Chapter 431: Here to Protect Your Heart
Zagan’s jaw feathered with the desire to argue that he should not be trusting himself. But instead, he trailed his hand lower on Penelope’s stomach, feeling the warmth of her shiver beneath him and the way his own body reacted to it, wanting to bring more of that out of her.
Right now, the sweet rush of her emotions and her vitality was everywhere within him—filling up every cell. He had drank her blood and would likely end up regretting it, but right now he couldn’t bring himself to. He was drunk on her, and yet his thirst wasn’t finished.
"Will you... correct me if I do something wrong?" He asked, playing with the hair that was sprawled out around her onto the white sheets of the bed.
She nodded, trailing a hand up his arm as she did. Everything about her felt so familiar, like he had been here with her before. The soft, reassuring feel of her skin gliding along his and the way her eyes silently spoke to him, risking every vulnerability under his own gaze and his own touch... it was reminiscent of something that had been locked inside of him for centuries.
"Yes, I will tell you," Penelope assured him, a soft breathy quality to her voice that spoke of her desire and desperation to have him figure this out quickly.
When he continued drawing invisible circles on her stomach, she took his hand and guided it down to the source of where she was aching for him.
"Please," she whimpered, her eyes squeezed shut as her fingers curled over his and her hips rose up, seeking to align with any part of him that would enter her and help stop this maddening ache. "Right there," she gasped, guiding his fingers inside.
"You are so warm," his bottom lip dropped open feeling this even softer part of her. She was living and fragile and delicate everywhere, but this was different. This was the true source of her vulnerability, he could tell, and yet she was allowing him entry—moving against him and urging him deeper.
"You are warm, too," she replied breathlessly, finding his stunned gaze absorbed in her reactions.
"I stole my warmth from you," he replied with a crooked grin, moving his fingers now to mimic the way she had guided him as he watched her hand fist the sheets on the bed next to her.
"You didn’t steal it. I gave it to you," she breathed, opening herself wider as his hand splayed, urging those fingers further to explore what mysterious depths she hid that were the key to unlocking this coiled beast within both of them.
Something about those words and the way she was offering herself now, trusting him with the most vulnerable part of her that was blooming in his hand, was what cut the final tether holding him back, and he came alive all at once.
The tail of that coiled serpent lashed him one final time, and he groaned with the freedom of its release. And then his movements became easy and fluid as he realized what was needed of him, as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes at last.
He bent down to taste the salt of her skin before rising to position himself between her legs that were open, waiting for him like the unlocked gates of a threshold toward being—toward life. She was the key—she was the answer to the question he had been asking for hundreds of years. She was the purpose of this whole search, and the realization lit in the air around him, the mysteries that had plagued him falling to the ground like a complicated math formula that was no longer needed because she was the answer to it. She had been the answer all along.
"Zagan," she pulled herself up to find his mouth, to take his mouth in her own, clawing at his arms that braced himself on either side of her as he stayed poised at her entrance, teasing her with the hovering promise of what she truly wanted from him. She wanted the one thing he had never given anyone—the one thing he had never even considered wanting to give. But now it was all hers. It was always meant to be hers.
She waited, her eyes deepening, pleading, offering and devouring as he gazed back at her with all of the knowledge he had been seeking revealing itself for him there in her glistening brown irises.
"Are you ready?" He asked in a gruff whisper, running a thumb over her trembling lips before dipping it in to that other delicious entrance that was a warm portal to being, letting out a shaky breath when her mouth closed around it—teeth grazing the thumb when he pulled it back out.
"Yes," she breathed, bracing herself on the solid arms of his that were tensed on either side of her. "Yes, I am ready Zagan."
His name—on her lips, it set alight a fire that ran the length of him, and then he urged himself forward, finding her welcoming warmth with the virgin head of his cock and easing into her as the rest of the veil hindering him from life fell away. She was unsheathing the pulse of him that had existed within all this while—the unfeeling skin of his former self dropping in layers as he became new and raw and vulnerable in that united space between them.
"Penelope," he shuddered, plunging into her the rest of the way now, wanting desperately to touch the furthest depth of her with the most sensitive and vulnerable part of himself.
