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DANTE

H er mouth tastes like desperate searching. Dawn licks the back of my neck as I crush her against me, our teeth clacking, her fingers already shredding the buttons of my shirt. "Still overdressed for a fight," she pants against my jawline, the shadows at her ankles coiling up my calves.

I hook a thumb under the strap of her tank top. "I don't think you'll need these right now." The blade harness clatters into dewy grass as her nails carve trails down my spine.

Her laugh is all gravel and smoke. She bites my collarbone, hard enough to bruise, shadows now spiraling around us like a living canopy. The runes on her arms flicker cobalt.

My hands find her hips, lifting as she wraps her legs around my waist. We crash backward into the grass, goldenrod stems snapping under our weight. Her teeth find my earlobe. "No more vanishing acts. No more martyr speeches."

"Make me." Her challenge vibrates against my throat as she rips my belt loose. Morning light fractures through the shadow-curtain she's woven, gilding the sweat already gathering between her breasts.

We don't speak after that. Not when her back arches like a drawn bow, runes flaring electric across her skin. Not when my palm slams into damp earth beside her head, knuckles whitening as her shadows cinch around us both. The world narrows to salt and static, to the chokehold grip she keeps on my hair, to the exact moment her glowing fingers leave brands on my shoulders that'll outlast sunrise.

My hard cock presses against the inside of her thigh, begging to break free and be inside of her, claim her. She finally whispers, "Take me," and I don't hesitate.

I tear my pants down with a feral snarl, the leather belt snapping like a whipcord. Her heat engulfs me before I’m fully sheathed—a scalding vise of muscle and want that steals the breath from my lungs. She sinks down with a shattered cry, thighs quaking as she takes me to the hilt, and gods, she’s tighter than a noose, wetter than a monsoon.

Her nails rake down my chest as she arches, leaving trails of fire that mirror the phantom ache of her shadows still coiled around my calves. “Dante—” she gasps, the word fracturing into a moan as I buck upward, my hips pistoning to meet her merciless rhythm.

The air reeks of split earth and her lightning-charged sweat. Every snap of her hips cracks through me like a lash, our bodies slapping together in a cadence that shakes the marrow in my bones. Her runes flare cyan as I seize her waist, thumb finding the jagged scar above her hip—the one she earned from those piece of shit enforcers. She hisses, but it twists into a laugh when I bite the sound from her lips, my teeth sinking into the salt-damp column of her throat.

“Louder,” I growl against her skin, rewarded by her broken scream as I drive deeper, the heel of my palm grinding against the swollen knot of her clit.

Her shadows surge up to bind my wrists, tendrils slithering hot as forge smoke as she pins me to the dirt.

“You don’t command me, bloodletter,” she pants, but the tremor in her voice betrays her. Her cunt clenches around me like a fist when I smirk, her retaliatory thrusts growing erratic.

The storm breaks as we crash together—her keening wail harmonizing with my roar, her back bowing until the glowing sigils along her spine sear my thighs. We devour each other’s cries, mouths bloody and desperate, as the sky opens above us. Rain sizzles against our overheated skin, and I know the marks she’s left—the crescent moons on my shoulders, the shadow-burns around my wrists—will linger long after this tempest drowns our sins.

Her climax breaks in a fractured scream she tries to choke against her knuckles—I snarl at her to let it shred through her , raking nails down her slick hips until she soaks my thighs in a flood that smells of lightning and saltwater.

The scalding rush sets my nerves ablaze, her convulsions threatening to snap me as I lock her shivering form against me. Twin arcs of sweat-slicked heat where her breasts crush against my chest, the glowing sigils along her ribs branding my skin as I piston upwards—frantic, feral—my roar lost in the storm's answering thunder when release claws through my spine. Her teeth find the juncture of my neck as I spend myself inside her, our twin growls vibrating through blood and rain and the dark magic sparking where our bodies fuse.

She collapses onto my chest minutes later, shadows dissolving into mist. Her laughter shakes against my sternum. "Well that was..."

"Unnecessarily dramatic?" I trace a still-smoldering rune on her bicep. "You're literally glowing."

Her palm splays over my heartbeat. "Shut up." The cobalt light dims, but doesn't die.

Her breath steadies first, fingertips still sparking against my sternum. The morning exhales mist across our tangled limbs. I watch a leaf blade quiver against her shoulder tattoo.

"No more midnight exits. No more martyrdom via shadow-vanishing act."

"And when I'm threatened again?"

Her teeth flash. "We’ll burn that bridge screaming." She flexes her palm, cobalt filaments threading between her fingers. The tattoo flares brighter. "But you...you’re the anchor. When I start..."

"Spiraling?"

"Fuck you."

"Precisely the plan."

She rolls her eyes, but her shadows coil up my ankles again anyway. "When the static rises..." Her thumb presses hard over the fresh bite mark on my throat. "...I let you in. All the way."

"Generous." I flip us, blades of grass sticking to her sweat-slicked back. "Can’t imagine why you resisted."

Her knees bracket my hips as shadows braid through the goldenrod stalks above us, weaving a fractured twilight. "You’re an acquired taste. Like arsenic."

"And yet you keep swallowing."

Her answering growl vibrates against my lips as she kisses me—all vengeance and sacrament. The shadow canopy plunges us into false night, her runes reigniting along her ribs. Her teeth catch my lower lip, shadows slithering up my forearms like shackles.

"Prove it," she rasps against my mouth. "Anchor me. Right fucking now."

I don’t give her the satisfaction of a reply. My palm cracks against her ass cheek hard enough to leave a print. She arches with a feral laugh, shadows yanking my head back by the hair as her other hand claws down my chest—no careful grappling this time.

"Still think you can— Ah! " Her taunt morphs into a gasp when my thumb goes just below her navel. Her hips stutter. "Cheat—mmph—cheating."

"You loaded the dice."

She snaps her hips down, taking me in one ruthless glide as the shadow canopy erupts with phantom embers. Her choked moan strangles into a laugh. "Fuck. You’re still?—"

"Yours?" I buck upward, grinning at her shattered exhale. "Hate to break it to you?—"

Her claws dig crescent graves into my shoulders as shadows writhe like serpents between us. " Mine implies I asked nicely."

Teeth sink into my collarbone, sharp and claiming, as she rolls her hips in a slow, venomous circle. I hiss - half pain, half thrill - and she laughs into my pulse point. The canopy above flickers violently, shadows spitting sparks that rain down as cold stings against sweat-slick skin.

Every thrust becomes a counterstrike. She shoves me deeper into the ground, her spine arching with every burst of pleasure.

I drag callused palms up her thighs, relish the hitch in her rhythm when my thumbs brush the fresh welt blooming across her ass. The shadows retaliate - tendrils cinching around my wrists as I drive deeper inside of her making her moan beg to wake everyone up.