Page 11

The pages blur beneath my gaze. The words, old and brittle, stretched across yellowed parchment in ink that's nearly bled itself invisible. I’ve read every book in this forsaken place—the Hollow’s archives scattered like bones through its libraries, tucked beneath crumbling towers and rotted shelves. Every spell, every theory, every fevered prayer of the Sin Binders before us who tried to escape this realm and failed.

And still, it all leads back to the same dead end—the portal Luna obliterated to save us. Riven's tried to rebuild it, pieced together blueprints and symbols and old magics, but it’s hollow now. No spark left. No way out.

I sigh and close the book, dragging a hand over my jaw. This place may be holding together for now, our little corner carved out of madness—Riven’s walls, Ambrose’s order, my endless reading, the others trying to pretend they can build something normal here—but it won't last. The Hollow doesn't allow peace. It’s just circling us, patient, hungry.

And the Sin Binders? We’ve only met two. Two tame ones, relatively speaking. But word will spread. They’ll come sniffing, because that’s what predators do when they catch wind of prey.

My thumb runs absently over the cracked spine of the book in my lap as I hear them outside—the laughter, the splash, the bickering chaos that’s become home.

Riven's new pond glimmers under the sun like a mirror poured out over the wild grass, ringed by the jagged spires of a world that’s always watching us. The house behind me hums quiet and content for now.

And there she is.

Luna, in that ridiculous, dangerous hot pink bathing suit Silas convinced her to wear. She glows. Not just in her skin, or the curve of her body—but in the way she commands the entire Hollow without realizing it. They orbit her like stars around a singularity.

I watch as she shrieks, flinging water at Ambrose who—Gods help us—actually laughs and lunges for her, pulling her under with a smirk.

There’s something so bright and human about it, so careless. And I want to burn it into my memory because we don’t get moments like this.

Not here. Not for long. I stand, smoothing a hand down my shirt. And then I peel it off. Deliberate. Quiet.

I don’t join their chaos—not yet—but I step outside, the grass cool against my feet, the scent of wild ivy and magic clinging to the air.

Luna’s gaze finds me when I cross the threshold, her laughter still lingering in her throat as she tries to duck away from Ambrose’s grip. But it stutters, her smile catching when she sees me.

Good.

I walk toward the edge of the pond, slow, deliberate. When I pass her, close enough that the droplets from her skin brush my arm, I lean in—not for anyone else, not for the boys throwing water like children—but only for her.

My lips skim the shell of her ear, and I murmur, voice low enough that it belongs to only her:

“You look too good in that little suit, Luna. I’m trying to be civil, but you’re making it very, very difficult.”

Her breath stumbles.

I don’t wait for an answer. I walk straight past, slipping into the cool water with a deliberate ease, the ripple of it carrying back to her.

The thing about courting Luna? I’ll never do it like the others. I don't need to chase her. I’ll make her come to me.

The water slides over my skin like silk spun from shadows, cold enough to bite beneath the surface but never enough to steal the heat simmering low in my chest.

I keep my distance. Not because I want to. Gods, no. Every fiber in me strains toward her—Luna, half-wild and laughing, bathing suit clinging to her like a threat. But this is the dance, and I’ll play it better than any of them. She doesn’t know yet that she’ll come to me. I’ll make her want it. Make her need it.

But not now.

Now, I swim across the pond, each measured stroke slicing clean through the water until I reach the opposite side. Lucien sits there, back against the jagged ruin of an old boundary stone, knees bent, sleeves rolled up, like he hasn’t ruled empires and razed kingdoms. He watches the others—the easy chaos of Silas dunking Elias, Riven barking half-hearted warnings, Luna glowing in the center of it like the world was remade just to orbit her.

I drag myself out of the water without ceremony, the shadows clinging to my shoulders as I shake the droplets from my hair. He doesn’t look up, but I know he’s aware of me.

“Lucien,” I greet quietly, settling beside him, close enough that the silence between us stretches tight.

He grunts in acknowledgment, eyes still fixed forward like he’s trying to solve an equation he can’t quite crack.

For a while, neither of us says anything. I let the weight of the moment settle, the way I always do with Lucien. He’s not like the others. You can’t meet him with noise or fury—you have to approach him like a blade sliding into a sheath. Slow. Precise.

Finally, I speak. “I’ve read everything.”

Lucien’s jaw flexes, his gaze steady on the pond. “And?”

“And none of it will get us out,” I answer without softening it, because he doesn’t require softness.

