Page 2

CHAPTER 2

SKINNY-DIPPING IN THE LAVA POOL

SHANNON

W hen I was a teenager, my high school boyfriend’s family had a pool in the backyard. He spent the entire summer between junior and senior year trying to get me to agree to skinny-dip with him. Finally, when his parents and his sister went away on vacation, I snuck over and swam naked with him.

I ended up fucking him, too, and got the worst UTI of my life after the combination of chlorine water up my hoo-ha and banging a boy who thought a dip in the pool every few days replaced a daily shower did a number on my poor vagina.

Now, all that’s to say that I don’t have the fondest memories of skinny-dipping in the human world.

In Sombra?

It’s fucking awesome .

Before we left the house—and just so my mate was on the same page as me that by ‘walk’ I totally meant ‘bang’—I stripped down to nothing. Once I realized that I wouldn’t be heading back to New York anytime soon, I asked Malphas and Loki to take a quick trip to our place and pack up all of my clothes. I’m not ready to go all native like Kennedy has, wearing woven dresses from the village seamstresses. I’m good with my jeans and tank tops… unless I’m wearing nothing but Mal’s shadows.

I love how he can use part of his magic to create his ‘coverings’. Not only can he use them to hide my tits, pussy, and ass from the villagers when I’m au natural, but Sombra demons can actually hide their mates in their shadows. So long as he goes from his solid, red-skinned demon form to a hazy, mess of shadows with the outline of his horns, arms, legs, and some other appendages on display, he can gather me up in them and no one knows I’m there.

Well, they probably can guess. Demons in Sombra don’t use their shadow form as much as Mal had to in Jericho so seeing him make his way out of the village in his shadows is probably a honking neon sign that he’s about to get laid. Especially when our ‘walk’ takes him a little out of the way of the village, toward the lava pools on the far side of the ash fields.

Sombra is a dusty, hot, fiery world. The farmers grow demon grains, fruits, and vegetables out of the ash with the teensiest, tiniest amount of moisture. In fact, they don’t even need rain; based on the prophecy, they’d rather never see the stuff. But that’s because the lava pools feed their crops.

Seems like it wouldn’t make sense, huh? Lava. Like, actual, literal lava. But it does, because in Sombra? The lava—while super hot… because, if I didn’t mention it already, Sombra is hot hot —has the consistency of water without making you wet.

Even better? As long as Malphas stays in his shadows and keeps me gathered up in them, the sensation of sinking down into the lava pool is almost as relaxing and soothing as easing your tired body into a hot tub. Add in the fact that it can’t touch me in Mal’s shadows, plus anything he shoots into the pool is disintegrated by the heat immediately, it’s no surprise that my kinky side enjoys letting him fuck me in the lava pool.

I’m not the only one, either. Kennedy thinks I’m crazy for it, but I’ve caught a couple of demon mated pairs doing the deed in the lava pools, too. I always lead Mal further away for one of our own, but tonight?

Maybe the gods are on my side for once because we’re all alone.

Like I said, I have all of my clothes with me in our place. I’d prefer to keep them in one piece as long as I can. That means that undressing and leaving them on the edge of the lava pool is a no-go. I can’t risk them somehow getting splashed and ending up incinerated. Or if they accidentally get knocked further into the ash fields and a piece of the volcanic underground incinerates them that way. Nope. It’s better to be completely naked and tucked inside of Mal’s shadows.

And that doesn’t have anything to do with how easy it is to initiate mating with him when he’s conveniently bare under his shadows, why would you ask?

I trust Malphas implicitly. If I didn’t, I would never willingly walk into a pool of freaking lava . He has to keep control of his shadows, but he explained to me once that it was like breathing for a human. He doesn’t have to think about how to do it. He just does it.

Because Malphas? Like all Sombra demons, he is shadow.

Sombra demons don’t have just two forms, either. They have three . Their solid form, when they turn to inky black shadows, and their mist. What Mal is doing now is keeping his body as his shadows while casting a net with his mist, tucking me inside of it. That’s how he can hide me, just like he did the first time I saw Glaine threaten him with the golden chains and a stint in Duke Haures’s dungeon.

All I feel is Malphas. All I know is my mate. As he holds my hand, guiding me into the lava pool before jumping in after me, there is a sensation of warm water up against my body without any part of me becoming wet.

Well, no. That’s a lie. There’s definitely a part of me that’s wet right now.

Turning into Mal, I grip as much of his sides as I can. I only come up to his sternum when we’re standing in front of each other, but that’s okay. I’m in the perfect position to scrape my teeth over the first S in the tattoo of my name on his chest. As he shudders, I grin, then do it to the H . I keep going until the last N is a memory, my attention focused on swirling my tongue around his hardened nipple.

When he’s in his shadows, that doesn’t mean that’s all he is. Unless he fades completely to mist or commands his body to turn to pure shadow, there’s still a solid body under there somewhere. It’s more like his whole form is black, but about two inches of the edge is transparent. I could push my finger through it before finding something hard beneath it.

Right now, my questing fingers find his cock.

The first time we mated, I was a little worried about his size. I was no virgin—even if Malphas was —but all it took was my determined mate turning his entire dick to shadow to make sure that he could fit that monster cock inside of me.

It worked, but that’s not all that happened. We both discovered that he’s even more sensitive when he slips from his solid form to his shadows. Not only that, but his pleasure increases mine exponentially. I climaxed almost immediately because I hadn’t expected it to feel that amazing.

Since then, we’ve fucked countless times. I’m confident I can take him in any form, though I’d be lying if I said that—as an admittedly selfish lover sometimes—I don’t immediately go off like a rocket when Mal gives me that shadow dick.

