Page 140

His breath slows eventually, muscles softening, his weight sinking deeper into the mattress.

Still, he doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t run.

I roll onto my side, propping my head on my hand, watching him without shame. His eyes are half-closed, lashes damp, lipsparted, throat exposed in a way he’d never allow if he had the energy to stop me.

“You’re not leaving,” I murmur quietly, voice soft around the edges, wrapping around the bond that still pulses low and dangerous between us.

His brow furrows, a flicker of the man who always controls every piece of the board.

But he doesn’t lift his arm. Doesn’t argue.

“Can’t,” he mutters eventually, voice rough, shredded from use. “You… drained me.”

My smile is sharp and sweet. “Good.”

I tuck myself against him without asking, curling into the wreckage of him, letting the scent of sweat and sex and magic settle over us like a second skin.

He doesn’t resist.

His arm drops, heavy and clumsy, sliding around my back.

His breathing evens.

Ambrose Dalmar—controlled, calculating, dangerous—falls asleep in my bed for the first time, because I ruined him too much to leave.

And I make sure to keep my magic wrapped around him even in sleep, because I want him to remember this in the morning.

That he stayed.

That I made him stay.

Caspian

I’ve never minded being bound. That’s the thing no one talks about—the convenience of it, the predictability. A Sin Binder wants what we can give, and what I give is lust, decadent and destructive in equal measure. I’ve always known how to pay my dues. An easy equation: pleasure for power, devotion bought in how fast I could make them come undone beneath me.

But Luna... she rewrote the math the moment she looked at me like I was more than what I could take from her.

She never asks for anything when she touches me. Never demands I shatter myself to keep her satisfied. She lets me exist. Broken. Frayed. Frighteningly human.

Her bond doesn’t press against my ribs the way the others used to. It doesn’t choke. It doesn’t pull. It hums low and constant like an open door, like she’s always waiting, patient, no matter how long it takes me to step through.

And tonight—when I can’t sit in my own skin another second, when the taste of Branwen’s power still sits like ash in the back of my throat—I follow that door.

Track it straight to her.

I find her outside, legs curled beneath her like something soft, something dangerous pretending at innocence, a book cracked open on her lap. One of the ones we dragged out of Blackwell’s subterranean graveyard of secrets. The spine looks brittle inher hands, but her shoulders are loose, her mouth tilted in the barest hint of a smile.

It hits me sideways, the way she looks when she’s not fighting the world.

She glances up before I even step fully into the clearing, like she felt me before she saw me. Her smile blooms like something ancient and steady, and she lifts a hand, patting the patch of grass beside her without hesitation. Like it’s mine.

Like I am.

I sink down next to her, letting my weight fold into the earth, and the bond hums between us, soft, warm, not pressing. Never pressing. Just there.

"Studying ancient death cults for fun now?" I murmur, voice low, teasing around the edges because that’s easier than admitting how much I needed this.