20. Cress
Iasked what had been on my mind from the moment I woke alone with Phaeron in a dark room. “Are you safe from Myuna’s control now?”
He raised a brow toward Braza, deflecting the question. “In New Salem, I was able to mitigate the hole in your soul caused by Endaeron. You were only overcome when you left the radius of my power. While I am no rival for a goddess…it’s clear she has only surface-level control of you. I will be able to provide the buffer you need,” she said.
Phaeron made a noncommittal “hm.”
“She was able to compel me while I was in her presence. I am perhaps fortunate she did not force me into corruption,” he said. He shared that refusing a direct order from Myuna had been about as painful as driving an ice pick through his skull. The goddess had gleaned information from him about the library and what a powercore was when Braza had arrived.
“Yet you were able to resist her by a fraction. That’s remarkable,” she said.
“It is not when she still did as she willed while I was forced to watch.” He glanced toward me, a guilty look.
“Let us not split already fine hairs. You are welcome to remain here, and I will use my power to support you while we seek a more permanent solution,” she said. “Why don’t you go rest?”
Though purple-tinted half-moons darkened the skin under Phaeron’s eyes, he refused sleep.
“You won’t be taken over again, not while you’re here,” I said, brushing his arm in support.
He glanced toward me, saying, “I shall retire with Cress all the same.”
Braza smiled and waved farewell before absorbing her body back into the powercore. I stood on my tiptoes and looped my arms around Phaeron’s neck, not missing the coy slant to his lips. “Floor negative two, please,” I said.
I liked seeing him a little caught off guard. “Hmm?”
“Take me to floor negative two. I’ll show you a room you can use,” I clarified. We disappeared in a whirl of shadows, and I closed my eyes to keep from getting dizzy when we re-emerged in the second floor hallway, right before the elevator doors.
I laced my fingers in his, guiding him to the original room I’d claimed before I’d moved to sharing a different one with Geo and Ben. “Maybe you’d like to relax with a shower?” I suggested.
“Implying I smell, bright soul?” Though his tone was a little too flat, I could tell he was trying to tease. I respected that he was trying for some sense of normalcy despite everything.
“Good thing you wash,” I said, eyeing him askance. I’d done my best not to stare, but he was bare-chested, and I came about to pec height. He smelled more like stale hospital cleanliness than any kind of body odor, and it seemed he’d healed off the worst of his physical injuries. All that remained was the shadows in his otherworldly eyes.
“I will cleanse myself…then we shall talk,” he said, slipping into the room once I showed him to the door.
I flipped the lock and patted my empty pockets. Oh, right. I’d dropped my ruined phone when Phaeron had stolen me from the hospital room. I imagined Geo mourning over it and stifled a giggle. Served him right for rushing in and decking Phaeron without waiting for any kind of explanation.
That phone had been the last bastion of technology between me and my three men. It’d been a fun thing to watch how Geo would change my algorithms to cat videos and “highly satisfying” type stuff, or how Ben would steal it away to leave silly or weird websites waiting for me when I needed to use the phone too.
But that left me with nothing to do after a quick trip to the laundry room to pick out a change of clothes—shadowborn black, of course—in the largest men’s size that’d been left behind. Phaeron was still showering when I returned, chill mist drifting from under the door, which he’d left ajar.
I set the clothes on the inside of the threshold and raised a brow. This man was seriously taking a cold shower and singing in his own language like the deluge of icy water wasn’t another form of torment. I went to remove my shoes and lay on the bed, closing my eyes while I listened to the alien syllables and soft, hissing words drifting from the shower.
It wasn’t a surprise Phaeron had a nice singing voice, not when his deep, smooth timbre had the power to tighten my lower belly. I wished he would emerge from that shower wet and ready to ravish me rather than to air out the burden he was carrying.
My heart quickened when the shower shut off, as did the tune he’d carried. I heard the shuffle of fabric and the creak of the door opening, but not his footsteps as he emerged with a towel tied around his trim hips. His hair was down from its usual scraped-back tail, framing his head and tangled around the root of his horns.
