Chapter 21 #2
“Too close,” he answers, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
We stay like that for a long time; the adrenaline bleeding out from our bones, leaving us raw and untethered.
As I blink the daze away, I take in the vast grotto we’re in.
Phosphorescent stalactites hang from the domed ceiling like sharpened tusks; their cyan hue reflecting in the surface of the subterranean lake underneath.
It feels surreal that such an otherworldly place exists, untouched by anything but the passing of time.
We must be the first beings to disrupt its existence in thousands of years.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Killian whispers suddenly against my flesh.
“Do what?” I ask, moving slightly to look at him. His hair is a disheveled mess, damp tendrils falling into his eyes, his shirt torn to reveal his glistening chest.
“This.” He moves his finger back and forth, pointing between us. “Us like this. I almost lost you twice in the span of, what? Hours, days? I don’t even know how long it’s been since we’re here.”
“Killian,” I whisper, trying to steer him away from this particular topic.
“No, umbra. Let me say this,” he says in a firm voice, his fingers digging into my leathers. “I’ve made the worst mistake of my eternity. Not listening to you, reacting the way I did, putting my pride above us. I fucked up colossally.”
My heart clenches painfully at his admission.
“I know there are no words that will ever be enough. No amount of groveling could wash away my sins. But I will do whatever I have to gain your forgiveness. Maybe not now, not in a year or a century, but eventually. I was a fool to believe for even one second that my feelings for you would ever fade away. You consume every fiber of my being; you’re carved so deep in my soul that I cannot fathom this cursed existence without you in it.
To wrench you out of my heart would be to splinter it into unmendable pieces. ”
I feel moisture in the corner of my eyes, and I swipe it swiftly with trembling fingers.
“I was so lost to grief, to rage, that I treated you in such a shameful way. You did not deserve any of it. I fixated on you never reciprocating my feelings, that I channeled all my hurt, all my wrath into making you feel as broken as I did. I know now that it matters not that you don’t love me back.
I need you beside me regardless of how you feel about me. I know you hate me. I…”
“Oh, Killian,” I say as a sob wracks through me.
I cup his jaw with one hand, reveling in the sharp feel of his stubble against my fingertips.
“I don’t hate you, you silly male. I never did, no matter how many times I said it in your face, or the countless moments I tried to convince myself that I did.
And for what it’s worth, I did have feelings for you.
I was just so afraid to voice them aloud, thinking I’d have more time to tell you everything.
To confess my secrets. The truth about my sister. My love for you. We both fucked up.”
“You did?” he asks, hope filling his voice, before his gaze clouds over. “You did. As in you don’t anymore.” His mournful sigh reverberates through my skull.
“I do,” I answer truthfully. “I never stopped loving you. Never will until the day I die—how far away or soon that might be—and even beyond death. The way my soul answers the beckoning of yours, the way our shadows yearn for each other—if destiny exists, mine is more than being the Foretold One; it’s to be yours. ”
He’s upon me even before I finish my confession, swallowing my last words as his tongue curls around mine and his hands grip me possessively, tugging at my leathers. We discard our wet clothes in a frenzy, and I sigh in contentment as he presses his growing erection into my thigh.
My shadows churn and slither against my arms, begging for release.
I allow them freedom, and my shadow double materializes next to us, just as Shadow Killian appears behind her, gloriously naked, like the first time I saw him.
He bends down to kiss her, and she writhes in his smoky grasp before he releases her and lowers himself to my level, a wicked grin on his face.
I glance at Killian just as my double crawls to him on hands and knees, like a feral thing stalking its prey.
“They wish to play. What do you think, my love? Should we indulge them?” Killian asks with a low growl, just as his double grabs my chin, forcing me to look back at him.
“Yes,” I mewl, and Shadow Killian swirls his tongue along my jaw, peppering kisses down my neck, my collarbone, taking a nipple into his mouth and biting just enough to spark a coil of heat low in my belly.
His misty hand travels past my ribs, skimming my navel before he plunges two shadowy fingers into my pussy.
I clench around the velvet intrusion, arching my back in pure pleasure.
I watch enthralled as my double lowers her head in Killian’s lap, taking his cock in her mouth with shameless abandon. He sinks his hands into the swirling mist of her hair and guides her movements, his gaze never leaving mine.
Shadow Killian releases my nipple with a wet pop and moves down my body, adding a third finger inside me and bending them like a hook, reaching a spot inside me that has me seeing stars.
He leans toward my double and plunges his other hand inside her too, pleasuring us both at the same fucking time.
I’m overtaken by sensation—mine and the echo of hers combining in a maddening tempo, and a ravaging fire burns through my veins, threatening to wipe out everything in its path.
Pressure builds and builds, and as I experience Killian releasing in my double’s mouth, I explode in an all-consuming climax that has me gasping for air like I’m drowning all over again.
Our shadow selves evaporate like thin mist, retreating to a corner of the cave, far away from us, as Shadow Killian takes my double hard against the wall.
The real Killian is above me in a heartbeat, aligning himself with my center, teasing my entrance with the head of his cock.
“I could get used to an endless lifetime of such foursomes,” he rasps as he pushes inside me to the hilt. I squirm under him, the fullness almost too much, but not enough at the same time.
Killian withdraws torturously slow, watching enraptured the point where our bodies are joined, before he grabs my chin and guides my gaze to his cock sliding in and out of me.