His eyes flick to me now, sharp and knowing. “You think I don’t know that?”

I lean back against the rock beside him, resting my elbows on my knees. “You’re the one who asked me to keep looking.”

“That was before I realized how fucking circular this place is.” He scrubs a hand over his face, voice edged and brittle. “Branwen built this realm like a snare. She made sure there’d be no clean way out.”

“It’s not clean ways I’m looking for.” I tilt my head toward him. “But even snares can be broken.”

Lucien snorts under his breath, the sound dry and humorless. “You planning to brute force the Hollow itself, Vale?”

“Not brute force,” I murmur. “Precision.”

The wind shifts around us, carrying the faint, living magic of this cursed place. The Hollow is not just a prison—it’s alive. It breathes. It watches. It remembers.

“You know it’s listening,” Lucien says after a beat.

“I do.”

His gaze flickers again to the others, to Luna—always, always to her—and then back to me. “What’s your plan?”

I let the smile curve slow and dangerous at the edge of my mouth.

“I don’t have one yet. But I will.”

Lucien shakes his head, almost fond. “You’re worse than her.”

“Probably,” I agree easily, because I am.

Because I’m patient. Because I will burn this realm to ash piece by piece if I have to—but I’ll do it carefully, precisely, the way I’m courting her. And when I’m done, there won’t be a door the Hollow can hide behind.

When he speaks, his voice is quieter than usual, the words cut from glass. “What do you think’s going to happen when you bond with her?”

There it is. The real question is stitched beneath the one he asks: How much worse will it get for me?

I glance at him, the set of his jaw, the way his fingers curl like he’s fighting the instinct to break something. I don’t pity Lucien—not ever—but I understand the weight on him. It’s the same weight pressing against my ribcage every fucking day since we stepped into this graveyard of Sin Binders and ghosts.

And it’s heavier now that five of us are tethered to her.

I stretch my legs out in front of me, slow and deliberate, my voice like velvet scraping bone when I finally answer. “It will sharpen everything.”

Lucien’s gaze flickers to me now, sharp and dark and dangerous.

I don’t stop. “For me. For you. For all of us. She isn’t just a vessel anymore, Lucien. She’s the pulse in our veins. The longer we resist, the worse it’s going to get.”

His mouth presses into a hard line, but I can feel the question radiating from him like heat: And what about me?

So I give him what he wants without forcing him to ask. “When I bond her, you’ll feel it. Like a blade pressed to the back of your neck. You’ll want to finish it. That’s how the Hollow’s made us.”

Lucien’s lips curl, not quite a snarl, not quite a smile. “You sound so fucking sure.”

I huff a quiet laugh, dragging my gaze across the pond to where Silas is throwing himself off a half-formed platform into the water, Luna laughing so loud it carries on the wind. “I’m sure because I’ve spent centuries watching how this magic works. The Gods didn’t make mistakes when they crafted these bonds. They made traps.”

Lucien’s voice is razor-sharp when it cuts the air again. “And you’re so eager to walk into it?”

I look at him then, meet his eyes without hesitation. “It’s not a trap when you want it.”

He goes still beside me, like that admission winds him tighter.

I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees. “You think I don’t know what’s pulling at you? You think I can’t feel it too? That need to have her tied up in us, to finish it so this ache in our bones stops gnawing? I do.”

I pause, then add, voice softer but no less lethal, “But it’s not the bond that will kill us, Lucien. It’s what we’ll do to avoid it.”

Lucien exhales like he’s been stabbed, gaze flicking back to the others across the pond. I don’t press him further. He doesn’t need my comfort—he needs my honesty. And the truth is, when I bond Luna, it’ll be a match tossed into dry kindling. The kind of burn we won’t walk away from.

But I’ll do it anyway.

Because I want to.

Because I need her enough to raze the entire world for it.

I stand, rolling my shoulders. “We can’t outrun it, Lucien,” I murmur before turning away. “And the Hollow knows it.”

The pond ripples when I slide in beside her, the cool water lapping at my skin as if it, too, wants to know how close I can get without touching her outright. I don't look at her immediately—I let the nearness speak louder. My thigh brushes hers beneath the surface, deliberate, and I feel the way she stills. It’s a small thing, that stillness, but I feel it all the way down to the marrow.

“Relax,” I murmur, voice pitched low enough so the others can’t hear. “It’s only me.”

She exhales like I’ve touched her with something sharper.