Combined with a chill cast on his skin from the cold shower, for a moment, I saw the second prince of Soiluire in his prime, dressed for peace with blue contouring his high cheekbones. But it was an illusion, banished in a blink. Fatigue lined his face, and he’d lost weight, evidenced in hollow cheeks and a breakdown of the perfect abs he’d once had.
“Oh, you must be hungry,” I said, sitting up quickly.
“Peace, bright soul,” he answered. With a flick of a tendril of shadow, he turned off the lamp behind me, leaving him backlit by the light filtering around the door shading the bathroom. He slid under the covers with a sigh, shedding the towel with his tail. “I need for little except to lie with you.”
I eased myself back down and scooted closer, resting face-to-face with him. He had the uncanny way of looking right through me with those topaz eyes. They threw off twinkling sparks as he threaded his fingers through my hair, nudging my head forward to touch foreheads with me. “I have missed you far more than words could convey,” he murmured.
“I should’ve done more to bring you back sooner,” I whispered back.
He shuttered his glowing eyes for a moment, gritting his teeth. “It is I that failed you with inaction. There is something you must know.”
“I doubt there’s anything—”
“Your sister, Carly,” he interrupted. I swallowed hard, feeling a little ill to hear him say her name with such guilt. “She was brought before Myuna.”
I broke into full-body goosebumps. “She ate Carly’s soul?” I could barely put the thought into words as shocked tears pricked the corners of my eyes.
He shook his head. “She recognized Carly from the memories she’d been able to extract from me. She tore the soul from Carly slowly while demanding my compliance in exchange for her. Up until that point, every supernatural brought before her was consumed, body and soul.”
I was scarcely breathing as he searched for the words to explain my sister’s fate. “I struck a deal with her, to sleep if she spared Carly. She’d already corrupted your sister’s soul by taking a small taste of it…but still, she returned it and revived her. I’m so deeply sorry, bright soul. Your sister is a torchbearer now, an unnatural enslaved to Myuna’s will.”
“That’s why you were asleep when you came to the library,” I realized.
“Indeed.” He met my gaze, resigned for my reaction.
I glanced away from that heavy expression. “Can we save her?” I asked.
“If she is captured, I can attempt to unbind her from Myuna’s will. But she has still experienced death and rebirth. She will remain an unnatural with unpredictable needs and hungers, whether or not she regains control of herself.”
I couldn’t help but think that Carly had become a supernatural in the worst way possible. I clung to the hope that we might still be able to rescue her and any others that were similarly corrupted.
In the meantime, I drew away a lock of hair that shadowed Phaeron’s face, tucking it behind the curve of his horn. My memories from Braza suggested that mates maintained one another’s appearance and grooming like an act of love. “Stay right there,” I said.
“What are you doing?” He gazed over his shoulder when I retrieved a few things from the vanity.
In reply, I ran a brush through his thin, damp hair and disentangled it from his horns. On a hunch, I abandoned combing it out and ran my fingers over his scalp. He leaned into my touch with a low moan, and I bet he’d purr if he could. Some of the tension bled out of his body.
“I don’t deserve this, bright soul,” he said.
“I’m glad you told me about Carly. I’ve been worried about her, too,” I said quietly, still massaging behind his horns. “You saved her from dying. It set you on the right path to be set free from Myuna’s will and back here to me. If we can save her, we will, together. And if we can’t, I will carry the guilt with you for the rest of my life. For now…relax. Let yourself recover before you try to help anyone else.”
I pinned his hair back with the leather tie he used. He shifted to lie on his back. “You would care for me as a mate,” he said quietly.
There was a blaze in his eyes as he waited for my answer. For all the teasing touches and whispers in my ear, the nibbles and snatched kisses…the fears born of a hunger he understood but didn’t fully control, thismoment felt like the tipping point between us. “Of course. I love you,” I replied.
