The Wicked (Elder Races #5.5)(34)

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He groped behind him. The wall was nearby. He shifted over until he could lean his back against it. Only some time afterward did he realize that he had kept such a clenched hold on Olivia, he had forced her to scoot over with him. He pulled her onto his lap, bowing around her as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

After a few minutes, she loosened her hold enough to pull back and study him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she looked shell-shocked, thrilled and concerned.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go to the guest room.”

He let her pull him to his feet. Taking his hand, she led him down the hallway. Wary of his blurred vision, he walked carefully, reaching out once to touch the hallway wall.

They walked into a quiet, shadowed bedroom where he eased himself down on a large bed. He stretched out with a sigh. That cutting blast of Power had been just like the first time. His body was still reacting to the adrenaline dump. All of his muscles shook with a fine tremor.

She stroked his hair. “Sebastian?”

“I’m all right,” he said. “Just, holy f**k.”

“That scared me half to death.” Her voice wobbled. “Did it hurt?”

“It happened too fast to hurt, but I have a headache now.”

“Let me get you some medicine,” she said. “Then you can rest for as long as you need.”

“Only if you lie down with me,” he told her.

“Of course.” She walked away, and a few moments later she returned with a glass of water and aspirin. He gulped both of them down, groped to put the empty glass on the nightstand and then stretched out again while she pulled off his shoes, then lay beside him.

He pulled her into his arms. Holding her felt incredible. Her body’s soft, warm weight was the essential something that he had needed for a long time, and in a few short weeks she had become his bedrock.

He pressed his lips against her forehead and murmured, “We both got a little beat up recently, didn’t we?”

A snort escaped her. “A little. But it’s all over now, thank God. Just rest.”

And so he did, turning his face into her hair and eventually drifting into a light doze. When he stirred, his headache had eased and the bedroom had grown darker.

He tensed and gripped her shoulder. “Tell me the bedroom really is darker.”

Olivia sat up. She said in a strong voice, “Yes, it really is darker. It’s evening now. Here, let me get the light.”

He put his hands at her waist, bracing her as she leaned over him to click on the bedside light. Brightness flooded the bedroom, and he squinted as he looked around.

His vision had still not cleared completely, but it wasn’t as blurry as it had been earlier. He let his gaze linger over the details in the stylish room before he turned his face up to look at Olivia, who remained draped over him.

Her gorgeous face broke into a smile as she searched his gaze.

“It’s gone,” she told him. “All of that black is really, really gone. Your eyes are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He cupped the back of her head, pulled her down to him and kissed her.

He knew, realistically, that it would take just as long to get used to the absence of the emotional weight from that curse as it would to physically recover, and he looked forward to every delicious minute of it.

She whispered against his lips, “Tell me that again when I know you’ve fully recovered your eyesight in a couple of weeks.”

“I don’t need to wait any longer,” he said. “I can see quite clearly right now.”

He could, too.

They had a wealth of time in front of them, and their future had never seemed brighter or more full of promise than it did in that moment.

He rolled her onto her back and lost himself in kissing her. The way she molded her body to align against him, the way her soft mouth felt against his, her lips, her lips were so goddamned unique.

“You know you’re mine, don’t you?” he muttered. “You have to be. You just have to be.”

“Of course I’m yours,” she whispered. She cupped his face in both hands. “Just as you are mine. I may not be Wyr, Sebastian. But you are still my mate.”

That was it. That was what he needed to hear from her. She was so wise. Her spirit would always pull at him. He swallowed hard as moisture flooded his eyes.

He pulled at her clothes, working to get her undressed, and she helped him. Then she turned her attention to his, and soon they lay together, skin to skin. Soon after that he eased inside of her, and together they shared the most necessary, most moving of all rhythms.

He cupped her breast, molding it gently as he rocked his hips against the sweet curve of her pelvis. Watching her open, tender expression as she peaked in climax was the highest privilege he had ever been granted. He lost all sense of control, all sense of a separate self, as he spilled his own climax into her welcoming body.

Yes, he took her. But he gave himself to her as well. He gave her everything he had.

And now it was time that he and Olivia started having that talk.