Page 94 of Shadowed

She comes screaming. My name—not the title, not the formal address, just "Caligo" wrenched out of her like something stolen. Her cunt pulses against my tongue and her legs buckle and the only things holding her up are my hands and the shadows and she is sobbing and clawing at my horns and I do not stop because I said again and again means again.

Eighty-five percent.

I stand. I lift her. She wraps her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and her mouth finds mine—not gentle, not careful. She has been on her knees in Ashworth for a week deciding whether to forgive a king and has decided instead to carry the unforgiven thing and kiss him anyway.

The bed. Our bed. The sheets she noticed—the ones I did not change, the ones that smell like her, faintly, because changing them would have been admitting she might not return and I don't admit defeat even in bedding.

I lay her down. The shadows surge. Every tendril in the room reaching for her, the living dark of a starving court touching what feeds it, and she lets them come—arms, shoulders, ribs, every shadow-pattern flaring as each tendril makes contact. She is mapped in shadow. Covered. Every inch of her skin touched by something dark and mine and desperate.

My wings spread.

Seven centuries of holding them folded. Seven centuries of the court's king contained, controlled, compact. They open now—vast, black, the membrane between the bones catching no light because there is no light to catch. The span of them fills the space above the bed. She looks up and her eyes widen.

"Christ," she whispers.

I bring them down. Around us. Over us. The wings close and the world disappears—no lamps, no stone walls, no palace. Just the dark. Just the membrane of my wings sealing us inside a space that belongs only to two bodies and the shadows between them. Her breath is loud in the enclosure. My breath. The sound of her heartbeat through the bond, fast, hard.

"Can you see?" I ask.

"No."

"Good."

In the dark she cannot see my face. She can only feel—my hands on her hips, my mouth finding her throat, the shadow-tendrils tightening on her ribs. Every sensation amplified by blindness. Her back arches off the bed and a whimper comes out of her that she would deny making in the light.

My cock is hard. Has been since she walked through the passage. I press against her thigh and the prehensile curl of it seeks—the tip tracing her hip, her inner thigh, finding the wet heat of her and nudging without entering. Learning the shape of her again. She gasps. Her hand reaches down between us and wraps around me and the grip—Christ, the grip of this woman.Firm and sure, the fingers that pick locks now holding me with the same reading touch, her thumb sliding over the head while the rest of me curls against her palm.

"Still," she says. Squeezing. "Let me."

I hold still. My wings tremble overhead. Her hand moves—slow, deliberate strokes that make my vision dark at the edges. She is taking her time. Relearning.

"You missed me," she says. Not a question. Her thumb presses the underside and my cock responds—curling tighter around her wrist, the prehensile tip tracing circles on her forearm because it has its own memory of her and the memory is louder than my control.

"Every corridor," I tell her. My mouth against her throat. "Every shadow. Every hour you were in Ashworth, this court was forgetting how to breathe."

"That's not what I asked." Her hand tightens. "Did you miss me?"

"Yes."

I push into her. Not slow. Not careful.

One stroke. Full. My cock buries inside her and her body opens around me and the sound she makes is not language—a raw, punched-out noise, the air driven from her lungs by the sheer force of being filled. The wet grip of her cunt closing around me is the only prayer I have ever understood.

Inside her, the prehensile tip searches—curling forward, finding the raised texture of the front wall, pressing. She cries out. Her nails rake my shoulders and her spine bows and she is already clenching around me. The cock adjusts without my instruction—tilting the tip against the spot that makes her thighs seize, holding pressure while my hips draw back.

And slam in.

Her body jolts. The bed hits the wall. My hips snap hard enough that the impact echoes off stone and the sound shemakes is guttural—a grunt, ripped from her belly, the noise of a body being fucked too hard to moan.

"Feel that?" My mouth against her ear. "My cock knows where you break. It found the spot on Night Two and it hasn't forgotten."

"Don't—talk —" She is gasping. The wings above us block all light. Nothing for her to focus on except the thick drag of me inside her, filling her, the tip stroking a place she cannot reach and I will never leave alone.

"You came back with conditions." I pull out to the head. Her cunt clenches on the emptiness and the whimper she makes—desperate, uncontrolled—is a sound I will remember longer than my own name.

I slam back in. Her whole body slides up the bed. My hand finds the top of her skull and braces—holding her in place so the next thrust has nowhere to go except deeper.

"This is mine." My hips snap. Again. Again. The wet slap of my body against hers filling the wing-dark space. "The sounds you're making are mine. The way you grip me when I press here —" The tip curls. She sobs. "— that is mine."