I had a moment of weightlessness as he wrapped his shadows around me, lifting my hips and setting me to straddle him on the bed. “I meant to tell you for a while, but…” I said, resting my hands on his warm chest.
He raised a brow. “But what?” he asked.
Buthe’d been so distant. Skirting the edges of his self-control, afraid to hurt me even though his absence was the worst pain he could inflict.
Buthe was so different, from a different world. Far more important than I’d ever dreamed of being. To think I was supposed to be his mate and equal.
“But we haven’t fucked, even when you were in the grips of a lust spell,” I settled on saying. “I thought I was, um, inadequate to you in some way. Probably many ways.”
His expression twisted into a troubled frown, and on cue, he blamed himself. “It is I that is inad—”
I swallowed the rest of what he was going to say by kissing him, holding one horn to get the angle I wanted. Just like before, the meeting of our lips seemed to obliterate Phaeron and draw out the growling animal that rested just beneath his princely manner.
He flipped us and trapped me in a cage of blankets and his body, kissing like he wanted to devour me. But he jerked away, panting. “This is a bad idea,” he groaned.
With each shift, I felt the hardness of him pressed against my thigh. He wanted me, and yet…it still wasn’t going to happen. I gathered myself to hear him tell me no, for him to disappear in a bank of shadows and leave me with only my hand to finish what we’d started. Moisture gathered in my eyes, and I glanced away from his conflicted face. I had to stop putting so much of myself forward like this.
He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning my head back. “It will not do to have you doubting.” He pulled the covers from between us, and I caught sight of his manhood for the first time. I’d sucked on him in the dark, only able to feel the shape of him, which matched the sight. His shaft had a few nubs along the length and purplish veins, with a velvety dark gray cap at the tip, matching his lips. No other surprises—he was human shaped.
“Cress.” He pressed in close to me, our foreheads touching again. “Do you trust me?”
The tenderness in his voice stole my breath. “Yes,” I managed to whisper.
Shadows unfurled around him, one particularly long tendril hitting a light switch and plunging the room into darkness. Fabric shredded, and cool air hit my chest and legs, my breasts bouncing free when my borrowed clothes parted. I felt his hands lift me as if I weighed nothing and sweep away the ruined material.
His magic felt as firm as his hands. In the dark, I could mistake him for having many caressing fingers. “Tell me to stop at any time,” he said close to my ear. “But I need to have control in this bed. Is that okay?”
He pinned my wrists above my head, keeping them there with a warm coil of darkness. “I can’t touch you?” I asked. The bindings flexed but held when I tested them.
“Not this night.” He nibbled on my earlobe, the sensation curling my toes. Everything was more intense when I couldn’t see what he was doing. He’d even covered the glow his eyes put off. In many ways, he was the night pressing in around us, here to take me. Finally.
“I want as much of you as I can have,” I told the darkness and parted my thighs for it.
“My True Light, you have called me home.” He pulled back, his voice enveloping me with warmth. I could feel one clawed hand adjusting my knee, running a palm up the tender inner flesh of my leg. “You are my beacon to return to, and how bright you have come to shine in my absence.”
I squirmed some as his touch skimmed closer to my heated core. The darkness sighed with me as the firmness of his fingertips vanished. His shadows continued to play across my skin, drawing circles and little nonsense runes over every inch of me except the folds that pulsed with my quick heartbeat in the dark.
Was he wrestling with his control as I waited breathless for his return? I wondered if he’d created the absence of light to hide his struggles and protect me from having to see how thin his control truly was.
He cupped my needy pussy, and I breathed out a soft sound of relief. “In the madness of every moment I spent with Myuna,” he said, stroking his way up my slit. “I clung to thoughts of you. If I would emerge from the ordeal as the man you recognized.” One of his fingers slipped within me, and I moaned. I could feel the tremor that passed through him. “If you would still want me.” In went a second finger, curling and coaxing within me.
“Of course I still want you,” I said breathlessly.
