Chapter 9

Petra

I was stoking my fire with a long stick, poking angrily at the cinders, when I heard the clop of hooves coming in fast. Standing, I looked ahead, making out the faint form of a centaur.

Moving my hand toward my pouch and to the waiting dagger within, I stood still and watched. I breathed a sigh of relief when the shadow drew closer and I was able to scent Ty’s unique scent of fresh-cut hay and wild flowers.

I didn’t even think about what I was doing, but suddenly I was running out to meet her halfway, feeling light and almost weightless, freed of the dark cloud that’d hovered over me since our parting.

“You came back,” I grunted when she was close enough to hear, trying not to show just how happy I was about it, but unable to stop from grinning like an arse from ear to ear when the soft glow of my fire danced across her lovely face.

She wore the same kind of smile I did, and my heart trembled. It wasn’t possible that she was as happy to see me as I was to see her, and yet she was looking at me in a way she never had before.

“I brought you food, gída.” She thrust a leaf-covered bowl into my chest.

I reached for it, expecting her to move away the second I had a good grasp on it, but she didn’t. Instead, our fingers glided over one another’s.

For the past four hours since she’d left me, I’d been calling myself all sorts of fool for kissing her, for touching her, for letting her see just what kind of call, what kind of power she had over me. I was sure Tymanon would mock me, scorn me for my weakness.

Instead, she moved in closer, and still hanging onto my hands, she called the light of her shift to her. Blinded by its sudden brilliance, I had to screw my now-tearing eyes shut against it.

A few seconds later, it was the glide of her strong, warm hands over my cheeks that had me blinking them open. What I saw made me feel weak in the knees. Tymanon was biting her lower lip with what looked like nerves, but her rich amber eyes shone with determination.

It wasn’t until her lashes flickered shut that I knew what she was about to do. The bowl in my hands shook when her soft lips grazed mine, not just once, but twice, three times, like flickering butterfly kisses, gentle and infinitely tender.

I’d been licked before and bitten, clawed and scratched, and I’d always thought there was nothing more exciting than a rough and wild tussle. But I swear to the gods and the heavens that no kiss had ever blazed through my blood quite the way her whispering, feather-light touches did.

The broth in the bowl spilled over my wrist, and I hissed.

She eased back, looking dazed and soft in all the right places. “Do you not wish this—”

“Don’t you stop what you’re doing, álogo,” I grunted roughly, barely able to breathe a proper breath at this point.

A shy smile pinched the corners of her pretty rosebud lips, and again she moved in, but this time her mouth did not find mine. Instead, she was kissing the tip of my nose, lining my whisker-roughened cheeks with a smattering of kisses. Pulling me forward, she forced me to tip my head back as she continued tormenting me.

My knees shook so hard they nearly buckled when she whimpered. Tymanon no longer held my face. Instead, she’d wrapped her arms around about my shoulders and was moving with sensual ease.

I was the one well versed in the art of seduction, and yet I was incapable of doing anything other than grip the bowl in my hands like my life depended on it. My arms shook, the muscles popping and bunching with the need to pull her into my chest, to hold her, to ease us both slowly toward the ground as I devoured her lips and mouth with my teeth and tongue.

I wanted to lave her body with wet, suckling kisses before slowly plunging into her welcoming warmth and bringing her to the peak of ecstasy. But I couldn’t move. I was shocked to my very core by what was happening.

She moved her mouth over my brow and then down the bridge of my nose before once more kissing the very tip of it.

I wanted to ask her why she was doing this. But another part of me didn’t want to be told that it was nothing more than one of her lessons, that I was nothing more than a curiosity to her.

Tymanon lived to learn. Curiosity drove her more than just about anything else. What if all she wanted was to know what it felt like to be with a satyr? What if—

Suddenly the very tip of her tongue swiped along the edge of my lips, and I did groan then. My body exploded with a sensation of heat and desire that was too powerful. My head grew dizzy. “Bloody hell,” I moaned as my knees finally did what they’d been threatening to do all along. I buckled to the forest floor, spilling a good part of my stew.