He was powerful now in a new way. He was powerful because she allowed him to be, and yet the bareness that he felt now made him also want to sob like a newborn baby.
"Oh Goddess, Zagan yes," she cried, fingers curling into his arms as he suddenly seemed to know exactly what to do—engaging in that sacred slide, finding her and losing her and finding her again, building up to the promised cascade of sensation as the muscles in his abdomen tensed and released, a gift for her eyes alone. No one had ever seen him like this. No one had ever felt him like this.
She watched as the ecstasy of this union painted itself on his face, his eyebrows cleaving, mouth dropped open, lips trembling before he noticed the depth of her eyes and bent to kiss her. And then when he tasted her there again, their tongues entangling in another warm slide that twinned the one below, he didn’t let go. One hand behind her head, the other behind her thigh, he kissed her like he had been doing it all his life—like she was the very source of the air, like he needed her to survive.
And then the dark abyss inside of his chest rumbled open, releasing a thunderous knock that stole his breath and had him freezing in her arms. He was inside of her, surrounded by the comfort of her warmth when the knock came again, and he sucked in a surprised breath, his eyes going wide as they stared back into hers.
"Goddess, is that..." she breathed beneath him, feeling the thunderous echo in his chest resonate against her own.
Zagan’s lips trembled, his eyes glistening with moisture when the knock came again and he felt as if the whole universe were tilting on its axis as a result. He squeezed his eyes shut, lifting his chest off of hers to brace against the blows that were speeding up now inside of him. This was it—he was going to get sick now like the last time he drank her blood.
"Don’t stop, Zagan. Stay with me," she spoke beneath him, running her hands over his face to try bringing his attention back to her and locking her ankles behind his back to keep him from leaving in a panic. "This is meant to happen. I can feel it. Trust me."
His long dark eyelashes fluttered open, and she saw his desire to trust her bright and hopeful competing with a growing terror that was threatening to overthrow it. "My heart... I-I have a heart," he choked, one of his hands grasping at the skin over that now thunderous part of his chest.
"I know. I can feel it," she said, placing her hand over his. "I can feel it like it’s my own. Its pulse is moving through me like it’s my own. I feel it—I feel you—everywhere," she breathed, her own chest heaving with the truth of it.
He stared at her, not knowing what to do now. There was a mad fluttering inside of him, the newborn wings of his heart spreading out across his chest and lashing him with every beat. How many animals existed inside of him waiting for Penelope to come and free them? It would seem he was not one being but a multitude.
Penelope watched as the terror started to gradually spread and consume the hope in Zagan’s eyes, and she urged him to give way and let her take over. His questioning gaze found her again, but he obeyed, rolling onto his back with a hand over his chest as Penelope climbed on top of him. Holding his gaze and reassuring him with the confidence and power of her own, she sank down onto him, causing them both to gasp when she did.
"Does it hurt?" She asked, settling him into the warm comfort of her shelter and wiggling a bit, a smile blooming on her face when he gasped and dropped his head back, one hand finding the soft flesh of her leg to caress.
"It is overwhelming," he said gruffly, lifting his chin to watch as she began lifting herself away from him before returning—this incessant tease of her departure that was terrifying and tantalizing at the same time. "Don’t leave, please," he heard himself say in a voice that was so vulnerable and pleading, he wasn’t sure that it was indeed his own.
His fingers curled softly into her thigh, urging her back every time she lifted as if she would leave him, but she kept returning. She kept returning, and it was better every time she did—the sensations of her surrounding him growing larger and richer as her pace increased and their skin found a rhythm to slap against each other, crashing in time with the fluttering of his heart until he thought he would burst. And then... and then he did.
Penelope threw her head back as she reached that climax with him, the rainbows from the lotus spilling across her face as the noises of their shared ecstasy entangled—rising gloriously into the air around them. She collapsed next to him, kissing his shoulder and running her hand along his arm, finding his fingers that were still splayed over his thundering chest and entangling them with her own. He was panting and shuddering, the light streaming in through the lotus so much brighter than he had ever seen it before.
"Don’t leave," he whispered when she kissed his shoulder again, a new, unfamiliar fear growing from the depths of him.
"I am here, Zagan," she whispered back. "I am here to protect your heart."
