Page 71 of Of Nightmares & Fire (Elusive Umbra #1)

Chapter fifty-three

Kyros

I’ve fallen for the enemy's daughter. I hold her gaze and watch her lips part in that delicious way I’ve come to crave.

She trembles slightly in my hold, but I can see in her eyes it's not fear of me or this embrace we find ourselves in. It’s anticipation for what could come.

I let my thumb score a path across the line of her jaw and tenderly bring my lips to hers.

The first brush of them is a question; the second, a promise.

She pushes forward, accepting everything I am giving her.

My grip on her tightens as I pull her to me.

Giving in to every urge I have been resisting.

I pull her from the floor, and her legs swiftly wrap around my waist. I can feel the heat from her barely covered core already, and the sudden influx of breath she pulls in tells me that she can feel just how hard I am pressing against my breeches.

Her hands come up, fingers tangling into my hair as the once gentle kiss becomes fevered.

We are both breathing hard, and she yelps when I slam her back against the shelf on the wall.

A few tomes fall from above and crash to the floor.

She laughs, and I devour the sound of it with a ravenous growl.

I palm her ass in a bruising grip, fingers digging into flesh, and I nip at her lips.

“Kyros,” My name is a plea breathed between ragged breaths; her head falls back against the shelves, and I make my way down her neck, sucking, biting, kissing, tasting.

Then we are kissing again. Her hands come to the ties at the neck of my tunic, and she pulls them apart.

The fabric splitting with a loud rip. She freezes, then looks at me in shock at what she did, and I can’t help the wide smile that splits my face.

“Careful, Shula. You are inviting your demons out to play.” I barely recognize my own voice. The deep aching need coating it is entirely new.

“I have run from demons my entire life. You are one I want to be caught by.” Her voice is husky.

Thick with both emotion and lust. Her eyes are heavy as they flick back and forth between mine, churning like a storm I want to get lost in.

I shift her weight in my arms, and hands clasp around my neck as I turn toward the bed.

A sliver of moonlight shines through the barely parted thick drapes, cutting through the dark bedding like a sharp blade.

I lay her down gently, easing my body over hers.

The moonlight barely reaches her face, lighting across her eyes, but there in that moment, I’m reminded once more of the tiny blue flower.

The deadly beauty lying before me, just as the scorpion grass in the dark recesses of the forest. She has no clue the hold she has on me.

She has no idea the lengths I would go to protect what is mine. Whether she knows it or not, she is mine. The divine have cursed her to that fate, and there is no getting out of it for either of us.

Her hand trails down my neck, the other one still tangled into my hair at the nape of my neck.

She pauses over my exposed chest; my shadows writhe with each caress she gives.

I shudder, causing her to lift her eyes to mine.

The way my magick responds is like it’s reaching for her.

It wants to embrace her just as much as I do.

“Touch me,” she says as her eyes fall back to my chest, where her fingers run through the patch of hair over my sternum.

They trace the small scars that litter my skin and slow to a halt over my pounding heart.

I sit up, looking down at her body beneath me, and pull my tunic over my head, tossing it to the floor.

She's wearing a thin slip, undergarments that barely cover anything, and her nipples peak as she squirms and arches her back. The hard tips press against the silky material, and a groan slips past my lips as I look at her, fists clenched. She doesn’t have to tell me to touch her.

I will learn every inch of her skin with my hands.

I will taste every part of her, but right now my eyes are starving and devouring everything she is offering.

“Was the princess not taught patience?” I ask teasingly, and she squirms more.

I lean forward over her, my leg pressing firmly between her thighs.

I drag my finger over her plump lips, letting them fall apart as I do.

She tilts her chin up, urging my touches to make a path down her neck and to the valley between her breasts.

My finger gets caught on the pendant she always wears, and my shadows pulse with the contact.

Similar to the feeling of the Tsalalerian Steel or the sand I've kept close to me since leaving the Dead Sea.

I eye it speculatively, but my attention is snared by the goddess beneath me when she arches her back with a moan.

