Page 32 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely (A Curse of Fallen Stars #1)

Lorel

Sila’s fingers let my hair fall away, and she moves around the table to take up Mercias’ vacated seat. She gives his cup a look and pushes it aside.

“What news did Mercias bring?” she asks. She’s circling. Trying to find steady ground again after I had upset her neat footwork with my panic.

He has informed the Head Librarian of the altercation, and the bodies have been removed. The Lightkeepers have been returned to the Keep.

Sila hisses. “Far better than they deserve. I should have liked to have them nailed to the front door.”

They would take that poorly.

It’s an understatement of the worst kind. They would seek blood for blood, and blame the Library for starting a faction war. It would not end well.

“They should consider themselves lucky that we have not taken their assault so,” Sila says, dark eyes blazing.

She tears her eyes away from me, her shoulders shuddering as she masters her anger.

The shadows curl at the edges of my vision.

Sila takes a deep breath, turning back to me.

“Sorry, little mouse, I’m getting carried away again. ”

I’m sorry I ran away.

There is the barest twitch of her eyebrows. “You have nothing to apologise for, Lorel. Nothing needs to happen that you do not want to happen.”

I stare down at my hands, all I have to try and explain myself.

There is only one thing that I don’t want to happen.

I never want to see you dying in my arms again.

I could not bear it. Never mind the Heart’s binding, I know you want me to leave.

I know I cannot let you come with me, even though I know I cannot stop you.

I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you, and it is tearing me apart to think I cannot have you.

To know that it would tear me apart even more so if I did.

Because I should leave you, and you should let me go.

Sila watches my hands, intent, eyes intent on my face when they still. Her expression is soft, and so lovely, and I could cut myself to pieces on it.

“Oh Lorel, how can you not know yet? I would follow you even into death. I already have. When I did not press my blade into your chest and still your heart, I chose. You cannot condemn me. I have already done that myself.”

My heart. My breath. My thoughts. The very blood in my veins.

All of it stops, for a moment. All of it catches on the thought that Sila wants to keep me, forever.

That I am not just a passing thought or amusement to be thrown aside.

That long before I had even truly noticed her, she had already given everything up for me.

And I cannot save her. Leaving her will not save her. Denying myself will not save her. I had been entirely foolish to think that I could. There is little that Sila would let stand in her way. And now, there is little left standing in my way.

Sila smiles at me, dark-eyed, from across the table. “Now that’s a promising look,” she says.

I shouldn’t.

Dawn King have mercy on me, I will . To hell with the rules.

Will you take me to your bed?

Sila reaches out a hand, plucking my glasses from my face and setting them neatly on the table. “Nothing would please me more,” she says. “But you must tell me what you want of me, and you must tell me if you want me to stop.”

What I want of you?

“Yes, little mouse.”

I do not know. I’ve never gone to bed with anyone.

I have the pleasure of watching Sila’s eyes widen, to see the way the blackness of her irises bleeds out across the whites.

“No one?” she says, intent.

Not a soul.

My heartbeat is racing, prey-quick. Sila looks at me like she intends to consume me where I sit. “I like that, rather more than I ought to,” she says. There is heat within me, warm and pooling, and she won’t kiss me still. She hasn’t even let her fingers make contact.

Let me please you. Let me have you. Let me give you everything I have. It’s yours. Let me be yours.

Her dark eyes are bright, ravenous things.

And still she holds back. She wets her lips, and I have never been more aware of her tongue, or how much I want it tangled with mine again.

I shift at the aching warmth between my thighs, the way every part of me is aware of where she is and where she isn’t.

“If you want me to stop,” she says, a little breathless.

“I want you to tap me with your fingers.” Her arm shifts and her fingers tap my shoulder sharply.

“Do you understand?” She turns her hand palm up to me, expectant.

It takes me a moment to understand what she’s asking of me.

I tap her palm back just as sharply, and her fingers wrap around mine.

I could sigh at the relief of it. I want to demand more of it.

