Page 13 of Safe in Shadow (Pine Ridge Universe #22)

S he didn’t move away from him.

In fact, she got closer.

“People can change. You don’t have to be evil if you don’t want to.”

He almost laughed at that.

“I cannot remember my life. Not even my name.”

She shook her head sadly. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.

I got to poke around the library’s historical archives, and I saw the names James and Cynthia Cameron.

Nothing about a brother. I’m sorry. I only saw this one deed about the sale of the land, so that doesn’t mean you’re not somewhere else in the files. We’ll find your name.”

“I do not want my old name.” The words were hard and firm. He meant it—and he said it with conviction, even though he didn’t know why.

“Oh. Bad memories?”

“ No memories. Not really. Except for James. James, I know, at least now. I see flashes of him, and I cannot remember our lives together at all, but I remember him so clearly—the feeling he gave me. I will never forget. Dear, wonderful James,” he whispered, head bowing again.

Warmth. Love. A true friend.

Someone worth protecting.

But he hadn’t been able to. Had he?

The cloudy confusion marred his thoughts, and the nebulous feeling of hatred and discontent festered in him.

Tonight would be a good night to rage and destroy this prison.

Instead, his Sunflower held him, her arm slowly sliding over his shoulder, her wayward blonde curls kissing his cheek.

He turned his head, and their lips met. Fused. He could not move without her touch, could not take his phantom breaths without breathing in her scent, inhaling her taste.

Nyx didn’t mind. If he could somehow bathe in her sunlight, he suddenly knew that he would. Scaring Grace away had not worked. Had not fed whatever it was that passed for a soul. Had not freed him.

But this? Touching her. Being accepted into her arms, her hands on his skin... There was a kind of freedom in that.

Or are you more simple than that?

Maybe part of his craving for Grace was because he wanted to rid himself of the broken, cloudy memory of Cynthia.

Cynthia. The name conjured up words, even if it couldn’t conjure up anything more concrete.

Evil. Beautiful. Conniving.

Grace was... Grace was a testament to her name. She gave grace. Forgiveness for something she didn’t understand, that he couldn’t tell her. She might be digging into his past, but her kindness only offered a way forward.

That taste of freedom.

You don’t have to be evil if you don’t want to.

She is my glimpse beyond the prison’s walls, even though she has come into this prison with me.

“You are remarkable,” he whispered between kisses, rolling his body with sinuous stealth, pivoting from beside her to in front of her, until his shadow enveloped hers.

GRACE’S HAND CRASHED over the side of the tub to finally turn off the water, but the steam lingered, making a haze of mist that mingled with shadow as she fumbled to get her shorts off.

All the years of feeling like her sex drive was stunted melted away when she felt his shadowy form wrapping around her.

Nyx didn’t need to breathe, but his form pulsed, and his lips were demanding against hers.

His voice never rose above a rasp that she had to strain to catch, but somehow that made everything more intense.

This passion was secret and stolen. Forbidden.

Yes, definitely forbidden. Maybe even dangerous.

And yet... she felt so safe in his arms.

Nyx said that he knew there was evil. He knew there were unseen things, but he wouldn't let them touch her. Grace hadn’t felt that sort of safety in a long time. She had even convinced herself that that was a luxury for weaker women, not the strong, independent kind of person she wanted to be.

“This place is so strange,” she whispered the obvious, but he didn’t laugh at her. “Not just the house, but the town. Something feels... off.”

He grunted his agreement, and his slender hips slotted between her open legs. Tendrils of shadows wove around her arms like Virginia creeper, from her fingertips, up her arms, weaving across her shoulders, and making a wild lattice of whispering darkness across her throat.

“But you are the beauty in the strangeness,” he hissed before sliding into her, filling her until she couldn’t hold another inch. “Everything here has been so ugly. Dark. More than you will ever know. Perhaps more than I can ever remember.”

Her eyes were closed as he moved inside of her, his solid form spawning shadows that seemed to cocoon her. The dark, formless mass moved her breasts like skillful hands, and winding tentacles of black crept up her legs, circling her thighs, and met in the middle.

Grace gasped as the shadows clashed over her mound, seeping down to her clit, pulsing and moving with Nyx’s thrusts. “Oh, God...” she panted, throat tight.