“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping back from me and looking anxious. “I didn’t mean... I fear, I don’t know what I’m—”

“You did it right, Tymanon. Bloody hell, female, you did it right.” I was gasping, clutching at my rapidly beating heart with nerveless fingers and staring at her in wonder and confusion, seeing her as I’d never seen her before.

Chestnut brown hair spilled like a dark wave down her perfect ivory shoulders. My gaze dropped to her chest. The leather bindings around her large breasts did nothing to hide her own heavy breaths. A pink stain colored her cheeks. Her eyes practically gleamed in the moonlight. I recognized desire when I saw it, I’d seen it often in my life, but I couldn’t believe this was real, couldn’t believe she’d actually done this.

“Eat your stew.” She pointed to the bowl still clutched tight in my hands. “You’ll need your strength for what lies ahead of us tomorrow.”

I frowned, not giving a fig about the stew, because I had questions, lots of them. But I felt out of my element with Ty. In truth, I always had. She was so much more than what I was accustomed to.

Wanting to ask her what was happening between us and still feeling the phantom press of her mouth on mine, I shivered as I snatched the leaf wrapping off the bowl.

Half the broth was gone, but the vegetables remained. Reaching into her pouch, she handed me a wooden spoon, which I took with a nod of thanks.

I ate, but tasted none of it. I might as well have been eating sawdust for all I cared. Her eyes were on me, hard, pressing, and focused. She was studying me in the way she did. It’d never bothered me before, but I couldn’t seem to keep from fidgeting.

We were several yards away from my fire, sitting in the dark. We should move. But a part of me felt that if I said anything at all, I’d shatter whatever this fragile thing was between us. So I glared, and I ate, and I grew more and more anxious with each second that ticked past.

Ten minutes went by, at least, before I finally looked up at her. She didn’t flinch, just continued to study me with her burning, intelligent gaze.

“What?” I barked, cringing at the roughness of the word, but I felt off and discombobulated. I tried again. “What is—?”

“The kiss. Why did you do it?” she asked.

Her voice was so bloody steady and calm that my heart immediately sank. I did not understand her at all.

Nymphs were easy. They wore their emotions on their sleeves. If a nymph had kissed me as Tymanon just had, I would have said she clearly wanted sex. But Ty wasn’t giving me a secretive smile. She wasn’t simpering or biting her lip, all clear indications for me to proceed.

She simply looked at me in the way she looked at all of life, and I hated not knowing what it meant. I nodded as I stabbed my spoon into a thick chunk of potato, splitting it down its center.

I shrugged, too terrified to tell her that kissing her had become a near constant obsession since leaving the games. It was crazy, but kissing Ty felt like coming home, like I’d done it before, like it was natural and normal and part of what it meant to be us. So I’d done it, because I’d had no choice, because I was her slave in all ways. But there was no way I could form those words, so I asked her my own question instead.

“Why did you kiss me?”

She opened her mouth, frowned, then snapped it shut. She took a deep breath and said, “I suppose because I needed to see for myself.”

Not liking that answer, I frowned. “See what, Ty? What it felt like to kiss a man? Or to kiss a satyr?”

To her credit she did not evade my question.

“Yes. Maybe.”

“Yes to which part?”

“Both.” She shrugged. “I have never kissed a satyr before.”

I wondered if she’d ever kissed another centaur the way she’d kissed me, all soft and gentle, sprinkling kisses all over my body. My cock grew thick and heavy as my mind remembered the soft, supple feel of those innocent touches, light caresses that should have done nothing for me. And yet they’d been everything, making me feel heavy and weightless all at the same time, like the only thing tethering me to the earth was her.

“Did it feel good, Petra?” she asked softly as she played with the tip of her thumbnail.

I sat my bowl aside, unable to eat any more of it.

