Page 28

I stand at the window, hands braced against the stone sill as I stare at the sea.

The waves crash against the rocks below in an endless rhythm—a reflection of the tempest inside me. Even with the fire crackling in the hearth at my back, goosebumps prickle along my arms.

Not from the cold.

No, it’s the simmering mix of fury and despair corroding me from within ever since Kiaran agreed to Sorcha’s terms. I’m resisting the urge to storm down to the dungeons and bury a dagger in her chest.

Behind me, the door opens and closes. The silence from Kiaran is intolerable.

“You made the vow.” The words scrape out of me. It’s not a question.

I already know the answer, but I need to hear him say it. Need the confirmation to drive the last splinter home, so the hurt has nowhere to hide.

I keep my gaze fixed on the roiling sea, trying to match my shallow breathing to the relentless pulse of the tide.

In and out. In and out.

Control. I need control right now, or I’ll unravel. Bleed out every ugly, howling thing inside me.

“Yes.”

The single syllable hangs between us, heavy with regret and resignation.

I dig my nails into my palms until bright sparks of pain lance through me, grounding me. Clearing the haze of rage just enough to rasp, “And Sorcha?”

“Resting. She’ll open the way tomorrow at first light.”

A bitter laugh cracks out of me. I finally leverage myself away from the window to face him, spine straight. Armour donned. “Oh, of course. A little rest before she continues tormenting us. Why not?”

I start for the door. I have to move. To do something.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“Where do you think?” I don’t break my stride. “She doesn’t need to sleep. Let’s finish this.”

I’ve nearly made it out of the room when Kiaran’s hand flashes out to circle my wrist. The touch sears me, even through the barrier of clothing. Brands me. I go still, arrested by the contact. By his proximity, the heat at my back.

“Kameron.”

Don’t let him see. Hold it together.

Just a little longer.

“Let go, MacKay.” To my horror, my voice cracks on his name. I swallow past the barbs in my throat and try again. “The sooner we secure the Book—”

“I want tonight with you.”

Quiet. Raw. Stripped of pretence.

My head snaps up, startled. And what I find in his face forces the air from my lungs.

His expression is cracked wide open, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen. There’s a terrible kind of tenderness limning his features, a softness at odds with the stark lines and angles. With the living poetry of viciousness and power leashed beneath his skin. Emotions flicker through his eyes.

Stay , they say. Stay with me.

As if he’s rebuilding me from my composite parts, immortalising this version of me.

A woman teetering on the knife’s edge of here and gone.

Before. After.

“I want every second with you I can steal,“ Kiaran tells me, his grip tightening infinitesimally. “Every breath and heartbeat. Until I have no more to give.”

A shaky exhale gusts out of me. One more night with him. Before Sorcha’s vow tears out everything that makes him mine.

“Every second, then,” I breathe.

Kiaran’s thumb smooths over my wrist, idle patterns that send curling tendrils of heat through me. He tugs me closer until barely a whisper separates us.

“What do you want, mo chridhe ?” That soft accent slides across my sensitised skin. Leaves me flushed, breathless. “Tell me what you need, and it’s yours.”

What I need is to crawl inside him. Build a space for myself until the shape of me is carved into him. Until we’re tangled so inextricably that nothing—not vows or death—can separate us.

What I need is impossible.

So I settle for flattening my palm over the steady thump of his heart. Feeling the tiny shudder that ripples through him at my touch. At the unspoken question behind it.

“Let me see.”

He doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. I watch his throat work on an unsteady swallow. The careful mask of composure falters again, betraying the wild riot of emotion beneath.

With precise movements, he reaches for the buttons on his shirt. Releases them one at a time, baring skin until he stands before me in only his trousers, bare from the waist up.

I’ve seen Kiaran unclothed countless times. Have mapped every valley and plane with my hands, my mouth. Traced the whorls of glowing tattoos with the tip of my tongue.

I know his body as well as my own.

But the sight of Sorcha’s vow steals my breath. It used to be an ugly, spiky latticework directly over his heart. Now, though? It’s everywhere, coiling around his ribs, over the swell of his shoulders, overtaking Caitri′ona’s vow until there isn’t an inch of his skin that she hasn’t claimed.

A collar, so Sorcha can yank his manacles whenever she wants.

I slowly circle him, gaze roving over every slash and curl marring his flesh.

Kiaran doesn’t move, but I sense the tension vibrating through him.

The barely leashed power begging to burst free.

Usually, when I look at him like this, with open hunger, it’s a prelude to his hands on my body. To his mouth all over my skin.

Now, it’s an accusation. An acknowledgement of what he’s given up. What’s been taken from us.

I reach out with trembling fingers to trace the cruel lines. He goes still, tensing beneath my touch. I feel the leap of his pulse, thundering just under the skin.

“I hate this,” I whisper. The admission hangs between us, small and broken. “I hate that she’s marked you. That she gets to claim even a tiny piece of you.”

“It’s just skin.”

“For now, it is.” I drag my palm down his sternum, fingertips bumping over his ribs.

He sucks in a sharp breath at the contact, his hand coming up to cover my own.

Press me closer. “But I remember our consort mark. The intimacy of it. It burrowed so far under my skin that my body remembered it even when my mind emptied. Does yours?”

“Yes.” A whisper.

