All night.
He moved onto the bed and stood on the mattress, pulling at the blinds to reveal more of the stars through the window, until the entire ceiling above us was the night sky.
Then, stepping off the mattress, he circled it and turned off the main lights, leaving only the bedside lanterns to cast a soft light around us.
Removing his jacket, he leaned back on the headboard and beckoned me to him. As I crawled to him, he spread his legs, creating a place for me to sit between his legs, my back against his chest. His arms wrapped around me, hands resting on my stomach. Silence fell as we both gazed up at the stars.
The way I sat against him was lighting me up, any insecurity I’d initially felt quickly ebbed away. I craned my neck to brush the base of his jaw with my lips.
“Unzip me,” I whispered.
His fingers moved readily to the top of my zipper. It was clear he’d just been waiting for me to make the first move.
Shivers ran through me as he bared my back. His hands slid from the base of my neck down my shoulders as he rolled the dress off until it had pooled around me, leaving me in my underwear. Although as I turned to face him, his intense green eyes roaming me, I felt as if I wasn’t wearing anything at all.
His hands engulfed my waist. I unbuttoned his shirt and removed it, then worked on his belt and pants. I lost all sense of timing after that. Before I knew it both of us were bare. As we kissed, we moved together, our skin touching, our forms molding. His tongue explored my mouth. I felt intoxicated. He pushed me into the soft mattress, one hand running down the side of my ribs, down the curve of my waist, and then down further still.
His kisses grew more intense, more demanding. Lowering more of his weight against me, I felt his tenseness between my legs.
As I sensed he was seconds from moving deeper, he unclasped his lips from mine. His green eyes hooded and blazing with passion, he whispered, “You’re my life, River Novak.”
My breath hitched, ripples of pain and pleasure surging through me, as he finally made us one.
Ben
I was so drunk with passion, I could barely see straight. I’d never felt such all-consuming desire. I’d never told her this before, but as I was her first, she was mine. I’d had girlfriends in the past, but none of the relationships had ever been serious enough for us to get past second base.
River was more beautiful than I’d ever seen her now, her long glossy hair in soft curls. And I could behold her in all her beauty. As we made love deep into the night, I only fell further into her, physically and emotionally. I couldn’t imagine a life without River in it any more. I couldn’t imagine an existence without her. It would be vacant, useless.
As I brought River to her climax, tears of ecstasy spilled from her eyes as she gasped out my name. Burying my hands in her hair, I pressed my lips firmly against hers as I released my own tension.
We rolled over on the bed, breathless and sodden with sweat… and I felt more alive than I’d ever felt in my life.
Reaching for her still-trembling body, I pulled her flush against me and ran my hands slowly down the length of her back. She looked as lost in my eyes as I was in hers.
I remained caressing her until exhaustion finally stole her away from me. Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. I hoped that fae could live a long time, because it felt to me that a hundred lifetimes wouldn’t be enough for us.
I sensed that she was getting cold. Detaching myself from her gently, I moved her closer to the centre of the mattress. I took a moment to take in the length of her body, the parts of her that had remained secret and shadowed for so long. Then I reached for the blanket, but as I pulled it up over her legs and was about to cover the rest of her with it, I spotted something on her lower stomach. A mark I could have sworn hadn’t been there before. A light scar that ran the width of her abdomen.
I frowned, looking at it more closely. Then I finished putting the blanket over her before sliding beneath it next to her. My hand slipped down to her abdomen, my fingers tracing the scar softly enough that she would not wake up.
How could she have gotten a scar like that? It was a huge scar… a surgical scar. The last time I’d seen her abdomen I guessed would have been the time I’d almost given into my passions back in The Oasis, just hours before I’d sent River back to The Shade with Corrine. She’d definitely had no scar then. We’d been naked in that oasis in The Dunes while waiting for Aisha, but the lower part of her had been hidden from me underwater.
Where else can she have gotten it but the hunters’ headquarters? What did they do to her? What could they have taken from her?
Frowning with worry, I looked at her face. Why didn’t you tell me, River?
She must’ve known that I would see it eventually. Maybe she had intended to tell me, but hadn’t found the right moment. I would ask her about it at the next opportunity.
For now, I stopped touching her scar.
I looked back up at the stars above us. I thought back to everything that had happened since I first left The Shade in one of the subs. Being held hostage in The Oasis, the discovery of the jinn, the defeating of the Elder, becoming a ghost and then managing—eventually— to find my way back again…. It was truly stranger than a fairytale. But without it all, I never would have met River. No matter the hardships, that was enough to make it all worth it. For her, I would do it all over again. Even bath time with that hunkri.
My mind lingered on Hortencia and the “lessons” she had been keen to share with me. Her gems of wisdom she’d said I needed to carry with me into the future… and her request for me to slay those Bloodless. My mind buzzed as I tried to make sense of what kind of future she was alluding to and what role the new breed of hunters would play in all of this.
But even as I pondered the possibilities, I realized I was no longer afraid of the future. What would happen, would happen. And I knew now that even if I lost this body again, life didn’t stop after death. I would live on in one way or another.
I never had found out what truly existed beyond death—the “other side”, the place where most people who died were purported to pass on to. I’d been trafficked to The Underworld before I had gotten the chance to discover the answer.