As I tease him with my mouth on his skin, I rub my thighs together to fight back my own arousal. I don’t know why I even bothered to try. He might have been an innocent virgin when I first got my hands on him, but Mal is a seasoned lover now.

His thick fingers slip between our bodies. Like usual, his claws are completely turned to shadow. He’ll never risk cutting me with their sharp points, though the sensation as he prods between my folds has me gritting my teeth in an attempt to keep from shouting out in need.

By the end of tonight, he’ll have me howling. No doubt about that. But since he once had to explain to one of the clan hunters that the shriek he heard wasn’t a predator with its kill, I’d rather wait to see if we can hold off on getting interrupted until after I come .

I’ve been dying for my mate since before the gold moon. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, doing a little foreplay when I got plenty of that last night. I want to be full of him. Stretched to the brink with his cock. I want to ride?—

“Oh.” My eyes flutter closed. “Yeah… okay. So maybe this was a good idea after all.”

“Mm. Did you say something, my mate?”

I lick my bottom lip as Malphas slowly works a second finger inside of me to join the first. The best part is that, on an oversized shadow demon, one finger is almost as big as a human cock. Two? I’m getting that delicious stretch I wanted, and I love it.

The lava pool is only about four feet deep. It hits Mal around his middle, while I would be covered past my tits if it wasn’t for his shadows. Still, I’m able to rise up on my tiptoes easily so that I can guide his fingers, making him fuck me with them as I sink back down.

I hiss.

He sucks in a breath. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are when we’re mating?”

Every damn time, but I never get sick of hearing it. “Thanks, babe.”

He thrusts his fingers, going a little deeper. I clutch his arm, digging my nails past his shadows as his claws touch that spot inside of me that has me squealing.

“Beautiful,” he rasps, repeating himself. “But you’re even prettier when you come for me.”

God, I love it when my sweet, formerly innocent mate talks dirty to me. It just means I taught him well, and since he could easily do just that if he keeps pumping his fingers like that, I know that I did. He’s had years to perfect his technique, and forever to remind me why I decided to mate my monster in the first place.

I could easily give in. I could just let him touch me like this, knowing that he’ll wait forever to find his own pleasure. To Mal, I always come first—and that includes actually coming .

But that’s not what tonight is about. This is about reconnecting, and maybe I’m taking it too literally, but that means I want his cock inside of me instead of his fingers. I want him to pluck my clit with those wicked shadow claws while I bounce on his cock, a race to see which one of us will finish first.

Only one way to find out.

In a voice that’s little more than a pleading whine, I tell him, “I need you, Mal. Not your fingers. Your cock. Won’t you give it to me?”

His shudder is so forceful, he causes the lava pool to form slight waves. After one last pump, he pulls out his fingers. I’m only empty for a few seconds before he wraps one hand around me. With a gentle push against my ass, he lifts me up, guiding me to wrap my legs around him.

With his height, we’ve had to find ways to make mating work. Whether he puts me on all fours and cages me in with his body until we line up perfectly, or he holds me aloft with his hand so that my pussy hits his groin and a simple tilt of my head means we can kiss as we fuck, it doesn’t matter. I was meant to be his. He was meant to be mine. It might look weird on paper, but when you have two eager souls wanting to become one… yeah, it works .

His fingers stretching me out wasn’t necessary. After going the entire gold moon without his dick to help me get through the worst of the lust, I’ve been waiting for him to impale me. I was probably slick enough to take his solid dick without any help, but between my lust, his practiced touch, and the remnants of the gold moon… as soon as his cock finds my entrance, he shoves and I’m fully seated on top of him.

Our first fuck tonight is fast. It’s frantic. It’s messy and not the least bit smooth. I could give a shit. Through our bond, I can sense just how desperate Malphas is for me. Same, big guy. He has me squirming almost instantly as he palms my ass, lifting me up and guiding me down so that I really am bouncing on top of him.

There are no words, dirty or not. It’s pure animalistic rutting out in the gentle shadows of Sombra. So maybe there are some white eyes peering at us from the burnt woods at our back. And we’re still near enough to Nuit that getting caught isn’t just a possibility. It’s something that adds to the excitement, even though no one will see me.

They’ll see Mal, though, and my possessive side insists that they can’t. His chest, sure. I love the way my name is inked on his skin, and when all of this prophecy nonsense is done, I’ll go back to convincing Mal that it’s only fair that I get his name tattooed on me, too.

I know why he hesitates. Bond, remember? He thinks I could never love him… never claim him as much as he does me. He’s wrong about that, obviously, but with our lives gone topsy-turvy since Alana was born, I decided to hold off on pestering him about something that’s so clear.

Besides, why tell him when I can show him? And as I purposely ride him until he comes first, that’s exactly what I do.

As Mal can’t help but unload himself inside of me, the warmth of his jizz coupled with the reverential way he pants my name during his orgasm does set off mine. I squeeze him, continuing to ride out my climax as he shifts his hand, lovingly stroking my clit, just as I like. The last bit of stimulation rips the howl right out of my throat, and even if one of the villagers stumble upon Mal’s golden eyes gleaming boldly, the scent of our sex for once overpowering the rotten egg stink of this sulfurous world… I wouldn’t change a damn thing about tonight.

Hey. He’s my mate. My one true love. For god’s sake, we have a kid. We fuck.

Get used to it.

As for me, when I can finally catch my breath again, I have only two words for my mate: “I win.”

He brushes my hair out of my face, nuzzling my temple. “What’s that?”

I shake my head, burying it alongside his thick throat. “Don’t worry about it, babe. Besides, it doesn’t matter. We’re only just getting started.”

Because another bonus to being a Sombra demon’s mate?

When you’re immortal, refractory periods? Who needs ‘em?

Not me. I just need my mate. I need my daughter.

My happily-ever-after.

And I’m going to have it, no matter what it takes.