A Heart of Ice and Shadow (Shadows Eternal #2)

Chapter 13

She wanted him. All of him.

Those three little words, edged with his accent, had sent a shiver through her. I am yours. No longer was he fearful or closed off. She could feel that he meant it, and it made a swell of emotions cascade through her.

Gwen pushed at Sirus’s chest until he was on his back. He didn’t fight her in the slightest as she settled over top of him. He held her steady, his fingers digging gently into the flesh of her hips. She realized then that his tattoos covered nearly all of him.

She ran her fingers through the patch of dark hair over his muscled chest, then along his biceps. “You’re so beautiful,” she breathed without really thinking.

His expression strained, then softened. A smirk teased at one corner of his mouth, and Gwen’s eyes widened with shock. It was the closest he’d ever gotten to a smile. “I was thinking the same about you,” he confessed, brushing his hand over her stomach and cupping one of her breasts.

Gwen arched her back into his touch. Sirus’s hard, damp tip brushed against the inside of her thigh as she did. She’d intended to draw out their encounter, to be gentle, but as she hovered over him, an urgency rioted through her.

She bent over and kissed his chest, letting her hair brush over him. Then she licked and nibbled along his corded neck. His fingers dug deeper into her hips. Gwen didn’t mind the pain. “I want you,” she whispered into his ear. Not just this night, but as many nights and days and weeks and months as she could have him. She just wanted him.

Gwen reached down and gently wrapped her hand around his silky length. Sirus sat up with a growl, still holding her hips above him. She stroked him until his eyes grew dark and his breaths harsh. The shadows began to pull around them, and it only made her want him more.

She ran her thumb over his damp tip, and he hissed, then shuddered. “Tell me what you want, Sirus,” she said darkly as she let go of him and dug her hands into his hair. He growled in response, his beard tickling the tip of her nipple as he kissed the skin above her breast.

She pulled his head back, and Sirus snarled at her forcefulness. His eyes were hooded and liquid, as if she enthralled him. She didn’t see control or coldness. He was lost to her. The realization filled her with a sense of pride. Of power. Only she was just as lost to him.

Gwen was overcome by him. His beauty and strength. His pain and patience. How vulnerable he’d been. How vulnerable he was now. She kissed him, and everything changed. Now it wasn’t just about desire or pleasure. It was about Sirus. She wanted him. The vampire. The lover. The friend. All of him. Her King of Shadows.

Roughly, Sirus positioned her hips over him, silently telling her precisely what he wanted. She wanted it too. He rasped as her wet sex enveloped the tip of him.

“Gods, Gwendolyn,” he moaned.

Gwen gasped a sharp breath of pleasure. She needed more. Sirus’s muscles strained as she pressed him further inside her. Every inch made her ache to have all of him, but she struggled to take the entirety of his length. She groaned, and he sensed her frustration. He guided her hips, slowly pushing himself deeper with shallow strokes.

“More,” she moaned on an exhale.

He took her mouth with an urgent kiss, then raised her hips to pull himself out of her entirely. With one hard thrust, he plunged into her, all the way to the base.

Gwen tore away from their kiss and gasped a harsh breath of pain and pleasure. For a moment, he held her hips steady, letting her adjust to the fullness of him—until she began to move.

With every rise and fall over him, Gwen lost more of herself. Her breaths became harsher as they found their rhythm in passion. He wrapped his arms around her hips and growled with abandon as she pulled herself away and then took him hard once more in full. She loved the sounds he made.

“Gwendolyn,” he rasped as she took him again. She leaned her head back, her eyes closed, lost in the throes of her pleasure. He dug his fingers deeper into her thighs. The pain only drove her further. “Gwen—I—You must stop.”

She looked down at him then. The shadows were drawn in around them so that he was shrouded in a dark haze. Her magicks had rippled out over her, a haze of blue swirling amongst Sirus’s darkness. Gwen saw the strain in his face. The fear.

“It’s okay,” she whispered against his lips as she moved over him. She wanted this, wanted all of him. He didn’t need to say it. She knew what he wanted, and she wanted him to take what he needed from her. She slowed her pace and kissed him softly. “You can’t hurt me.”