This has to be dangerous, doesn't it? He’s inside of me so deep, and surrounding every inch of me...

Safe.

Deadly.

Oh, so fucking good.

She moaned as the shadows writhing around her pushed forward while his hard length sank in and held.

“Why do you let me?” Nyx demanded in a rasp.

“Why do you want me?” she countered, eyes opening, struggling out of his hold to tentatively place her hands on his shoulders.

Questions neither of us have answers for...

“You make me less... Less dark.” His eyebrows, streaks of sleek black, drew together over his straight, strong nose, flashing black eyes clouding.

“Literally.” She managed a smile, touching his gray cheek with her peach-colored finger.

“I wanted to scare you. Drive you away. Keep you away from this place.”

“This isn’t how you do it,” Grace moaned, her pussy grasping him.

She was so full, and it seemed that shadows knew no limits, no bounds.

Just like his shadowy mass sprouted tendrils and coils as if Nyx’s form couldn’t be contained in one simple shell, the cock inside of her seemed restless.

She could feel Nyx swelling, the shadowy rod inside of her pressing against her walls as if he wanted to force more of himself into her, taking over every inch.

He chuckled, hips dropping hard to hers, making her worry that she could burst from the inside out. His cock seemed to split in half, then thirds, then too many to count, and all of the smaller shafts were fucking her at once with no sort of order.

The sensation was odd and overwhelming, but Grace knew within seconds that it would have the power to become addicting.

Different thicknesses and lengths owned her dripping slit, stroking her sensitive upper wall one second, plunging in hard and deep with one cock the next, and circling and rippling with another.

Her brain seemed to lose track of her senses. There was only pleasure and pressure and...“Oh, God! Nyx... Too much!”

“Then why do you keep soaking my cock with your juices? Why do you grunt and scream, and kiss me like you want me?” he demanded. “This isn’t how... This is different. With you, things are different.”

“With you , things are different,” she rejoined as she felt shudders coursing over her body.

The dozens of cocks squirmed and shimmied inside of her, leaving no part of her sensitive walls untouched.

When Nyx pulled back to gain momentum for another forward thrust, several of the slender, slippery shadow cocks slid out of her pussy.

That didn’t stop Nyx from moving. Now, she was being fucked on the inside and the outside, cocks moving inside of her and against her swollen clit, sliding down the slippery base of her pussy to graze her tight pucker as her juices dripped down.

With a strangled gasp, one of them slipped inside of her, making both holes clench and blackness dance across the edges of her vision at the sudden forbidden sensation.

Or was that darkness just her lover?

“Nyyyyx,” her long, drawn-out groan was accompanied by her hips rising to meet his onslaught, bathing in the overstimulation that was slowly frying all of her nerve endings and eroding her ability to think.

If I go out like this... I’ll go happy, Grace thought to herself.

“You don’t hold anything back. You let me have all of you.” Nyx looked at her with those intense eyes, some dawning wonderment in them. “You didn’t try to drive me away when you discovered me.”

“Why wouldn’t I want you in the house when you had it first?

Why wouldn’t I want you in my body when it feels like this ?

” Her head rocked from side to side as her orgasm built faster than she thought possible.

The mental image was what did it—looking at Nyx’s handsome, serious face as it went ragged with passion, feeling every part of her wrapped in him, every part of her invaded by him. ..

She could feel his desperation as he clutched her, the inky coils threatening to cut off her circulation. He was anchoring himself to her because she was warm and living, and he wanted a break from darkness and confusion...

As if that isn’t the truth for every soul, she thought.

Would a “normal person” feel this way? Would a “normal person” overlook initial fear and try to see the hurting man beneath the shadows?

No, probably not.

Curse her lonely heart; maybe she just wanted someone to need her again. Someone to live for again, not just a dream or a mission, but some person (or semi-person) who would hug her at the end of a long day.

Who would take her into his arms with such need.

Yes, someone who might need her, but give her something she needed in return.

Someone with a dozen cocks that were thrusting everywhere, sending her into an orgasmic tsunami?

Well, that’d be a bonus.

“Thank you,” Nyx mumbled against her cheek.

