The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(34)

In this, at least, we were truly equals.

She pulled back, staring deep into my eyes as she framed my face between her small hands. “Isn’t it, Petra? You say books cannot teach you everything, and yet I say that I’ve read enough of love to believe that is exactly what has happened to me. I’ve been stung, gída. There is no going back from this.” Leaning into my ear, she whispered, “They hear. They know. Everything has changed, and yet I am not sorry for it. Tell me that you feel the same.”

I did not know what the first part meant, but I understood the last half well enough. She was saying this was love of the very truest kind. In Kingdom, true love was a magic and power all its own. Nothing could break it, not even the darkest of spells.

But satyrs were supposed to be immune from it.

Myra hadn’t been.

It was clear to me that my twin and I were broken. We weren’t what we should have been. But that no longer bothered me.

Tipping Tymanon’s chin up, I stared deep into her eyes, never flinching as I said. “I choose you, my ómorfo álogo.”

A single tear slipped out the corner of her eye, and my soul soared. Brushing at that tear with my lips, I took her into me.

“Make love to me, Petra. Teach me what that word truly means.”





Chapter 10


Tymanon

He pushed me back, and I wanted to sob, wanted to plead with him not to leave me. I’d cracked open my heart and bled for him. I’d thought he felt the same way.

He stood, and I looked up at him, swallowing and biting my bottom lip so hard I felt the sting of teeth close to the point of breaking skin.

But Petra wasn’t walking away. He had his hands on his trousers, and looking at me for a long moment, he shoved them down. I gasped, unprepared for what I saw, for the way the moonlight played over his sun-darkened skin, kissing his flesh and adding shadows to hollows.

The first thing that caught my eye was his massive cock jutting out, thick, hard, and long from between a dark patch of neatly trimmed curls, tempting me to touch it. My fingertips tingled with the need to do so. The books had been so very right. He was large, very large. But I was a centaur, and our males were far from small.

What caught my attention more than anything else, though, was the alluring symmetry of his long, muscular legs. I’d expected Petra to be as furred in his hindquarters as I was, but he looked more human than I’d imagined. He did have a lot of hair for a human, but he was nowhere near as hairy as a goat.

His legs were dark, the muscles lean and toned, flexing as he stood before me, looking like a man awaiting sentencing. It was cute how nervous he suddenly appeared. He swallowed hard, causing his Adam’s apple to roll up and down as his hands curled and uncurled by his thighs.

I took my time studying his beautiful body, from his muscular arms to his powerful chest, and back down to those legs that caused a feather of heat to unfurl and wind through my belly like a coiling snake.

A shuddery breathed scissored out of me. How was it possible that I’d once believed this man ordinary? How was it possible that I’d ever looked at his face and thought him plain?

Slowly, I looked up toward said face and my heart filled to bursting with such a profundity of joy that I felt overwhelmed by it. He stared down at me with brilliant green eyes, so full of the depth of his own emotion. Petra looked raw, hopeful, but also terrified, feelings I could quite understand.

Now it was my turn to be nervous. I flattened a palm against my belly, trying in vain to stave off the manic flight of butterflies within.

“Say something,” Petra said after several long moments in a voice grown husky.

“You’re so beautiful.”

Long dark lashes fluttered against the tops of his cheekbones, and he visibly seemed to sway back and forth before me. I wasn’t sure where I found my courage, but suddenly I was on my feet and my hands were reaching up to unwind my leathers from my breasts.

My hands trembled as I did it, but he didn’t offer to help, and I was grateful that he let me do it on my own. I needed to feel there was a part of me, at least, still in control of this, though I knew it wasn’t true at all. I was a slave to my need for this satyr, and I thought that maybe he was for me as well.

When I was finally free of my covering, I let the leathers flutter from my fingertips to the ground. He sucked in a shuddery breath.

“You have a perfect body, my álogo.”

Joy blazed like a flame through my veins, making me feel hot and needy. “I do?”

His gaze was raking and slow as he looked me up and down. And when he wet his lips, my gods, I moaned long and low.

His eyes shot up, caressing the lines of my face. I trembled, feeling weak in the knees.

No centaur had ever made me feel this... alive before. Petra had not even touched me, and I burned for him. Without thought, I circled my left breast, running my fingertip over the hardened nub of my nipple, and it was his turn to groan, the sound raw and loud in the vast silence of the night, making my heart flutter.

His nostrils flared, and I swore his pupils suddenly looked bigger, wider. “Come to me, álogo.” He crooked his finger.

I moved. As though he had a string attached to my heart, he called and I came. There was no choice but to obey him. The night shivered with the faint prickling of magic. I blinked, body tingling all over like I’d just walked out into the center of a lightning storm.