I swallow against the sudden thickness in my throat. Blink away the burn of tears. “I’m going to get this off you. Whatever it takes. You won’t be exchanging consort marks with her. Not now, not ever. I won’t allow it. You’re mine, understand?”

He drags me into him, slanting his mouth over mine in a searing kiss. He pours months of yearning into it, centuries of hunger. It’s wild and unrestrained, a clash of teeth and tongue as he consumes me.

I kiss him back just as desperately, my own need a living flame in my veins. I want to devour him, inhale him. Curl up against his heart and stay there.

I pour everything I can’t say into that desperate press of mouths. Every shard of longing. Every ounce of devotion.

Then I sink to my knees between his thighs, determined to commit to memory this fierce creature who would raze the world for me. Who’s giving up his soul to keep me breathing.

Kiaran stares at me through eyes gone liquid silver, muscles coiled tight. But he waits motionless, yielding this power to me. My hands find the fastenings of his trousers and work them free, sliding the fabric down his muscled thighs. I wrap my fingers around his cock as I hold his gaze.

“I love you,” I whisper.

Then I bend to take him into my mouth.

His sharp inhale cuts through the silence.

Fingers tangle in my hair, but he doesn’t guide or demand.

I have this ancient, brutal male trembling on the edge of release.

He lets me take what I need. Lets me swallow him deeper, until I memorise the taste of him.

The feel. The way he tenses beneath my touch.

His expression is tender as he watches me advance and retreat, pleasuring him. Giving him what’s still mine .

I might be on my knees, but he’s the one submitting. Coming apart on my command.

“I want to come inside you,” he whispers, his grip tightening a fraction.

Then he hoists me up, carrying me to the bed. We tumble down, shedding the rest of our clothes until we’re skin to skin. Kiaran cradles my face in reverent hands, thumbs brushing away my tears.

When did I start crying?

“ Mo chridhe ,” he rasps. “Look at me.”

I do. Aching at the reverence limning his gaze. The apology there.

“I’m yours, Kameron.”

Yes. Mine.

Even if the only consort mark I can leave is made from lips and teeth and tongue, I’ll stake my claim on his body with bruising fingers and ragged breaths. With pleasure so intense the only word he remembers is my name.

Let Sorcha hear it in the dark when she thinks she owns him. Let my name be her curse long after I’m dead and buried in the dirt.

He kisses me again as his hands map out the curves and valleys he’s long since charted. “I’m yours,” he breathes into the hollow behind my ear.

A prayer. An oath spoken into the shadows.

His lips trail the line of my jaw, the column of my throat.

Pressing an invisible vow into my skin with each fevered touch of his mouth.

When he looks at me, I feel seen down to my marrow.

Like he knows every dark secret and twisted piece, and loves me not in spite of them, but because of them.

Tonight, I have this.

“I’m yours.”

He says it even as Sorcha’s mark mocks me.

But I don’t care. His soul is mine. All of this is mine.

I didn’t have to steal it. Didn’t have to force it.

He and I came together because we’re built of the same shored-up cracks.

Because we’ve been taken apart and seen nothing but the wreckage of each other.

For these stolen hours, in this quiet corner of his fortress by the restless sea, Kiaran MacKay belongs to me.

“I could worship you for a thousand years and never get enough.” He drags his mouth along the arch of my neck, tongue laving at the pulse hammering there. He nuzzles behind my ear. “I’ve always been partial to this freckle here.”

I let out a laugh. “Oh?”

“Mmmm.” I feel his smile. “Staked an early claim on it. Along with this one—” He blazes a slow trail to my jaw. “And this one.” To the dip of my collarbone. My blood sparks everywhere his lips touch. “And this one here . . .”

Down, down, down, he kisses. Until we’re both gasping. But there’s an urgency to his touch, a raw-edged desperation.

“Beautiful,” Kiaran murmurs. “I could destroy entire worlds for you like this.”

And then his shadows bind my arms over my head. Soft against my skin, a whisper of sensation. But there’s no give in their hold. No mercy. They tighten until a gasp catches in my throat, until I can feel the bite of them imprinting on my flesh.

“Let me taste you,” Kiaran rasps, the words torn out of someplace deep and aching. “I want to feel you come on my tongue.”

He sinks to his knees, hands bracketing my hips. And then his mouth is on me. Tongue in me. No teasing flicks now. Only the slick thrust and the exquisite scrape of teeth.

Just when I think I can’t take anymore, he uses his fingers. It’s too much, almost brutal in its intensity.

I’m shattering apart, held together only by the press of his hands, his shadows, his mouth.

Then he lays himself over me and pushes his cock inside me. Taking me—and I want it all, everything he has to give. I arch against him as he sets a hard, relentless rhythm.

Something dark and fierce and possessive flashes through his gaze. A heartbeat. Two. Then he’s moving again, seizing my thighs to hitch my legs higher around his waist.

Every movement carries the bitter tinge of farewell. Of finality. Our touches take on a different cadence, whispering what words can’t. We hold nothing back, every defence torn away, every secret shattered and presented to the other. I am destroyed and remade.

We are two broken creatures made whole in each other.

“I’m yours,” he whispers. “For as long as there are stars in the sky.”

I burrow deeper into his embrace and press myself closer as my hips rise to meet his.

“For as long as there are stars in the sky,” I say.

A vow not with blood or magic or sacrifices. But with the bright, pure truth of it, nestled safely in the space behind my ribs.

Because what we are is beyond flesh and bone. We are written in the stars.