Chapter 49
Lunara shivered as the floor changed beneath her bare feet—from smooth, timber floorboards to the cool, stone tiles of the washroom. Anticipation quickened her breath, threatening to force a stifled laugh from her.
When they finally paused, Brand’s lips were at her ear. “Ready?”
He’d insisted on the element of surprise. Of bringing her up to his—their—chamber for the first time and giving her a full view of her mating marks.
She’d tried to catch glimpses here and there, tucking her chin to see them, but to no avail.
Her cheeks ached from the grin that hadn’t left her face in what felt like hours. “Yes.”
His hands dropped away—air rushing in to brush her cheeks and eyelids against the warmth he’d left there—but she kept her eyes closed, drawing it out.
“Good idea.” He swept her hair aside, tongue landing against her nape, teeth sinking into the spot where neck met shoulder. “You are entirely too clothed.”
Calloused fingers trailed along the neckline of her dress, tugging it down. She popped free of the bodice, her nipples hardening in an instant, goosebumps following the trail of fabric as it left her body entirely.
One of his hands retraced the path, so slowly, drawing a line up between her breasts. “Look at you,” he rasped.
Blinking, she finally beheld herself, awe bolting through her.
An upturned, crescent moon was nestled against her sternum, its bottom curve radiating out and down with sunbeam spikes that just kissed the swell of her cleavage—except for the center point, which dove between them, almost all the way to her navel.
His chest to her back, Brand sank one hand into her hair, his lips devouring hers as he walked them closer to the gilded mirror above the basin.
He groaned into her mouth when she reached behind to grasp onto one of his horns, his breaths sawing in and out of him by the time they crashed against the long counter.
He broke away, jaw clenching. “Look,” he urged, head tilting towards the mirror as he pinched her chin. “Look at yourself, now marked eternally. Look, and see how Solyrian and the Sisters have blessed us.” His thumb caught on her lower lip, digging in.
Another gasp. She hadn’t even thought to look at her face.
She pressed shaking fingers to the mark there, the pointed ray a match for the one down her torso. Brand grabbed her other hand and brought it to his own mouth, and her eyes went wide.
No, not a match for her own, but a match for his.
“They will sing songs in your name,” he whispered, gaze on her stunned reflection. “Ballads, for the little moon bathed in sunlight. Our prayer was answered.”
“How? I didn’t realize it was literal.” Her head shook with disbelief. With wonder.
Brand leaned back only far enough to pull the tunic from his body, the fabric ripping as it caught on his horns. “Nor did I, but you won’t hear me utter a single word of complaint.” He shucked his dark trousers with a sigh. “Though the color is curious. I think I love it.”
Indeed, her markings were not the burnt red of Brand’s settled ones as she would have expected, but rather a deep charcoal that simmered with a concentrated version of the iridescence that had ever lain beneath the surface of her skin.
Stark against her paleness, they seemed almost alive, glowing faintly along the edges and throbbing as if they had their own pulse.
So different. Other.
A tendril of that earlier self-doubt trickled in, the what ifs snaking their way around her throat.
Brand stilled, obviously feeling it too. “What is it?”
“Can you really forgive me so easily?” she whispered, needing to hear him say it. “Just like that?”
His eyes locked on hers in the mirror, devotion shining there.
“Little moon, nothing has ever been so easy. Now…” He cupped her heavy breasts, plucking at the pebbled peaks.
“Have you ever watched yourself as someone made love to you?” His voice was like gravel, the sound scraping deliciously over her and pooling low in her belly.
Lunara wanted to weep as her worry melted away. Shitting stars, she’d missed him.
“Does watching our likenesses count?”
Brand bit his lip, pinching that parallel mark between straight teeth. “Not quite.”
“Then never,” she said.
She couldn’t manage any more than that. Not with the way his hands had begun roaming, sinking into her hips for leverage as he ground his hard length against her.
“Nor have I.”
He gripped one of her thighs, resting her knee on the countertop.
That same hand ghosted up to palm her arse, parting her as he used his other to tease himself through her wet heat.
Lunara whimpered, raising her arms to wrap them around his neck when he prodded at her entrance, the motion begging and tempting him all at once.
“Here, with you,” he said, “I find myself wishing to know what it’s like.”
“Yes.” She arched her back, offering herself up to him.
