again.
“Not fair,” I told them, and Jasmine echoed her agreement.
“Learn Greek if you’re curious,” Costa said, still grinning.
“Don’t worry,” Adrian told me, chuckling. “It’s mostly lies and wishful thinking on his part, anyway.”
Brutus suddenly popped onto the hillside, his broad features expressing alarm at all the sunshine, then relief when he spotted me and Adrian. I ran over to him and reached him right as Zach appeared out of seemingly nowhere, too.
“How’d you do that so fast?” I asked, surprised. “We thought you’d be gone for hours again.”
His brow arched. “I deliberately took longer before, and as anticipated, I had reason to delay.”
I didn’t touch that. There were a lot of things I wanted to talk to an Archon about, but my sex life wasn’t one of them.
“Thanks for getting us all here,” I said instead. “Brutus, don’t worry. We’ll find you a tree or something to hide under.”
“I can do better than that,” Zach said, walking down the hill. “Follow me, and I will take you to a place that has tents he can hide in, as well as food, water and dry pants,” he added, with a last glance at Costa.
I exchanged a surprised look with Adrian. We knew light realms had food and water; they had streams as well as fruit and nut trees. But I’d never seen one with tents. Or pants.
“Follow me,” Zach said again.