He let out a harsh breath, his fingers digging deeper into her skin but not stopping her. “Gwen?—”

“Trust me,” she told him. She leaned her head back again, throwing her hair away from her shoulder, further exposing her neck to him. He ran his tongue along the edge, and she worked herself harder over him, moaning as she took him deeper.

“I want to taste you,” he groaned against her neck with dark desperation.

Gwen could feel him through her magicks. Could feel his hunger grow. “I want it. Please,” she breathed.

She wanted to draw it out. To take her pleasure with him, but she was too close to the edge to stop. Gwen dug her fingers into his hair and pulled him to her. He bit down at the base of her neck. The moment she felt that sharp touch of pain, she crested over the edge, crying out in pure pleasure. Sirus groaned with primal ecstasy as his tongue lapped over her skin.

Her magick flowed around them. Time itself seemed to stop as they were tangled in their passion. Gwen’s skin was electric with energy. With one last hard thrust, Sirus released inside her, throwing his head back with his own roar to the heavens.

As Gwen’s body trembled back down to reality, her magicks began to fall away too. A distant, dull ache lingered in her neck.

For several minutes, they remained entangled, rasping deep, labored breaths. Gwen held on to him. Afraid to untangle herself. Afraid for the moment to end.

But she couldn’t keep them there forever.

“Why?” he growled against her shoulder, his fingers still digging into her hips.

Gwen took in desperate gulps of air as wave after wave of emotion slammed into her. She leaned back and held his face in her palms, his red-tinted lips proof of what she’d let him take. “Because I wanted you too,” she panted. “Because I knew you wouldn’t hurt me, Sirus.” She kissed him. The taste of her blood lingered over his lips, but she didn’t care. This was who he was, what he needed.

Gwen could feel the conflict rioting in him. Feel him grow more rigid with each passing second. Sirus didn’t lean into their kiss, but he didn’t pull away either. Not at first. He broke away slowly.

In silence, Sirus pulled her off of him and nestled her across the bed at his side. He didn’t settle next to her, as she’d hoped. Instead, he slid to the edge and sat looking off into the fire.

Gwen touched her neck. It was sensitive but not painful. Her skin was—healed. All that remained was a smear of blood and sweat. With each breath, her heart grew heavier. She didn’t want him to shut her out. Not yet.

“I don’t know how this is done,” he told her, his tone returned to ice. He let out a deep breath, and she could sense his struggle in it. A war was raging within him. Gwen wanted to soothe him, but she was afraid to go near him. Afraid she might scare him away. His back grew rigid, the muscles, tattoos, and scars tightening as he straightened himself to rest his hands on his bare thighs.

“As a vampire of my clan, I swore not to take blood except in combat. It is how I have lived for centuries. I was tempted at times,” he confessed, “when the hunger grew loud enough, but my control never wavered. I never thought I would?—”

When the room grew darker, a shiver ran up Gwen’s spine, but she didn’t dare move or speak. His voice was like shadow itself when he spoke. Dark and dense. “I crave you, Gwendolyn.” Agony laced his words. “I do not trust myself to not?—”

She shifted to her knees and hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around his chest. “I trust you. You didn’t hurt me, Sirus,” she assured him. “And I wanted it. It was…” Gwen didn’t know how to describe it other than, “Amazing.”

Sirus didn’t move away, but he grew more rigid under her. Gwen laid her cheek on his back and let out a long, stuttered breath, hoping he would not pull away. “I don’t know how to do this either. It’s not like I’ve been with a vampire before, you know?” She sighed and kissed his back. “This is new to both of us, but we can figure it out.”

He laid his hand over hers on his chest and pressed it against him. The shadows abated back to the corners of the room, and Gwen squeezed him tighter. Her heart fluttered as they sat there together. Her and her vampire, and neither one of them had a damned clue what they were doing. For some reason, that made it all feel a little less daunting.

“You should sleep,” he told her. “It’s late.”

