Imperial (Insight #8)(19)
“You were never forgotten. I worshiped your memory. As did my entire line.” His velvet voice caressed every word.
His hand carefully sent the candle on its way, and it floated across the room and settled next to billions and billions that were just like it. Only this line of smoke, the memory it revealed, showed him holding me through my last storm, showed his lips framing mine. The forced control that he reigned in as my storm poured out of my soul. They showed the ache in his eyes when my energy questioned his loyalty.
Vade’s hand was cradling my face in the next pulse of my soul. As the hum of his flesh swarmed through me, he leaned his forehead against mine. His fingertips traced my bottom lip. Painfully, slowly, he spoke the words I yearned to hear. “You are my rush.” The scent of roses reached out for me.
My knees gave way, only for him to catch me. A fever flashed across my skin before coring itself within my soul.
“If you have forgotten, my adored, I will wait for you to remember. I will never forsake a gift as precious as your soul,” he said as his eyes tenderly rained down on me.
Those stubborn tears encased my eyes once more.
I had infinite power within my soul, but at this moment it was barely enough for me to shape the words of my next confession. “Every thought, every breath, you were within. I never forgot you. I waited, from moon to moon. I waited for you to have your vengeance and bring me home.” The girl I was deep inside had been revealed. She openly told him that, though she could have found her way home, she waited. She waited for him to prove his devotion, and time had soured who that girl once was.
Apparently, those words were just as painful to hear as they were to say. Agony echoed in that diamond stare of his.
The girl deep inside was finding her stride, her voice. She was coming to life just in time for me to find the will to take away that pain I could see in his eyes. “Rush, fever. You are more than both.”
He smiled. Oh, that smile; it could light the world if he would let it—if he would let anyone beyond me see it.
An old fear, the one I had gone to war with over and over, surfaced. In my mind, moments like this are always fleeting. So fleeting that it was painful to enjoy them simply because I knew they were numbered.
I glanced away to catch a glimpse of the masses of candles; to the images the smoke was creating. “I will have to return to the Reaper. He told me my stay was measured by my words.” My eyes found his once more. “We both know that my words and deeds will be laced with wrath. That my time here is not unlimited…it is near nonexistent. A dream we will look upon for eons to come.”
When his lips feverishly claimed mine, it was hard for me to tell if he agreed or not. I was sick of holding back, fighting the rush his soul gave mine. I reached my arms around his shoulders just after the coat I was wearing found its way off my body.
Hungrily, my hands moved across his shoulders, his chest, letting the scent of fresh cut roses course from my being. As he returned that essence to me all the more powerfully, we were basking in the sweet aroma of a feverous rush.
We were quenching an undying thirst for one another.
My flesh was aching for him. I felt starved for this. The bliss was near painful. There was so much emotion in every movement of our embrace that I felt my soul quake.
Before I could even gasp, we were lying across a bed that had manifested in this room. Surrounded by silence and candlelight, we explored what belonged to each of us.
Every girl remembers her first, the first soul that seized every emotion within her…the one that took her precious innocence and replaced it with an emotion that changed everything she knew about the world around her.
With time, those girls become women, and they embrace their last with a force that has grown with time and experience. Vade and I were each other’s first, last, only, and knowing that—knowing that the rush between us was so sacred that it could never be shared with another—was more than empowering. It was a regal sensation that we had never once taken advantage of. At least we would not take advantage of that in this moment.
Gradually, with care, the clothes that bound our bodies were released. Skin-to-skin, soul-to-soul; that was our destination. But we had waited too long for this moment to be anything but slow and deliberate. Once a new part of our bodies was exposed, we took the time to kiss the warm skin sensually that was hidden before. I could tell it was killing him to hold back, to be tender, that his embrace was just as greedy as mine. It was painful, but I have never felt such a glorious aching in my life.
Passion is called a fever for a reason. The heat comes from within—the craving is unmistakable. It burns. A divine pain that most would kill to feel endlessly. Your very being is on fire, and it craves the one that created that heat. It fights to get closer to that source, yet at the same time it caresses and calls gently to its other. For if the pure fever were released suddenly, it would nearly destroy the souls. It was just that powerful. An addictive, potent lust.
I sighed as his lips moved across my skin, which was no longer translucent, but now glowing against the candlelight. As I felt his powerful hands embrace my flesh, the ache in his every movement dared me to believe that he feared I was a dream, an illusion his mind had created to appease him.
They call it a rush for a reason, too. A rush is felt in moments like this for almost any soul, but once an Escort claims a rush they feel this emotion near constantly, most definitely when they are in the presence of the one who created such an emotion.