Page 44 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)

M y sleep was a battlefield of broken images. Jalend’s anguished face dissolving into smoke.

The sickening crunch of Sirrax’s wing. Over and over, I fell, the ground rushing up to claim me, only to be caught in arms of living shadow that were both terrifying and strangely gentle.

Then I was back in my rooms at the Academy.

The bed was harder than I remembered, but the ink black arms of the man who held me were unmistakable.

I felt Tarshi’s warm breath dance over my skin as his lips trailed down the side of my neck, sparking a deeper heat elsewhere.

I sighed, pressing back against the hardness behind me, grinding myself against him in a way that made him groan.

His hand slid from my waist, his fingers tracing the curve of my hip before settling on my breast. A thumb brushed over my nipple, and I arched into the touch, a soft moan escaping my lips.

It was a delicious friction, a familiar dance.

He kissed the nape of my neck, his stubble scraping my skin in a way that sent shivers of pleasure through me.

I pushed back against him again, already wet and wanting.

I felt his cock slide, long and hard between my legs and I moaned, rubbing myself over him.

He gasped, his breathing harsh and rugged, his hand dropping to my hip to rock me back and forth over his length.

His hips bucked against me, a single, sharp thrust that was pure, possessive demand.

It was so like Tarshi, that raw, impatient need he sometimes showed when we’d been apart too long.

A thrill shot through me, hot and sharp.

I whimpered, a sound of pure wanting, and tried to twist in his arms to face him, to kiss him, but his hold was iron-strong, keeping me pressed with my back to his chest. He didn’t want me to turn. Another game.

I tilted my head back, trying to find his lips, but he only buried his face in my hair, his growl a vibration against my skull.

His free hand snaked around my front, fingers tangling in the curls between my legs.

He found my clit with unerring accuracy, his touch sending a jolt of lightning straight through my core.

I cried out, my hips bucking wildly against his cock as he worked me with a brutal, single-minded rhythm.

It was almost too much, too intense, pushing me right to the edge.

A low growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating through my back. It wasn’t Tarshi’s familiar, playful sound; this was deeper, more feral. The sound snagged on the edges of my sleepy haze, a dissonant note in a perfect dream.

A word tore from his throat, a guttural sound in that strange, harsh language. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated possession.

My eyes snapped open.

The cave walls, flickering in the dying firelight, came into sharp, horrifying focus.

The man holding me wasn’t Tarshi. The arms pinning me were corded with unfamiliar muscle, the skin covered in tattoos that writhed in the low light.

And the eyes that stared down at me over my shoulder, burning with a black, consuming fire, were not warm brown.

They were the colour of storm clouds and winter ice.

I was naked, wrapped in a stranger's cloak, held captive in the arms of the shadow mage.

And I had been grinding against him. Moaning for him.

My body, tricked by a dream and a familiar face, had betrayed me completely.

His hand was still between my legs, slick with my release.

His breathing was a harsh rasp in my ear, his arousal a rigid brand against my skin.

He had been touching me. Not in a dream.

In reality. While I slept, while I thought he was my mate, he had…

oh gods. His fingers were still circling my clit, his hard cock still sliding through my wetness, and though I should have felt afraid, should be utterly terrified, all I felt was desire, intense, driving me on.

My mind told me I was crazy, but something deeper urged me on.

It wasn’t just my body betraying me, it was something far stronger, primal almost.

A whimper escaped my lips, a sound of utter shame and unwilling pleasure.

He felt the change in me, the moment horrified awareness replaced sleepy compliance.

A low sound, something between a chuckle and a growl, vibrated against my back.

His hand tightened on my hip, pulling me impossibly closer, grinding the rigid length of him against my pussy.

He wasn't Tarshi playing a game; he was a captor asserting his dominance.

He drove a finger inside me, then two, stretching me, filling me while his thumb continued its relentless assault on my clit, claiming me in a way that was both a violation and a dark, twisted homecoming.

Every push of his hips, every stroke of his fingers was a brand, marking me as his. I was coming apart, unravelling under the hands of a monster who wore my mate’s face, and the most terrifying part was that I didn't want him to stop.

