Chapter 36 #2
The moonlight caught black lines across his chest, more than I had ever seen at once.
Runes branched over both shoulders and down his ribs, wrapped his arms and climbed toward his neck.
A few old scars broke the patterns here and there, but across his chest the runes claimed nearly everything.
I ran my thumb across one. The ink darkened beneath my touch. Shadow moved inside it.
My breath caught. Kieran watched my hand.
I pushed the shirt from his shoulders. The rest of the runes appeared with every inch of skin—across his arms, over his sides, curling around his ribs and disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers.
Then I put my hands around him. Most of the scars were on his back.
My fingers found them before my eyes did.
Pale, uneven ridges crossed beneath the black runes, some narrow enough to disappear until I touched them, others thicker where the skin had healed badly.
Several ran diagonally over his shoulder blades.
More disappeared down his spine beneath the ink.
My hands slowed. Kieran felt it. His body went rigid beneath my palms. I didn’t ask about them.
I didn’t want an explanation with my hands on him like this, and the tension running through him made it clear I wouldn’t get one anyway.
Instead I followed one of the runes around his shoulder until it climbed the side of his neck and put my mouth there.
Kieran swore. His hands closed around my waist and pulled me flush against him. My ribs protested. I ignored them. So did he, mostly. His grip shifted away from the bruised side without thought, but the rest of him pressed into me hard enough that I could feel exactly what I had done to him.
My breath broke.
The sound changed him. His hand slid beneath my shirt. My Light flashed across the stone. Silver-blue. We both glanced toward it. A thin ribbon of Starlight crawled along the cracks in the floor, bright enough to throw our shadows against the ruined wall.
“I’m not doing that,” I said. Kieran’s Shadow had begun moving too. It pooled beneath our feet and crept along the bases of the broken columns, thicker than it had been when I arrived.
He barely looked at it. His hand continued upward.
His palm closed around my breast. I forgot about the magic entirely.
Heat shot through me so fast that my head fell back against the stone.
His thumb brushed my nipple, then did it again more slowly, watching my face in a way that should have embarrassed me.
It didn’t.
I dragged him closer. His mouth replaced his hand. For a while there was only heat, his tongue, and the ridiculous fact that I had spent weeks wanting this without understanding how badly.
My Light flared again. Brighter this time. Somewhere above us the moon dimmed. I barely noticed. Kieran’s hands found the ties at my waist. My breath caught. His eyes lifted to mine. I pushed his hand lower. He understood.
The fabric loosened. His fingers brushed the Shadow rune at my hip and everything inside me tightened.
Kieran stopped. He had seen most of it before, when it manifested, when he stitched me up. But never like this.
He eased the fabric lower. The rune kept going. Black lines curved over my hip and swept inward, narrowing as they traveled toward my pelvis.
Kieran stared, his attention following them lower with an intensity that made every inch of skin beneath them feel newly exposed. His thumb touched the upper line. Shadow spilled beneath his fingertip.
I gasped.
The darkness curled around his knuckle instead of recoiling, and his own Shadow answered instantly.
Silver flashed where they touched. His thumb followed the rune lower.
My hips moved before I meant them to. That got his attention.
He traced the line again. A streak of silver-blue Light shot above us.
This time we both looked up.
Kieran’s Shadow had climbed halfway over the ring. It stretched between broken walls in uneven sheets, swallowing pieces of the moon as it spread. “Did you mean to do that?”
He stared upward for a second. “No.”
I started laughing against his shoulder. “Don’t.”
“You covered half the—” His mouth came back to mine before I finished. Shadow continued gathering while neither of us watched it.
My Light followed.
When I opened my eyes again, the moon was gone. The southern ring had disappeared beneath a dome of living darkness, uneven at its edges, still shifting as Kieran’s control bled into it.
Inside that darkness, my Starlight had filled the sky. Hundreds of silver-blue points hung above us, scattered without pattern. Some barely glowed. Others burned sharp enough to illuminate the broken tops of the columns.
For one strange second, neither of us moved. Kieran looked up. I did too.
It was beautiful enough to hurt. “You did that.”