“What I mean to say is—” she blinked several times “—was it... was it like what your nymphs do?”

My mouth parted, realizing not only was she nervous, but s hoped that she’d measured up to some mythical feminine ideal. She had no idea, none at all, about the kind of hold she had over me.

Chest feeling as if it would burst, I shook my head. “No, álogo, it was nothing like a nymph.”

“Oh,” she whispered before swallowing.

“It was infinitely more.”

The words were barely spoken when the heavy lashes shadowing her cheeks suddenly flew up.

“Oh,” she said again. “I... I have never kissed another the way we kissed today. I... I did not think I would do it well.”

A feeling of supreme satisfaction rolled through my veins like a wave. I was not the kind of male that minded if a female explored her sexuality. In fact, it was encouraged among my kind not to bed someone who hadn’t already bedded others.

There was nothing fun about bedding a virgin. They were oftentimes too nervous and anxious to do anything other than lie there and wait for the act to be over. Tymanon and I had never spoken of our past exploits, but it wasn’t hard for me to see that Ty had little to no experience.

This fact would have had me searching for a different bed partner before, but now... my hands curled into fists on my lap as I tried to hide the evidence of my arousal from her clever gaze. I did not wish to frighten Tymanon, but I wanted her with a need that rivaled anything I’d ever felt before.

Clearing my throat at least twice, I finally said, “You did it very well.”

Her lips twitched as she glanced down at her crossed legs, her very naked legs. I was trying hard to be a gentleman and not stare, but I loved Tymanon’s body—the strength of it, her muscular leanness, the tight tone of her stomach, the soft curves of her arms and thighs.

I wanted to teach Ty about passion, wanted to show her all I knew. She liked to learn, and I could be her teacher. But I did not want to frighten her with the ferocity of a satyr’s needs, either. I’d not felt desire in some time, and never like this.

I wanted to be all things for her, everything, her sun and moon and stars. I wanted her to see me as a capable and equal male. Satyrs were often the butt of jokes in Kingdom, but I never wanted to be that to her.

“What happened tonight?” I asked her, needing to understand this, needing to know what she was thinking before I could decide on my next move. “Why this sudden change?”

She cocked her head, causing a cascade of curls to tumble prettily against her cheek. My gods, I was ruined for her. Those sweet, innocent kisses had undone me completely.

“Your kiss today. Why did you do it?”

The sharing of feelings wasn’t a general practice of mine. In fact, it’d never been required in any of my relationships. I wanted to shield myself, wanted to hide what it was I felt, wanted to guard my heart as my sister had not.

Her love had destroyed her.

What if the same happened to me?

I’d hated Myra for giving into those feelings, for being so bloody weak that she’d forgotten the one lesson ingrained in all satyrs from birth. Never give all of yourself. Never give your heart.

She’d done it and had been ruined for it.

But when I looked at Tymanon, I saw truth burning back at me. Sincerity glowed in her reflection. I didn’t have it in me to believe this nothing more than pretense.

I’d seen it in Myra’s man, Tronos, seen his words for the pretty lies they were. Myra hadn’t seen it, though. She’d sworn up and down it was love, sworn I was wrong. I’d thought her a fool for deliberately closing her eyes to reality.

Was I being the same sort of fool now? Was what I was seeing truth, or the desires of my own heart to believe it so?

Rubbing the back of my neck, I knew I had one of two choices: tell her the truth, or stop this now.

She gave me a soft smile, as if trying to ease me. Tymanon was not Tronos.

“Because I wanted to,” I finally said.

Ty said nothing for so long I thought maybe she’d not heard me, until she said, “So why did you run from me?”

Licking my front teeth, I tired to ignore the sick pit eating a hole in my stomach. “Because I thought maybe you hadn’t liked it, and I felt like an arse.”

Her lips twitched before she ran her fingers lightly over them. “I had never been kissed like that before, Petra. I was stunned. But I did not hate it. In fact, I rather liked it.”

