Page 56 of Elanie & the Empath
Emerging from the depths again as sunlight filtered through the water, I felt awareness return to me in sluggish, drowsy waves. A gentle breeze ghosting over my skin, humid, almost tropical. Soft voices murmuring in the distance. The sharp scent of lime and coconut swirling around me, mingling with something more familiar,cinnamon and vanilla. And when I finally breached the surface, pain. So much pain.
Every part of my body ached. My back, hips, shoulders, fingers. But the bed underneath me was soft, and there was a warm and comforting weight on my chest. Slowly, I opened my eyes, then closed them again at the sight of her. Pressure swelled behind my lids, the hot sting of tears burning my nose.
She slept nestled against me, her hair flowing like silk across my arm, her hand resting on my chest. Her skin was cool, her breathing slow and steady.
“Saints be praised,” I whispered, pulling her close despite the agony that shot through my arm, my side. I’d take it. I’d take any pain the worlds could inflict on me as long as she was safe in my arms at the end.
I burrowed my nose into her hair, breathing deep, inhaling her into my lungs, holding her there while she stirred.
“You’re awake,” she said. She tried to sit up, but I held her in place.
“Don’t move. Everything hurts.” This wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth either. I couldn’t let her go yet. I needed to feel her chest rising and falling. Needed the length of her body molded to mine just a little bit longer. When she settled against me, the breath I’d been holding since we’d left the cave rushed out of me in a deep, grateful sigh. “Where are we?”
“A hidden community.” Her voice was soft but strong. “They call it Thura.”
Events came back to me like flashes from a dream: a deep voice, a fist grabbing my shirt, a man lifting me into the air… That memory, I could have done without. “The huge Aquilinian, he’s?—”
“Golgunda. But everyone here calls him Gol.”
Beings milled about outside the bright and airy hut we’d been left to rest in, lots of them by the sound of it. Even so, I felt nothing. “What kind of community is this? I can’t read anyone.”
She turned her head to rest her chin on my chest, and the sight of her eyes, so bright and clear, knocked the wind out of me. “Bionics,” she explained with an exhilarated grin. “An entire village of them.Freebionics.”
That was a wild statement, and one I should probably have been more concerned about. But my focus refused to stray from her pink lips, her flushed cheeks, her skin glowing in the sunlight that poured through the open windows. Healthy. Vital. So beautiful that nothing I’d ever seen before could compare. Nothing I’d ever see again would either.
Because we were here, because I could, because I needed to, I slid my fingers over her soft skin and cupped her cheek. In the cave, I’d clung to the flimsy, professional line between doctor and patient to keep my needs in check. Now, with her body half-covering mine, her eyes so close I could see the tiny nanofibers threaded through the golden brown of her irises, her heart beating against my chest, I couldn’t remember why. Why had I thought this was wrong? Touching her? Feeling her? There was nothing wrong about it. “You made it.”
Leaning into my palm, just like she’d done last night when I thought I might lose her, she closed her eyes. “You saved me.”
When she opened her eyes again, meeting my stare, regret surged through my veins, fueling me.
I should have kissed her.
Saints, I should have. But it wasn’t too late. We werebeing given a second chance. We were here and alive, and I wasn’t going to question this. I wasn’t going to squander another moment with her.
My hand dropped from her cheek, and I slid my fingers beneath the dark curtain of her hair to cradle her nape. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I know.” Her chin ducked. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “None of this was your fault. I’m just so relieved that you’re here and safe. You’re feeling better?”
“My fever broke as soon as we arrived. But I’ve been worried about you.” Her chin wobbled, her eyes shining like glass, somehow even more beautiful. “You were so pale when he brought you in here. So cold. I was so scared.”
“I was scared too.” Running my thumb along the length of her neck, I let myself indulge in the sensation, touching skin I hadn’t allowed myself to touch for what felt like an eternity. “But now we’re here.”
Her hand moved in a tentative glide up my chest, her fingers curling around my shoulder. “Together.”
Slowly, inch by miraculous inch, I trailed my fingertips down her back, skimming over skin so soft it felt covered in velvet. When my fingers slipped into the small valley of her lower back, then up over the rising curve of her hip, I felt only skin. A sea of skin. “You aren’t wearing any clothes.”
Her pupils expanded into deep black pools. “Neither are you.”
Blood surged hot through me, rerouting from my fingers and toes and brain to race between my legs. After weeks of trying to hide the way I felt about her, I was suddenly exposed, harder than I’d ever been in my entire life, and tenting the sheet that covered us.
“I can hear your heartbeat.” She stared at her hand onmy chest, her expression awed. “It’s so hard and fast. Even faster than mine.”
She wasn’t wrong. My ribs hurt from the pounding my heart was giving them. I didn’t care, too busy studying all the places her body made contact with mine, committing the weight of her arm and the curve of her belly to memory.
“It’s okay,” I said, drowning in her delicious scent. It swept around me, filling our hut. “I’m okay.” And when she tucked her lower lip between her teeth, something she had to know drove me out of my mind by now, I moved my hand on her body even lower, lower, lower. Until I cupped the round, devastating swell of her ass.
