To overthrow the cruel King who brutally slaughtered her foremothers, the last surviving water witch Elara Consuli must team up with novice warrior Juda Vikaris from the Serpent Order and realise an ancient prophecy, before the blood-thirsty ruler d...
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Scarcely daring to believe what she was doing, Elara reached up and removed the delicate sealant from behind her ears, one, then the other.
Never in her entire life had she revealed her Naiad respiratory organs to another Druvarian. Never would she dare.
And now she was doing it in front of him. For him.
How had she reached this point? Goading this Highguard to reveal his desire, knowing instinctively that his undeniable curiosity of the creature that she was and his longing for her was becoming too difficult for him to resist, and yet always believing that he would stop himself from crossing that line.
By her foremothers, how wrong she had been.
Just when she thought he could not surprise her again, he did something else to rock her core—something indisputably intriguing.
As curious he was of her, so too she was of him, and she wanted more. She wanted his pain, his passion, his strength, his sorrow. Everything. It was as if she sought to take him down with her under the surface and hold him there, wrap herself around him, breathe herself into him and let the current take them where it would. They would drift together, she and him.
This was to be their bargain with each other.
She would give the most important part of herself to him, and he would give her everything in return.
Turning her head to the side, she bared herself to him, her spine stiffening as he reached for her, his fingertips stopping just over where he longed to touch.
"Wait," he said, almost to himself. "Not like this."
Pulling her down onto the bed, he positioned her on her side, facing away from him, and she found herself strangely complying, her hand curling around the cushion as he lay behind her, raised up on one elbow so he could get a better look.
He was barely touching her, but her whole body burned with the heat of him. She squeezed her thighs together, and arched her back.
"Be still," he demanded of her, as his fingers began to trace the outline of the delicate folds of skin behind her ear.
She shivered under his touch, an involuntary reaction to his exploration of her most secret flesh. No one had touched her there since her mother had been alive, but that had been a different kind of touch. Her mother had always sought to keep their true identity concealed, painstakingly teaching Elara how to apply the skin sealant, ensuring that all the edges were seamless and unpuckered. Young Elara had always understood the necessity, but she'd hated it too. Hated that the most important parts of her had to be hidden away, erased from sight as if they did not exist at all. As if she did not exist.
As Juda shifted closer, his fingertips moving lightly now with the direction of the skin folds, she could feel his breath there, warm but shallow, as if each movement of his fingers thrilled him.
