Chapter 125: Angel and Wolf
- DEX -
The crackling fire may be out, but it doesn’t feel like it. As soon as I take Raya’s hand and lead her into the house, it feels like the fire has only changed positions. Now it’s in the air, it’s in the connection of our hands and traveling with lightning speed to every straining muscle in my body, and it’s just as dangerous as ever.
I don’t want to scare her with how much I want her. It seems like it only grows with each passing day and moment, and I’m trying to keep it tamped down. I’m trying not to seem like a sex-crazed psychopath, but once we’re to the top floor, I can’t take the molten lava that has replaced my blood, and I turn to take her beautiful mouth—growling when I do.
Raya becomes a soft, fluid wave colliding against me, and I don’t even realize that I’ve pushed her against the wall until she hits and there’s nowhere left to go. Instead, our chests press together, my hands weave into her hair, and she’s making those vulnerable, desperate sounds that make every muscle of mine harden into rigid stone.
I don’t have to ask her if this is okay—if she’s okay—because I feel it. Her body sings to mine, and the tune resonates in every cell, every movement. All I want is to invade her in every way possible.
"Dex," she rasps when my mouth trails down her neck and she arches away from the wall, offering herself.
I could come just from hearing my name roll across her tongue like that. Her voice wraps around me, encircling me, teasing the fire within my blood like a whisper of breeze that only stokes it, and in return it spirals higher toward the sky until it’s licking the stars. That idea—licking the stars—that’s how high I want to send Raya, and in the next moment, I’m pushing through the first doorway we come to uncaring as to which room it is.
I will take her in every room of this house until it’s painted and redecorated with the memories of us—until everywhere I look there is our bright, thrilling desire haunting the air. This house needs it. It was filled with so much love before, and it will be brought to life again.
Knowing now that by meeting me, Raya was possibly spared from a killer—that the accident she suffered saved her from a killer, because that’s the reason I was in her apartment at all—seems like confirmation from the universe that all of this was meant to happen.
Not that I needed confirmation. I already knew it. We both did. The way destiny is woven into every event that happened now just glitters more vibrantly to life, and it’s here now... this is the path we are meant to be on. These are the moments Raya and I are meant to share.
I lower her on the bed in the spare bedroom, stripping us of our smoke-scented clothes in fluid motions until we are both bare—her soft pale body revealed with every inch begging to be kissed and caressed and appreciated. It’s my life’s mission to explore and memorize every part of her.
"Oh god, Dex," she gasps and slaps her hands on my shoulders when I slide into the only heaven I’ve ever known—one filled with silky heat and a sensation that explodes like fireworks racking my body, filling it with light.
How the whole fucking world isn’t bowing at the feet of women and allowing them to lead, I don’t know. I would bow before Raya any day, acknowledging this divinity between her legs and begging to be forgiven... worshiping the perfection that is so evident and that I only want to be one with. I will do whatever she says, be whoever she needs, please her in every way I can until she is a quivering, beautiful mess writhing against me and casting her light all over the world to add to the rest.
"You are so fucking perfect," I growl, sliding into her and back out again as her heat folds around me, clenching so tightly I can feel her in my toes. She fits perfectly—made just for me to worship and devour.
Her eyebrows pinch and mouth falls open, hips arching as mine piston on until we find the perfect angle where our bodies are slapping against the boundary between us and her eyes are rolling back. One continuous beautiful moan slips from the depths where I’m buried within her, and she rides it, following the wave of it on the air until finally it breaks into an explosive cry. Tremors rake her body, convulsing around me and milking the steel straining to its breaking point.
"Do you see the stars, angel?" I ask without slowing, chasing her high and determined to make her fly so far off the edge of that cliff that she’s deep in the galaxy.
My thumb finds that button where all her nerve endings converge and presses and circles while I continue sinking into her heaven. The ecstatic sounds that erupt from her beautiful mouth are enough that I finally explode out into the galaxy with her, snarling as I do and feeling as if all of creation must resonate with how primal and deep that sound is.
Auraya.
I see it light up behind my eyes and feel it quiver all the way through every fiber of my being. The sacred name of my goddess. She is spread around all of me, she is entangled within me, she is me—the other half of me. The sweeter half. And I will fight to keep her, fight to protect her, fucking die for her if I need to. Without a question. She is MINE.
I collapse next to her with heavy pants, pulling her against my chest and kissing her forehead, curling around her so that she is cocooned in my body. Raya is glistening with a sheen of sweat just like I am, and it’s delicious. Her skin is salty and smoky and primal. I imagine us in a primitive time or as animals in the wild where we would recognize each other by the natural musk of our scent, and the idea brings an appreciative rumble from my chest.
I love her scent—the smell of her skin, the taste of it. I can imagine recognizing that as home and desiring only to bury myself in its shelter over and over and over again. I would build a temple to it and leave the goddess within offerings. I would stand outside as its permanent guard, incinerating anyone who dared think of entering.
Love isn’t a strong enough word. I said it before. How can I begin to explain all of this with only words? They fall tragically short.
"Dex..." she hums, her fingers playing across my chest and head nuzzled against me, but there is nothing coming after my name. Raya only wishes to whisper it, perhaps feeling something like I do.
I can’t imagine how she feels the same though, because it’s clear to me—so clear that I’ve never been more certain of anything else in my life. Raya is the one to be worshipped here, and I am the worshipper.
"That was beautiful," she whispers now, and I kiss her head in a wordless reply. I feel the same. I just don’t know how to put words to it yet. I’m going to weep again if I try.
"I did see the stars," she says softly. "I felt them. They were singing, and we were singing with them."
This time I hum and caress her—my fingers weaving into her hair and smoothing it over her back. "And I felt heaven," I tell her. "You’re the gateway."
Her chin tips up, sparkling blue eyes connecting with mine. Gazing into those depths is another gateway I could get lost in. I could stare into the infinity of her eyes forever and never come out.
"You know something?" Her voice is a beautiful smoky rasp that I want to run my hands over like a pebbly shoreline, which makes sense when her eyes are the ocean.
"What, angel?" I pinch her chin between my finger and thumb, gaze dropping to the glistening curve of her lips when she wets them and a smile emerges.
She likes her new nickname, and I like it, too. It suits her even better than princess.
"This was entirely new. It wasn’t one of the dreams, and I love it even more for that reason."
I smile back, caressing the elegant line of her neck that curves into her shoulder. There isn’t even the slightest bit of anger that ignites at the reference to the journals this time. There is no way anger can survive here when my entire being has been soaked in paradise and I’m holding heaven in my arms.
"Good, because there is plenty more where that came from." My thumb runs over her bottom lip before I follow it with a kiss. "But not tonight. Even angels need to sleep."
"That’s it," she groans, but it’s soft and teasing. "I need a nickname for you now."
"I’ll be interested to see what you come up with."
"Hmmm." She hums. "With the way you growl, it will have to be an animal."
Something about that suggestion is satisfying. A protective, hungry predator always seems to be pacing under my skin these days wishing either to punish the creeps around her or to gobble her up all for myself.
"How about wolf?" She smirks, testing the sound of it, her fingers running along the silver ring that I still have on that is in the shape of a wolf--something I picked up while I was traveling.
My lips curl into a grin that feels wicked with the way my teeth want to sink into her the moment she says it.
"I like it. But I suggest you don’t use it unless you want to get eaten."
