Page 65 of The Discovered
Daelon and I carried on our potentially disastrous affair in between training sessions, and I fell deeper for him despite it all. There was a sense of naturalness and inevitability between us, like we each reflected our desires back to each other. We reminded each other of where we came from, and that meant something that was hard to put into words. It was sacred.
Today I watched the sunrise with a cup of coffee in hand, curled up on a couch on the back deck. With the snap of my fingers, I lit the firepit, and because I was alone, I couldn’t help but smile with childlike glee. That would never get old.
I leaned back into my oversized sweater, my hands warming against the hot mug. Daelon was inside working out, refusing to let me watch like I’d very much wanted to—because apparently that would have beendistracting.
The snow had melted, but its smell lingered in the air. The atmosphere was sharp and frosty, and because of Lucius’s threat ofseeing me soon,I scanned the surrounding energy for anything out of the ordinary. As usual, I came up blank. All I could sense was the strong energetic wall around the property’s perimeter—along with the wall of a human being that was Daelon in the next room.
The sun had risen over the distant mountains by the time my mug was empty. I thought of my mothers in the stillness of the morning, remembering their soft-spoken prayers in the early hours each day. I now understood they were also magickally charged spells.
Goddess protect us, they had said.
And when I came into my power, they said:Reveal to us the right path to keep Áine safe.
My heart was heavy at the thought of this prayer, as I knew now that the path required their death. If Lucius had something to do with their murder, then let him come.
I would destroy him.
“Áine?”
Daelon pulled me from my inner diatribe, and I turned to look at him as he stepped onto the porch. His skin shone with sweat in the soft morning rays, his dark hair tousled and clinging to his forehead. He spotted me and his face visibly relaxed.
I smiled, waving my hand over the firepit to extinguish the leaping flames before walking over.
“Hey,” I said, stealing a very long glance at his chiseled frame. The veins in his arms protruded as they coiled around his muscles.
He shot me a sly grin. “Ready for your workout?”
I gazed at him quizzically, raising a brow. “What workout?”
I squealed as he lunged at me, throwing me over his shoulder in one swift movement.
“Ew. Put me down. You’re sweaty,” I protested, squirming against him.
He swatted my ass playfully. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with that when you were just undressing me with your eyes.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
He set me upright, and I steadied myself against him after a wave of dizziness. I ran my hands along his chest, looking up to meet his heated, possessive gaze.
“Take off your clothes,” he commanded.
And I obeyed.
“Okay, now we really should go. I want to get there soon so we can be back before dark,” Daelon said, slightly out of breath.
His hand cupped the side of my face, both of us nude on the carpet in front of the fire. We had barely made it out of the shower and into the kitchen before we ended up getting tangled in each other once more. Over the past few days, our escapades had only gotten even more intense and all-consuming, if that was even possible. Daelon seemed desperate to make sure I knew I belonged to him.
And I was desperate to believe him.
I groaned, unwilling to peel myself away from him. But I was quick to rise when I remembered our destination, and the same mysterious pull from before arose in my gut. We were finally going to visit the ocean my mothers told me about in bedtime stories—the ocean I used as a metaphor to make sense of the vast, infinite pool of energy that lay at my fingertips.
“Your excitement is quite endearing, as usual,” Daelon chuckled, picking up my clothes from the floor and handing them to me.
He stooped to lock his lips with mine, moving slower now, less urgent. He moved his hand to rest at the side of my neck, his thumb softly stroking the sensitive skin of my throat. It was a move of subtle authority, and I felt myself still and calm under his touch.
He smiled down at me, dropping his hand and kissing my forehead. “Get dressed.”
I hurried back into my sweater, slipping away to the bathroom to fix my mess of hair. After trying in vain to make my long, tangled hair cooperate, I threw it into a messy braid instead.
