Page 18

This is what he’s always done—reached into my chest and ripped out all the ugly, shattered pieces.

Forced me to confront them. To own them.

This has always been our language—spoken in lips and teeth and claiming hands.

Lust and fury, violence and need. Ripping into one another until the only truth between us is blood and breath and touch.

Until we’re both tangles of torn, bleeding edges and shattered pieces.

I want to wind myself like ivy around his heart, dig roots into his bones.

Until my fingerprints are etched into his soul.

I want every flawed shard of him—however he’ll let me take it.

I’ll collect those pieces one by one. Hoard each splinter of memory and every stolen caress.

Stitch them together inside me until I’ve cobbled some shadow of us back into existence.

I want and want and want , a ravenous thing threatening to swallow me whole.

His mouth drags from mine to kiss a scorching path down my throat. When his fangs graze the join of my shoulder, I gasp. He releases my wrist to press his palm over my mouth.

Kiaran rocks into me then. Each deliberate roll of his hips sends heat singing through my veins. I press back, seeking more, always more. I’ll never get enough of him. Not if we stay like this until the world ends around us.

His hand on my hip tightens, pulling me more firmly against him until I feel every hard inch of his arousal.

His fingers dig into my backside, just shy of pain.

Frustration knots in my core. I need him, need this.

Need to feel him buried so deep that he leaves fingerprints on my skin when he grips me.

“Is this what you want?” His breath ghosts hot over my cheek. “To have me use you this way?”

He punctuates the question with another slow roll of his hips, letting me feel what he offers. A promise and a threat all at once. His power glides over my sensitised skin, raising the fine hairs at my nape.

“Shall I fuck you just like this?” he continues. “Sink my fangs into your throat as I spill inside this pussy? Take you hard and fast from behind? Should I have you beg me for it?”

One hand drifts lower, fingers working at the laces of my trousers.

He toys with them slowly, deliberately. All the while holding my stare.

Then cool air meets my exposed skin as he releases me to slide my trousers off.

The barest graze of his fingertips on my inner thigh wrings a ragged exhale from my lips.

“Or maybe I should ruin you. Shatter you so completely no magic will ever remake you.” Those fingers slide along my slick folds, a devastating pressure.

“So that even if you somehow crawl out of the grave to curse me, you’ll never forget the feel of my hands on you.

Me inside you. I want to plague your thoughts in death the way you plague mine. ”

He kisses my jaw, almost tenderly, whispering, “I should break you apart.”

Then his fingers withdraw, and I barely choke back a bereft sound. Before I can protest, he’s spinning me to face the wall. His hand splays between my shoulder blades, pinning me in place.

“Hands flat against the wall. Move them, and I stop.”

I comply, pressing both palms to the cold obsidian. My breaths saw in and out of my lungs. I feel his gaze drag the length of my bent spine like a physical caress. My skin prickles in anticipation of his hands, his mouth.

“Whose blood are we drawing now?” His lips brush my ear. I hear him working at the fastenings of his trousers as he nudges my legs wider. “Yours or mine?”

“Mine.” The ragged word spills past my lips.

A pretty lie. We both bleed for each other. There is no yours or mine anymore.

His palm presses over my mouth again, stifling any further words.

Then he’s driving into me in one long stroke.

I welcome the bright sparks of pain kindled with each rough snap of his hips.

He takes me ruthlessly. As if he can fuck the distance between us into oblivion, with all the fury festering in my absence.

I want him to. To brand himself into my bones, my veins. To leave no part of me untouched.

My power lashes out at the pleasure, and the obsidian splits beneath my hands as he takes me again and again.

His grip on my hips turns punishing, pulling me back to meet each brutal thrust. This is war, not intimacy.

The pleasure-pain blots out thought, reason.

Searing through muscle and bone. Through blood and breath and sanity.

The harsh rasp of breaths echo through the chamber. I’m lost to everything but this—the merciless glide of him inside me, the damp heat of his exhale. The way he envelops my senses, blocking out anything but us.

His head drops to my nape, and his bruising grip is almost reverent where he braces my hips.

When we both finally shatter, it feels like absolution.

Like coming home. He buries his face against my neck like he wants to breathe me in, hold this stolen moment between his teeth.

Like he feels the same devotion threatening to choke me.

And just this once, I let myself cling to the illusion that it means something.

That for a few heartbeats, I have him back.

But then his lips brush my ear, cold and remote once more. “You have until dawn to leave my territory. If you’re still here come sunrise, I’ll kill you myself.”

I close my eyes against the burn of tears. He’s already retreating, footsteps echoing through the chamber. The groan of ancient hinges rings out, then the deafening boom of the doors sealing closed.

Shutting me out. Leaving me alone.