Page 195 of The Lands Defying
Runa side-eyes me as I look at her, and she huffs happily, picking up speed.
Is she always using power at her paws?
I grin.
“You brilliant wolf, you,” I say to her, and she holds her head a little higher at that. I lose my smile though when I hear Darius and Drax gaining on us. “We are so fucked when they reach us, you know that?” She huffs. “What do we do, split up?”
She shakes her head and when a particular growl of excitement sounds behind us, I grip her fur to keep next to her.
They love the hunt.
Looking ahead, we are coming up to another river, and I know it will slow us both down. Well, more me as Runa can probably jump it.
I blink.
Runa can probablyjumpit.
“Hey,” I say to her breathlessly, “Wanna give me a ride?” I ask. She eyes me and then ahead. I rode Drax, and Runa isn’t that much smaller than him. I feel her amusement before she givesme the slightest head nod. “Really?” I didn’t expect her to say yes.
I look at the distance between us and the river and hope I can pull this off.
“Here goes nothing.” Gripping Runa’s fur with the opposite hand to her, then using the hand closest to me to grip between her shoulders, I wait one moment, then two, then…
I push off from the ground, using the strength in my legs and arms to haul me up onto her back.
Yes! Thank you, wood chopping and forever running on these damn two legs.
Next, I adjust myself just right before we are leaping over the river.
I scream, throwing my head back with a wide smile on my face as Darius’s amusement-filled laugh reaches me.
We land with anoomphon the other side, and I nearly fly forward off of her back but manage to hold steady.
“Fuck yes!” I tell Runa, stroking her head. “You are the best, you know that?” She does this little tappy-dance thing, but then we arebothtumbling to the ground.
I’m still laughing as I fall off her back, a shield of darkness encasing me before I land. I pant up into the sky as a heavy weight is back on top of me, his darkness like a familiar caress of when I sunk into the Unforgivable Seas tickling the back of my mind.
“You are bold, little wolf,” he says down to me, “You cheated.”
“I did no such thing,” I pant, lifting a hand to stroke his jaw. His eyes instantly darken at my touch. “I just raced, like we said.”
“Clever.”
“Always,” I whisper.
“You were made for each other.”
“And made for other things,” I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but he instantly gets my meaning.
I can tell by the way his body locks up, those intense eyes of his burning with some kind of new emotion, and then, last but not least, the way his mouth lands on mine.
It’s deep and possessive, his hands clutching me closer to him and he groans at my taste. I may have let out a moan, a sound or something, because his touch turns almost desperate.
I know the moment he shields us to hide as the light begins to fade away from behind my closed eyelids, then he possesses my mouth in a way only he ever could.
Darius’s hands land on the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my wild hair as he moves me to thrust his tongue deeper. He seems to want to reach everywhere inside of me, and I can barely breathe as he devours me.
But it doesn’t matter when he has become the very air I breathe.