“So did you.” The first star loosened from the dome. It fell soundlessly between us and struck the back of Kieran’s hand. Silver-blue Light spread over his skin in a tiny burst. For half a heartbeat it illuminated the rune beneath it, then sank straight through him and vanished.
Kieran stared at his hand.
I did too.
Neither of us knew what to say about that.
Then his thumb moved lower over my Shadow rune and I stopped caring enough to ask.
My trousers ended up somewhere on the floor.
I had no memory of removing the rest of his shirt, only the sudden fact of his bare chest against mine, his runes warm beneath my palms.
His fingers slid between my thighs. The first touch made me clutch his shoulders.
He found me already slick, his fingertips dragging slowly through the wetness before circling higher.
My thighs tightened around his hand on instinct.
Kieran’s breathing changed against my mouth.
That reaction did almost as much to me as his fingers.
He touched me again, firmer this time, and my knees weakened. I buried my face against his neck. His fingers moved in slow strokes until I stopped knowing what to do with my own breathing. He caught me around the waist without breaking rhythm.
I tried to say his name. It came out wrong. He laughed once against my throat. I bit his shoulder.
That stopped him. “Menace.”
I pulled his hair. He touched me harder. My Shadow spilled from my skin and wound around his wrist, creeping over the runes covering his forearm. His own darkness met it and turned silver wherever they crossed. A star slipped free somewhere above him and landed against the inside of my thigh.
I expected heat.
Instead it melted cool and bright against my skin, silver-blue disappearing beneath the surface in a shimmer that traveled toward the Shadow curled there.
The Shadow flashed silver. Then Kieran’s fingers moved again and I forgot the star entirely.
My hand found the fastening of his trousers.
Kieran’s fingers stopped for half a second when I reached inside.
Then I wrapped my hand around his cock. His eyes closed. That alone sent heat through me. I moved my hand. His forehead dropped against mine. “Lyra.”
I had never heard my name sound like that. I did it again. He caught my wrist. For a second I thought he was going to stop me. Instead he shoved his trousers down the rest of the way and kissed me hard enough that I lost track of my own hands.
We made it to the old training platform somehow. Not gracefully. His boot caught the edge of the cloak when he pulled it beneath me and he nearly lost his balance. I laughed into his neck. “You almost fell.”
“I will leave you here.”
“No, you won’t.”
His mouth curved against my skin. “No.” Then he kissed the breath out of me.
The stone was cold beneath the cloak. Kieran was everywhere else.
His mouth moved over my breast again, tongue circling my nipple before his teeth grazed it.
One of his Shadows slid over the other breast, not quite touching the way a hand would, but close enough that the cool pressure made my back arch.
Pain pulled through my ribs. I swore. He shifted immediately, one hand sliding beneath my uninjured side and changing the angle without stopping. That was all the acknowledgment either of us gave it. His mouth moved down my stomach. My breathing changed when he reached the rune.
Kieran paused. The black lines were fully visible now, twisting toward the most intimate part of me.
His Shadow moved over my thigh. The rune lit silver under it.
He kissed the first curve. My fingers tightened in his hair.
Then lower. Another silver-blue star slipped free overhead and drifted past his back.
His mouth reached the place where the rune nearly disappeared between my thighs. “Kieran.”
He looked up. That image burned itself into me. His mouth against my Shadow rune. Black runes covering his own body. Silver-blue stars caught in the darkness above him.
Then his mouth moved lower. His tongue found me and my hips jerked hard enough that his hands had to catch them. “Fuck.”
He did it again, slower this time, flattening his tongue against me before drawing it upward. That same burning heat tightened low in my stomach. I twisted my fingers into his hair.
Whatever restraint he had started with disappeared once he realized what made my breath catch.
His mouth became less patient after that, tongue circling my clit before his lips closed around it.
My whole body pulled tight. He followed every reaction until I couldn’t tell whether I was trying to get closer or get away.
My Light flickered overhead.
The stars trembled.
One fell.
Then another.
Slowly.
One at a time.
A star dissolved against Kieran’s shoulder, silver-blue sinking through the black line of a rune before vanishing beneath his skin.
He didn’t notice. Or didn’t care. My Shadow tightened around his wrists.
His tangled through it, silver breaking over my thighs.
I came against his mouth with his name torn out of me.