Page 133 of His Darkest Desire

“Now”—Vex brushed her cheek—“tell us more about your adventures, Kinsley.”

Echo bounced in the air. “Please, share more!”

“These ones would love to hear more,” Flare said.

“Uh, right. My adventures.” Kinsley cleared her throat, buying herself another moment to regain her composure. The lingering effects of Vex’s words proved difficult to shake, especially while she was lying against him, snug in his embrace, with his spicy oakmoss and amber scent enveloping her.

Had he really implied what she thought he had? Sex while flying?

Don’t think about it now, Kinsley!

To her credit, she didn’t think about it one more time.

She thought about it a couple more times. Well…maybe a few more times. Definitely no more than half a dozen.

Somehow, she focused enough to tell Vex and the wisps about some of the other places she’d visited—places that had left lasting impressions upon her. The more she talked, the more her pounding heart, heated skin, and fluttering stomach eased.

She told them about her trip to the Dixie National Forest in Utah, where towering red sandstone formations jutted up from amidst tall pine trees beneath an expansive blue sky. Vex asked several questions about the odd landscape, leading to Kinsley describing the desert comprising the greater southwestern United States and the way it varied from place to place.

Unsurprisingly, he’d never seen a desert. His only knowledge of such environments had come from books.

From Utah, she leapt to the Midwest, detailing the week she’d spent in Shawnee National Forest in Illinois. She couldn’t help but smile as she described the varied deciduous trees, the rocky cliffs, the streams and enchanting waterfalls. Though sandstone was also prominent there, it was so different from that at the Grand Canyon and in Utah—gray and relatively smooth, its layers more subtle in some places and jarringly obvious in others.

Her favorite place in that park had been the Garden of the Gods, where those unique rock formations rose above the woodlands, offering stunning views of the surrounding area. Sitting on one of those rocks with the forest stretching out before her and the sky stained red and orange by the setting sun had been an experience beyond her ability to describe.

So many cities had been within a few hundred miles of her that evening—Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville and Memphis, St. Louis. But on that rock, she’d felt a million miles away from it all. She’d felt wholly surrounded by nature, at one with it.

“Would that we could lie together upon those rocks and bask in the moonlight,” he said, skimming his lips along the side of her neck, “while the woods slumber peacefully below us.”

A shiver coursed through her as those lips pressed a kiss to the spot just beneath her ear. She caught a strand of his long hair and twirled it around her finger. “We could find a similar rock here.”

“Mayhap,” he purred. “But you’ve not yet satisfied my curiosity.”

“What curiosity haven’t I satisfied?”

He kept his lips beneath her ear, letting his breath tease her skin as he traced little circles upon her lower belly. “Of the places you’ve journeyed, which is dearest to your heart?”

“Mmm… Here.” Kinsley closed her eyes, thrilling in the sensations he produced. And she knew he was fully aware of what he was doing. “Definitely here.”

Vex chuckled, creating a rousing vibration, and nipped her ear lobe with a fang, making her breath hitch. “Before you came here.”

How could he expect her to think clearly when he was toying with her like this? Her blood was hot, her nipples taut and throbbing, and her clit ached for attention. All she wanted to do in that moment was take his hand and slip it between her thighs so he could feel how wet she was and put her out of this misery.

“Before I came here…” Continuing to twirl his hair around her fingers, Kinsely opened her eyes. Despite the distractions, the answer to his question came quite easily, and the associated memories brought a smile to her face. “A place called Sequoia National Park. It’s up in the mountains, and it’s pretty popular, but it just… It’s special.

“It’s named after the trees that grow there, giant sequoias. They’re the largest trees in the world. I mean, your tree is bigger, but it’s magic and technically isn’t in the same world anyway, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, the sequoias are so tall that if you stand at the base of one and look up, you might think it’s punching right through the sky itself.”

She sighed, smile widening. “I went there as an adult, but standing amongst those trees made me feel like a kid looking out at the Grand Canyon for the first time again. They rekindled that sense of the huge, breathtaking world around me. I think I actually got a kink in my neck from staring up at them for so long as I walked the trails.”

Her smile faltered, but the frown that replaced it felt more thoughtful than sorrowful. “That was also the first trip I took after Liam left. I was hurting, obviously, but being there… I realized that there were so many things bigger than my pain. Those trees…they’re basically adapted to survive wildfires. You can see black spots on some of the trunks where they burned, but they heal over time. They take their wounds, collect their scars, and continue standing tall.

“My scars will never go away. They’re part of me. But I grew stronger from them. I stood, no matter how much I wanted to fall sometimes. That park was where some part of me decided that I needed to heal. That I would heal. I just needed time.”

“Ah, Kinsley,” Vex rasped, voice thick, and hugged her tight.

Kinsley turned her face toward him, caught his gaze, and held it. “You will heal too, Vex.”

“I am, my moonlight.” He kissed her tenderly, and though it lacked the heat of earlier, it made Kinsley melt.

---