My chest puffed. I hated how much her words affected me, but they did. I wanted to stomp my feet in satisfaction like some Neanderthal. One might think I’d never known the affections of a woman before with the way I felt now, all hot and full of anxious nerves.

“A male propositioned me while I was at the village.”

That feeling of fulfillment fizzled out like a flame in water upon hearing her say that. I scowled. She shook her head.

“It was nothing, Petra. Truly.” She shrugged. “Except it did help clarify something for me, something I might have been willing to ignore otherwise.”

“And that is?” I asked in a rush.

“I have never been a sensual creature. I have had sex in the past, but it was nothing to me. It did nothing for me. I thought myself incapable of ever experiencing the emotion that so many poems and sonnets laud. It was one aspect of my learning that seemed beyond me.”

I swallowed. So I had been right, this was nothing more than research. I clenched my jaw.

She frowned as she flailed her hands. “I am saying this all wrong.”

“Saying what, exactly, Ty? If you want to learn about sex, about how gratifying it can actually be, then tell me so. I am the best tutor you could ever have, at least in this field.”

Why the bloody hell had I said that?

I ground my molars so hard they’d soon turn to dust if I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to simply be her tutor. I didn’t want that at all. Tymanon was an apt pupil. In no time, she’d learn all my secrets. She was already catnip to her kind. If she learned about the art of seduction, there would be nothing alive that wouldn’t want her. I wouldn’t stand a chance of winning her then. She did not need me for anything, not for protection, not for my mind, not even for my body. I had nothing to offer her except the dregs I was.

And yet, I wanted her with the type of fire that grew and blazed and destroyed all it touched. As much as I wished I could be, there was nothing about me that was her equal. At least with my nymphs, I was secure in what I was. But Ty would soon grow bored of me. How could she not?

It was for that reason alone that I knew I should not do this, should not cross that line with her. I would never find another like Tymanon. If I let her in completely, it would destroy me when she finally woke up and realized she was far better off without me.

And yet when she crawled toward me on her knees, looking all soft and lovely and utterly breakable, my heart squeezed like a vice because she was different. Tymanon was a warrioress. She would never appear thus to anyone else, and yet she was willing to be soft with me.

It had to mean something. It had to. My heart echoed like a drum in my ears, loud and painful and desperate, begging me to walk away, to protect myself, and not to go down the same path that’d destroyed my Myra.

Ty stopped just shy of touching me. I could feel the heat of her body press against my own like sparks of energy, making me shake and quiver with the need to close the gap between us and truly make her mine.

How had this happened to me? How had this woman, this centaur, burrowed beneath my skin, my blood, and into the very beating center of me? I knew better than to allow this.

Looking back, I couldn’t even pinpoint when this had begun to happen. It’d all happened so slowly that she’d gone from being a mate, a companion, to now all things.

“Petra, it would be a lie to say I did not wish to learn.”

A sad smile graced my lips. “Ever the scholar, you are. Of course, I understand.”

She grabbed my hand, squeezing hard and rubbing her thumb over my knuckles, causing me to break out in a wash of heated and prickled flesh.

“But only because it’s you.” She looked at me from beneath her lashes. With the moonlight playing over her pale, perfect skin and the soft glow of the campfire adding shadows to the dips and hollows of her, she looked beyond this world, like something magical but fleeting. A sprite released only for a little while to dance and sing and light up my world, but vanish before the sun’s rising. An ethereal ghost that would haunt me all the days of my life, reminding me of what I’d once had and forever lost.

Her smile was sad. “You still don’t hear me, Petra. Then hear this.”

Taking my hand, she placed it against her heart, and I felt the wild, thudding beat of it vibrate against my callus-roughened palm. I sucked in a sharp breath.

“I am terrified.” She said it slowly, words little more than a whisper on the breeze. “I’m so scared of what is happening to me and what this means for us.”

“Us?” My voice came out a harsh, grating sound.

