“I am yours to command, Princess.”

Sarani’s eyes widened as he lifted a wicked brow with a slanted glance to their bodies. She blinked in confusion. Did he mean right here? Or for her to mount him as one would a horse? Or both? Some of the erotic sculptures she’d seen in various temples of couples threaded together came back to her, and she felt heat fill her cheeks.

Rhystan answered her unspoken questions when he took her lips in a hungry kiss and lifted her over him so that she was straddling his hips with hers. The intimacy of the position and the slickness of her wet body against his made her gasp. Her legs dangled into the hot bathwater behind him before she wrapped them around his waist.

“Here?” she asked.

“Here.” His voice was as tight as hers, his fingers palming her breasts. “Ride, Sarani.”

His filthy command went straight to her core. She moved then, lifting slightly to notch him at her entrance and then letting gravity do the work. They groaned in unison when she was fully seated, her muscles clenching around him. The upright position added to the heightened sensations, making her breath hitch as he stroked her on the inside.

He placed his large hands over her hips and eased her up before guiding her down again. The slow erotic slide nearly had her eyes rolling back in her head with pleasure.

“You feel so good.”

“So do you, my apsara.”

The endearment, his love, filled her with sorrow-tinged bliss, and she tucked it away deep inside her heart. He might not truly love her or be willing to make her his duchess, but at least she would always have this part of him and this memory. In this moment, he was hers forever. In this moment, she felt cherished. Maybe even a little loved.

Sarani closed her eyes and quickened her movements, letting the glorious sensations build inside her until they were nearly impossible to bear, until she could only whimper as her body repeatedly impaled itself on his, taking everything he could give.

“Rhystan…”

His hand slid between their writhing bodies, his thumb circling the pearl of her sex where everything coalesced, and then her vision went to white as everything detonated. Pleasure shivered through her veins as she clenched around him. With a growl, Rhystan sped up his thrusts until he, too, was on the brink of eruption before yanking himself from her and roaring his release.

Sarani collapsed onto him, breathing hard and listening to his pounding heartbeat as it slowed. Her skin grew chilled as the heat dissipated, but nothing short of a miracle would incite her to move.

Tonight, something profound had shifted between them. An understanding. A release of past hurts. An acknowledgment of what they’d been and what they were now.

Friends. Enemies. Shipmates. Lovers.

“What are you thinking?” he asked after he’d caught his breath, fingers trailing down her back.