Thought dissolved into pure, splintering sensation.

My orgasm ripped through me, a silent scream that arched my back and sent my whole body into violent tremors.

I shuddered against him, boneless and gasping, my mind a white-hot void.

His body went rigid behind me, his own release a shuddering wave that pulsed against my thigh.

He groaned, a long, low sound of pure animal satisfaction, and buried his face in the curve of my neck.

For a long moment, the only sounds were our ragged breaths and the soft hiss of the dying embers.

Shame, cold and sharp, warred with the lingering heat in my blood.

I was his captive. This was a violation.

Yet my body hummed with a satisfaction so deep it felt like a betrayal of my very soul.

He held me as if I were a cherished possession, his hand resting possessively on my hip, his thumb stroking lazy circles on my skin.

I didn’t dare move. I lay perfectly still, my mind a maelstrom of confusion and self-loathing.

He had taken my pleasure without my consent, yet some dark, primal part of me had craved it, had met his silent demand with a frantic need of its own.

It was the feeling of a mate, the undeniable pull I felt for Tarshi, but twisted into something dark and predatory.

He shifted behind me, his hold never loosening. His lips brushed the shell of my ear, and he whispered a single, soft word in his harsh tongue.

“Aeveth.”

“What?” I asked, my breath still catching in my throat, but he made no reply.

He sat up suddenly, letting me fall onto my back.

The feather cloak was bunched up under me, but the sheer size of it still protected my back from the hard mud packed floor of the cave.

Before I realised what he was doing, my captor had pulled my legs apart and was trailing his mouth up the inside of my thigh.

I gasped, trying to clamp my legs shut, a pathetic attempt at modesty and defiance.

He simply wedged his shoulders between my knees, forcing me open.

A low sound of approval rumbled in his chest as he nuzzled against the damp curls at the juncture of my thighs, his white hair a stark contrast against my skin.

His tongue swept out, a hot, wet stripe from my inner thigh up to my pussy, and my hips jerked off the ground.

He was tasting me. Tasting my release, and his own.

The sheer, possessive intimacy of the act sent a fresh wave of heat coiling low in my belly.

He licked me clean with slow, deliberate strokes, removing any trace of his own release, before moving upwards and tracing every part of me with deliberate, maddening slowness.

He tasted me, learned the shape of me, his tongue stroking and teasing until I was slick and arching helplessly off the floor.

The sensation was electric, a direct line to the deepest, most primal part of my brain. The part that didn't care that this was wrong, that this man was my captor. The part that only recognized the overwhelming, undeniable pull of a mate that my soul answered.

When his mouth finally closed over my clit, a sob tore from my throat.

He sucked gently at first, then harder, his tongue flicking and teasing until I was writhing beneath him, my fingers clawing at the feathered cloak.

A helpless cry tore from my throat. It was too much.

He was pushing me over the edge again, claiming my body so completely that there was no room for thought, no space for resistance.

My world shattered into a million glittering shards of pure sensation.

The orgasm was a violent, consuming thing, ripping through me with such force that my vision went white and a raw, keening sound tore from my lungs.

It was an animal noise, a sound of utter surrender that I didn't recognize as my own.

My body convulsed, a helpless puppet dancing on the strings of his expert mouth, until I was left gasping and boneless on the feathered cloak, my mind wiped clean of everything but the aftershocks of pleasure.

He lifted his head, his unearthly eyes intense with satisfaction.

The intensity of it made me want to squirm away, to hide myself, but I was too weak, too utterly spent to move.

He surveyed my ruined state—my flushed skin, my trembling limbs, the dazed look in my eyes—and a low sound of approval rumbled in his chest. He had wrecked me. He had owned me. And he knew it.

He stood abruptly, his face closing off as if shutters had been drawn across a window.

The tender lover of moments before was gone, replaced once again by the cold, controlled captor who had cleaned my wounds and bound me with shadows.

He pulled me to my feet with hands that were now strictly business, his touch impersonal despite what we had just shared.