Across the pond, Silas’s voice slices through the quiet like it always does—loud, irreverent, brimming with chaos. “I’m telling you, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried the meat pies at Della’s. They’re sinful. Literally.”

Elias groans, floating lazily on his back, arms spread like he’s being martyred. “Silas, you say that about everything you can shove in your mouth.”

Silas flips water at him like an overgrown child. “I only say it when it’s true.”

Caspian, who’s been sitting at the edge of the pond, bare feet skimming the water, shoots Silas a look that’s equal parts exasperated and fond. “You’re easily impressed.”

“I have standards,” Silas argues, swimming backward now, practically grinning at himself. “Low, sure, but standards nonetheless.”

Luna laughs quietly beside me, the sound slipping from her lips like something she doesn’t mean to give away. I catch it anyway.

I lean in, close enough that when I speak, my mouth nearly grazes her ear. “You’re humoring them,” I say softly. “But you’ll come, won’t you?”

Her head tilts, just slightly, like she’s trying not to lean into me. “You sound so sure.”

I don’t smile, but it’s there in the shape of my voice when I answer, “Because I am.”

Silas pops up from the water, flinging droplets everywhere like a drenched dog. “Let’s go! I want meat pies and ale and to see if the tavern girl still wants to sell her soul to me.”

Elias smirks, still half-lounging. “I’d sell my soul just to not have to listen to you anymore.”

“I’ll take it,” Silas shoots back.

Lucien, who’s been silent and brooding by the bank, finally lifts his gaze. “Fine. But if anyone starts a brawl tonight, it won’t be me cleaning up the mess.”

“Famous last words,” Caspian mutters under his breath.

Luna looks between them all, something soft flickering in her eyes before she glances back at me. I can feel her question even before she asks it.

“You’re coming too?”

I meet her gaze fully now, letting her see the weight behind my answer. “Where you go, I go.”

She swallows hard enough I can see it in her throat.

Silas claps his hands together like a child about to cause trouble. “It’s settled then! We feast!”

And just like that, the decision is made, chaos moving around us as they scramble out of the water, arguing over who’s going to buy the first round.

But I stay close, deliberately letting my leg brush against hers one more time before I push up from the pond. I don’t look back when I say, under my breath, just for her, “You look good wet.”

I catch the sharp intake of her breath behind me as I wade to the bank, and the way her gaze lingers on me long after I’ve left the water.

Lucien

I should’ve stayed behind. The tavern is too loud, too warm, too full of voices I could compel with a thought, and none of that matters because the only voice I can’t quiet is my own.

I sit at the end of the table, my back to the wall like always, nursing a drink that burns too weak and too soft down my throat. It doesn’t do a damn thing to ease the fracture behind my ribs, the one that’s been there since the moment Luna walked into our world and ruined everything.

Across the room, they’re laughing—, Silas, Elias. Even Ambrose, who never laughs. And her.

She glows. Even here, in this battered, dim little tavern, she glows like something wild and untouchable, and every time her eyes cut toward me, I swear it carves something out of me I don’t know how to name.

I shouldn’t look. I shouldn’t care.

But my gaze drifts to her anyway, always.

is beside her, too close, his arm slung along the back of her chair like he owns the air she breathes. And maybe he does now. He’s wooing her, slowly, deliberately, planting seeds that will bloom whether she wants them to or not.

And when he bonds to her—because we both know that’s coming—I will lose the last inch of ground I’ve been clinging to. Because after , there will be no one left to hold me back. The pull will become unbearable.

I drain the rest of my drink, signaling for another before the server even makes it halfway across the room. I don’t drink like the others. I don’t allow myself to lose edge or composure.

But tonight, I want the ache dulled. I want the shaking in my hands to stop when she laughs too softly. When she leans toward and I can feel the gravity of her magic twisting around me, even when I’m across the damn room.

My next drink slams down in front of me, and I knock it back like it’ll fix anything. Elias glances over from where he’s lounging, too lazy to sit properly, his arm thrown carelessly across Silas’s shoulders. He raises a brow at me, mouthing something snarky I don’t bother to read.

I can’t stand how easy it is for them—all of them—to let her in.

I’m the only one still fighting. I’m the only one trying to hold the line. Because once bonds with her, it will shred me, and I know it. I can feel it already, like a hook under my skin, pulling, pulling.

But I will not fall quietly. If the Hollow wants to watch me drown, it’s going to have to watch me claw at the walls until I bleed.

