Ravaged

Chapter 21

Feng can't quite say what it is that makes him give in. The salt on his skin, perhaps. The moonlight in her eyes.

Sitting with her in the sea on a night like this... it was never a good idea. He should have kept swimming when he scented her sitting here. Should have left.

For some reason distance is hard to remember when there's salt on his tongue.

The heady sense of freedom granted him by the sea hasn't left, even if he can't shift into his original form. Something about it broadens the edges of his mind--makes him drunk on the moon and the waves.

The lavender in her hair and the softness of her skin and the exhilarating fact that she didn't pull away combine to make everything worse.

And Feng is kissing her.

She tastes like she smells--a hint of nature, the pulse of a stormcloud, an electric tang at the back of his throat. There's something else amidst it all that brings the scents together and marks her as Sky.

Her hair on his fingers is cool and damp with salt water, her cheek beneath his palm smooth. And her mouth, warm and soft and inviting. Especially when she starts kissing him back.

Feng didn't expect her to kiss him back. He didn't expect anything really, except maybe her to pull away.

Instead she pulls a little closer, and Feng revels in the feel of her mouth, exploring her lips slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. In truth, he does.

Usually.

Feng wants to deepen the kiss. He wants to taste her on his tongue--taste her mouth, her skin. It doesn't help that he knows she wouldn't pull away, that he can smell the attraction on her.

Instead, he forces himself to pull back slowly. Right now, he can't promise himself that he'll stop if he lets it go further.

And that's not acceptable.

So he looks at her, absently stroking brown curls away from her face. She looks a little dazed, as if she can't quite form coherency. His wounded pride--though he tells himself it wasn't that wounded--feels mollified at that. He took a bit of a beating earlier when she didn't seem to even notice the fact that he's naked.

Feng, however, is very well aware of that fact. Too aware.

Not to mention the fact that she might as well be naked, her wet clothes clinging to her beneath the water's surface. Where they don't cling, they float away, pulled about in the waves, revealing bits and pieces of her skin.

Feng wonders how much of a sadist it makes him that he thinks her scars are beautiful.

Skylar continues to sit there, staring at him, for a very long time. He can see her trying to gather her thoughts, trying to focus. His continued proximity is probably not doing her any favors.

It's certainly not doing him any favors.

He wants to kiss her again. Very much.

Instead he places a kiss on her nose, then lets go, moving back. "You should try to get some more sleep," he tells her, then ducks beneath the surface and pushes off the ledge, heading back toward deeper waters.

He needs to swim.

He also needs to find the Aidonare. Though, he'd like some pants... but he can't exactly go up on shore. Getting out of the water within Skylar's sightline is not a good idea.

No pants it is. Feng prefers the feel of salt on his skin to cloth, anyway, but he has no idea who or what might be guarding the Aidonare. For the Yveneth it was the Dragon Riders, but all the texts mentioned about Aidonare is that it's located in the deepest trench in the Rhi'ha Gulf, and that it's a unique bioluminescent turquoise coral.