“Leave those hands right where they are.”
With that, he thrust into her, barking out a wordless shout she felt all the way to her soul—a sound of all-consuming relief that she echoed back to him.
He stretched and filled her so completely. So perfectly. Made just for her.
She’d been a fool to try and deny it. To try and separate something so immaculately rendered.
With one hand splayed across her abdomen, his other snaked around her raised leg to grip her inner thigh, spreading her open further and revealing the sight of his cock gliding in and out of her, glistening with her arousal.
“Fuck, look at us.”
He landed a sharp smack to her arse, digging in to the crackling pleasure-pain to massage it away.
“Brand,” she cried, breathless as he started to pump his hips faster, harder, her body already beginning to tingle with the first signs of her release.
“Do I forgive you? Yes. Wholeheartedly. Easily,” he growled. “But don’t ever leave me like that again. Don’t ever deny us this most precious gift.” Another smack, hot and stinging and sublime. “I am yours and you are mine, Lunara.”
“Never again.” Her voice was little more than a broken croak. “I swear it, never again. I am yours and you are mine.”
“Exquisite fucking creature.”
Pressure built, her mind and body careening towards that invisible edge. Bowing, tensing, ready to snap so she could tumble over.
The sight of them was something to behold—his skin reddening against the shimmering milkiness of hers, the writhing of their bodies as they reached in tandem for that blessed peak and fall, the ecstasy painting itself across their faces as they came undone together with gazes locked.
She’d never seen herself that way. So wanton and lovely, euphoria radiating out from her with every heaving breath. It would be seared into her mind forever.
“Beautiful,” he growled, snatching the word right from her thoughts, even as he began moving again. “We are fucking beautiful together, little moon. We are nothing apart.”
Lunara was lost in bliss, the bond pulsing so powerfully between them that she wasn’t sure how she’d ever lived without it. Her body was little more than a puddle, sunk so far into the down of their bed that she was a part of it.
She inhaled deeply, languidly emerging from sleep as salt and pine wound their way around her, Brand’s warmth both scent and reality. She burrowed further into his chest, the little golden-red hairs there tickling her cheek.
Home. She was finally home.
There were so many things to disentangle, but they were together. They could do it together.
The domed glass above revealed an endless expanse of stars, the twin moons caressing one another in the sky as they drifted lower and readied for Solyrian’s rising.
Everything was still, silent, but for the almost imperceptible music of their breathing.
A warm, salty breeze fluttered in to brush against the canopy through the open balcony doors.
If she focused, Lunara could just make out the soft lapping of the sea as waves broke against the shore.
The caw of a single crow. The murmurs of late revelers returning to the castle.
Not silent, then, but perfect.
She darted her tongue out, unable to resist dragging a fang over the permanent scars she’d left on him—her own sort of mating mark.
Brand stretched, his arms tightening around her. One hand drifted down her spine to squeeze her arse, and she loosed a breathy giggle. He was bleeding obsessed with the damned thing.
“I hope you sorted your affairs before the Occurrence, little moon.” His voice was sleepy gravel, rumbling beneath her.
“Sorted my affairs…” She scraped her nails over one muscled shoulder, watching the goosebumps that appeared in their wake. “What do you mean?”
“Mmm.” He hiked her closer, his steely shaft digging into her hip. “I mean we won’t be leaving this bed for a month, so you won’t be making any meetings or appointments.”
She laughed outright. “High-handed, overbearing Demon. I don’t have any of those things.”
“Excellent.” He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, biting down. “No one will miss us then.”
“What about your ‘meetings and appointments,’ mighty Imperial Son?” She dropped her voice to mimic his, snorting.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. So someone, somewhere, might miss us. Well you, anyway.”
“Luna.” He started to pull away but she shoved his head right back to what it was doing.
“I’m not complaining. Meetings are dreadfully boring, and the others are probably sick of me after everything I put them through. I bet they’d be happy to be left alone for a whole month.”
He laughed into her hair. “Glad you’re starting to see it my way, even if you got there from the wrong direction.”
She pinched his ribs and he jerked away, cackling. “Ooh, are you ticklish?”
“Absolutely not.” He grabbed her wrist, pinning it above her head and bringing them nose-to-nose. “We Demons are far too formidable for such a thing.”
Her heart skipped over, a little thrill of nerves. His, in the bond.