Page 55 of Stormvein (The Veinbound Trilogy #2)

When our lips meet, the kiss carries none of the desperate circumstances of our moment before the ambush at River Crossing.

There is no immediate threat, no countdown to separation.

This is driven by something more primal, more honest. A connection I haven’t allowed myself to acknowledge before this moment.

For someone who spends every second planning every move, this feels dangerously unplanned , yet absolutely necessary.

She responds immediately, her hands curving over my shoulders, pulling me closer.

My hands drop to her waist, so I can draw her against me.

Her body arches into mine, closing the space between us.

The press of her breasts against my chest, her fingers caressing the back of my neck.

Everything feels right in a way I could never have anticipated.

The taste of her floods my senses, and heat spreads through my body.

Her mouth opens beneath mine, and my tongue traces the curve of her lower lip before dipping inside to slide against hers in a slow exploration that sends sparks down my spine.

The contact is electric, intimate. She makes a sound in her throat, something between a sigh and a moan that reverberates right through me.

Her teeth catch my lip, tugging gently before releasing it. My fingers tangle in her hair, so I can tug her head back and hold her exactly where I want her. Her moan vibrates against my lips, and sends heat surging through my blood.

When she pulls back slightly to catch her breath, I follow, unwilling to break contact.

This is different. It’s a claim. An acknowledgment. Each movement of our lips, each slide of tongue against tongue, each shared breath builds something between us that I neither planned for nor expected.

When we finally break apart, her breathing is uneven, a flush spreading across her cheeks, down her throat.

“I didn’t plan for this.” My thumb brushes over her bottom lip, feeling the softness there. The admission costs me more than she knows. To acknowledge there are things beyond my control, beyond my strategies and calculations. Things that simply exist, whether I will them or not.

A small laugh escapes her. “That’s what makes it matter.” Her palm presses against my chest, directly over my heart. “Some things can’t be strategized, Sacha, no matter how much you try. Some things just … are.”

The truth of her words strike somewhere deep inside me. Control has been my armor for so long. My weapon, my salvation through years of captivity. Yet here, with her, surrender feels like strength.

She takes a step back, hand sliding down my chest, and coming to rest over where the Authority’s brand had been burned into my skin.

“I need to see it again. I know you’re healed … I know … but I keep seeing you the way you were in that cage.”

I understand her need for confirmation, so I don’t stop her when she reaches for the fastenings of my shirt and pulls it open. When the fabric parts, revealing unmarked skin, her breath catches. Her fingers trace now-absent wounds, searching for evidence of what she knows happened.

“It’s all really gone,” she whispers. “Everything they did to you.”

Her palm flattens against my chest, over my heart again, and her other hand finds the place where the sword wound had festered.

“I thought I was going to lose you. When the fever kept climbing, and the infection wouldn’t respond to anything we tried.”

“You didn’t lose me, though.”

I place my hand over hers, pressing her palm against my skin so she can feel my heartbeat, steady and strong.

“ You did this. Your power met mine. What was dying was reborn.”

Her eyes meet mine again, as her fingers continue their exploration over smooth skin that once held wounds and bruises.

“I can still see them. Every time I close my eyes. Every mark they put on you.”

I capture her hand and raise it to my lips, kissing each fingertip. “They’re all gone now.”

“Not in my mind, they’re not. I watched you dying for days .”

My shadows rise in response to her upset, coiling around her fingers like smoke. She doesn’t pull away. Instead, she watches, fascinated, as darkness curls against her skin.

Our eyes lock, and something breaks loose inside me.

I pull her back against me, and claim her mouth again with a hunger that surprises us both.

My hands find the hem of her tunic, and I drag it upward.

She raises her arms, allowing me to pull it over her head.

Tossing it to the floor, I wind one arm around her waist, while my other hand slides over her skin, down her arm, over her waist, up her spine.

Her hands fumble with the fastening of my pants, while I reach for hers, dragging away clothing, eliminating the barriers between us. My shadows spread across my skin like dark fingers, reaching for her silver light.

“What is this?” she asks, watching darkness swirl around silver. “Between us?”

