Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
AZRAEL
The kiss detonates between us like something neither of us is meant to survive.
One second, I am kneeling in the middle of her living room, her blood still on my hands from closing her wounds.
The next, my mouth is on hers, and the world collapses into this narrow, consuming point where nothing else exists.
Her lips part under mine with a sharp intake of her breath.
The taste of her hits me like a shock I was never prepared for.
Her fingers twist into my shirt immediately, like she has been waiting for this for far longer than either of us should admit.
Fucking hell.
This is more than anything I ever allowed myself to imagine.
I haven’t kissed anyone in decades. Haven’t wanted to. Touch without purpose felt like weakness. Intimacy was a liability I learned to survive without.
But this does not feel like a liability.
It feels like annihilation.
For the first time in longer than I care to remember, I cannot tell whether I am taking control or surrendering it.
She makes a sound against my mouth, half gasp, half moan, and something in my chest gives way.
My hand slides into her hair, angling her head for deeper access, for more.
The kiss turns more aggressive, more consuming, as if neither of us knows where restraint is supposed to begin.
She meets it without hesitation, without fear, teeth catching my bottom lip just enough to sting.
The pain shoots heat straight through me.
A low sound rips from my throat, and I push her into the sofa. She goes willingly, her back sinking deeper into its softness. The movement pulls another breathless sound from her.
“Azrael…”
My name on her tongue breaks something I was holding together by force alone.
I am on her again.
My hands are everywhere at once: at her jaw, her throat, the curve of her waist through silk that suddenly feels like too much distance, too much separation. She is pulling at my jacket, frantic now, dragging it from my shoulders as if it offends her.
And then the binding erupts.
Not the controlled pulse from before. This is different. Wild. Jagged. Like lightning striking straight into skin instead of the sky.
Every place we touch ignites. Pleasure and pressure coil together until it borders on pain, until it becomes impossible to tell where I end and she begins. I can feel her through it, not just her body but her response, her need, her shock as it crashes into mine and multiplies.
A loop.
A spiral tightening between us.
The binding has not invented this. I know that with vicious clarity. It has only stripped away the distance I was using to survive it.
“Wait,” she pants, breath breaking apart. “What is this–”
“The binding.” My mouth drags along her jaw, then lower, her throat warm beneath me. She tastes like expensive perfume over something deeper. Vanilla, spice, and a soft musk that is entirely hers. “It responds to this. To us.”
“It feels like…” Her head tips back against the sofa arm, exposing her throat without thinking. “God, I can feel what you’re?—”
“I know.” My teeth graze the pulse at her neck, and I force myself to hold back, to not lose what is left of control. “I feel you too.”
Her nails rake down my back through my shirt, breaking skin. The sting makes me exhale sharply against her.
She is still in that damn dress. The one I should never have allowed myself to look at for this long. Black silk clinging to every line of her, the back bare, the slit revealing far too much leg and far too much temptation I have been ignoring all night.
My hand finds that slit and slides beneath it.
Her skin is warm, impossibly soft. My palm moves upward, and she makes a fractured sound that goes straight through me.
“Off,” she breathes, tugging at my shirt now. “I need it off. Get it off.”
I help her.
Buttons scatter across expensive hardwood, and neither of us cares. Nothing matters except her hands on my bare chest, mapping scars and muscle as if she is learning something she cannot yet name.
Her fingers pause at the marks on my wrists.
The binding surges.
White floods my vision for a heartbeat.
Morgana gasps in pleasure, and her magic answers without permission.
Shadows explode outward from her skin, not controlled this time, not shaped. Instinctive. Raw. They coil around us both, threading into the space between breath and touch, wrapping us together until there is no separation left to find.
“Too much,” she breathes, shaking. “It’s too much.”
“Breathe,” I say, pressing my forehead to hers. “Do not fight it, Morgana. Let it move through you.”
She tries. I feel it immediately. The effort, the instinct to rein it in, to survive it the way she always has. The shadows soften, not gone, but no longer tearing through the room. They cling to us instead, alive but steadier.
Her eyes open.
Silver now. Pure, luminous shadow-touched silver before it fades back into that storm of grey-green I have memorized without meaning to.
“You are so beautiful like this,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her laugh comes out breathlessly. “Covered in blood and apparently mid-magical crisis?”
