Page 51 of Ashen Souls

A broken gasp tore from my mouth. My hands flew up to seize his thick wrists, but my muscles refused to push him away. I dug my nails into his forearms, tethering him to me like a lifeline.

“You spent the entire day trying to wash me off your skin, hiding behind daylight and the pathetic delusion of safety.” Daeren bowed his head until his lips brushed the shell of my ear. “But you couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d do to you in the dark. Your pretty little morality snapped, Aveline. You didn't just surrender to the devil. You got down on your knees and begged it to swallow you whole.”

His thumb ground mercilessly into the tender center of the bruise. Agony arced through me, igniting a coiling throb low in my belly.

“The veil between your world and mine is thick, Aveline,” he breathed against my skin. “But I don't need to drag you here to put my hands on you. I reach across the divide just to remind you exactly who owns your flesh when the lights go out.”

I should have hated him for saying it, but my blood accepted his claim as law. The starvation hollowed me out, demanding to be fed by the exact menace suffocating me.

I blinked through the haze. My clothes were gone. In their place, a red silk gown clung to the sweat-slicked curves of my breasts and hips, turning me into an exposed, shivering offering.

Daeren’s gaze tracked the shock dawning over me, the amber fire in his eyes dying into pitch black.

“Mine,” he decreed.

His hands cinched my waist, hauling me off the mattress. The shadows spun wildly as he flipped me around, slamming the front of my hips into the harsh edge of an obsidian altar. He forced my upper body forward, bending me over the stone slab until my cheek and breasts were pressed flat against the rock.

“Daeren…”

The protest was crushed out of me as he stepped in flush behind me. His chest pinned my spine to the altar.

“Quiet.” His voice scraped my ear. “You begged for the monster. Now take what he gives you.”

I remained motionless, paralyzed by fear and twisting anticipation.

His palm flattened between my shoulder blades, trailing slowly down my spine, his skin searing right through the gown.

“You think daylight can hide you from me?” he murmured against the nape of my neck. “You can play the untouchable mortal all you want, Aveline, but you belong to the dark.”

His fist closed in the delicate weave. The silk shredded with a violent tear, falling away into the shadows.

Daeren shifted his weight, driving his thick knee between my thighs. He forced my legs apart, stepping seamlessly into the space he’d just claimed.

His fingers wrapped around my jaw, turning my head just enough to force two digits past my parted lips.

“Lick them,” he ordered.

I obeyed, my tongue sliding over his rough skin.

He slipped his hand from my mouth, dragging his damp fingers over my clit before sinking them deep into my pussy.

A sob tore out of me as he stretched me.

“I could spend an eternity doing this,” he rasped. “Sliding into your wet cunt. Feeling you melt around my fingers.”

He withdrew his hand slowly. Then came the wet sound of his mouth closing over what he’d just taken from me.

“Fuck, you taste so good,” he growled.

He dropped his hands to my hips, hauling my backside flush against his groin. The rigid length of him pressed against my entrance through his pants. He ground his hips forward.

“Do you feel how hard you make my cock?” he taunted.

I couldn't form a single word. My spine arched backward against him in a pathetic plea.

I had been reduced to nothing but a naked offering on his altar, my body at the mercy of whatever claim he staked on my skin. But just taking it wasn't enough anymore. He owned me, yet I hadn't truly put my hands on him, and it was driving me insane. I needed to wrap my fingers around that thickness grinding against my hips. I wanted to feel the weight of it in my bare palm. I wanted it in my mouth.

He laughed, as if he could hear the filthy desperation screaming through my veins.