Her core grinds on my leg for friction, and I smile.

“So needy.” I playfully chide. “Tell me, Shula, should I return the favor of you destroying my tunic?” She gasps as I don’t give her time to answer and rip the delicate fabric down the center. A growl builds low in my throat as I look down at her nearly bare to me.

“Are you trying to scare me again?” She asks, breathless and panting.

“I told you, you don’t scare me.” I chuckle darkly, licking my lips, and letting my hand trail down her exposed skin, slipping the tip of my finger beneath the hem of her undergarment.

Her breaths shake as she watches me tease the skin in the hollows of her hips with a feather-light touch.

“Your heart beats to the same rhythm either way, Shula.” I say, and her brows drop just slightly, but I distract her. Covering her pert nipple with my lips, I suck it into my mouth. Another beautiful gasp fills the silence of the night around us, and I smile with the pink bud between my teeth.

“Great divine, Kyros!” She groans, digging one hand into my hair and the other into the bedding.

“Mmm, I like the sound of that. You want to worship me, Shula?” I let my mouth explore both of her breasts, tugging with my teeth on one and rolling the bud of the other between my fingers.

When I finally claim her mouth again, she's nearly begging for me to give her attention elsewhere.

Reaching down, I pull at the ties on my breeches, shuffling out of them while I claim her mouth amorously.

Part of me knows I should stop this. That same part knows that when she realizes the truth of all of this, it will only hurt her, but the other part…

The part of me that is selfish wants nothing more than to claim her and ask for forgiveness later.

She is mine whether she knows it yet or not.

There would be no world where she could be taken from me. Not now.

She reaches between us, and this time I let her find what she is reaching for.

She rubs her palm along my length, and I grind my teeth together and let my eyes roll back as I close them.

Her hand glides up my shaft and circles the sensitive tip, creating a quake to rack my body with a jolt of pleasure.

Her hand feels perfect wrapped around me. Pumping slowly in soft strokes.

“If we do this… There is no going back, Shula.” I warn her between urgent kisses. She pulls me back down, crushing my lips to hers again before she hisses her response into my mouth.

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Will you accept my claim on you?” I ask seriously, pulling back so I can look into her eyes.

“You would claim me?” The moonlight flickers as clouds pass over its glow and casts her face in a moving shadow.

Her cheeks are flushed and her hair pools out around her like a spilled inkwell.

She is devastatingly beautiful and oblivious to the fact that she is already mine.

Of course I would claim her. Since the moment I laid eyes on her, I knew, though I didn’t want to accept it.

It wasn’t in the plan. She was never the plan, but even as I fought it— I knew.

I would always choose her. This would always be our future because there would never be anything that stood in the way of me claiming the person who is the other part of my soul.

My twin flame.

“I would claim you in every life— Always , Shula.” A question shadows her eyes, but she doesn’t speak on it.

Instead, tears gather along her lashes. I cup her face, hoping the truth in what I’m about to tell her is clear in my eyes.

“No matter what happens next, you are mine, Shula. I will never let you go.” She nods, accepting my proclamation.

“I want to hear you,” I say, as I move fully between her legs.

Each of her knees rests at my hips, and I rub my hand up her bare thigh and back down again as she takes her time drinking me in.

Her lips part, and her tongue juts out before she swallows and finds my eyes.

“I will accept your claim.” She says, and my brow twitches just the slightest in question, wondering what she knows about claiming with the Neer people… What it means to be claimed or to accept a claim.

We stare into each other's eyes for a long moment, both of us acknowledging what we are doing, but I am the one who breaks our stare.

I drop my mouth to her throat, licking, sucking, and nipping my way along it.

Reaching between us, I let my fingers slide between her legs and groan at the wetness I find.

She pulls at my shoulder, digging her nails into me, wanting me to give her more with my hand.

I circle her clit with a slow, even pressure, before slowly sinking two fingers into her opening.

She moans into my mouth, and I can't help the animalistic growl I release as I trap her clit with my thumb.