Chapter Thirty

Niva

We go back to the ship on the roof, and I let Graven take the captain’s chair again. I’m tired and need a reprieve. But even my exhaustion from the stress being over can’t contain my joy. After an hour of each of the council members individually thanking me, congratulating and apologizing to me, we’re alone again, finally.

“We did it!” I grab him and kiss him with all the excitement I feel. He’s mine, all mine, and no one can take him away from me anymore.

He kisses me back, fiercely holding me and resting his forehead against mine. “You did it. You are the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met. Truly. If I didn’t already love you, I’d love you all over again.”

I can’t help giggling and kissing him again, but before I can give in to him further, I leap off his chair, buckling into mine. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Where are we going?”

I realize beneath the swirls of violet love and loyalty in his emotional aura, there are traces of anxious orange. “We’re going back to the mountain retreat house, of course. You have nothing to worry about anymore.”

“Oh…that’s a relief.” A smile lights his face as he navigates the ship into the air and selects the autopilot to the mountain coordinates I tell him, but his anxiety doesn’t ease.

“It’s going to be all right,” I try to comfort him. “We have no limits this time. We can stay there alone for as long as we want and return as often or whenever we want.” I can’t believe it. The relief flows through my limbs, and I can’t help a shout of delight. After the month of being limited by duty, I have my life back. “Freedom!” I cry and can’t help throwing my hands in the air.

Graven smiles at me. “I’m so proud of you. Happy for you.”

I grasp his hand and correct him. “Happy for us!”

He kisses my hands. “Yes.” But the tentative smile he gives me is nowhere near as euphoric as it should be. We have everything we want. Complete and total freedom of our choices, and he’s still acting like there’s an omniscient cloud hanging over our heads.

“Do you want to go back to the rebellion instead?” I ask, worried he doesn’t want this.

“No, no, I can go visit them once we go back to town.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I’m just in shock.”

“Okay.” But his aura still flows with anxiety, and I don’t believe him.

We arrive at the mountain retreat complex, and all the memories from a magical two days of sex-capades comes flowing back in erotic images that have me already making plans for all the things I haven’t taught him yet.

It overtakes him, too. I’m barely out of the speeder before he grabs me around the waist and hugs me to him so hard, I fear he won’t let go until he’s inside me. It’s been too long. Too much time since I’ve had him. Not enough times that I’ve had him.

It’s going to be weeks before I’ll be ready to leave here. “Let’s go watch the sunset by the lake,” I say, already backing away from him, loving this game when he chases me.

“Sunset?” He growls and bares his teeth at me. “Niva, if you think I can keep my hands off of you long enough to watch the fucking sky, you are delusional.”

I can’t help moaning at his words and am a breath away from spreading my thighs for him right here on the landing platform. But chasing is so much fun, I refuse to let my rampant desire ruin it. “Not if you can’t catch me!”

I race down the path to the lake, the trees moving by me in a blur. Graven shouts after me, unable to keep up with my speed. He calls my name more and more aggressively each time, and I decide to slow down enough for him to reach me.

He tackles me to the sand on the shore, the lake water lapping at my toes. Though he catches his own heavy weight with his massive arms, he lands with his body pressed fully along mine. He’s right. Fuck the sunset.

I cradle his face in my hands. “Make love to me.”

“My Niva…” He yanks off his uniform, pulls my robe off, then wraps his arms beneath me and holds me. I hook my ankles around his hips, feeling his cock long and hard pressed to my navel. I arch my hot, wet pussy along his length, urging him to lift his hips to enter me.

“Don’t make me wait,” I beg.

He weighs my pelvis down, though, refusing me what I want. “I’m yours,” he whispers in my ears. “That will never change. I want you to know that.”

I pull his head back so I can look into his eyes. “I know. You’re mine. Nothing you can say will ever make me let you go.”

“That’s good,” he sighs. “And I want to be clear, that means there will never be anyone else for me. Just you, Niva. You’re all that exists for me.” He buries his fingers in my hair and whispers against my lips, “Gods, how I love you. I don’t care how many lovers you choose when we go back. You can have all of them you want. Just know—”

“Whoa!” I jerk back from him. “What are you talking about?”

