Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Helia knelt by the bed as she touched Stone's sand skin, waiting for him to rouse with the morning light with impatience. So many cuts littered his body, and they were healing more slowly than a vampire's wounds should. That meant Stone needed something to heal them. For normal vampires, that was blood, but Rodney said that Stone had thrown it up. What then did she feed him?
Worry knitted her brow as she pressed her hand to Stone's face, keeping it there until his skin warmed just to prove he was still alive. The way he slept like the dead worried her that one day he might never rouse. Stone was so frightened of being grabbed by the void and pulled back in, and she wanted to make sure that didn't happen. Even with no memories, he was so focused on granting her wish, but Helia had already accepted that her mother was gone. This had been her last ditch effort and it had failed splendidly. All she wanted was to get Stone home, back to the family that made him feel safe enough that he didn't have to cling to her hand.
A breath warmed her wrist, and Stone's eyes fluttered open as he breathed her in. A smile spread on his lips as his soft grey eyes searched her face, lingering on her eyes before tracing her nose and then landing on her lips. Stone always took in everything when he entered a room from the books to the number of nails used in each floor board, observing, cataloging, and making sure he knew everything about everything. Very assassin like.
"I had the most pleasant dream, Helia Cinder," Stone said, lifting a hand to trail its ice over her cheek. She shivered, but it deterred Stone none as he slid his hand behind her neck to pull her face closer. "I dreamt of your hands delicately undressing me." Stone purred with the words. "Touching every inch of my skin with such tenderness."
That hadn't been a dream. Horus had brought Stone back in shambles, and she'd patched him up while he drifted in and out of consciousness. She'd had no choice but to remove everything from above the belt to get to the wounds on his sides and shoulder. That and she couldn't have laid him down soaked in his own blood. That was the last time she carelessly left him to Horus's care.
Stone glided fingers down her cheek, running the knuckle of his index finger along the curve of her chin before his thumb landed on her lip. It heated her face as he left the soft skin of her lip to travel his hand down her shoulder, her arm, and then to her lower back.
A rush of air tousled her hair as Stone moved her faster than she could object. Pillows crowded her vision on either side, and she grabbed the blanket next to her as she found herself staring up at Stone. There was nowhere to look but at his bare, tanned chest, smooth and unmarred except for the bandages from the scuffle at the pits. Had his memory been intact, she doubted the muscled weapon of a man above her had ever lost a fight. As a grand mage, that should terrify her, but the sheer reverence in Stone's eyes as he hovered over her had her brain functioning like the roll of molasses.
Too much naked man near worshipping her body.
"I would savor every moment if you might allow me to return the favor, to grace my undeserving hands with the velvet of your skin, to use myself as an instrument to ease away any lingering tension."
