Page 13 of The Fires of Longest Night
“Goddess above, Ria, you are so fuckingbeautiful,” she murmurs quietly, her voice thrumming with honesty. Ria’s smile is small but there’s no mistaking the delight in it. “Will you let me touch you?” Ria’s throat works and Nissa can see the vulnerability as if she’s spoken it aloud. “Wait, let me try another question.” She draws close, kissing against Ria’s neck. “Is this alright?”
“It is,” Ria says in a husky voice, then clears her throat.
Nissa swallows. One night, and she’s being given this intimacy, more than she could ever have expected. Is she opening a door better left closed? But she can’t resist this vulnerable offering; her body is already moving against Ria. She draws her tongue down the salty skin, then along the collarbone.
“This?”
“Yes,” Ria affirms softly.
Nissa smooths her hands across Ria’s upper stomach, then slides them upward. As Nissa’s hands fit to the curve of Ria’s breasts, Ria’s body shifts, almost imperceptibly but somehow so clearly towards desire.
Her mouth falls open.
“Yes,” she says, before Nissa can ask, and then she smiles, reaching up to tug Nissa down to kiss her thoroughly. When they part, both breathless, Ria grins, that familiar, cocksure attitude behind it. “Touch me as you will, Nissa, love. But just know this—I have been on the edge of that waterfall all night, so it’s not likely to take much.”
Nissa gives her a speculative smile. “Well, at least not the first time,” she corrects.
Ria chuckles deep in her throat, drawing Nissa down to kiss her again, and then she folds her good arm behind her head. “Do with me as you will,” she says, melodrama in her tone.
“Oh-ho, now there’s a promise,” Nissa says with a grin, but she kisses swiftly down across the wound carved beneath Ria’s collarbone, to capture a nipple. The sensation of it in her mouth is like nothing else; it feels like it fits too perfectly. She tongues it briskly, experimentally, and the sound of Ria’s swift inhalation sends desire shooting through her core. Again, even now, she can feel herself becoming slick again.
This woman.
She drags her tongue against her nipple again, and Ria sighs, her hand falling against Nissa’s head, and Nissa takes the hint, setting to it with a will. It’s not long before Ria’s hips are moving against her thighs. Nissa releases the nipple, turns to the other, and Ria moans in her throat as her mouth closes around it. Nissa can barely keep back her own moan, and when she lets it out, Ria makes another sound, almost a whimper.
Every sound she makes feels like it tugs at Nissa’s core.
“You are incredible,” Nissa whispers to Ria’s torso. The muscles shift under the skin, and Nissa kisses into the salty skin, letting her teeth score gently across it. Ria murmurs something, and Nissa smiles against Ria’s warmth. She lifts a hand, placing it gently against Ria’s hip. Something ragged is under her fingers and she pulls away startled as Ria gasps, remembering the wound she’d stitched earlier that day under Illima’s falcon-precise gaze.
“I’m so sorry,” she cries, pulling up to look at Ria’s face. Maybe she shouldn’t be doing any of this. She doesn’t want to hurt Ria.
“It’s fine,” Ria says. “It didn’t hurt, just… it might.”
Nissa settles her hand back against Ria’s lower belly instead. “This alright?”
Ria glances down at her, smirking. “I mean, it’s fine, but it could go a little lower. Y’know. If you wanted.”
Nissa huffs out a breath on a laugh and deliberately picks up her fingers until only her first two fingertips touch Ria’s skin. Then she walks them down, down, into the tight-curled triangle. “Like this?”
Ria is caught between laughing and arousal. “Yes… I mean, no, I mean no don’t stop but—”
Nissa grins and raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” she says questioningly, pretending more innocence than is real. “Is this not right?”
She walks a gentle fingertip into Ria’s slit, and the other woman is caught between a groan and a laugh at the sensation. Then Nissa bites her lip as she registers the slick heat of Ria’s sex. She can’t keep back the ache that opens in her chest at the sensation, almost like a fear of loss, and she bends to kiss Ria’s thigh, slipping gentle fingers into that warmth. Ria’s hand fists at her side, and she whimpers, a sound that feels like a plea to Nissa’s unpracticed ears.
“More?” Nissa asks softly.
Ria doesn’t hesitate. “Inside. I want you inside.”
The words make Nissa’s breath catch again, her heart swelling. With gentle, exploratory fingertips, she feels through the slick warmth until she finds the entrance of Ria’s sex. She hesitates just a split second, and then her mouth falls open as she doesn’t need to press inside at all; Ria’s sex draws her inside. Nissa whimpers softly at the sensation of all that heat and wetness wrapped around her fingers, and Ria responds in kind.
“My mouth?” Nissa asks softly.
“Fuck,” Ria says, the word hard and ragged and somehow perfect. “Yes. Goddess. Nissa.Yes.”
Nissa kisses gently, the sensation of the damp curls under her lips like a promise. She tries to remember what Ria had doneto her, any of the half dozen times she’s pressed her mouth to Nissa’s sex. She opens her mouth, her tongue licking, and Ria’s entire body jerks towards her, and she cries aloud. Nissa pulls back, startled. “Alright?”
“Goddess, fuck.” Ria hesitates, as if she’s finding the words. “More than alright,” she says roughly. “You are incredible.”