I lift the next drink to my lips, and when I meet her eyes across the tavern, she’s already looking at me. She sticks her damn tongue out at me. That sharp little flick of defiance, like I don't own the very bones of this room. Like I don’t decide who lives and dies here with a word. She does it with a smirk, like I’m some joke she hasn’t gotten tired of laughing at yet.

And gods help me—I want her to smile at me the way she smiles at Silas.

That soft, stupid way like she’s weightless in the middle of this crumbling, dying world. I want to be the reason she looks that way. Not because I care. Not because I want her.

Because I shouldn’t.

And that thought? That’s what pisses me off the most.

The liquor isn’t helping. It never helps, but it’s crawling in my veins now, warm and slow, making my tongue heavy and my skin too thin. I shouldn’t have touched the bottle tonight. I know better. But then again, I’ve been making bad decisions since the moment she said my name without flinching.

So I do the only thing that won’t have me tearing this place to the ground—I get up, the chair scraping violently across the warped tavern floor. Too loud. Too sloppy. I hate how unsteady I feel, how the floor tries to tilt beneath me like it’s mocking me too. Silas and Elias glance up, but I don’t look at them. watches me go like he knows exactly why I’m leaving, and that’s almost worse.

I push out the door, the cold slap of night air hitting me like a curse. It’s quieter out here, but no less suffocating. I brace my hands against the stone wall beside the tavern, breathing hard, trying to shake her out of my system, but she’s there—pressed under my skin like a bruise I keep poking.

A shadow shifts behind me, boots scuffing across gravel, and I know without looking it’s Riven. He’s the only one quiet enough to follow without me noticing.

"You're drunk," he says blandly, leaning beside me without asking.

I don’t answer. I don’t need him to spell out how far I’ve unraveled tonight. He knows. They all know. Riven doesn’t push, but he doesn’t leave either. The door creaks behind us, the sound of Silas’s laughter spilling out into the street. And I swear I can still feel her eyes on the back of my neck.

Riven doesn’t bother softening the edge in his voice when he finally speaks. “She’s not the enemy.”

Like I don’t fucking know that.

But I don’t look at him. I stay leaning against the rough stone wall, head tipped back, eyes closed because it’s easier than meeting the calm certainty in his gaze. Because he’s right and I don’t want him to be.

He leaves without waiting for an answer. I hear his footsteps fading down the street, swallowed by the pull of the Hollow’s unnatural hush. And I stay there, until the burn of the whiskey stops numbing me and starts turning me raw again.

The walk home is a blur. The tavern lights behind me, the weight of everything pressing heavier with each step. The ground pitches beneath me, and maybe I deserve it, deserve to stumble and scrape against the consequences of everything I’ve done.

A hand slides under my arm before I hit the edge of the stairs.

Warm fingers. Steady. I know that scent before I even look—rosewater and ruin.

Luna.

She doesn’t say a word. She just presses in beside me, shoulder firm under mine, guiding me without ceremony, without pity. Like it’s her fucking right to carry me when I fall apart.

“Go away,” I mutter, voice slurred and sour.

Her grip tightens when I try to shrug her off, her fingers curling like she’s holding something fragile. She leans her body into mine as if she can anchor me without words, as if she can carry the weight of me without it crushing her.

“You’re heavy,” she breathes, half a laugh, half a reprimand, but there’s something else threaded beneath her voice. Something sharper. Something that sounds a lot like she cares.

I hate it.

I hate that I lean into her anyway.

Her arm stays wrapped around my waist until we make it to the house, her warmth a brand pressed against my side. When we step through the threshold, she doesn’t let go. She gets me to my room, pushes the door open, and walks me to the bed like I’m a fucking invalid.

When I turn to push her away, to tell her to leave, her eyes are already on mine.

And she looks at me like she sees everything. Like she knows I’ll never stop fighting this. Like she doesn’t care.

“You’re not doing this alone,” she says quietly, firmly, like a fucking promise I never asked for.

I sit heavily on the bed, and she kneels in front of me like she has any right, like it’s her job to peel the ruin off of me piece by piece. Her fingers slide over the worn leather of my boots, deft and certain, as if this is something she’s done a hundred times. As if she knows me well enough to undress me without hesitation.

I tell myself to stop her. That I don’t want her kindness, her hands, her presence. But my body is a liar. Her fingertips brush my ankle, featherlight, and the air cracks inside my chest.

“You don’t have to—” I start, but my voice scrapes raw and useless against the shape of her name trying to tear out of me.