She wanted to fuss about how bossy he was, but her eyes felt heavy as she lay against his warm back, her body exhausted and sated from their lovemaking. Gwen kissed a trail along his shoulder. “Fine, but I’m not doing it because you told me to,” she grumbled playfully.

When she shifted away, he stood, and she cocked her head. “Where do you think you’re going?”

He turned, and she got a full, glorious view of him. Muscled, tattooed, and gleaming. She swallowed. Maybe she wasn’t so tired after all.

She came to the edge of the bed and sat up on her knees, bracing her hands on his chest.

His eyes immediately darkened, and she smirked. She loved how he responded to her. How powerful it made her feel. He held her hands still against his chest when she tried to move them.

“I will go and let you sleep,” he told her.

“You’re not going to stay?” She didn’t even try to hide her disappointment.

His expression was oddly blank. Like he was confused.

She smiled up at him. “I know you don’t sleep, but I’d like you to stay.” Sirus’s blank look remained. “You have cuddled before, haven’t you?” she teased him.

Sirus didn’t know what to say other than, “No.”

Gwendolyn blinked up at him with those beautiful, emerald pools. She huffed a little laugh. “You’re kidding?”

“No.”

Her brows furrowed skeptically, then she shrugged. “Well, I guess I can be your first then,” she told him. She kissed him softly and took his hand, pulling him toward the bed as she lay with her beautifully luscious backside to him. “Come lay with me.” She let go of his hand and patted the empty bit of bed behind her.

His heart pounded as he did what she asked. He slid into the bed next to her, the weight of his body sending hers shifting back. She took his hand and wrapped it around her bare front, bracing it on her chest as she nestled back against him. When her naked body settled into his, he was caught between the urge to growl and purr.

“This is spooning,” she teased. “One of the many positions of cuddling.”

He released her only to reach down for the blanket at the foot of the bed and pull it over her. “If that is so, I have cuddled before. Though it was much less pleasurable, as my partner was Barith.”

She let out a sleepy huff of laughter, hugging his arm to her chest. His own chest ached at the tenderness of her touch. “And the story there would be?”

“Even immortals can freeze to death,” he admitted, trying to force himself to relax next to her. “Barith can summon fire, but not constantly. When one is stuck in the frozen tundra during a blizzard and the Sun Dragon can no longer draw fire at his will, one must do what they must.”

Gwendolyn smiled, her eyes drifting shut. “So who was the big spoon?”

Sirus did not reply, and she laughed again, even more sleepily than before. “It’s funny to imagine, Barith spooning you in a blizzard.”

“It was less humorous in the moment,” he grumbled, kissing the top of her shoulder.

She nestled deeper against him as he felt her drifting further toward sleep. The moment he sensed her succumb, he lay there next to her, wholly unsure what to do with himself. For long years, Sirus had wondered what this would feel like. He’d wondered countlessly what this would feel like with her. He was frustrated by how uneasy he was now that he’d been given this gift.

With a steadying breath, he pulled her closer. This night had been beyond anything he could have imagined. She was beyond anything he could have imagined. His heart ached as he felt her own beneath his hand, which was held tightly in her grip. Of all the moments they’d shared. Of all the ways she’d surprised him.

He struggled. Struggled to see himself as she saw him. Struggled to trust himself as she trusted him. Her neck displayed no sign of what he’d taken from her, just a small patch of pink. Sirus didn’t know how she’d healed this time when she hadn’t before. It scared him. The way she’d been able to draw her magick to her.

The fear rippled through every part of him, and he held her closer. He could feel the magick more than before. Could feel it humming through him from the blood she’d given him. A small sliver of hope slipped through the fear as he listened to the soft pattern of her breath. Gwendolyn was strong. Resilient. Maybe she could find a way to harness this magick. She had healed herself. Perhaps her situation was not as dire as they’d believed.

Doubt and instinct crept in from the recesses of his mind, and he pushed them away. He breathed her in and closed his eyes, savoring the moment. Committing it to memory.

It scared him.

It scared him to think she might care for him too.

Sirus didn’t know what the future would bring, but as he held her he let himself hope.