Chapter 635: Still Careful?

The water between them felt suddenly warmer.

Every careful restraint Sol had forced into place since the moment she first undressed began to fray at once.

The reminder of Kira and Zeyra, the calm acceptance of those relationships, the explicit declaration that she neither wanted nor required the same careful handling... he felt it all hit the locked-down hunger in his gut like a spark landing in dry tinder.

Hearing that, the emotions he had been trying to suppress finally broke all of their restraints.

Sol’s hands moved down and settled firmly at her waist beneath the surface, fingers slowly spreading over the soft skin of her bare hips.

The contact was not polite or careful by anything, in fact it was as possessive as it could get..

His palms drank in the feel of her: the Layer 4 density that made her body feel denser, stronger, more real than ordinary flesh, the quiet power coiled under the feminine softness, and beneath all of that the simple, mortal heat of a woman who had chosen to stand this close and let him touch her.

He could feel the faint flex of muscle when she breathed.

Could feel the generous curve of her hips filling his hands.

Could feel how easy it would be to pull her the rest of the way against him, stop pretending and shove his cock in.

But... even then Veylara didn’t react or try to shake him away.

"And what truth is that?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

His voice came out rough and raspy, scraped raw by everything he was no longer bothering to hide.

Veylara’s eyes met his without flinching.

She leaned in a fraction closer, until the hard erect nipples of her breasts nearly brushed his chest with every breath, and the scent of her mature body filled his lungs with every inhale.

"That you want to fuck the Warchief of the Veynar," she said, calm and clear and completely unashamed. That you have been hard in this water since the moment I took my clothes off." Her eyes flicked downward briefly, as if she could see exactly what the cold pond was failing to hide, then rose back to his face.

"That the fact that I am Kira’s mother makes it worse for you, not better. And that you are still waiting for some kind of formal permission..."

She leaned in another fraction, until her lips were close enough that he felt the shape of every word against his mouth.

"...that I have already given by not sending you away."

The silence that followed was thick enough to drown in.

The full, explicit detail was impossible to ignore, deny or to step around.

Sol’s fingers tightened on her hips hard enough to dimple the soft flesh.

She had not only seen through every careful restraint he had tried to maintain. She had taken those restraints, held them up to the moonlight, and discarded them with the same nonchalant authority she used when issuing orders on a battlefield.

Veylara held his gaze and waited, completely still, completely unafraid of the truth she had forced into the open.

As if to say: Now that we have both stopped pretending... what are you going to do about it?

"Chief—"

"Veylara," she corrected, and there was the faintest edge of command in it. "Here, in this water, you will use my name."

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded once.

"Veylara."

Now that he had said that the name tasted different in the cool night air, how to say it felt more close and intimate.

"Better," she murmured.

Sol leaned in, close enough that his breath brushed the damp skin of her neck.

"If we continue," he said quietly, "there will be no pretending afterward that this was only a bath."

Veylara turned fully in his arms, water streaming from her breasts and shoulders, and met his eyes without flinching.

"I did not come here to pretend," she answered.

Then she closed the last bit of the distance between them herself.

There was no hesitation in the way she did it. No slow, teasing approach. Veylara simply decided... and moved.

One moment the cool water still separated their bodies; the next she had pressed herself fully against him, mouth finding his with a fierce, unrestrained intensity that left no room for questions.

It was the kiss of someone who had already decided what she wanted and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

The first contact was almost abrupt in its certainty; it was firm, hungry, completely without any coyness.

There was no practiced rhythm to the way her lips moved against his, no carefully measured seduction, only pure, concentrated intent.

When Sol answered with the hunger he had been holding back since the moment she first stepped out of her clothes, she met him with equal force, deepening the kiss as if the taste of him only confirmed that this was exactly what she had come for.

Her full breasts pressed fully against his chest, soft and heavy and cool from the water, the tight nipples dragged lightly across his skin with every small shift of her body, the contact unplanned and therefore even more devastating.

One of her hands slid up into his hair; the other stayed braced against his chest as if to keep him exactly where she wanted him.

It was intense, direct and driven by pure will rather than some exquisite technique.

Sol groaned and pulled her harder against him, one hand gripping the strong curve of her waist while the other slid up the bare length of her back.

The raw, decisive way she claimed his mouth only fed the hunger that had been building since she first stripped under the moonlight.

When her hips shifted against him... again without any calculated rhythm, just pure instinct seeking more contact... the soft, slightly bushy heat of her pussy brushed along the aching length of his cock beneath the water.

The suppressed breath she exhaled into his mouth at the sensation only made him grip her tighter.

Slowly, the cold of the mountain spring became irrelevant.

All that existed was the wet heat of her mouth, the soft weight of her tits crushed to his chest, the strong curve of her waist under his hands, and the unmistakable press of his aching cock against the soft skin of her lower stomach beneath the water

Finally after an unknown amount of time, Veylara broke the kiss just far enough to speak against his mouth, her breath hot, and voice still maddeningly controlled.

"Still careful?"