She doesn’t answer, just works the boot off, then the other, her brows drawn in concentration like this is war strategy and not me, wrecked and half-drunk, pretending I don’t want her.

When she reaches for my shirt, I catch her wrists. Her skin is warm beneath my hands, pulse thrumming steady against my fingers. She’s too close. She’s always too close.

“Stop,” I rasp, but it sounds weak even to my own ears.

Her gaze lifts to mine, calm and infuriatingly patient, and she doesn’t flinch when I narrow my eyes. She’s not afraid of me. Never has been.

“You’ll sleep better without it,” she says softly, like that’s all this is. Practicality. Mercy.

But it isn’t. My hands drop, because I’m a fucking coward and because I want to see what she’ll do next. Her fingers find the buttons at my collar, and I’m certain she can feel the way my heart beats faster beneath her touch. She works slowly, deliberately, each button a declaration, an unraveling. When she parts the fabric and pushes it off my shoulders, her knuckles graze my chest.

I should shove her away.

Instead, I lean.

The room tilts, or maybe it’s just me, the warmth of her pulling everything off axis. My breath stumbles when she reaches for the hem and smooths the shirt from my arms, her hands grazing over bare skin, light as sin.

She smells like dusk and smoke and something sweeter beneath it, something that burns all the way down. Before I know I’m doing it, the words fall out of me, drunk and stupid and true.

“You smell good.”

Her eyes flick up to mine, and there’s a glimmer there—something sharp, something dangerous.

“You’re drunk,” she says, but her voice is softer now, low and velvet-edged.

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

I don’t remember moving, but somehow she’s closer, her face tilted up toward mine, her breath warm against my cheek. I should pull away. Instead, I tilt forward, my mouth slanting over hers, rough and desperate and reckless.

Her lips taste like everything I’ve been starving for.

And when she kisses me back—slow, sure, inevitable—I swear I forget how to breathe.

Her fingers ghost over my chest, like she doesn't know how dangerous it is to touch me like this. My muscles twitch beneath her hands, not from the alcohol burning through my veins, but from something far worse—her. Always her.

"Luna," I rasp her name like it's a curse and a prayer, my voice wrecked and unsteady as her fingers brush bare skin. She looks up, smug and sweet and sharp, her lips parted like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me.

I lean in again before I can stop myself. My mouth finds hers and it isn’t sweet—it’s a wreckage. It’s consuming. My hand slides into her hair, tangling, dragging her closer like I need her mouth to save me, ruin me, swallow me whole.

She kisses me back like she’s starving, like she’s waited for this moment and she’s done pretending otherwise.

Her body presses against mine, warm and soft and insistent, and my hands slide down, gripping her hips tight enough to bruise. She collapses back, dragging me with her. I bite her lower lip as I settle between her thighs, the growl in my throat entirely unintentional. She arches up into me, and I don't miss the way her eyes darken when she feels how hard I am for her, how far gone.

"You drive me fucking insane," I mutter against her jaw, my mouth sliding down to her throat, teeth grazing skin, marking her soft enough she won’t forget. Her nails dig into my back, a desperate scrape I’d bleed for, and she whispers my name like she’s surrendering—but she’s the one conquering me.

I kiss down the curve of her throat, my tongue tracing that pulse racing for me, for this. I breathe her in, my mouth finding her collarbone, her chest, every inch of her a weapon and I, the fool walking straight into the slaughter.

When I lift my head, she’s panting, her lips swollen, her pupils blown wide. "Lucien," she breathes, wrecked, her hands sliding up my chest to curl around my neck.

I roll my hips into her, letting her feel exactly how far she’s undone me. "This is going to be messy," I warn, my voice dark, low, wrecked. "And you're going to beg me for every second of it."

Her legs part wider beneath me like she’s daring me to do exactly what I just threatened. Her fingers curl at the nape of my neck, dragging me down until her mouth catches mine again, messier this time, a little desperate, teeth and lips and a moan she doesn’t try to swallow.

Her hips roll up against me, her thighs bracketing mine, and I curse against her mouth because there’s nothing in this world, in this cursed realm, that feels as good as her body writhing beneath mine.

I drag my hand down, slow, deliberate, until my palm slides under her thighs, hitching one leg higher against my waist. Her skin burns against mine, soft and scalding, and I take my time tracing my fingers up, brushing the inside of her thigh until she squirms beneath me.

She gasps when I slide my hand beneath the thin fabric of her shorts, her breath catching when I drag my knuckles up, not giving her what she wants—yet.