“Nothing that you don’t want, Lorel. If you don’t like something, if you want to stop, if it’s too much, if you decide you want to read a book instead. Anything at all, tell me. Stop me, do you understand?”

I nod, and grip her hand, pulling her over the table, grasping for her blouse as I press my lips to hers and kiss her with all the hunger that’s been lying in wait inside me.

I’m clumsy at first, and then Sila takes control and I surrender to her clever tongue.

She breaks the kiss, allowing me a moment to breathe and I use a simpler single handed gesture.

I understand.

“Good,” she murmurs.

Her fingers curl into the fabric of my collar and she drags me back to her.

Her mouth is not soft or gentle. It demands mine again and I offer it up to her, everything up to her.

Her arms come around me, sliding across my clothes and holding me up against her, my toes inches from the ground.

Everything goes dark and airless for a moment, and as my vision clears, the bedroom appears around us.

“I told you I liked you in my clothes,” she murmurs, setting me down on my feet. “But I think I’ll like you dressed in my shadows just as well.”

As the shadows draw away, they take my dress with them, slipping it from my body.

They tug at the ties of my shift until it’s falling over my shoulders with a whisper.

Sila steps from her trousers, and pulls her blouse over her head with a tumble of hair.

The shadows unfasten my utilitarian breast band and drop it to the floor.

I gasp, quiet as the shadows touch my skin, drawing the last of my clothes away and leaving me bare in front of her.

When I look up again, Sila’s eyes are dark from edge to edge.

Hungry. It’s almost enough to distract from her nakedness.

Her bare full chest, where I have rested my head so often these past weeks.

Her strong shoulders that I have clung to— that I imagine myself clinging to in an entirely different way.

The smooth curve of her stomach, the points of her hips, and her thighs.

The Dawn King have mercy on me, I would happily drown in them. Drown in her.

So why is she just standing there?

Are you just going to look, or are you going to touch me?

Sila’s smile widens, smug and satisfied. “If you think I’m going to rush this, little mouse. I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you.”

I make to move closer to her, and her shadows tighten— just a gentle pressure keeping me in place.

If I could, I’d plead with her name and taste it on my lips.

I know it would bring her to her knees. Bring her closer.

As it is, my entire body is awake under the weight of her gaze.

She tips her head, gaze raking over me and then finally, she closes the gap between us, leaning down so that her breath is a gentle ghost across my skin.

Her hair, soft and gentle where it brushes against me.

The scent of the bath and her hair oil clinging.

Surrounding me. And still she isn’t touching me.

Sila.

She must be able to feel the movement of my frustrated hand signs through her shadows because the soft breath of her laugh flutters over the soft skin beneath my ear.

Her lips brush across it and it sets my flesh alight.

I whimper and it’s silent. Everything is silent, and still, and careful. I don’t want her to be careful.

“Tell me what you want, Lorel,” she whispers, between the lightest of kisses down my neck.

“Whatever you demand of me, it is yours. I am yours.” Her hand slides around the back of my neck, tangles in my hair and tugs, baring my throat to her.

I gasp silently as she nips at my jaw. Kisses down my throat to my collarbones. “And you are mine.”

I ache. It is no longer a simple want to have her skin against mine, to have her fingers against me, to have her mouth back on mine, stealing my breath away.

It is vital. Imperative to my continued existence.

It scours through me and I push against the barrier that keeps the curse locked away.

That keeps my voice locked away. She kisses across my breasts and I tear at the wall I built.

It is my bloody nails dragging me across the chapel floor.

My desperate plea to the Heart. A hungry search for a locket through scholarly detritus. A desperate need to call to her.

I rip at it, shred it with every part of my being and every piece of me that wants to meet and be matched by her. And as I pull at it, the magic I had woven unravels and her name tumbles freely across my tongue.

“Sila,” I gasp.

Sila stills and the curse stirs and I hope that the curse and I have made some kind of peace for now because if it decides now is the time to come forth, then I will set fire to the Heart in retribution.

A long heartbeat later, the curse settles, and Sila’s shadows loosen.

I thread my hands through her hair, bring her mouth to mine, and pull her with me as I fall back against the bed.