“We would both be banished by our families. For myself, I do not care. I have not seen my herd in years. But you will find your Myra, and you must return to your people. A satyr thrives on the company of others.”

I shook my head, the denial falling swiftly off my tongue. But she covered my mouth with her free hand.

“Ssh. Let us never lie to one another. Not us.” Light brown eyes so full of wisdom stared back at me.

She was right. Tymanon was seldom ever wrong. In fact, the entire time we’d travelled together, I’d never known her to be wrong. Satyrs did need the company of others to thrive.

But she was wrong this time.

“Álogo.” I said the endearment tenderly, letting her hear my heart in that one word.

Her lashes fluttered, and I could not keep from framing her beloved face in my hands. She heaved a deep sigh.

“You are so very bright, but also, so very wrong right now.”

Confusion twisted her lips.

Pulling her into me, I wrapped my arms tightly around her, saying nothing for a moment, content only to hold her, to feel the solidness of her pressed up against me.

I forgot all the confusion, the questions, the hurt. The inevitability of what would happen to us simply faded away. This was real. She was real.

I was a creature of the now. That’s how I’d always been. So I would take what I could get right now. I would stop worrying about what came next or what had been, and I would live in this moment.

Dropping a kiss on the crown of her flowery-scented hair, I breathed her into me, pulling her so deep that I would never again be able to excise her. If I had to go down as the tragic figure in history, then so be it. Better to know this feeling and have lost one great love than to have never known this feeling at all.

“A satyr thrives on the company of others, true. But I do not need another satyr or even a nymph to keep me content.”

She shook. “You don’t? But my books—”

I groaned. “My silly, wonderful female. When are you going to learn that books cannot teach you everything?”

“They can teach you a lot,” she said, snuggling her head beneath my jaw and blowing softly on my chest. It was a very horsey gesture, and one I now secretly adored.

I chuckled, but I stopped laughing when she crawled onto my lap and wrapped her gorgeous legs around my waist, making me very aware of the nothing she wore, of the heat now pressing right above my stiff cock.

I closed my eyes and fought to breathe properly.

She was so worldly and yet so innocent in so many ways. Her fingers thrummed on my back as she continued to blow against my chest.

“Your skin is covered in gooseflesh now. Does this hurt you? Or do you like it?” she asked. Always trying to learn, my Ty.

The laugh that came out of me sounded strangled to my own ears. “Very much.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

She gasped, wiggling as she tried to get off, but I wouldn’t let her. I held her fast to me and shook my head.

“This is a good kind of pain though, Tymanon. A very good kind of pain.”

She laughed. “Love is a strange thing.”

My stomach plummeted to my knees. I asked softly, “Is that what this is?”

Pulse ringing in my ears as I waited to hear her response, I told myself that she didn’t know what she was talking about. You could be book smart and still know nothing of the world, the real world, and of messy things like feelings. But then, it wasn’t as though I had much experience when it came to feelings, either.

In this, at least, we were truly equals.

She pulled back, staring deep into my eyes as she framed my face between her small hands. “Isn’t it, Petra? You say books cannot teach you everything, and yet I say that I’ve read enough of love to believe that is exactly what has happened to me. I’ve been stung, gída. There is no going back from this.” Leaning into my ear, she whispered, “They hear. They know. Everything has changed, and yet I am not sorry for it. Tell me that you feel the same.”

I did not know what the first part meant, but I understood the last half well enough. She was saying this was love of the very truest kind. In Kingdom, true love was a magic and power all its own. Nothing could break it, not even the darkest of spells.

But satyrs were supposed to be immune from it.

Myra hadn’t been.

It was clear to me that my twin and I were broken. We weren’t what we should have been. But that no longer bothered me.

Tipping Tymanon’s chin up, I stared deep into her eyes, never flinching as I said. “I choose you, my ómorfo álogo.”

A single tear slipped out the corner of her eye, and my soul soared. Brushing at that tear with my lips, I took her into me.

“Make love to me, Petra. Teach me what that word truly means.”