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She felt like a fish thrashing in the mesh of a net.
As she flailed instinctively to tear herself from the bed, Varkas pressed her gently down, cupping both her cheeks in his hands.
“Shh… It’s all right.”
His warm breath washed over her damp eyelids. Her frozen limbs melted all at once, though her mind stayed coiled with tension.
She jerked her head aside and wrenched her upper body out from beneath the duvet.
“The moon… hide it.”
She thrust an arm toward the window like a drowning woman reaching for the shore, but firm, long fingers tangled in her hair. Her head was tilted back, and searing heat clamped over her lips.
Every coherent thought vanished. Nothing remained but the friction of their tongues twined like flickers of flame. Talia threw her arms around his shoulders, breathing in gasps of feverish air.
“Lift your hips.”
Following his command without thought, she let him draw down the hem of her sheer dress.
Slick with sweat, their bodies grazed against each other in the suffocating heat trapped beneath the duvet.
Was this what it felt like to sink into a boiling bog? It seemed as if every bone and muscle inside her were turning to liquid.
Talia let out a ragged sob, rubbing her yielding flesh against his hard, unyielding frame.
Then she felt the fabric bunched at her waist roll past her hips.
The moment that final barrier slipped away, her mind—softening like heated wax—recoiled with sharp alarm.
She parted her legs wide, terrified that her bandaged thigh might brush his skin. She craned her neck to see if her legs were bare to the air outside the duvet, but Varkas gripped her chin and forced her to face him.
“Keep your eyes on me.”
Blue eyes steeped in moonlight filled her vision.
Talia forgot to draw breath, caught by the silver splinters shimmering in his irises. Bluish ash-blond strands brushed softly against her brow.
While she stared into his face as if bound by a spell, his scorching hand traced down her body, his gaze never drifting from her eyes.
The mortification of knowing how closely he watched her made her squeeze her eyelids shut.
It was a mistake. Without her sight, the decadent slip of his touch between her thighs became unbearably sharp.
She dared not open her eyes as she endured the wave of sensation, but his humid sigh dampened the hollow of her ear.
“Open your eyes, Talia.”
His quiet voice cut like a blade.
In that instant, she understood: he meant to gouge out and claim the last fragment of her heart.
What would be left of her when everything had been stripped away?
“Look at me.”
Pressed beyond endurance by his relentless urge, she parted her lashes.
At that exact second, he drove deep inside her.
Talia clutched his pale, hard-carved shoulders. Her neck arched backward under the crushing fulness in her womb.
He bore down with his full weight, brushing away the tears at the corners of her eyes with his thumb. Then he stared obsessively into her hazy pupils, a gaze that seemed bent on excavating the deepest corners of her soul.
A sharp vertigo tore through her vision. Yet he would not let her turn away.
Cradling her head firmly, Varkas moved his hips in slow, deliberate strokes. It felt as if her trapped body would split and bruise like overripe fruit.
Talia stammered frantic pleas without knowing what she begged for.
Their drenched bodies gave off thick steam in the furnace of the bed. Her very mind seemed on the verge of evaporating.
“Varkas…”
Moans that tore like sobs broke incessantly from her throat.
The creaking frame, the wet friction of their skin, and the hammering of her chest that felt ready to burst all blurred into the air.
She was losing her mind. Mind, body—everything was coming undone. And Varkas watched every piece crumble.
Over her burning cheeks and wet lashes, over her parted, panting lips and shattered eyes, his keen, piercing gaze beat down.
Unable to bear it a moment longer, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his smooth shoulder.
She heard the grate of his teeth beside her ear, and then he drove in ruthlessly, crushing her inner depths.
Her fingertips dug into the contours of his pale, taut back that gleamed in the moonlight. Her nails, trimmed short so they would not cut him, skittered uselessly over his slick skin.
Harsh, broken breaths washed across the crown of her head.
How long she clung to that fraying thread of consciousness, she could not tell. The measured, steady rhythm suddenly quickened into a desperate, merciless haste.
Startled by the wild surge, Talia clamped down with her teeth against the crook of his neck. At the same moment, a violent rupture tore through her insides.
Her entire body shuddered, clamping tightly around him as tears flooded down her cheeks and throat.
She felt warm fingers stroke her wet cheek. It was a caress that felt as if his bare hand were closing over her exposed heart.
Swept under by a strange vertigo, Talia shut her eyes. Sometime after that, she must have slipped out of consciousness.
Tossing fitfully against the stifling heat, Talia woke to a heavy arm banded across her waist.
The bedchamber, bathed in pale blue light, drifted into her blurred gaze. She blinked blankly, then started as the radiant heat at her back registered. Varkas lay deeply asleep, his cheek pressed into the pillow.
She shifted carefully onto her hands and sat up, looking down at him.
The thin moonlight slid over his sharp cheekbones, catching on the dark bite marks scoring his neck.
Her fingers reached out instinctively to touch them, only to pull back. She did not want to disturb his rare, undisturbed rest.
Talia quietly slipped her feet off the bed. The moonlight was clear enough to make out shapes in the room.
Finding her crumpled dress tangled at the foot of the bed, she pulled it on over her head.
As she smoothed down the wrinkled hem and lifted her chin, she saw the full moon hanging in the black sky through the wide arched glass. The silver brilliance pouring through was almost blinding.
“Don’t go.”
Standing spellbound beneath the night sky, she felt warmth steal up behind her.
A sharp shiver broke across her skin.
Drawing the cool duvet around her as he took her into his arms, Varkas rested his cheek against her temple.
“Just stay here tonight.”
She closed her eyes.
She knew she ought to pull away. But she could no longer recall why she had to.
From the very first moment she had known him, she had hungered for this embrace. She had wanted him to hold her close and never let her go.
Why, then, had she fought her own desires so bitterly?
Helplessly trembling, Talia finally lowered her head.
“…All right.”
“Tomorrow as well.”
“…Yes.”
“And the day after that.”
Nodding like a woman possessed, she let him guide her back to the bed.
His warm arms closed firmly around her chilled frame. After a brief hesitation, Talia laid her hand against his waist.
A quiet shadow of satisfaction seemed to pass over his usually impassive face. Talia watched him a moment longer, then buried her forehead against the breadth of his chest.
The season of winds was drawing to an end.
Leafing through dispatches in his study, Varkas turned his head as a chill draft grazed his cheek.
Beyond the open sash stretched an ache-inducing expanse of clear blue sky. As his eyes were drawn outward, a stray gust scattered the loose papers on his desk.
Clicking his tongue in annoyance, he set a brass weight atop the parchment, rose, and shut the window.
Through the clear glass, a shimmer of gold caught his eye.
Varkas cast his gaze downward. Wrapped in the newly finished white cloak, Talia was strolling along the garden path beside her nanny.
Each time the bitter wind struck her flushed face, her golden hair spread wide like the wings of a bird.
He narrowed his eyes, tracking her every step. The sight of her wearing the pelt of a beast he had hunted with his own hands brought a strange fullness to his chest. Though he had gone without food all morning, he felt sated.
Yet it was not long before displeasure crept in.
For days she had been visibly lethargic. Had she not woken at dawn with a low fever, setting his nerves on edge?
END