“You take me so well, little umbra. Look at how your greedy pussy devours my cock. Like it was meant to. Like it knows who it belongs to.”
His domineering words unravel me further, goosebumps covering my body whole as rapture pushes to the surface. Moan after moan slips my parted lips, and I arch further into him, hooking my legs around his waist, desperate for release.
“I’m so close, Killian.”
“Not yet, little umbra,” he says as he slows his pace, grabbing my throat and restricting my airflow. “Not until you say it. Do you know who you belong to?”
“I…” I struggle to form words between pants, “belong to you, Killian. Body and soul.”
“You sure damn do, Aimee. You’re mine. And I’m yours for all eternity. Nothing will ever change that,” he groans, pushing harder into me, the crown of his cock hitting my pelvis repeatedly. “Say it.”
“Yes, oh yes. You own me and I own you.”
He pushes his thumb into my mouth, and I wrap my lips around it on instinct.
“Suck, little umbra.”
His command wreaks havoc on my already fraying senses, and I hollow my cheeks, swirling my tongue around his digit and biting slightly.
“That’s my good girl.”
His praise washes over me like sparks of delirium, and I become a living, breathing pyre of ecstasy. If I could combust right now into molten ash, I would die on the highest peak of my life. I come screaming his name over and over again, and he doesn’t relent, doesn’t slow down his punishing pace.
Killian drags me up by my boneless arms, sitting back on his heels, knees spread wide apart, as he wraps my legs around his waist and keeps me upright with one arm, the other supporting his weight behind him as he drives into me with unfettered lust.
This angle brings him so deep within me that pain wrapped in bliss spreads through my veins, from my center to every nerve ending. I feel the urge to inflict the same on him, to make him tremble in ruin and rapture, just like I crash and burn with his every caress.
I tangle my tongue with his, my hips picking up pace, matching his brutal rhythm stroke after stroke, the wet sound of our fucking filling up the underground gallery—a debased hymn to the unholy Gods from their unconventional champions.
Sinners mistaken for saviors. I drag my teeth across his bottom lip and bite harshly until blood blossoms on my tongue, the taste exquisitely filthy, the drops not merely enough.
“I want to drink you up, Killian, to bathe in your blood, as you in mine,” I whisper harshly, licking the surface wound I caused as it already closes.
“Please,” I moan, unhinged. I need his blood as much as I need air. It’s a corrupt craving I can’t control, a yearning unleashed.
“Your wish is my command, umbra,” he answers, bringing his wrist to his lips, but he hesitates before biting.
“But you should know, if you die with my blood in your system, you’ll awaken as a vampire.
Not that I’d mind having my Vampire Queen in every literal sense, but it shouldn’t be a choice you take lightly. ”
“I don’t care, Killian. I would die a thousand deaths for you, and awaken a thousand more. I don’t care what I am, just that I am with you.”
His approval rumbles through his chest, and he bites deep into his own wrist, blood flowing freely as he brings the wound to my lips and lets me drink.
His fangs are on my neck in the next breath, breaching skin and burning my veins with euphoric condemnation.
The blood trickling down my throat feels like destruction and creation, like the world ends and begins only with him.
I have half a mind to beg him never to leave this cave.
To damn the entire realm and let it all decay while we keep fucking, lost in each other for centuries on end.
We don’t need anybody else; all we need is to taste our sins, to stay connected like this, not two beings with the weight of the world shackling their souls, but one carnal monster made of lust and profanity.
We come undone in perfect harmony, his cum filling me up as my walls clench viciously around his cock. It’s almost too much of an orgasmic haze to bear, but I don’t want to miss a second of it. I don’t want it to ever end.
As I slump in Killian’s arms, relinquishing my hold on his wrist, he swirls his tongue around the punctures, healing the bite marks, and he keeps staring at my throat.
“Now that you’ve admitted who you belong to,” he lazily says, licking his fangs, “I think it’s high time the whole damn world knew too.”
He trails a finger on my flesh slowly, in a spot between my pulse point and collarbone.
“Here. I’ll carve my name so deep within you, you’ll carry it like an unholy scripture for every unworthy male to see and tremble in fear upon the sight.”
“Do it,” I say with a gasp. “Mark me, and I’ll return the favor.”
His crimson eyes gleam with possessive madness as he grabs his dagger and places it in my palm.
I press the tip above his collarbone, ready to lay my claim, feeling his fangs push into my flesh not in a bite, but in a branding. Our shadows join in, his crimson ones coiling around his canines just as my dark ones layer onto the point of the dagger slicing my initial upon him.
The sting of an open wound fades into a dull throb, and as the shadows recede, I admire my handiwork, only to be greeted by a strange yet familiar symbol instead of my intended design.
A crescent moon wrapped in shadows decorates his clavicle in pink, slightly raised skin. I touch his own marking at the base of my throat, only to find a circular scar, not bigger than a coin. I already know what I shall discover there when I look upon myself in a mirror.
An Ouroboros, forever consuming itself.
“How peculiar,” I murmur in awe. “The symbols from your daggers. How could it be?”
“Akaori herself must indeed bless our union, little umbra,” he whispers in unbridled astonishment before he kisses me senseless, his tongue chasing my own with such fervency that it sends another thrilling pulse through my bloodstream.
I cannot help but wonder what it all truly means.