“You told the council that if you chose to—”

“Oh shit.” I pull away from him, realizing I forgot to clarify for him what I told them. “I didn’t say it to the council, but what I meant was if we choose. I wouldn’t bring someone else into our relationship unless you wanted it, too. We’ll have the choice now. That’s the point.”

He sits back and stares at me. “I can choose?”

“Yes!”

“But you will want someone else?”

“Not if you don’t.”

His brows scrunch. “I don’t understand. That means you will want someone else, too.”

“But it would be a joint decision.”

His mouth drops open and closed, not knowing what to say. “You mean…?”

“Didn’t the translator tell you what I told the council? I want monogamous with you.”

A smile quirks at his mouth. “The translator left that out.”

I sigh with frustration. “Well, that explains it.”

“So…” He clears his throat and says slowly, “Let me just make sure we understand each other. You want a monogamous relationship with me?”

“Yes, monogamous with you.”

“Monogamy? As in only me and no one else?”

“Your language drives me nuts! Which is the correct one, monogamous or monogamy?”

He chuckles and moves closer to me. “Both.”

“Well…” I sputter. “Fuck words. You’re mine.” I tackle him, and he lets me, falling into the sand on his back. “I’m yours.” I grab his cock and sink onto him, so swollen and ready and desperate, he slides inside me, slick and full.

I gasp in relief at having him inside me after too long. I rest my palms on his chest. “Never doubt it again.” I flood him with my power, through my hands on his chest, around his cock. I orgasm and clench onto him with my pussy claws, owning his cock until he’s bucking under me and coming inside me and screaming my name so loud it echoes across the lake.

My orgasm barely subsides. The moment my inner claws let him go, he slams me onto my back and starts pounding me with his hips, driving me into the sand.

“Mine…mine…mine…” he breathes on a litany with each mad thrust.

I’m a little afraid for him. His whole face clenches, his eyes shut tight, so he can’t even see me, as though he’s beyond desperate to know, for me to know, I’m his.

I can’t stand to see him in such torture. I pull his chest down to cover mine and wrap my arms around his neck and soothe him with fingers in his hair. “Shh, it’s all right. It will be as true tomorrow and the day after and the day after as it is now. You have all the time in the world.”

“Oh gods, Niva.” He shudders in my arms and loses himself inside me again, moaning pained sounds as though to orgasm inside me is hardly enough. “I want to own you. More than I have ever wanted or needed anything in my life. You’re air to me.”

He lifts me up and cradles me against his chest, kneeling with my legs tight around his hips, his hard cock still buried to the hilt inside me, as though he couldn’t bear to withdraw from me.

“You have me,” I whisper to him, wondering if there is anything I can say that will ease him. Perhaps there isn’t. Perhaps all I can do is hold him and be here for him to make love to in every moment he needs—how I want that…

“I’m yours. I belong to you,” I murmur in his ear.

He buries his face in my neck and inhales against my skin. “Will you say the other thing?”

“What other thing?”

“Maybe it’s not true, I don’t know, but I want to hear you say it. If it’s possibly true, please.” His voice is so desperate, so vulnerable, I’m pained for him and will say anything he needs. If only I knew what it was.

“Graven…I…what do you mean?”

He gives an ironic laugh and pulls back and caresses my cheek. “Master of emotions who’s taught me to feel…can’t you think of anything I might still need you to say?”

I clasp my hands to my mouth. “Oh gods…” I still haven’t said it. “Poor Graven. I’m so sorry to make you suffer. You know it’s true.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t need to hear it.”

I inhale, trying, wishing, hoping I can say it in a way he will believe me and know without a doubt… “I love you.”

His whole body shudders, and his voice comes out ragged. “Again.”

I kiss his forehead. “I love you.” And his nose and his cheeks and lips; every press of my mouth I say it again.

He finally breaks out in the smile I’d hoped to see from the time we left the council. “And I love you.” His hold on me finally relaxes, as though he now has enough confidence in my feelings and so can let me go, for a moment.

“I’m still your teacher, though,” I say with a suggestive arch to my brows.

He laughs. “I’m still a student, am I?”

I crawl off his lap. “Mmm-hmm, so much for you to learn.” I back toward the water, gliding into the lake, going deeper. “For instance, water sex—you still have yet to experience it.”

“I like this lesson,” he prowls toward me. “And I will give you a head start.”

I dive into the water, laughing, knowing he will always catch me.

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