I give myself time to drip dry and tilt my head back to the sky. “That group of stars kind of looks like a broken wing,” I point out to Pigeon, but she’s three sheets to the wind and is currently trying—and failing—to pin down her own tail.
“I always thought it looked more like a Thais Fairy,” Ryn announces from somewhere behind me, and I jump at the sound of his voice and almost land my ass in my own puddle. I manage to grab onto the tree trunk and save myself, but it was a close fucking call.
“You need a bell,” I grumble as I pull up my pants, glaring at him over my shoulder as I move to the other side of the tree.
“You need to be more careful, two other males followed you out here,” he tells me.
I gasp dramatically. “Oh no, not two males.” Rolling my eyes, I huff out a breath. “Maybe they had to pee too, Ryn,” I defend, leaning back against the crystal trunk of the tree so my swaying body can settle before I try to make my way back to my tent.
Ryn moves closer. “Or maybe they wanted to mess with things that don’t belong to them,” he counters quietly, reaching out to capture a lock of my white hair between his fingers.
“Oh, so I’m a thing now?” I snark, batting his hand away from me. I push away from the tree trunk, shaking my head. “Doesn’t matter, call me whatever you want. I don’t belong to you,” I tell him, ducking between him and the tree.
He puts an arm out and stops my escape.
“We belong to each other, Falon,” he declares, stepping even closer to me. “That’s what happens when you’re mated.”
He brushes hair off my shoulder, and I have to stop myself from leaning into him.
I snort. “Mated?” I question. “We fucked and somehow we’re tied together, but we’re not mates, Ryn. Not in the way that word is supposed to define a relationship. There’s nothing sacred or special between us. We’re strangers, ones that don’t even like each other.”
The crystalized bark of the tree digs into my back as Ryn flattens his body against mine. My breasts are pressed tightly against his muscular chest, and his leg settles between mine. He runs his fingers down my hair, and I despise that I don’t want him to stop. I should push him away, crush his effort the same way he’s pulverized my trust. I should leave him hurt and wanting, the way he and the others have left me too many times. The only problem is...I don’t want him to leave. I want him to show me why fate has kept us locked together. I want him to prove why I shouldn’t break the bond.
My mind and body war with what I want versus what I deserve, and I’m lost to the confusion of the battle. He feels good against me. He feels right. And in a world and time where everything is so wrong and uncertain, I need this.
“We started off badly, there’s no denying that, but it doesn’t change what you are to me, Falon. I know I hurt you, but if you’ll stop running from me, I can show you how I can make it better. I can do things the way I should have done them from the beginning. I can show you why we’re right for each other. Don’t you want that?” he asks me, his lips so close that I can taste his desire. “We don’t have to be strangers if you’ll just accept me.”
Ryn’s tone is molten and pleading, and I hear a hint of sorrow laced with the heat and the hunger.
“Ryn...” I breathe out heavily, and I can’t tell if his name on my lips is an invitation or a chastisement.
I can’t get the image of him holding our severed bonds to his chest and desperately trying to reattach them. The pain in his face haunts me, but so does everything that’s happened between us. The mistrust and accusations, the fighting and betrayal.
I don’t know if it’s possible to come back from that.
His lips are on mine, and I’m opening to him before I can question what I’m doing. He kisses me and throws me off my axis, just like he has from the first moment I saw him on the balcony in the Eyrie. He cups my face and devours me, mind, body, and soul, and as much as I question coming back from all the awful things that have happened between us, I know in this moment, that there’s no coming back from this either.
As hurt as I’ve been. As lost and as broken as he’s made me feel, you can’t kiss someone with this much passion if you have no hope for more.
He can’t sear his lips and soul to mine, pour his sacred promises into my mouth, caress his passion against my own, if I don’t feel all of those things too.
I pull away from Ryn’s lips, panting and confused. His thigh rubs against my sex, and I’m practically grinding against it as the rest of me tangles around him. I don’t drop my hands from around his neck or open my eyes, because I’m not ready for this moment to be over...and it has to be over.
I can feel Ryn’s unspoken apology in his kiss, his words, and in the way that he’s holding me right now. I’m woman enough to admit that as much as I don’t want there to be anything between us, there is. But if I accept him, then I know Zeph and Treno will come too, and I’m not there.
“Ryn…I can’t…” I start, but his lips steal my words.
“You can. You just choose me like I’m choosing you, and we fight for that,” he tells me, as though it’s all that simple.
“If it