“I worried I would not be the same within,” he continued. He ran his lips along my throat and applied pressure to my clit with the pad of his thumb. My cry sounded ragged, too loud to my own ears. “That I would no longer appreciate the great power you carry within you. I feared the sight of you would no longer bring me joy. A true monster of hers would not crave the taste of your lips.”
His mouth was there, his kiss first a chaste brush but deepening to a full duel of teeth and tongue. He trembled with fine control. The sensation of his kiss pulled away, and he withdrew from my pussy too.
“Phaeron?” I asked, flushing hot, then uncertain. “If this is too much, we can stop…”
“Still so sweet,” he answered. I heard a wet sound and was fairly certain he was licking his fingers. “I may be a touch broken, bright soul. Mere pleasure cannot mend me.”
“Maybe we can still try,” I said.
“Yes.” Before I could worry about what he was trying to imply, he was there between my thighs, nudging within me. He lifted under my back, taking away the sensation of the sheets and leaving me in a cushion of darkness. And that inky night…all of it was him. His skin, his magic, his breath upon my shoulder as he sank inside of me.
His tail twined around my locked ankles, pulling my body into the roll of his hips. He drew back, adjusted minutely, and thrust again, repeating this three times until one of the hard nubs on his shaft brushed an ultra-sensitive patch within me. Back arching, I screamed at the unexpected starburst of pleasure.
The darkness laughed, a chuckle of pure male satisfaction. I imagined his smug smile, the vicious way he tended to bare his teeth when he gave in to his shadowborn side. “Oh, Phaeron.” I longed to see his pleasure.
He didn’t reply. Now that he’d gotten the perfect angle, he slowed, sawing against that bundle of nerves. Fingertips traced my face, the curve of my jaw. This was lovemaking, sure as anything. He’d not declared his love as directly as I had, but I felt it. Every tender touch and meeting of our hips said it.
He truly was mine. But I was also his, at his mercy completely.
How well he treated me, though. I came apart in his arms, seeing stars as my eyes shut tight. He stilled, then withdrew, leaving me clenching on air with a whine of denial. Even the pressure of his tail and hands vanished.
“Come back. Please,” I said. It would ruin the moment, to get off without him experiencing the same.
I could hear the rasping way he drew in breath. He wasn’t far, but he was perhaps on the knifepoint of his restraint.
“You are too tempting, bright soul. I cannot keep my fangs from your neck if we continue,” he answered after a few moments.
I wiggled my hips to tempt him anyway, and a growl drifted from the darkness. “Take me on my hands and knees, then. No need for fangs anywhere near my neck,” I reasoned.
For the space of two heartbeats, I didn’t think he would come back. But then his hands grasped my hips, and I had the sensation of turning over. He pressed his length between my lower lips, rubbing up and down and catching my clit against one of those amazing nubs. “I don’t know how much more I’ll be able to hold back,” he whispered.
I arched my hips up. “Go ahead,” I coaxed. “I want you to fuck me now.”
He made a sound like a snarling animal and slammed home within me again. The driving power of his thrusts would’ve shoved me into the bed but I didn’t even know if we were on it anymore—the cushion of shadows underneath me had firmed up and kept me in the right position.
I had the biggest grin, exhilarated to feel him let loose on me. He released with a shadowborn’s howl, holding my hips flush with his as he pulsed within me.
“Oh, I should’ve told you,” I said as soon as he let me go and I fell into a boneless heap back onto the soft bedsheets. His magic was receding, and I spotted the half-lidded glow of his yellow eyes as he stretched out next to me.
He stroked his fingers through my hair, idly working free a tangle. “Is something the matter?” he asked.
“I’m on the pill now, so we should be safe, but next time, you should probably wear a condom.”
He started to laugh. Deep, carefree rolls of his chest. “We’re from different species. There won’t be any babies,” he promised.
“Says the man who was made humanlike on his way to Earth,” I protested playfully. When he put it that way, I did feel silly.
His mirth drifted to quiet, and he didn’t reply. Moments later, he was snoring.