Page 43 of Shadowed

I lift my mouth. Force myself to breathe. The rut is still clawing but the thread holds.

She's shaking. The kind of tremor that comes from twenty years of holding everything together and finally being given permission to stop. Her grip on my horns loosens. Her head falls back against the stone.

"Am I broken?" Whispered. Wrecked.

My face is soaked with her—lips, chin, jaw, slick dripping onto the stone.

"You're compatible." Level. She needs truth, not gentleness. "Your blood recognised the court. This is what it looks like when it wakes up."

"It looks like hell."

"Yes."

I grip her hips. Shadow-dark fingers against the curve of bone. Her body arches into my hands and the heat surges between us, and my cock presses against her thigh through my trousers—heavy, prehensile, the curl seeking her—and she feels it. The size. The movement. Her eyes go wide.

"That's —"

"Yes."

"That's not going to —"

"It will."

Her laugh is broken and dark and so purely Lilith that my cock throbs and a bead of pre-release darkens my trousers. "Wonderful. That's very reassuring. Thank you for that."

My shadows strip her shirt. Her nipples are hard—peaked, flushed. My shadows find them immediately, circling, pulling. She gasps. Arches. The sound goes straight through me.

I lift her hips. She's naked on the stone floor of her own room. My shadows pool beneath her—not cold stone against her back. My darkness, cradling her.

I free my cock.

Heavy, shadow-dark, rigid—it springs free and curves toward her immediately. The velvety surface already slick with pre-release, thick enough that her eyes track down and her breath catches.

She stares.

Her hand reaches. Stops. Reaches again.

Her fingers close around it and it curls into her grip—fitting itself to her hand the way the blade did in the training room. The sound she makes is small and awed and furious.

"Of course it fits." Barely a whisper. "Of course everything in this bloody court fits."

Her thumb drags across the tip. My cock twitches against her palm, the prehensile curl tightening. A groan tears out of my chest. My hips push forward into her fist.

"Careful." My voice is raw. "Unless you want this to end before it starts."

"Would that be so terrible?"

"For you? Yes." I wrap my hand around hers, guiding her grip down the full length of me. "Because the heat won't break from your hand. It breaks from this —" I press the tip against her cunt. Her slick coats the head. My cock curls toward her heat on its own. "— inside you. As deep as it goes."

Her breath shudders.

I position myself between her thighs. My wings spread above her. Not a threat display. Something older—the shadow court bond instinct, the claiming of what's been chosen, the same protective arc my shadows have been making around her door for weeks. She's beneath me. I'm above her. My horns catch the shadow-lamp light. My wings block everything else.

The cock finds her without guidance—prehensile, directed—the velvety tip pressing against her cunt, parting her. Her body opens. Slick and swollen and ready.

Her hips tilt. The willing choice. Delivered in muscle and heat.

"Mine."