The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(30)
Chapter 9
Petra
I was stoking my fire with a long stick, poking angrily at the cinders, when I heard the clop of hooves coming in fast. Standing, I looked ahead, making out the faint form of a centaur.
Moving my hand toward my pouch and to the waiting dagger within, I stood still and watched. I breathed a sigh of relief when the shadow drew closer and I was able to scent Ty’s unique scent of fresh-cut hay and wild flowers.
I didn’t even think about what I was doing, but suddenly I was running out to meet her halfway, feeling light and almost weightless, freed of the dark cloud that’d hovered over me since our parting.
“You came back,” I grunted when she was close enough to hear, trying not to show just how happy I was about it, but unable to stop from grinning like an arse from ear to ear when the soft glow of my fire danced across her lovely face.
She wore the same kind of smile I did, and my heart trembled. It wasn’t possible that she was as happy to see me as I was to see her, and yet she was looking at me in a way she never had before.
“I brought you food, gída.” She thrust a leaf-covered bowl into my chest.
I reached for it, expecting her to move away the second I had a good grasp on it, but she didn’t. Instead, our fingers glided over one another’s.
For the past four hours since she’d left me, I’d been calling myself all sorts of fool for kissing her, for touching her, for letting her see just what kind of call, what kind of power she had over me. I was sure Tymanon would mock me, scorn me for my weakness.
Instead, she moved in closer, and still hanging onto my hands, she called the light of her shift to her. Blinded by its sudden brilliance, I had to screw my now-tearing eyes shut against it.
A few seconds later, it was the glide of her strong, warm hands over my cheeks that had me blinking them open. What I saw made me feel weak in the knees. Tymanon was biting her lower lip with what looked like nerves, but her rich amber eyes shone with determination.
It wasn’t until her lashes flickered shut that I knew what she was about to do. The bowl in my hands shook when her soft lips grazed mine, not just once, but twice, three times, like flickering butterfly kisses, gentle and infinitely tender.
I’d been licked before and bitten, clawed and scratched, and I’d always thought there was nothing more exciting than a rough and wild tussle. But I swear to the gods and the heavens that no kiss had ever blazed through my blood quite the way her whispering, feather-light touches did.
The broth in the bowl spilled over my wrist, and I hissed.
She eased back, looking dazed and soft in all the right places. “Do you not wish this—”
“Don’t you stop what you’re doing, álogo,” I grunted roughly, barely able to breathe a proper breath at this point.
A shy smile pinched the corners of her pretty rosebud lips, and again she moved in, but this time her mouth did not find mine. Instead, she was kissing the tip of my nose, lining my whisker-roughened cheeks with a smattering of kisses. Pulling me forward, she forced me to tip my head back as she continued tormenting me.
My knees shook so hard they nearly buckled when she whimpered. Tymanon no longer held my face. Instead, she’d wrapped her arms around about my shoulders and was moving with sensual ease.
I was the one well versed in the art of seduction, and yet I was incapable of doing anything other than grip the bowl in my hands like my life depended on it. My arms shook, the muscles popping and bunching with the need to pull her into my chest, to hold her, to ease us both slowly toward the ground as I devoured her lips and mouth with my teeth and tongue.
I wanted to lave her body with wet, suckling kisses before slowly plunging into her welcoming warmth and bringing her to the peak of ecstasy. But I couldn’t move. I was shocked to my very core by what was happening.
She moved her mouth over my brow and then down the bridge of my nose before once more kissing the very tip of it.
I wanted to ask her why she was doing this. But another part of me didn’t want to be told that it was nothing more than one of her lessons, that I was nothing more than a curiosity to her.
Tymanon lived to learn. Curiosity drove her more than just about anything else. What if all she wanted was to know what it felt like to be with a satyr? What if—
Suddenly the very tip of her tongue swiped along the edge of my lips, and I did groan then. My body exploded with a sensation of heat and desire that was too powerful. My head grew dizzy. “Bloody hell,” I moaned as my knees finally did what they’d been threatening to do all along. I buckled to the forest floor, spilling a good part of my stew.
“Oh no. I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping back from me and looking anxious. “I didn’t mean... I fear, I don’t know what I’m—”
“You did it right, Tymanon. Bloody hell, female, you did it right.” I was gasping, clutching at my rapidly beating heart with nerveless fingers and staring at her in wonder and confusion, seeing her as I’d never seen her before.
Chestnut brown hair spilled like a dark wave down her perfect ivory shoulders. My gaze dropped to her chest. The leather bindings around her large breasts did nothing to hide her own heavy breaths. A pink stain colored her cheeks. Her eyes practically gleamed in the moonlight. I recognized desire when I saw it, I’d seen it often in my life, but I couldn’t believe this was real, couldn’t believe she’d actually done this.