All the while, she was sinking back into sleep.
Urgency spurred him to lay her gently on the bed and smooth away the tangled hair from her forehead. Her lids fluttered open, revealing unfocused eyes that drifted aimlessly.
“…Did we come to your bedchamber?”
Gazing in bewilderment around the room where faint lamplight trembled, she slowly propped herself up.
He eased her back against the cool sheets. Yielding to an impulse he had held back ever since finding her at the spring, he thrust his tongue into the warm, damp heat of her mouth.
Startled by his rough, starved invasion, she shrank away for an instant before looping her arms around his neck. A shiver coursed down his spine at her soft embrace, and he deepened the kiss, eagerly claiming the tender flesh inside.
The sweet moan caught in her throat dampened his lips. Gripping her small chin, he pressed deeper still.
When he grazed the sensitive roof of her mouth, her head tilted back. Cradling her slender, fragile neck in one hand, he felt the heavy rhythm of her pulse beneath his thumb.
The ragged tremors shivering through his palm set his blood on fire.
“Varkas… I can’t breathe.”
Pushed to her limit, Talia thudded a small fist against his shoulder.
Reluctantly lifting his head, Varkas lingered on her swollen, flushed lips before meeting her eyes, in which the lamplight flickered. Even in the gloom, her vivid blue gaze shone with tears.
A pang struck his chest, cold and piercing like a blade. In the past, he would have mistaken it for hostility. Now, he began to understand the true nature of the raw, intense sensation she stirred within him.
Lowering his weight over her, he pressed his slick mouth to her warm cheek.
He nuzzled her soft skin and lightly caught her delicate earlobe between his teeth, making her slender frame shudder.
“Don’t… It feels strange.”
“How does it feel strange?”
As he traced the line of her spine in soothing strokes and brushed light kisses over her eyelids, she blinked in flustered surprise, then hooked her arm around his neck to drag him down. Tilting her chin, she bit his earlobe. A sharp, electric shock ripped clean through the back of his mind.
Clenching his jaw, he bowed his head, fighting not to let an unseemly groan slip out.
Like a teasing child playing a wicked trick, she nibbled his ear and whispered hot breath into it.
“It feels truly strange, doesn’t it?”
A quiet giggle slipped from her lips.
Holding his breath, every cord of muscle coiled tight, Varkas drew back and glared down at her. He caught a fistful of her hair, tugged her close, and captured the mischievous smile on her mouth. In the quiet room, the wet, parted sounds of their kiss broke the silence.
Parched like a man crazed with thirst, he tasted every corner of her mouth. He tangled his tongue with hers, drinking her down, and when he grazed the tender walls of her cheek, she let out an aching gasp, her fingers clutching frantically at his hair.
Intoxicated by her desperate touch, he tugged at his shirt, tearing away the suffocating cloth. The cool night air met his feverish skin, yet it did nothing to quench the fire burning beneath.
He cast the shirt to the floor beside the bed and gathered her pliant, lithe frame beneath him. Scattering kisses along her jaw, he traced the delicate knobs of her spine through the thin linen of her nightgown.
He yearned to strip her bare as well, but he knew that if he did, he would lose all restraint.
Trailing wet kisses down the sensitive curve of her throat, he nipped lightly at her collarbone. A shudder ran through Talia, and she pulled his head toward her breast.
He squeezed his eyes shut, caught in the most exquisite torment he had ever known.
“Talia.”
Breathing in the sweet, delicate fragrance rising from her skin, he wound his arms around her slender waist.
By now, sweat slicked his skin. The arousal coiling in his gut felt on the verge of tearing him apart. The faint embers of reason warned him to pull back, but he could not bring himself to let her go.
“Kiss me again.”
Just as he was struggling to rein in his racing pulse, her breathy whisper broke over him.
After a sharp, inward struggle, he yielded to her command. Angling his head, he pushed deep into her mouth again, their lips parting and meeting in a slick, breathless friction that mimicked the act itself.
He drank in every tremor of her mouth, straining with all his might to keep his fevered body from pressing into hers.
How much time had slipped away? Relentlessly overwhelmed by the heat of his mouth, Talia suddenly went rigid, then melted into complete limpness.
He gazed down at her through ragged breaths. Her unfocused eyes drifted into the shadows.
His gaze traveled from her dazed, flushed face to the pale throat, the slick hollow of her collarbone, and the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
The sharp, piercing ache in his chest returned, sharper than before. Clinging to composure, he brushed the damp strands of hair from her neck with a trembling hand.
Catching her breath, Talia stared up at him with a questioning look.
“Why…?”
She was asking why he stopped short.
Varkas avoided the question and drew the coverlet over her shoulders.
“You are weary. Sleep now.”
“…It is only the draught. It will pass soon.”
With that, she wrapped her arms around his back, her fingertips tracing the firm contours of his muscle.
Gently catching her hand, he brought it to his mouth. When he brushed soft kisses against each of her pale knuckles, her pout softened into a bashful, lowered glance. He pressed tender kisses to her flushed cheeks and pulled her yielding, relaxed body tight against his chest.
Slipping an arm under her head, he stroked her tousled hair until the steady rhythm of her breathing filled the quiet.
Varkas watched her peaceful face bathed in the dying candlelight for a long time. It still felt as though something had been carved out from deep within him, yet strangely, his heart felt full—intoxicated, as though he had drunk strong spirits to excess.
He drew her closer. Her thighs, veiled only in thin linen, rested against his legs. Every inch of skin that brushed hers burned like fire, but he had no will to pull away.
Burying his face in her hair, he drank in her sweet scent.
Was this what it felt like to drown in a swamp of belladonna?
Though the tight ache remained low in his belly, the soft warmth in his arms gradually lulled his mind. Holding her fast, he slowly sank into the dark tide of sleep.
He walked through a barren wasteland.
Before him rose an altar stacked with human skulls.
Looking up, he saw countless headless corpses suspended in the air. Blood poured in torrents from severed necks, saturating the earth and carving a river of red.
“This is the sin flowing in your blood.”
A cold hand gripped his shoulder. Turning, he met his father’s face, pale and waxy in death.
The hollow, blood-red voids of his eye sockets bored into him as the dead man repeated:
“Our house must atone. We must repay the slaughter of our ancestors with endless loyalty to the Empire.”
He tore himself violently from the grip.
At once, the severed hand twisted into heavy iron chains, coiling tight around his frame. He struggled to break free, but the ice-cold weight cinched closer, choking the life from him.
“Why do you fight it?”
A gentle, melodious voice whispered in the dark.
He raised his eyes and saw Bernadette smiling serenely down at him.
The hand that had once dragged him from the brink of the grave reached out to cup his frozen cheek.
“Was life not meaningless to you? If it is merely a matter of existing… it hardly matters if you spend it fulfilling your promise to me.”
Whispering softly, she wrapped her arms around his neck in a tender embrace. But her snow-white flesh hardened into freezing chains, bearing heavily on his shoulders.
He stopped struggling.
An instant later, the river of blood swept over his head. The thick, metallic liquid rushed into his lungs and throat, pulling him down into the black depths.
Someone was violently shaking his shoulder.
Varkas wrenched his eyes open, wincing against the harsh morning light stinging his vision.
As the blur faded, a pale, terrified face swam into focus.
He blinked in a stupor, unable to comprehend his surroundings, until he caught the tears brimming in her eyes and bolted upright.
“What is the matter? Are you un—”
“You were not breathing.”
Her voice trembled with terror. He froze, then let out a low, ragged breath.
END