Page 42 of Shadowed

Her hands open wider. She looks at them—at her own traitorous hands—and I watch her understand what they're doing. Her fingers spread. She reaches for the dark.

Not for me. For my shadows. She pulls the darkness toward her body with the lockpick's grip—sure, precise—and my self-control shatters.

My wings slam wide. Every shadow in the room explodes outward. I cross the floor in two steps and drop to my knees.

Not beside her. In front of her. My hands find her thighs. I push them apart. She gasps—not heat-gasping, sharp and present, Lilith gasping, the sound of a woman still in there behind the glaze.

My shadows strip her trousers. She lifts her hips to let them. The willing choice—a six-inch movement. The jolt through thebond is so fierce the court answers, shadows along every wall in the palace snapping faster.

Her cunt is swollen. Flushed dark. Slick coating her thighs, the inner lips glistening. The scent this close—fuck. The scent this close is the end of everything I've been pretending about strategy and percentages and court restoration. The scent this close is a male finding what his body spent seven centuries starving for.

I put my mouth on her.

The first stroke of my tongue parts her and she screams. Not a moan—a scream, high and broken, her hips bucking off the floor. I pin them down. Press my tongue flat against her clit and hold. My wings press against the ceiling above us, filling the room. My shadows slam against all four walls at once—the rut responding to her pleasure before my mind catches up.

She's scorching against my mouth. Her slick coats my tongue—shadow-mineral, sweetness, underneath that something sharper. Purely her. The taste of a body surrendering while the mind behind it fights.

Every instinct I have screams to move up her body. Cover her. The rut wants her pinned beneath me, wants to be inside her, wants to seal this bond the fastest way available. I keep my mouth where it is. Tongue in slow circles. Hands locked on her hips.

My cock throbs against my thigh. The rut is very loud.

"I hate you." Her hands are in my hair. Pulling, not pushing. Nails dragging across my scalp. "I hate you, I hate this, I —"

I suck her clit into my mouth.

Her scream cuts to silence. Mouth open, spine arched, her whole body off the floor. My shadows wrap her thighs and hold them spread. Two tendrils find her nipples—circling, tightening. She makes a sound when the shadows pinch that sends a jolt straight to the base of my cock.

"That's it." I say it against her cunt. Let her feel the words. "Let me hear you."

She whimpers. Hates it. Rolls her hips against my mouth anyway, chasing the pressure. I give it to her—tongue working her clit in tight circles, shadow tendrils pulling at her nipples, her body writhing between my hands and the stone.

Fae alphas do not serve. The alpha claims, takes, commands.

I'm on my knees with my face buried in a human girl's cunt, groaning against her because the taste of her slick is making my cock leak through my trousers and the rut is so loud in my blood I can barely think.

I serve anyway.

She comes with a sob that breaks "please" in half. Her cunt clenches against my tongue. Slick floods my mouth—hot, sweet, the omega blood finally waking. The taste of her orgasm hits the back of my throat. My hips jerk forward against nothing. A groan rips out of me that I don't control.

I don't stop.

She's panting. Oversensitive. Trying to close her thighs. My shadows hold them open. My tongue finds the spot that broke her—same pressure, same rhythm, relentless.

"I can't—you can't—it's too —"

"You can." I flatten my tongue. Press. "Again."

Her body obeys before her mouth can refuse. The second orgasm hits harder—she convulses, her hands releasing my hair and finding my horns. She grips the charcoal spirals, one in each fist.

The world goes white.

Every nerve in my body fires at once. The jolt rips from my horns through my skull and down my spine and slams into the base of my cock with the force of a physical blow, and my wings explode wide—membrane cracking against both walls—and for one moment the rut has me entirely. My hips drive forwardagainst nothing. My cock is seeking her and finding air and the sound that tears out of my chest is not a groan.

It's a snarl.

I drive my horns into the stone floor to keep myself from mounting her right now. The cool stone against the ridged surface holds me. Barely. My whole body shakes with the effort of not moving up her body, not covering her, not taking what the rut is demanding.

My thief. Her hands on my horns. Like she's always owned them.