“For what?”

“All of the things. I want to repay you, Sunflower. You like it best when I rub you here,” Nyx stated, a thick band of shadow joining two of his small writhing appendages to manipulate her swollen bead.

“Oooh, yes. I do.” Grace let the constricting pleasure wash over her, wrapped too tightly to move, flying too high on a cloud of bliss to care.

She felt Nyx’s cocks swelling inside of her as his fingers slipped between her legs and roughly rubbed her clit.

“I want to watch your face this time. Hear you speak my name. Call for me when you come,” he panted.

“Nyx! Fuck, Nyx! God, yes, fill me like that!” Her orgasm exploded, and so did the cocks inside of her, shuddering out a hot, misty mass of inky fluid and steam that made her head spin.

Grace swallowed and gulped for air as he left her, the shadows unwinding from her body at high speed, recoiling and rejoining with Nyx as he collapsed onto the floor beside her. “Oh, wow.”

His ribs were rising and falling fast, even though he didn’t need to breathe. “Was it true? Your pleasure?”

“You thought I faked that? Sweet Jesus, no. That was insanely good. I didn’t know you could—” Grace ran a fingertip along his thigh, risking a soft nudge to the dark gray phallus slowly sinking against his leg, “turn this into an army.”

“I didn’t know, either. I haven’t been with anyone since I was trapped here. And I...” His face twisted as if something bitter had suddenly been stuffed into his mouth, “I never gave a woman pleasure. I was with a woman, but she was lying. It was all lies.”

Grace rolled over on her side and hugged her chest to his shoulder. “You gave me pleasure in my dream. Last night. Today. It’s not always the same kind of pleasure, not always given in the same way, and I like that. Variety is good. Each time was real, though.”

“No.” Nyx sat up, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Grace. My mind might never hold memories that reveal my past, I just know... I know when I’m with you that I understand things better than I have in a long, long time.”

“Well, you were all alone,” Grace said, stroking his back.

“When people are alone, or cut off, they lose pieces of themselves. I’ve gotten to know a lot of elderly people, and I want to keep working with them in some way or another.

I’ve seen what happens when people become prisoners of their own minds.

Their minds betray them. Play tricks, don’t work right.

Something from five minutes ago never happened, but things from fifty years ago are as clear as a bell.

.. And when they start to lose their hearing,” Grace shook her head, “that makes it worse. They’re suddenly alone with those thoughts. Other people’s words can’t come in.”

“My hearing is fine.”

“I’m saying it’s the same principle. You’re locked away here. Even when there were people here, you couldn’t talk to them. Well—couldn’t converse .”

“They weren’t here alone. Perhaps that’s why. Or perhaps it is because there is something about you , Grace. My saving Grace.” A flicker of a smile darted across his lips, “You see things others cannot.”

Grace shrugged. “That’s true about the elderly.

A lot of young people have no compassion or patience for older people.

I’m not saying ghosts—or whatever you are—are like people in nursing homes, but there’s a certain ‘invisibility’ about both groups of people.

Out of sight—don’t exist. No longer important.

” She snuggled closer. “You’re important to me now. Okay?”

Nyx shook his head. “What a rare sort of woman you are. You are very outspoken compared to the women of my time.” He frowned at her, a sudden spasm of pain passing over his face, “Yet you are more gentle.”

“I don’t know about that. You’ve never seen me and my Nana at the Spring Bring-N-Buy sale. We throw elbows with the best of them.”

Nyx slowly wrapped his arm around her as they lay sprawled on the bathroom floor. For several minutes, the silence stretched, and then he said, “You came home screaming my name today.”

“I needed you. Needed a friend. I think there are monsters in the town.”

“But there is a monster here.” He looked at her, one eyebrow arched.

“Yeah. But I know you . I like you.”

“You like me?”

Grace felt heat rushing to her cheeks. She’d just had the craziest sex ever with some sort of paranormal person, but let her have to admit that she was starting to get a crush on her “dream lover” and...

But she couldn’t lie to him. “I like you a lot, Nyx. Things aren’t so lonely with you here.”

He slowly lifted her arm and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “I am glad that you came, Grace. I’m glad you stayed.”