Page 168 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

He sighed into it. Molding to her like they were crafted for one another. Unrushed. Unhurried. Like he wanted to commit every second to memory as he parted and allowed her in.

Smiling against her, Garrik murmured, “I assure you. It is I who is winning.” And deepened the kiss. Garrik’s fingers fell to her waistband, trailing across the top until she groaned at his contact with the snaps and ties there.

“Cheating?” she breathed, unable to control her whimpering.

“Fucking cheating,” he agreed, panting. Letting his tongue explain how badly he craved her as it danced with hers. “Starsdamn.Alora.” Her name echoed like a desperate prayer.

Alora’s hands splayed into his hair, to the scar on his neck, refusing to release his lips the more his hands pulled her closer. Until she couldn’t determine where his stopped and hers began. A mix of fire and ice, burning and melting in a clash of lips and possessive hands.

Her hips were moving then. Against his hard length pressing into her, eliciting a traitorous groan from her mouth. The fabric between them—there was too much of it—and he didn’t stop her when her fingers found his tunic button and released it.

“Do you want me to stop?” she murmured, waiting at the next one.

Garrik flexed his hips and groaned, “No.”

So, she popped that button, then another. All of them until his tunic was opened and scars fully bared. Alora couldn’t imagine not running her lips across them. To let him feel a loving touch. Scar by scar, Alora kissed them, traveling down, down, down his body.

But she didn’t notice how his hands had fallen. How his fists clenched the grass so tightly his knuckles blanched, threatening to split.

And when she turned her eyes up the swells and dips of his muscles, his were sealed like an impenetrable fortress.

Garrik’s face had fallen pale—sosopale.

She reeled back as Smokeshadows gathered around him. As his hands and arms began to feather into darkness, threatening to dawn him away.

“Open your eyes, my prince.” Her voice frantic, imagining his face, his body on that bloodstained bed in his nightmares. “You’re not back there. You’re with me, Alora.” Carefully, as if something had stolen her hand and drawn her to him, she placed her palm on his star-shaped scar, pulsing warmth there so he couldn’t doubt who touched him.

His entire body convulsed. By some miracle of Maker of the Skies, silver opened. For a moment, he stared. As if he didn’t recognize her.

Garrik swallowed and dropped his head to the grass. His quivering hands found her thighs as he opened his mouth to speak.

He released a frustrated sigh. “I do not know if I will ever be able to…” He shook his head. “At least not flat on my back.” For a few moments, Garrik nestled into the hand she cupped his cheek with. “I cannot endure being touched by anyone.”

Alora began to slip from his body, but Garrik tightened his grip on her thighs, holding her there. She whispered, “I don’t want to cause you pain.”

But Garrik smiled. “How can the one that has stolen my every thought do that? I crave your touch, Alora.” She knew the feeling. “The things I do with you, I have been unable to withstand since the day they threw me in those dungeons. But with you… I need your touch like I need air.”

Another hand drifted through his hair, brushing some from his forehead when her eyes shifted to the forest, then their horses. To the pack tied to Storm’s saddle.

A tender grin twisted on her face as she peered down at him and asked, “Do you trust me?”

Garrik dropped his head against a tree and allowed his hands to relax in the grass, not caring that his open tunic fluttered in the wind. Unashamed of what Alora saw.

With a deep breath, he stole a moment and scanned her until he saw a rope dangling in her hand. “What is that for?”

The wary look in her eyes softened. Almost as if she treaded on a thin layer of ice, her posture cautiously shifted.Alora gripped the rope tighter and said nothing as she bit that starsdamned perfect lip.

When he lifted a brow, Alora finally said, “I … I thought maybe I could replace a bad memory with a good one.” Her eyes glazed as her fingers loosened. The rope uncoiled, swaying close to the ground. “But now I hate the idea. Hate myself for it.”

Garrik’s senses sharpened, narrowed on every twist and knot.

Fear and humiliation cloaked the shake in her voice when she stuttered, “I wanted to … give you something you can control. Knowing you can decide what happens. To help take some of the pain away.” The rope dropped to the ground before she nervously rubbed the leathers over her death mark, and her watery eyes found the sky, evading his stare.

His silence.

“I’m sorry,” Alora murmured. “It was a terrible idea.” A brutal tear slipped down her face as she met his stare.

Smokeshadows whorled around the rope pooled in the grass, dawning it away. And before she reacted, likenesses of his hands pulled her closer. So close his face was at her knees and calloused hands cupped her calves.

---