Page 91 of Shattered Stars

“He thinks you’re fated mates.”

I jolt a little. I’ve not shielded my thoughts. Stone can read my mind. No doubt he can read Tristan’s too. It’s not surprising he knows and yet these thoughts have been hovering around, half-formed in my mind for some time, and he’s never picked them out before.

“Half-formed ideas are very hard to read,” he explains. I nod, not quite able to meet his eye. “How long have you known?” he asks.

“I’m not sure that I know anything,” I snap, kicking at loose earth with the toe of my boot.

“Rhi …”

I glare up at him, those tears threatening to overspill again. “How can fate bind me to someone I hate? Someone who hates me? That can’t be right. It just can’t be!”

“He doesn’t hate you,” he says softly.

I scoff at that. “You don’t know the half of what he’s done to me, Phoenix.”

“Rhianna Blackwaters, you don’t owe him anything. You don’t owe anyone anything.”

“But?” I say, because there’s always a damn but.

He shrugs. “Going against fate, refusing your fated mates–”

“Is what you were doing.”

He sighs, then takes a hold of my arm and drags me towards him. “I’m a far bigger fool, far more stupid, far more of an idiot, than you are, Blackwaters.”

“That must make you an exceedingly big one, Professor.”

“Yep,” he says, “because see what I was missing out on.”

My bond thrums as he leans down to kiss me, sliding his warm hand into my hair and cradling the back of my head.And now, right now, is the moment I should tell him about the crimson magic. That I should confess all the dark things I suspect I might be capable of. But I can’t. I can’t do it. He’s already learned one of my secrets tonight. To confess another, one far worse, feels too dangerous. I can’t lose him. I can’t. So instead, I whisper:

“Someone might see.”

He waves his hand through the air, whispering the enchantment and the air seems to shimmer in a cocoon around us. “Now they can’t,” he says, kissing me harder this time, walking me backwards until I collide with the trunk of a tree.

“I almost feel sorry for him,” he murmurs as he kisses his way down my throat, my eyes drifting shut.

“Who?” I say, my train of thought completely disrupted as he slides his hand under my shirt and squeezes my breast.

“Kennedy. You’re so delicious, Blackwaters. So fucking delicious. It must be driving him mad to want you and not to have you. I know it drove me to the fucking brink.”

His other hand finds the waist of my jeans and he twists the buttons through their holes, opening the fly and tugging them down my legs.

I wrap my hands around his neck, and scrape my nails against his scalp – something I’ve learned that he likes.

“Hmmm,” he moans as he slides his hand between my legs. “So delicious, so deliciously wet.”

“I can’t bear to be apart from you,” I whisper, as he tugs down his fly and, taking a hold of my thighs, hoists me up against the tree. “You and Azlan. When we’re apart, all I can think about is you and the things you do to me.”

“I think you do a fair bit to me, too, Miss Blackwaters,” he says, grinding his hard cock inside me. My bond sparks to life and I moan as he rubs against every sensitive spot. Despite how much I plead, he grinds and grinds until the tears in myeyes finally spill and my nails are deep in his shoulder, then he pounds me against the tree, his words turning wild as both of us wind higher.

“I can’t wait till he’s home either, sweetheart. I can’t wait until we can pleasure you together, share you between us, fuck you at the same time.”

“Oh,” I call out, coming messy and loud as he does the same. We float together, high above the shadowy trees and the pale meadow, somewhere up in the stars where our magic swirls and curls around us.

And when we float back to earth, buffeted along the way by more feelings of bliss, he whispers in my ear, “You like the idea of that, Miss Blackwaters? You want us to fuck you together?”

“Yes,” I whisper. Yes, I want that very much. So much so that I don’t think I have the words to describe it.