Chapter Twenty-Six

Niva

I walk more slowly through the jungle than I ever knew I could move.

There’s no reason to hurry. Every step takes me farther away from him. Every minute I spend in this jungle lets me know how much I’ll miss him.

It’s painful, but at least in the pain I still feel that I’m with him.

I don’t want the feeling to go away. I don’t want it to stop. If it did, it would mean I lost him. It would mean I might forget him. I can’t ever do that. Not as long as I live.

As miserable as I am, I’m happy for him. I meant what I said: he deserves to be with the rebellion. He should have people. He needs to experience that. He should be with them.

But it doesn’t mean I don’t envy them. In a way, I hate them. They get to have him while I have to leave him.

Not that he ever was mine.

What am I saying?

I’m Fellamana. My obligation is to all my people. I am a healer. No one will ever be mine. I’m incapable of that.

I have to go back to my people. I am a sex goddess. That’s what my biology, my DNA, has created me to be. I might have had Graven for a little while longer. I might bemoan losing him before I was ready to be done with him, but eventually I would’ve tired of him.

Best to end it before that happened. Now I can always remember him with fondness.

Fondness…

Ouch.

What a joke. I’ll remember him for the rest of my life with pain and pleasure, a mixture of the most powerful of emotions I’m capable of in my Fellamana way.

I almost wish I were human, that I didn’t have these responsibilities, that I could run back there and swear myself to him, that I could declare him mine for a lifetime. What would that be like?

Beautiful.

I used to think that…monogamy? Yes, that’s the word—monogamy was this torturous thing. But no. It’s a gift, a powerful pleasure for those who want it. Something to be cherished and safeguarded, held in as high of esteem as polyamory. Not demeaned with lesser value.

I cannot judge my cousin Koviye any longer. I understand…

Wait…

If Koviye could do it…but I can’t. He could leave because I was here to replace him. There’s no one here to replace me now. It could be years before there is someone.

I stop in the bushes beneath the canopy of trees, the light of my power flooding the space around me. A phantom voice sounds in my head.

I squint my eyes closed to keep the tears away.

“Niva!” the voice calls. It’s Graven’s voice in my head.

Gods, if I could keep him, have him all to myself, if I were free to devote myself entirely to him, I would.

“Niva!” his voice comes again, this time distinctly behind me, growing closer, louder.

I turn toward it, knowing he’s not really there and it’s merely inside my own mind. But I can pretend. I can imagine him running after me. I can dream that he feels the same about me even though I know he doesn’t.

But this time I see a person in the dark, someone moving along with the voice. “Niva, wait!” he calls.

I move toward him. “Graven, is that you?” My pulse stutters then races. Oh gods, please let it be him.

“Niva, don’t go. Please. I have to tell you something.” He rushes toward me, stumbling over branches and bushes in the dark. He enters the circle of my light, and the sight of him brings such a relief to my whole body, I sigh with pleasure and longing.

“Graven, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be with the rebels.”

“I don’t care.” He sees me, gets close enough to see my face, and stops. “I had to see you again. You left before…well, before I figured out…that is…” He scrubs a nervous hand through his hair. “Oh fuck…”

I smile at his usual adorable awkwardness. He stopped too far away so I move closer. “What did you want to tell me?” Please, oh please gods, let it be what I hope he wants to say.

“Niva…” He stares at me, his eyes so full and overflowing with deep affection and…and…is it what I think he’s feeling? His emotions are still a riot of too many colors for me to decipher. “Niva…I…”

“Yes…?”

His jaw hangs open, and he loses words.

I take another step closer. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can tell me.” I swallow and rephrase. “Please tell me. I want to know.”

“I love you,” he shouts, too loud and too fast, it comes out harsh and almost angry. “I mean. Phew, I’m bad at this. Just…give me a second to calm down.”

I bite my lip and smile, trying not to cry with happiness, wanting to give him time to say it the way he wants to, the way I need him to.

I take another step closer, and he reaches for my hand. I put mine in his palm, and he cradles it and strokes my fingers with delicate caresses.

Not looking at me, just staring at my hand, he murmurs gently, “I didn’t think I could, but I knew I couldn’t stop or go on if I didn’t say it. It’s true…” He meets my eyes and beseeches me. “I love you, Niva. You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to say anything. I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, and I’m sorry for chasing you down like this, but I needed to say it. I thought I’d die if I couldn’t tell you, so I…”

It’s my turn to be speechless. My words clog in my throat.

He mumbles on. “It was selfish, and I shouldn’t have bothered you, but I just…I just love you.” He takes a hard breath, kisses my hand delicately, reverently, then lets go. “I’ll go now. Thanks for listening. I just…yeah…okay, bye.”

He turns to leave as though I’d let him go, as though I could bear to see him leave me, as though hearing him say he loves me means nothing to me.

“Graven, you can’t just walk away from me,” I shout after him. “Don’t I get to say something, too?”

He looks back and cringes. “If it’s that you don’t feel the same way or can’t or you’re Fellamana so it’s not possible for you or…yeah…maybe you could just not tell me? Spare me the misery? Please?”

“Can I tell you maybe? Can I say, I might love you? That it’s possible, and I don’t know?” Gods, what am I saying? I have to go home. I’m supposed to go home. They need me at home. My heart is supposed to be dedicated to my people and my family. I can’t be in love with a human!

He runs back to me. “Yes. Yes, you can say that.” He reaches for me, but then stops himself. “Can I…”

I shake my head at him. “Have you learned nothing from me?”

He clenches his fists as though trying to keep from touching me. “I don’t…what are you saying?”