"Lucien…" My name is a whisper and a threat on her lips.

I bite down on her throat, not gentle, not soft. "Say it louder."

Her hips jerk when my fingers finally find her, wet and ready, and I drag one finger through her slow enough to make her shiver. "You're so fucking wet for me," I murmur against her skin, my breath hot at her ear. Her back arches, and she tries to grind down, but I pull back just enough, my fingers ghosting over her without giving her more.

She lets out a frustrated noise, her nails digging into my shoulder. "Lucien."

"That’s better," I mutter darkly and slide one finger into her, slow, filling her enough to make her eyes flutter shut and her lips part around a gasp. Her walls flutter around me, and fuck, she’s so tight, so warm, it makes my head spin. I add another finger, watching the way her mouth falls open, her breath coming fast now, her body moving against my hand, chasing more.

"You’re going to come on my fingers," I growl against her throat, dragging my mouth down to her chest, her stomach, until I’m right there, my lips brushing over the waistband of her shorts. "And then I’m going to make you beg to have me inside you."

Her eyes meet mine, dark and wild and hungry. "Then do it."

I hook my fingers in her shorts, tearing them down her legs and tossing them somewhere I don’t care to look. And then I settle between her thighs, dragging my tongue through her slick folds slow and filthy, groaning at the taste of her.

Luna’s hips jerk, her fingers sliding into my hair, and when she moans my name like that, like she’s ruined and breathless already, I know I’ll die a thousand deaths just to hear her sound like this again.

I suck her clit between my lips, flicking my tongue against her in a rhythm that makes her breath stutter, makes her legs tremble against my shoulders. Her fingers tighten, her hips grinding against my mouth now, chasing that edge I refuse to let her have.

Until I do.

Until I slide my fingers back inside her and keep my mouth on her until she shatters, her body shaking beneath me, her thighs pressing tight around my head as she comes undone.

I drag my mouth up her body, kissing her stomach, her chest, until I’m back at her mouth, swallowing her moans like I’ll starve without them.

I grind my hips against her, slow and filthy, and growl against her lips, "You ready for me now, little Sin?"

Luna’s eyes are heavy-lidded when I look down at her, her mouth swollen from my kiss, her thighs still trembling where they cradle me. She’s the picture of ruin, and it should make me pull away—should remind me of all the reasons I’ve fought this, fought her. But it doesn’t.

I drag my hand down her body, slow, reverent, settling on her hip and gripping it tight. My cock throbs painfully against her thigh, and when I shift, sliding the blunt head against her slick entrance, she gasps and arches for me like she’s already forgotten how to breathe without me.

I sink into her slowly, deliberately, letting her feel every inch. Her eyes flutter closed, her lips parting on a strangled sound that punches straight through me like a blade.

"Fuck, you feel—" I grit the words out between my teeth as her heat drags me deeper, until I’m fully seated inside her, her walls fluttering around me like she’s trying to pull me even deeper. "So fucking tight."

She’s already wrecked beneath me, and I haven’t even started.

I lean in, pressing my forehead against hers, my breath shallow. "You wanted to help me home, sweetheart," I murmur darkly, rocking my hips slow, deep, "but I don’t think you knew what you were inviting in."

Her fingers curl around the back of my neck, pulling me closer until her lips graze mine. "I knew," she breathes, her voice a soft, dangerous thing.

I snap my hips forward, harder now, and the sound she makes is a curse disguised as a moan. Her nails dig into my back, her legs wrapping tight around my waist like she’s afraid I’ll leave her.

I won’t.

Not tonight.

I move faster, grinding into her with bruising rhythm, and her body meets me every time, desperate, greedy. She’s panting now, her eyes glazed, her mouth falling open around the sounds I drag from her. Every thrust is a declaration, a threat, a promise.

"You’re mine like this," I snarl against her mouth, swallowing her whimper. "No one else will ever get you like this."

Her walls clench around me, and I know she’s close. I drop one hand between us, circling her clit with ruthless precision, and her hips buck wildly beneath me.

"Come for me," I order, my voice rough and low. "Come while I’m inside you."

She shatters beneath me, her body tightening around me like a vice, and I follow her over the edge with a guttural curse, burying myself so deep she’ll feel me for days. I don’t stop moving until the tremors ease, until her breath slows, until her nails soften against my back.

Only then do I collapse against her, my lips at her throat, her pulse fluttering wildly beneath my mouth. And still, even now, even spent—I want her.

Always.