“I don’t know.” I lower my head to the curve of her neck, my lips finding the spot where her pulse beats strongest. “But I intend to explore it thoroughly.”

My mouth kisses a path from her neck to her collarbone, then lower still. Her breathing turns ragged while I take my time learning what makes her gasp, what makes her tremble. Shadows follow where my lips lead, leaving trails of silvery smoke behind.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she whispers. Her fingers stroke down my chest, tracing scars that are no longer there, mapping the memory of wounds that once marked me.

I straighten, and lift her off her feet, then turn and stride toward the bedchamber. My shadows respond to her closeness, darkness flowing faster across my skin. When her hands touch me, the sensation is electric, awakening nerves I’d forgotten could feel such pleasure.

We fall onto the bed together, all pretense of restraint abandoned. She pushes me onto my back and crawls on top, straddling my hips, hands splayed across my chest. Her silver light brightens with her arousal, casting her in an otherworldly glow.

“I need to feel you. All of you. I need to know you’re really healed. That you’re?—”

“Here?” I finish for her. “Mel’shira, I’m alive because of you.”

My hands follow the curves of her body, palms smoothing over her thighs, up her stomach, cupping her breasts. Her lids lower, lips parting when my thumbs sweep over her nipples. The silver brightens, a physical response she can’t control.

Pushing up on one arm, I replace my thumb with my mouth, tongue licking over one taut peak. She clutches at my shoulders, nails leaving half-moon impressions in my skin. When my palm slides down her stomach, the muscles there jump in anticipation.

I surge up, twisting to roll her beneath me on the bed.

Shadows flow down my arms, extending and wrapping around her wrists like cool silk.

With deliberate slowness, they guide her arms above her head, binding her wrists in place.

The contrast is striking—her skin shining against the darkness of my power, her vulnerability against my control.

She tests the bonds, pulling against them. She’s not trying to escape, but testing the resistance. They tighten in response, and her back arches, pushing her breasts against my chest.

I lean over her, pressing my lips to her throat. “Is this what you want?”

“Yes,” she breathes.

I kiss my way down her body, taking my time, savoring each shiver, each small sound she makes.

When my mouth reaches the inside of her thigh, her entire body tenses.

I pause there, letting her feel my breath against her skin, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she strains against the shadow-bonds.

When I finally taste her, her reaction is immediate—a sharp cry, her hips rising toward my mouth. I use shadows to hold her in place, setting a rhythm with my tongue that soon has her trembling, incoherent sounds escaping her lips.

“Look at me.” I lift my head slightly, gazing up her body.

Her eyes open, hazy with desire, and meet mine. The vulnerability in her gaze, the trust implicit in her surrender, is more erotic than anything I could have imagined.

“I want you to watch me.”

I draw patterns against her with my tongue, making her thighs tremble. The silver grows brighter with each stroke, pulsing in time with her quickening heartbeats. It reaches for my shadows, and they twine together, creating spirals of darkness shot through with light.

When her breathing turns erratic, and her whimpers become sobs, I release the shadows, wanting her hands on me when she breaks. Her fingers immediately tangle in my hair, gripping almost painfully as pleasure crashes through her.

The sounds she makes, my name mixed with her cries, turn my blood to molten lava.

Before the last of her tremors fade, I move up her body. She pulls me down for a kiss that tastes of her. Her legs wrap around my hips, positioning me exactly where she wants me.

When I finally push inside, the feel of her wrapped around me is overwhelming.

Her back arches off the bed, driving me deeper, a sound of pure pleasure escaping her lips.

My shadows surge in response, darkness flowing over both of us like a living thing, creating patterns where they touch her skin—spirals and whorls that dance across our bodies.

We move together with growing urgency, her hips rising to meet each thrust, her nails dragging down my back, digging into my shoulders, anywhere she can reach. The room fills with the sound of our breathing, gasps, and half-formed words.

“Stay with me,” she whispers against my lips. “Don’t leave me again.”

Her words bring a new kind of intimacy, one that transcends the physical. I slow my movements, our bodies still joined, and cup her face between my palms.

