your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
The first thing that slips through is not a sentence so much as a pulse with words caught inside it—always her—and Flora nearly comes apart right there, not because it’s polished or pretty or meant to be given, but because it isn’t, because it rises out of him clean and unguarded, so purely, stupidly, impossibly Kai that it steals the air from her lungs before she can even name the feeling he so easily causes to bloom. A soft shiver travels up the length of her spine, quick and helpless, and when his hand catches her wrist against his face holding her there, the touch keeps her from tipping straight into whatever glittering disaster her body is apparently trying to become, because she can feel him now; not just what he says, not just what his mouth and hands and heat are telling her, but the actual shape of him behind it, the confusion giving way to wonder, the bright, breathless rush of realization, the love that comes flooding across the bond so honestly it makes her smile before she can stop herself.
Her mouth curves wider as he blinks at her, her expression turning luminous as she waits for him to understand it, waits with her thumb still near his mouth and her breath caught somewhere high in her chest, and the laugh that starts to spill out of her is warm and bright and already half-victorious when he surges forward and cuts it off against her lips, stealing it straight from her before she can decide whether she’s smug or wrecked or both.
Heat blooms low in her belly with immediate, devastating disobedience, not only from the force of his mouth or the solid line of his body pressing into hers, bullt from the arousal pouring out of him and into her like someone has opened a door inside her ribs and set the whole room on fire. It’s unlike anything she’s ever felt, his want braided into hers until there’s no clean edge between them, until every breath she takes feels flavoured by him, every place they touch made twice as sharp because she can feel the hunger from both sides now. Flora moans greedily into the kiss, her body yielding backward with each step he drives her toward their bed while her hands cling to his hair as if she might pull every last spark of him through the bond by force if he’s foolish enough to leave any behind.
Do you feel that? she thinks, the words sent directly to him while her lips stay parted beneath his, breathless and hot and threaded through with a flicker of wicked satisfaction, because that is already rising inside her, a flutter of arousal building around her spine like a thin column of smoke suddenly caught by flame, pulsing higher and hotter each time his tongue brushes hers, each time the friction between them tightens and drags a fresh rush of sensation through her. It feels like a scream trapped deep in her chest, not frightened, not pained, but wild and bright and waiting for the exact right touch to let it burst outward, and her fingers slip from his hair to his hips with none of her usual elegance, one hand tugging impatiently at the bottom of his shirt to pull it up and off him while the other presses flat against the caged erection beneath his boxers, bold and deliberate and hungry to feel his mind sear hotter through the bond in answer.
But then Flora pulls back only enough to find the copper of his eyes, not enough to give him any real distance, not enough to let the heat between them cool into anything sensible, her hand still pressed where she can feel his cock straining beneath the fabric of his boxers, while the other clings to the shirt she’s already trying to drag off him. She could put the words straight into his mind now, could send them down that new golden thread between them wrapped in every flicker of want and laughter and ridiculous, overwhelming love currently making a spectacular menace of her, but this she wants out loud. Wants it given shape by her mouth and breath and voice, wants it to exist in the room the way it had existed once before when everything between them had been sharp-edged and new, potentially caustic and uncertain aboard the Sugar Tide.
Her smile barely moves, only the corners of her lips twitching as her heart flutters hard against her ribs and a low, pounding roar of arousal beats warm in her belly, her whole body lit up by him. She looks at him, entirely undone by adoration, entirely in love and on fire with need, and the words leave her softly, deliberately, an echo of what she’d said a year before. "Like you love me." But this time she isn’t hoping, isn’t standing at the helm of uncertainty trying to read the truth from the way he touches her and to pretend that it wasn’t what it was; this time she knows, with the ring warm against her finger and his heart blazing through the bond into hers, that he does.
Her mouth curves wider as he blinks at her, her expression turning luminous as she waits for him to understand it, waits with her thumb still near his mouth and her breath caught somewhere high in her chest, and the laugh that starts to spill out of her is warm and bright and already half-victorious when he surges forward and cuts it off against her lips, stealing it straight from her before she can decide whether she’s smug or wrecked or both.
Heat blooms low in her belly with immediate, devastating disobedience, not only from the force of his mouth or the solid line of his body pressing into hers, bullt from the arousal pouring out of him and into her like someone has opened a door inside her ribs and set the whole room on fire. It’s unlike anything she’s ever felt, his want braided into hers until there’s no clean edge between them, until every breath she takes feels flavoured by him, every place they touch made twice as sharp because she can feel the hunger from both sides now. Flora moans greedily into the kiss, her body yielding backward with each step he drives her toward their bed while her hands cling to his hair as if she might pull every last spark of him through the bond by force if he’s foolish enough to leave any behind.
Do you feel that? she thinks, the words sent directly to him while her lips stay parted beneath his, breathless and hot and threaded through with a flicker of wicked satisfaction, because that is already rising inside her, a flutter of arousal building around her spine like a thin column of smoke suddenly caught by flame, pulsing higher and hotter each time his tongue brushes hers, each time the friction between them tightens and drags a fresh rush of sensation through her. It feels like a scream trapped deep in her chest, not frightened, not pained, but wild and bright and waiting for the exact right touch to let it burst outward, and her fingers slip from his hair to his hips with none of her usual elegance, one hand tugging impatiently at the bottom of his shirt to pull it up and off him while the other presses flat against the caged erection beneath his boxers, bold and deliberate and hungry to feel his mind sear hotter through the bond in answer.
But then Flora pulls back only enough to find the copper of his eyes, not enough to give him any real distance, not enough to let the heat between them cool into anything sensible, her hand still pressed where she can feel his cock straining beneath the fabric of his boxers, while the other clings to the shirt she’s already trying to drag off him. She could put the words straight into his mind now, could send them down that new golden thread between them wrapped in every flicker of want and laughter and ridiculous, overwhelming love currently making a spectacular menace of her, but this she wants out loud. Wants it given shape by her mouth and breath and voice, wants it to exist in the room the way it had existed once before when everything between them had been sharp-edged and new, potentially caustic and uncertain aboard the Sugar Tide.
Her smile barely moves, only the corners of her lips twitching as her heart flutters hard against her ribs and a low, pounding roar of arousal beats warm in her belly, her whole body lit up by him. She looks at him, entirely undone by adoration, entirely in love and on fire with need, and the words leave her softly, deliberately, an echo of what she’d said a year before. "Like you love me." But this time she isn’t hoping, isn’t standing at the helm of uncertainty trying to read the truth from the way he touches her and to pretend that it wasn’t what it was; this time she knows, with the ring warm against her finger and his heart blazing through the bond into hers, that he does.