The sheets are soft against my skin and they smell of her.

All damp earth, salt, and decaying wood, laced through with that insidious floral scent that reminds me of funerals and incense.

Sila braces herself over me and I kiss her still. She’s smiling.

“Lorel,” she murmurs.

“What I want,” I say, breaking the kiss, blinking as I hear my breath again for the first time in months. I relish the feel of each sound in my mouth. “Is for you to devour me. Consume me. Show me that I am yours. Ruin me for any other, because there never will be. I am yours.”

She is still all over, eyes wide, mouth a soft shape of surprise. “Your voice,” she says. “It’s sweeter than I remember it.”

“It will be all the sweeter for calling your name,” I insist, tugging her closer. Demanding her skin against mine, her limbs tangled with mine. Because she is mine. “Give me everything.”

“Alright,” Sila says softly, and she suddenly seems more. Where the shadow begins and she ends, I do not know. Her mouth is on mine and she’s kissing me like she did that first time, leaving my mind blank as she ensnares every wisp of thought.

She presses against me, presses her thigh between my legs where I am damp and aching and I moan into her mouth. Her nails drag over my skin, her fingers press into my hips as she holds me there and grinds against me. She licks up the skin between my breasts, over the curse mark.

She kisses it as if she can suck the mark from my skin with her mouth alone.

Her mouth on me, her hands firm against my body, her thigh grinding against me.

It leaves my thoughts nothing but the faintest wash of watercolour.

I can barely breathe, barely think, and then the pressure of her thigh gives.

“Sila,” I gasp as the edge of building heat slips away. So very different from anything I’ve ever done for myself.

“Tell me you are mine,” she says, her mouth demanding against my skin. It leaves me gasping and writhing against her.

“I am yours,” I say, breathless. “Sila?—”

Her name turns into a moan as her fingers slide between us, against me.

Press into me. I thought I had known what pleasure was.

Satisfactory, but nothing to bother another being with.

Something to barely bother myself with. But as I gasp Sila’s name, as she gives me everything I want, everything I have asked for, I know there is nothing, and there never will be anything that compares to this.

There will never be anything I want more than her.

And if she is condemned, then I will be condemned with her.

Sila sends me tumbling, gasping, crying out into release and I am everything, and nothing, all at once.

I gasp beneath her as I come back to myself and she bundles me against her as she rolls onto her side.

My limbs are as loose as warm honey and I drift a little on the soft and hazy bliss of it, enjoying the press of her body against mine, the tangle of our legs, and her fingers, gentle and soft as they comb through my hair.

Fingers that can tear through flesh just as easily as they can bring it pleasure.

I press my face into her neck and feel the slow, determined beat of her heart through her skin. I feel her laughter through her chest.

“You are exactly as lovely as I thought you would be,” she whispers. I smile against her and bite at her jaw. Lick at her skin. She tastes of salt and earth under my tongue.

“You taste of the grave,” I tell her as her breath catches. “I like it.”

Sila’s fingers curl into my hair again, pulling me away so that she can look at me.

“Little mouse,” she says, wicked and dark eyed.

“I want to touch you,” I tell her. I don’t know if I’m still allowed to make demands.

“You may touch me however you wish, if it will please you,” Sila says.

“I want to please you ,” I say. “But I don’t know how, exactly.” I had thought I knew some of it, but I had not realised the depths of my inexperience.

Sila kisses me and it’s soft and sweet, and cold as mountain water.

Then her arms come around me as she rolls onto her back, pulling me astride her.

She smiles up at me from under long dark eyelashes.

“I can assure you that at this moment there is little you could do that would not please me. So why don’t you start with what you would like to try most? ”

It shocks me, that little revelation. That this lovely creature of darkness is just as wanting, just as aching for me, as I am for her. She takes my hands and kisses my injured fingers.

“Be careful with these. You might have to be creative,” she says, pleased.

I lean down to kiss her, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind as I stare at her mouth. Sila lets me. She doesn’t push back or try to take control. She permits me to make my demands.