reaction, the way fire began spreading up his legs, gathering force. The magma burning in his balls, churning like a massive storm ready to throw out a comet streaking across the sky.
He let it happen. Welcomed it. His balls tightened as the firestorm took him, spreading through his groin to center in his cock. He thought he couldn’t stretch any further, grow any thicker, but her tight channel was scorching hot and squeezing down on him with a silken fist that was stronger than he could have conceived of. Hotter as well.
Isai heard himself call her name as he emptied himself in her, sharing the ecstasy with her. You did this. You gave this to me, Julija. Your surrender, your selflessness. Thank you for loving and trusting me enough.
Her body surrounded his, her orgasm biting deep, clamping down on his cock, wringing every last drop from him. He collapsed over her as she went all the way to the floor of the chamber. At the last moment, he managed to place a thick mat of grass beneath her. They lay together, their hearts pounding. He felt that same out-of-control rhythm in his cock, as it jerked and throbbed to the beat of their hearts.
It took minutes, or maybe hours, who knew the passing of time, before he had the energy to lift his head and spread kisses down her back. “You are so brave,” he murmured, meaning it. “So very brave.”
“If I could breathe, I’d tell you I love you.”
He smiled against her back. She always managed to make him want to laugh. His woman. He rubbed his face along the sweet curve of her lower back, seeing the way her fair skin reddened when his bristles came into close contact.
“We could just lie right here, Isai. Not move. If the sun comes, we’ll just fry together.”
He frowned and rolled off her. “But you do not actually burn, Julija, and you have been Carpathian all along. You did not have to go through the conversion.”
“I burn.” She rolled over onto her back and regarded him steadily. He sat facing her, trying to figure out the puzzle that was Julija. “I’ve always burned. I learned to wear long sleeves all the time and a hat to shade my face. I wear sunglasses all the time and heavy-duty sunscreen. You won’t ever see me tanning on the beach.”
“Getting a sunburn and actually burning in the sun are two different things, kessake.” He called her a cat—she reminded him of one with her lazy way of stretching and then curling back in on herself. “If I were to stay in the sun, it would kill me. I am an ancient and it has become much more difficult to wake early or go to ground late.”
Julija glanced around the chamber. “You thought we would both sleep in the ground.” She made it a statement.
“We did the other night.”
“No, I lay in the soil because it felt good, but I didn’t bury myself deep. I didn’t cover my face. I wouldn’t like that at all, and I don’t need to do it.”
He reached out and gently shackled her ankle, his thumb sliding up and down her skin. “Uh-oh. I believe we are about to have our first real fight,” he said gently. Sadly. Watching her closely.
She sat up as well, but she didn’t pull her leg away. “There’s no need to have a fight. We can do what we did together the other night. We were close, but I didn’t have to feel as if I was being buried alive.”
She put one hand to her throat and then, noticing that he was watching her carefully, stroked it as if that had been her intention all along. He wasn’t buying it.
“Julija, were you ever buried alive? Did someone do that to you?”
He expected her to say Barnabas. He already had the man so entrenched in his mind, he was so absolutely certain, that when she replied, he at first didn’t comprehend.
“My father. Anatolie. He buried me several times.” Her voice was very low, and she looked around the chamber as if she expected him to leap out at her from behind a rock.
Isai sat in silence trying to digest that. What father would be so cruel to his daughter? “Was it a punishment? What crime did you commit that your father would do such a terrible thing?”
She shook her head. Shivering. Wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. Immediately, Isai waved his hand to clothe her