Blood of Two Crowns (Hallowed Fates #2)

Chapter 54

Chapter

Fifty-Four

MAREINA

N akoa’s expression was nothing short of tortured as he held my gaze. My hands roamed over his thickly muscled shoulders before curling my fingers around his neck. I didn’t miss the hope and fear infusing his words. “What would you have me do?”

Akash almighty.

Anything and everything.

Iron wings flapped in my belly as I gathered my courage. I knew he desired me. Our bond made sure of that, but after everything that had happened… I was still terrified of opening myself up to him. Perhaps most of all, because, next to Azrael, I couldn’t ignore the fact that so much of this was my fault.

But if I had learned anything with Malekai… It was that time was never guaranteed, and I refused to waste a second more of it on fear instead of allowing myself to love and be loved. To give my soul what it longed for and demanded.

And just as my soul needed and demanded Malekai, I knew that nothing would ever change the fact that I would always feel the same for Nakoa. No matter what happened between us. We had literally tried to kill one another, and still, it had done very little to quell the soul-deep longing for him.

I rose to my tiptoes and pulled him down to graze my lips across his beautifully scarred cheek. “I love you, Nakoa Solanis. Let me show you, please. Let me fulfill our bond.”

Nakoa’s arms came around me, and in the next moment, the shower turned off, and our bodies were dry. The brush of his magic in doing so made every hair on my body rise. My legs instinctively curled around his waist as he lifted me off the ground.

Nakoa’s lips captured mine as his fingers sank into the globes of my ass to the point of bruising. Our lips and tongues slid together and twined, each caress infused with an aching, soul-deep need.

As he strode towards the bed, his teeth nipped firmly at my bottom lip before sucking it into his mouth in a way that I felt in my clit. With every pass of his tongue and lips, it further coaxed open the floodgates of all our restrained emotions.

All the hurt, unhealed wounds, the lust and desire, the longing. How much we had missed one another. The love and need we shared all crested in a tidal wave, ready to obliterate our feebly constructed walls.

Tears burned my eyes as Nakoa laid me on the bed with shocking tenderness. He pulled back to take in the glistening in my eyes, and caressed my cheek as we both savored this moment. Squeezing me against his chest, he buried his face in the curve of my neck, breathing in my scent.

My hips oscillated against his, painting the thick length of him pinned between us with my arousal. “Please… I need you now.” Nakoa’s body tightened as he growled low and braced himself on his elbows on either side of my head. The cage of his body around mine was the singular thread holding together my sanity.

“I never told you how much I love you, lohane thili.”

My breath caught, as the memory of my dream returned.

“I wish I had, Nakoa.”

Relief floods me as his lips and tongue devoured mine. His hips drew back, notching the head of his cock at my entrance, and he slowly began to push in. The action stole my breath. He was so thick that the further he sank into me, it felt as though the action shoved the air from my lungs just to make room for him. His gaze held mine all the while, drawing a hand to grip the meat of my hip before his thumb moved to my clit to lavish me with teasing strokes.

Keening softly, my nails dug into the flesh of his arms, hips thrusting upwards to capture more of him. He brushed his nose against my cheek as he murmured.

“I have loved you since the moment you threatened to cut off my balls with a dull, jagged blade, Mareina.”

A surprised laugh bubbled out of me, cut by the pang of swelling emotion and the deep stroke of his cock.

“And there is nothing in this world or the next that could change that. With or without this bond, I will always love you, lohane thili . You are the air in my lungs, and without you, I have been fucking suffocating.”

Helpless to the joy spilling down my cheeks, a tremulous smile spread across my face.

“No matter what pain or pleasure it earns me, I love every glorious facet of you, Nakoa, and despite how I may have tried to will it away, my love for you will never fade.”

My eyes caught the dip of Nakoa’s throat as he swallowed thickly, eyes glistening.

“Do you remember the fire? When you helped me save those humans?”

Nakoa huffed a laugh. “How could I forget? We nearly died.”

“That was when I fell in love with you. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. When we were laying on the ground watching that house burn after we’d managed to escape… I wanted so badly to hold your hand.”