“I’m here, Mel’shira.” I punctuate each word with a slow, deep thrust. “I’m yours.”

The admission surprises me. It’s a truth I hadn’t planned to reveal, yet one that feels undeniable in this moment of connection. Her eyes widen, then soften as she accepts what I’m giving her. Something beyond pleasure, beyond the joining of bodies.

It’s a promise. A truth.

“And I’m yours.” Her arms wind around my neck, lips finding my jaw, my throat, my mouth.

When she throws her head back, I watch her face as pleasure builds again.

The flush spreading across her cheeks, the way her lips part, her eyes half-closed but never leaving mine.

When she comes apart a second time, the sight of her abandon, the sound of my name on her lips, the way her body tightens around mine—it all pulls me over the edge with her.

Pleasure crashes through me in waves. My shadows flare with the intensity of it, momentarily plunging the room into darkness before receding. For a moment, I forget everything. Revenge, plans, the years of imprisonment, torture.

There is only this. Only her. Only us.

Afterward, we lie tangled together, sweat cooling on our skin, breathing gradually slowing.

She curls against my side, her head finding its place on my chest where she can hear my heartbeat.

Her hair spills across my skin, new streaks of silver mixing with the brown, while her fingers draw idle patterns over my chest and stomach.

No longer searching for wounds, but simply wanting to touch.

I find myself doing the same, my hand moving slowly along the curve of her spine, memorizing the silky softness of her skin, the small dip at the base of her back.

“I keep thinking I’ll wake up and find this was all a dream. That you’ll still be dying, and I’ll be helpless to stop it.”

I press my lips to the top of her head. “I’m here. I’m alive.”

She raises herself up on one elbow, and palms my jaw, bringing my head around to meet her gaze. “Promise me something.”

“What?”

“When you go to Blackstone Ridge, I go with you.” The determination in her eyes is impossible to ignore. “I won’t stay behind while you face Sereven. Not after everything that’s happened.”

I study her face in the dim light. “You understand the danger of being there.”

“Better than most,” she counters. “I’ve seen what he’s capable of. What he did to you.”

I understand what she’s telling me. That her stake in this isn’t about justice or resistance, it’s about something far more personal to her.

“I won’t leave you behind.”

She nods once, accepting my word, then settles back against my chest. Her breathing gradually slows as sleep claims her. After days of desperate vigilance, of holding my death at bay with nothing but her sheer force of will, she finally surrenders to exhaustion.

I remain awake, one hand moving absently through her hair, up and down her spine, while my mind turns to Blackstone Ridge, and the confrontation that potentially awaits us there … to justice long overdue.

But for the first time since my initial capture all those years ago, something has shifted in my purpose.

The shadows inside me still hunger for Sereven’s blood, for justice against the Authority.

That hasn’t changed. But now they curl protectively around Ellie’s sleeping form, responding to desires I’ve never acknowledged.

When I first encountered her, she was nothing more than a means to an end—the key to my freedom, a tool to break my binding, and nothing more. I calculated her usefulness with the same precision I applied to everything else in my need to survive.

Now, holding her in my arms and watching her sleep against my chest, I recognize that something essential has changed. The prophecy spoke of shadow and storm uniting, but never mentioned what that union would create within me.

Sereven will pay for what he’s done. To me, to the Veinwardens, to countless others whose names are lost to time. But my purpose has expanded beyond mere vengeance.

Maybe the prophecy saw this. Maybe my summons finding her wasn’t mere chance, but something written in the stars long before either of us drew breath.

She sighs in her sleep, shifting closer, one leg sliding between mine. My arms tighten around her, holding her close.

Freedom, I told her when she asked what I wanted. And for the first time, I begin to consider what that freedom might look like. What it might mean to exist beyond the Authority. What it might mean to live rather than to survive.

If we survive what’s coming. If we manage to defeat Sereven. Might there be a future I never dared to imagine? One that includes her?

The last conscious thought I have before surrendering to darkness is that I might have found something worth building from the ashes of destruction.

Something worth surviving for.