Page 38

THIRTY-EIGHT

LUCIEN

S he was trembling.

Not from fear. Not from weakness.

From the weight of everything they’d held back for too long.

Evryn pulled away from the kiss just enough to rest her forehead against his, her breath ghosting over his lips. Her hands stayed fisted in the fabric of his shirt like if she let go, she might shatter. Or run.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

He let the words settle into the cracks inside him like balm—raw and warm and healing in ways nothing else ever could be.

“I love you,” she repeated, softer this time, like a confession given in a cathedral. “And I’m terrified.”

Lucien’s hands rose, cradling her face gently, his thumbs brushing away the tears she hadn’t let fall until now.

“So am I,” he whispered. “But I’d rather be terrified with you than fearless alone.”

Her eyes fluttered shut. And when they opened again, something had changed. The walls weren’t just cracked now—they were gone.

She leaned into him fully.

And he caught her like he’d always been meant to.

Their mouths met again, this time slow, deep, searching. No longer a collision of desperation—but a surrender. A promise.

Lucien walked her back into the bloom-covered alcove beneath the stone archway, where moonlight pooled like silver water across old cobblestone. Vines brushed their shoulders, heavy with midnight blossoms.

The Veil shimmered faintly around them, not intruding—just watching .

Evryn’s fingers moved to his belt. Slow. Deliberate.

Their hands moved with an urgency that spoke of a need long denied, each piece of clothing discarded a barrier torn down.

Lucien's shirt, a whisper of fabric against his marble skin, fell to the moss-covered ground, revealing the lean, deadly contours of his chest and abdomen.

Evryn's fingers, trembling with desire, fumbled with the clasp of her own garments, her violet eyes darkened to the color of twilight.

Lucien's breath hitched as Evryn's dress pooled at her feet, leaving her standing in the moon's glow, a vision of wild beauty with her dark auburn curls cascading over her honey-toned skin.

His gaze traced the freckles that dusted her shoulders, a constellation he ached to map with his tongue.

The chill of the night air did nothing to dampen the heat that flared between them, a fire stoked by the shadows that danced at the edge of the Veil's watchful gaze.

With a swift, fluid motion, Lucien divested himself of his remaining clothes, his movements a silent testament to the predator that lurked beneath his skin. The shadows seemed to cling to him, caressing his skin like old friends, as he stood before Evryn, a creature of the night in his element.

The garden breathed around them, blossoms shuddering in time with Evryn’s trembling inhale as Lucien slid his thumb along her lower lip.

Moss cushioned her back, each thread of shadow beneath the ancient tree curling against her skin like living silk.

She arched when his mouth found the pulse beneath her ear, her hands raking through his hair hard enough to strain the roots.

Evryn reached out, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw, the sharp angle of his cheekbone, the soft fullness of his lower lip.

Her touch was both a benediction and a brand, searing through the layers of his carefully constructed defenses.

In the sanctuary of the bloom-covered alcove, Lucien allowed himself to be vulnerable, to be seen not as the heir to darkness or a weapon honed for war, but as a man.

“Freckles here,” he murmured against her sternum, tongue tracing constellations across her chest. “Like the night sky dared to touch you.”

Her laugh fractured into a gasp as he dragged teeth over one peaked nipple. “You—ah—hate the stars.”

“You outshine them.” His palm skated down her stomach, callouses catching on the softness there. “Let me worship what’s real.”

In the shadowed embrace of the ancient tree, the night air thrummed with the electricity of their desire.

Lucien's lips were a scorching brand as they blazed a trail down Evryn's quivering abdomen, each kiss stoking the fire that simmered just beneath her skin.

The heat between her thighs became a molten inferno, an aching need that only he could quench.

His breath was a whisper against her most sensitive flesh, a teasing prelude to the exquisite torment that followed.

When his tongue, deft and demanding, flicked against her clit, it was as though a live wire had been pressed to her core.

Her body jolted, a strangled moan escaping her lips as her heel dug into the small of his back, urging him closer, deeper.

"Lucien—“ His name was a plea, a prayer, torn from her throat as she surrendered to the waves of pleasure that threatened to overwhelm her.

"Say it again." His voice, dark and saturated with satisfaction, was a command that sent shivers down her spine. "Let the Veil hear whose name you scream tonight."

Her body was no longer her own, thrashing beneath the onslaught of sensation.

Her thighs clamped around his head like a vise, trapping him in the cradle of her hips as he lapped at her with relentless precision.

The shadows that clung to him like a lover's caress now obeyed his silent command, curling around her wrists and pinning them to the soft moss below.

It was a dual-edged embrace—half punishment for her futile attempts to escape the unbearable pressure building within her, half praise for her unbridled response to his touch.

The climax that tore through her was cataclysmic, a force that ripped through the carefully constructed walls of her control.

Her back arched, pressing her further into the mossy bed as her release cascaded over her in relentless waves.

Her voice, ragged and raw, echoed through the garden as she chanted his name to the stars hidden behind the leafy canopy—a testament to the power he held over her.

As the last tremors of her orgasm faded, leaving her boneless and sated, Lucien rose over her, his eyes gleaming with a predatory triumph that made her heart stutter.

The shadows, once her bindings, now retreated, leaving her free to touch him, to pull him down into a kiss that was all teeth and tongue and desperate need.

“Wait.” His hand clamped her hip, tendons standing rigid. Every breath sawed through him like broken glass. “If I start… I can’t stop.”

Her teeth grazed his jaw, fingers tightening around his shaft. “Who said I want you to?”

Lucien's control, already hanging by a thread, finally snapped.

With a feral growl that resonated deep within his chest, he surged forward, sheathing himself inside Evryn's welcoming heat in one brutal, possessive thrust. Her cry of his name mingled with his groan, the sound reverberating through the shadow-draped garden like a carnal symphony.

The initial stretch and burn of their union quickly dissolved into pure liquid fire, searing through every nerve as he stilled within her, his body trembling with the effort to maintain some semblance of restraint.

"Open those eyes," he demanded, his voice a ragged edge that threatened to unravel completely.

Violet eyes, ringed with the silver glow of her Sight, locked onto his, wide and unguarded, reflecting the raw vulnerability of the moment.

They were magnificent, those eyes, a testament to the strength and resilience of the woman who lay beneath him, surrendering yet unbroken.

He began to move with an exacting slowness that bordered on exquisite torture, each deliberate withdrawal an agony of anticipation, each powerful plunge deeper than the last. Evryn met him stroke for stroke, her nails carving crescent moons into the taut muscles of his shoulders, marking him as hers just as he claimed her.

When her legs hooked around his waist, pulling him impossibly closer, he seated himself to the hilt, grinding against her sensitive clit with a precision that bordered on cruelty, stealing her breath and reason in one fell swoop.

"Mine," he snarled against her swollen lips, the word a primal declaration that resonated with the ancient magic of his bloodline.

"Yours," she gasped in return, dragging his hips harder against her own, urging him on with a fervor that matched his own. "Always— fuck , Lucien?— "

Her words dissolved into a keening cry as her second climax tore through her, muscles fluttering around him in rhythmic waves that milked his own release from the depths of his being.

With a broken shout that echoed through the garden, he followed her over the edge, spilling himself inside her with a force that left him shaken to his core.

As the last of their mingled cries faded into the night, the shadows that Lucien commanded with such ease surged forward, responding to the intensity of their joining.

They twined around their joined hands like ethereal bindings, sealing their vow in a tapestry of ink and starlight.

In that moment, there was no past, no future, only the here and now—a testament to the unbreakable bond that had been forged between them, a connection that transcended the physical realm and delved into the very essence of their souls.