Nakoa smiled, slowly easing himself in and out of me as I adjusted to his formidable size and my pussy wettened with increasing arousal. His smile such a rare, awe-inspiringly beautiful sight that it stole my breath even as my channel gripped his thick length.

“I wish so badly that you had.”

My smile waned. “I was too conflicted…”

Remorse takes over Nakoa’s expression. “I grew to love him too, Mareina…”

I nod in understanding. I’d begun to assume as much, and I wished more than anything I’d been blessed with witnessing it.

Nakoa leaned forward to capture my tears. “We’ll find a way, maha loha. All of us.”

My throat tightened with grief, but I swallowed it back, moving my hips up to slide back down Nakoa’s length. “Just help me forget. For now.”

Nakoa sat back on his heels, holding me in place by my hips with his hands and his beloved tail, now fully regrown, came around to slide against my clit. His thrusts turned steady and deep as he leaned into me, licking the curve of my neck. “May I?”

“Akash, yes.”

Nakoa’s fangs sank in, and my back bowed in pleasure as a cry tore from my throat. Each pull of my blood was a sensation I felt directly against my clit. Between that and the caress of his tail, the firm strokes of his tremendous cock, the cries and whimpers drawn from me were enough to make my cheeks burn.

After a few, too-short moments, he withdrew his fangs and sat back against his heels. His heavy-lidded, reverent gaze made my heart soar. Truly, the sight of him was nothing short of breathtaking. From the thick black horns curling from his head, to the dark, membranous wings at his back, and the small dark plates of armor at his temples… he looked like a demon, if anything. Or perhaps some god of the underworld.

He used to call me his little nightmare, and it seemed too serendipitous not to be the deliberate workings of Akash herself that he would be my demon and tormentor, forcing me to acknowledge and heal the worst parts of myself. And I, his little nightmare, forced him to do the same.

All the while Malekai, for all his morally black ways, would always be my avenging and saving angel.

I wish you were here.

Grief and longing swelled in my chest, coupled with the overwhelming love radiating from me as the ecstasy of my body rose higher, all working together to produce catharsis. My orgasm rose in tandem. Every muscle and fiber of my being was set alight as the tether between us coiled impossibly tighter, even as my heart still longed for Malekai. “I love you so much.”

Nakoa drew one of my legs up to his chest, angling my hips higher, thrusting his cock deeper, his tail never faltering in the teasing of my clit. Nakoa pressed his lips to my foot and licked a stripe along the inside of my sole, making me clench firmly around him.

“I love you, lohane thili, in this life and every life to come.”

The words stole my breath, nearly identical the same shared between me and Malekai, but I was too far gone to speak of it.

Nakoa’s strokes turned punishing as my pussy spasmed around him. The orgasm lighting up every molecule of my being felt like the birth of new stars, new worlds as something within us both changed. Transformed. Distantly, I realized it was the sensation of our bond finally being fulfilled.

His gaze held mine as his cock pulsed inside of me, filling me with liquid heat. Something in my chest, our tether, burst. Emotion and ecstasy coursed through us in synchronized, unending waves that felt as though my body was dissolving to meld with his.

“You’re mine, Mareina. Say it. Tell me that you belong to me as I belong to you.”

My heart clenched with the sweetest pain as our bond continued to both ignite and dissolve every molecule of our being until it felt as though I could no longer discern where my body ended, and his began. Tears streaked my cheeks in awe.

“I always have, anim gemla.”

Soulbound. The Aurialingan term for it. The same language Malekai so often spoke to me when calling me tessari mú.

I knew Nakoa understood that a part of me would always belong to Malekai, in both life and death, just as I would to him and Ataraxus. Not even time, the creator and destroyer of all things, could change that because love is enduring and eternal.

Nakoa’s features tensed under the weight of his emotion, which I could feel barrelling down our tether. His eyes shut briefly as his strokes gentled. My watery emotion doubled its efforts at witnessing this powerful male come undone before me, physically and emotionally. Whatever walls had been between us had now been reduced to nothing.

Hope flickered within me at this new beginning for us. I could only pray that somehow Malekai and Ataraxus would be there with us.