Page 72 of Ashen Souls
He had given me what I begged for, yet the moment he left my body, a sunken yearning twisted in my center. A need clawed at my insides, demanding more of him.
He turned me onto my back and reached for the thick bindings. The second the cords released their bite, the acute pain rushed in, forcing tears to my eyes.
As my arms fell limply to my sides, I tensed for the waking world. I expected the cavern to dissolve, expected the black silk to turn into my cheap sheets, just like every time before. But he didn't fade.
Instead of letting me go, Daeren sat up. He gripped my waist, lifting me before lowering me slowly right back down onto his throbbing, swollen length.
This time, we were face-to-face. The fiery embers were back, ensnared in mine.
He settled his hands on my hips.
“Ride.”
Having this terrifying monster beneath my hips woke a dormant darkness inside me, a shadow I had spent my whole life trying to bury. But here, in his inferno, I was free.
As I began to move, rocking my hips to take all of him, Daeren reached up. He captured my bleeding wrists in his hands. Never once breaking eye contact, he brought my torn skin to his mouth and began to reverently lick the blood from my flesh.
His feral hunger was gone. An unspoken devotion that bordered perilously on affection took its place.
We were both so hypersensitive that the next orgasm crashed over us almost immediately.
I collapsed forward, wrapping my arms around his neck. My limbs trembled as I clung to him, drowning in the scent of charred myrrh, sweat, and the consuming power of the body beneath mine.
He drew me down into a kiss. It lacked that unyielding demand from before, turning deep and gentle. As his tongue swept through my mouth, I tasted the metallic tang of my own blood.
When he broke the kiss, his fingers closed around my left wrist, turning my arm until the sigil faced him.
A wave of fire rolled through me. My body gravitated toward his, as if my very bones had remembered who they belonged to. The urge to cling to him struck so violently it left me dizzy. Leaving him felt like severing my own flesh.
Slowly, he turned his own wrist.
The exact same sigil burned there: etched into his skin, glowing with an identical light.
“I know exactly what you feel,” he murmured. His thumb brushed the mark on my pulse. “We are bound. Not by chance. Not by desire alone.”
His gaze held mine.
“You will never be satisfied with another man,” he stated. “You will never want anyone the way you want me.”
“Without me, you will ache.” His tone dropped into a quiet roughness that chilled me more than his anger. “You will wander. You will suffer.”
The words branded me like a curse disguised as truth.
Thoughts fractured. Only one question surfaced. “Are you real?”
Silence stretched between us, before his lips parted.
“I am real, Aveline.”
“You call this unreal,” he continued, “because it doesn’t fit inside the world you know. But that world was never built to hold me.”
His eyes lifted back to mine, a faint smile curving his lips.
“And yet… it still holds you.”
He buried his face into the crook of my neck, inhaling my scent deeply. “Mmm. You still smell like jasmine.”
The room quaked.