“Powerful,” I correct. “Dangerous. Mine.”
The word lands in my mind before I can stop it, sharp and instinctive, and I hate how easily it comes.
That last word makes her inhale sharply.
I should not have said it.
Because it cannot be.
Not with five years between us and a contract that will eventually sever everything we are building right now. A bound woman cannot be claimed. Not honestly. Not by the man who made the chain.
Still, she is here. Against me. Breathing as if I am the only thing anchoring her to anything real.
I should stop. I could stop. The fact that I do not alarms me more than the binding ever has.
My hand slides higher again. Her dress is bunched at her hips now, undone by movement and urgency. My fingers find the edge of lace, and she makes that same broken sound again, the one that is unravelling every piece of discipline I have ever built.
I need to hear her choose this.
Not the binding. Not the magic. Her.
“Tell me to stop,” I say, my mouth hovering near hers. “If you want this to stop, say it now.”
Her fingers tighten on my shoulders.
“Don’t stop,” she breathes. “Don’t you dare stop. I beg you.”
That is all it takes.
I kiss her again.
Slower this time, but no less consuming. She opens immediately, as if she has decided there is no point in pretending she can resist what is already happening between us. Her tongue meets mine without hesitation, and heat coils low and dangerous in my spine.
My hand moves her thighs apart slowly, and the instant my fingers slide against her, she gasps into my mouth.
Her body reacts instantly, hips shifting forward as if drawn by something beyond thought. I move slowly at first, controlled circles, watching her unravel piece by piece beneath my hand.
Through the binding, it is worse.
Or better.
I cannot tell anymore.
Her pleasure hits me as if it is my own, folding into mine, multiplying, until I lose the ability to separate where she ends and I begin. When I finally press deeper, her sharp sound of pleasure echoes through every nerve I have left.
“Azrael…”
Her nails dig into my back again, trembling now. “I can’t. It’s too much.”
“You can.” My voice is lower now, steadier than I feel. I find the rhythm in her response, the pattern she is slipping into, the need she is not yet fully trusting. “Let go. I have you.”
Her head falls back. I catch it with my free hand, cradling her skull against my forearm. My mouth finds her throat again, teeth and tongue working in counterpoint to my fingers.
She’s close. I feel it building through the binding, tension winding tighter with every movement. Her magic answers mine, shadows stirring around us like something alive.
“Look at me,” I command.
Her eyes snap open. Locked on mine.
“That’s it,” I say, increasing the pressure of my fingers. “Let me see you.”
She breaks.
The binding snaps with her release. Pleasure crashes through both of us, hers and mine blurring into something indistinguishable. I feel her climax from the inside, each wave of sensation hitting with brutal clarity while my own release pulls at the edges of control.
I hold on. Barely. I guide her through it while the binding strains between us and shadows spread across every surface.
When she finally goes limp against me, gasping, I am shaking from the effort of staying in control.
Whatever distance existed between captor and captive, king and thief, has been damaged beyond clean repair.
She looks up at me, face flushed, eyes bright, mouth swollen from my kisses.
“I can’t believe we—” she starts.
My phone erupts.
Not a ring. Not anything ordinary. The emergency alert slices through the room, sharp and insistent, the sound reserved for catastrophe.
The room comes back with brutal clarity. Hardwood. Blood. Torn clothing. The taste of her still on my mouth.
We both freeze as reality snaps back into place.
Shit.
I pull away. She makes a soft sound of protest before the meaning of the alarm registers.
“What is that?” Her voice is hoarse.
I am already moving, grabbing my phone from my jacket on the floor. “Emergency alert. Something’s—” I read the screen. My blood goes cold. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“Times Square. Multiple rifts opening. Shadow creatures pouring through.” My thumbs are already moving, messaging Kieran and Chella. “Civilian casualties. Hundreds at risk.”
She straightens, adjusting her dress with unsteady hands. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough that human authorities are involved. This will be global news.” I look at her, at the woman who had been trembling under my hands moments ago, now watching me with sharp focus cutting through the haze. “I have to go. Now.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I can help.” She stands up and starts moving toward her closet. “You said I’m getting stronger. Put me to use.”
“This is a war zone–”
“Then I’ll fit right in.”