The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(33)

Ty stopped just shy of touching me. I could feel the heat of her body press against my own like sparks of energy, making me shake and quiver with the need to close the gap between us and truly make her mine.

How had this happened to me? How had this woman, this centaur, burrowed beneath my skin, my blood, and into the very beating center of me? I knew better than to allow this.

Looking back, I couldn’t even pinpoint when this had begun to happen. It’d all happened so slowly that she’d gone from being a mate, a companion, to now all things.

“Petra, it would be a lie to say I did not wish to learn.”

A sad smile graced my lips. “Ever the scholar, you are. Of course, I understand.”

She grabbed my hand, squeezing hard and rubbing her thumb over my knuckles, causing me to break out in a wash of heated and prickled flesh.

“But only because it’s you.” She looked at me from beneath her lashes. With the moonlight playing over her pale, perfect skin and the soft glow of the campfire adding shadows to the dips and hollows of her, she looked beyond this world, like something magical but fleeting. A sprite released only for a little while to dance and sing and light up my world, but vanish before the sun’s rising. An ethereal ghost that would haunt me all the days of my life, reminding me of what I’d once had and forever lost.

Her smile was sad. “You still don’t hear me, Petra. Then hear this.”

Taking my hand, she placed it against her heart, and I felt the wild, thudding beat of it vibrate against my callus-roughened palm. I sucked in a sharp breath.

“I am terrified.” She said it slowly, words little more than a whisper on the breeze. “I’m so scared of what is happening to me and what this means for us.”

“Us?” My voice came out a harsh, grating sound.

“We would both be banished by our families. For myself, I do not care. I have not seen my herd in years. But you will find your Myra, and you must return to your people. A satyr thrives on the company of others.”

I shook my head, the denial falling swiftly off my tongue. But she covered my mouth with her free hand.

“Ssh. Let us never lie to one another. Not us.” Light brown eyes so full of wisdom stared back at me.

She was right. Tymanon was seldom ever wrong. In fact, the entire time we’d travelled together, I’d never known her to be wrong. Satyrs did need the company of others to thrive.

But she was wrong this time.

“álogo.” I said the endearment tenderly, letting her hear my heart in that one word.

Her lashes fluttered, and I could not keep from framing her beloved face in my hands. She heaved a deep sigh.

“You are so very bright, but also, so very wrong right now.”

Confusion twisted her lips.

Pulling her into me, I wrapped my arms tightly around her, saying nothing for a moment, content only to hold her, to feel the solidness of her pressed up against me.

I forgot all the confusion, the questions, the hurt. The inevitability of what would happen to us simply faded away. This was real. She was real.

I was a creature of the now. That’s how I’d always been. So I would take what I could get right now. I would stop worrying about what came next or what had been, and I would live in this moment.

Dropping a kiss on the crown of her flowery-scented hair, I breathed her into me, pulling her so deep that I would never again be able to excise her. If I had to go down as the tragic figure in history, then so be it. Better to know this feeling and have lost one great love than to have never known this feeling at all.

“A satyr thrives on the company of others, true. But I do not need another satyr or even a nymph to keep me content.”

She shook. “You don’t? But my books—”

I groaned. “My silly, wonderful female. When are you going to learn that books cannot teach you everything?”

“They can teach you a lot,” she said, snuggling her head beneath my jaw and blowing softly on my chest. It was a very horsey gesture, and one I now secretly adored.

I chuckled, but I stopped laughing when she crawled onto my lap and wrapped her gorgeous legs around my waist, making me very aware of the nothing she wore, of the heat now pressing right above my stiff cock.

I closed my eyes and fought to breathe properly.

She was so worldly and yet so innocent in so many ways. Her fingers thrummed on my back as she continued to blow against my chest.

“Your skin is covered in gooseflesh now. Does this hurt you? Or do you like it?” she asked. Always trying to learn, my Ty.

The laugh that came out of me sounded strangled to my own ears. “Very much.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

She gasped, wiggling as she tried to get off, but I wouldn’t let her. I held her fast to me and shook my head.

“This is a good kind of pain though, Tymanon. A very good kind of pain.”

She laughed. “Love is a strange thing.”

My stomach plummeted to my knees. I asked softly, “Is that what this is?”

Pulse ringing in my ears as I waited to hear her response, I told myself that she didn’t know what she was talking about. You could be book smart and still know nothing of the world, the real world, and of messy things like feelings. But then, it wasn’t as though I had much experience when it came to feelings, either.