I grab his arms and pull him against me. I shouldn’t. I should leave him. But just one more time can’t hurt. Maybe one more time will be enough. “If you don’t make love to me right now, Graven, I haven’t managed to teach you anything.”

“Oh, thank gods!” He cups my cheeks and kisses me, his lips a fierce passion of heat and lust. I sigh in absolute bliss into his hands, against his mouth, his glorious, addictive sensitive lips the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

“Sweet heaven…” he murmurs and slows himself down. “Do we have time? Can I savor you?”

“You have until dawn.” I glance at the moon still high in the sky.

“Not long enough,” he mutters. “But it will do.” He feathers kisses across my brow, over my eyes. He strokes my cheeks until I fear I’m igniting in flames.

I didn’t know my face could be an arousal zone, but it heats me from the chest down to my core. So deep, to the marrow of my bones. He kisses along my jaw and down my throat, every caress of his mouth and lick of his tongue a tender expression of his growing feelings for me.

He’s so expressive in every touch. If I could’ve doubted whether he truly loved me, I can’t doubt it from his loving of my skin like a mirror of his words.

I lean against him, craving his hot, strong body. I climb him, wrapping my limbs around him, cradling him against me, hugging him. He runs his hands up and down my back over my robe, but he doesn’t squeeze me more than necessary to support me.

The lack of pressure in his embrace makes me remember—I still haven’t fully healed him. He has no feeling in his skin beyond his face and hands and cock.

“Oh, Graven…” I kiss his face, wanting him to know how I feel about him. “There has to be a way I can heal the rest of your body.”

“Niva…” He nips and licks my ear. “I don’t care about that. I just want to love you.”

“But I care.” I rest in the strength of his hands holding me up and press my hands over his heart. “Maybe it’s here. Maybe it’s not just me who can heal you. Maybe you can heal yourself from the inside.” His emotions are flowing so freely now, and there’s a new fire to those emotions, pulsing with a blinding strength.

He presses a tender kiss to my forehead. “You have lots of great ideas, love, but that isn’t one of them.”

“But it could work!”

“No, it won’t.” He looks around behind me, using the circle of my body’s light to see in the darkness. “There’s a good spot.” He finds a large flat rock that’s bedded with soft green mosses.

It’s a perfect sex rock, and I’m certain it has been used many, many times. Perhaps it was even placed there by a Fellamana for just such a purpose many years ago.

Graven rests me on the rock, trails his hands up my arms, and slides my robe from my shoulders. “So beautiful,” he murmurs, dotting my shoulders and chest with kisses. “I would do this forever,” he breathes, “if they’d let me.”

I pull his uniform off him, wanting him naked, yes, wanting to feel him, oh yes, but also…I want to see if my new theory will work.

“Show me how you love me,” I whisper. “Make me feel it.”

His eyes widen with gratitude as though I’ve just told him what he wants to hear most in the world. He worships me with his hands and his mouth, tenderly using his lips and tongue, tracing up and down my limbs. It’s ecstatic how he makes me feel.

But I try not to lose myself to him, I hold on to my goal: for him to heal himself with his love for me.

He sinks to his knees and kisses up my thigh, but I pull him back up and wrap my hand around his gloriously hard cock.

“I want you to love me with this.” I send a bolt of power from my hand into his cock, and then place my other hand over his heart. “And with this.” I press another surge of power into his chest, until the two meet inside him, his body lighting up from his heart to his groin.

He seethes through his teeth, and his cock pulses in my hand. “Oh gods, Niva… Don’t make me come yet.”

“I won’t. Yet.” I guide his cock to my pussy and feed him inside me. Gods, he’s so big. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the size of him. I don’t want to. That stretch is exquisite, filling me.

“Niva…,” he gasps and his arms and abs tighten so I fear he’ll come just entering me.

“Shh, shh,” I calm him, forgetting he’s still so new to this. He’s been having sex for only three days. “Go easy.”

He slides into me slowly, gritting his teeth, but his hands grip me, digging into my thighs. When his hips meet mine, I wrap my arms around him, sealing my chest to his, determined that somehow, we’re both going to heal him this time.

“No one’s ever loved me with sex before,” I confess to him. “You ready to be my first?”

He moans a delightful sound and lowers his mouth to mine. “Yes.”

His hips jerk against me, and he starts to thrust as though he can no longer help himself. “I’ll give you everything you need.” But he loses himself; his ability to speak disappears in the tide of his groans and heavy breathing as he makes love to me with that big cock driving in and out of me.

I almost lose myself, too. Fuck, he feels good.

But no, I have a purpose. I can’t give myself over to what he makes me feel, yet.

I grab his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “Tell me.”

He pants and shakes, his mind and body overtaken with lust. “I…nnn…” is all he can moan.

“Say it,” I demand, trying to hold off the orgasm that’s threatening to overtake me.

“Say…whuh…?” He clings to me and presses his forehead to mine, sweat dotting his working body.

“Say you love me,” I prompt, and start to filter small traces of power from my hands into his back.

“Love you…” He moans and kisses me, breathing the words in my mouth as he powers into me with his cock. “Love you, Niva. I…love…you!”

He starts to go off, but as he does, I feel something different from him. A heat comes not just from his cock coming inside me, but from his chest. I prod with a tightly controlled beam of power at the heat in the center of his chest… and break it free.

“NIVA!” he cries, and a burst of light comes from inside him. He hugs me harder than he ever has, his whole body wrapped around me, his chest rubbing against mine as his hips jerk inside me.

Satisfied that I’ve done my work, that he’s feeling more of me against him, in his arms, his whole body sensing me for the first time, I smile, then give in to my own body’s demands and come around him…wishing with every fiber of my being that I didn’t have to leave him.