Chapter 21 #2
The shadows he summoned in the kitchen flooded the room, coating the windows, sealing the door. They shut out the city lights, leaving us in a private twilight illuminated only by the golden flare of my own skin and the silver fire in his eyes.
Clothes were an insult. A barrier we couldn’t tolerate for another second.
I tore at his shirt, the buttons popping and scattering across the floorboards as I shoved the dark fabric off his shoulders. He didn’t wait. He stripped me with efficient, desperate hands, peeling away denim and cotton until there was nothing left between us but heat and air.
He pulled back for a second, just to look.
His gaze travelled over me—slow, worshipful, devouring. It touched my breasts, my stomach, the curve of my hips. Where his eyes landed, my skin tingled, the magic rising to the surface in glowing waves.
“Beautiful,” he rasped.
He settled between my legs, his weight heavy and perfect. His hands slid up my torso, capturing my breasts. He squeezed—firm, possessive—thumbs circling the hardened peaks.
I gasped, arching into his touch.
He dipped his head, his tongue tracing one nipple then the other, while his hand drifted lower—past my navel and into the damp heat between my thighs. He found my centre, slick and swollen, and stroked it once. I cried out, my hips bucking off the mattress in an involuntary spasm.
He moved down, his lips ghosting over my ribs and stomach. He spread my legs, hooking one of them over his shoulder, and looked up at me. His face was stark with hunger, the silver swirls in his eyes spinning with a frantic, liquid speed.
“I have wanted this since the moment I saw you,” he growled.
Then he lowered his mouth.
The sensation was blinding. His tongue was relentless, hot and skilled. He tasted me, his fingers sliding in. The pleasure went deeper than the physical; it was a magical resonance. Every stroke sent a jolt of golden light shooting through my veins, making the very air in the room feel charged.
I tangled my hands in his hair, my head thrashing against the pillow. “Riven—please—“
He didn’t stop. He increased the pressure and the rhythm, driving me towards the brink.
I unravelled.
My magic flared outward, a sudden, brilliant wash of light that flooded the room. My body clenched around his fingers, spasms of ecstasy rolling through me. He stayed with me through every tremor, his presence a steady anchor as I found my breath.
When I finally settled, limp and panting, he moved up my body to hover over me, bracing his weight on his forearms.
He was magnificent.
Lean, corded muscle shifted beneath his pale skin. The tattoo on his chest seemed to throb in the fading magical light—dark ink stark against the glow of the scar beneath it. I reached up, tracing the lines of the ink and feeling the hard ridge of muscle, the frantic beating of his heart.
He growled—a low, animal sound of desire vibrating in his chest.
I reached down between our bodies and wrapped my hand around him. He was thick, hard as iron, and he lurched in my grip as a hiss escaped his teeth.
“Now,” I whispered. “I need you now.”
I guided him to me. He pressed against my entrance, stretching me open as he began to sink inside. Inch by inch, he filled me completely, the sensation so intense I felt full to bursting. I gasped, my nails digging into the muscle of his shoulders.
He paused when he was fully sheathed, his forehead resting against mine, our breath mingling in the quiet. Then, he began to move.
A slow, deep rhythm. Withdrawal and return. Friction and heat.
With every thrust, the magic in the room reacted. My golden light swirled with his shadows, twisting together in the air above us, a canopy of starlight and storm.
We remained silent in the face of it. The magic spoke for us.
It vibrated with a song of connection, of two halves finding the whole. I could feel his desperation, his need, bleeding into me. He could feel my surrender.
The pace quickened. The sound of skin against skin echoed in the quiet room.
He hit a spot deep inside me, and I moaned, my legs tightening around his waist, pulling him deeper.
He stopped suddenly, freezing mid-thrust, cords standing out in his neck. He was fighting for control. Trying to last.
I panted, bucking my hips, forcing him to move. “Don’t stop.” I demanded. “Give me everything.”
His control snapped, as he drove into me, hard and fast. Relentless. The pleasure built, a tide rising higher and faster than before. I was close again. So close.
“Come with me, Riven,” I begged him.
He buried his face in my neck, his thrusts becoming erratic, desperate.
The climax hit us both at the same time.
I screamed his name as my body convulsed, clamping down on him. He groaned, a ragged shout torn from his throat, and poured himself into me.
Our magic erupted.
A shockwave of power blasted outward from the bed. It should have blown the windows out. It should have torn the roof off.
Riven contained it.
Even as he came, even as he unravelled, his shadows flared. They formed a dense, impenetrable sphere around us, containing the explosion. The light and dark crashed against the barrier, mixing, churning, filling the room with a blinding, silent maelstrom.
Nothing seeped out. Nothing was visible to the world outside.
It was just us. Here. In the eye of the storm.
We collapsed. Riven settled over me, his solid warmth entirely welcome. The shadows receded, drifting back into the corners like a retreating tide, leaving the room dim and quiet.
He rolled to his side but didn’t pull away. He kept an arm draped over my waist, his leg tangled with mine, refusing to put even an inch of space between us.
We lay there in the cooling air, skin slick with sweat, chests heaving in sync.
I turned my head on the pillow to look at him. His eyes were closed, his dark lashes resting against pale cheeks, the sharp lines of his face softened by a bone-deep relief I hadn’t seen in him before.
My hand moved of its own accord, fingers trailing down the line of ink on his bicep, tracing the dark swirls over the corded muscle.
Madness, a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispered.
He was dangerous. He was a weapon forged by Highspire, the right hand of the very people I was supposed to be fighting.
Sleeping with him should have felt like walking into a trap, or at the very least, a tactical error I would pay for in the morning.
But it didn’t.
It felt inevitable.
I thought of the men who came before him—fleeting connections that never truly took hold, leaving me lonelier than before I’d met them.
I had always kept a part of myself in reserve, guarding the restless heat in my blood.
With Riven, those defences had simply vanished.
His touch went deeper than skin; he had reached into the silence I had carried for decades and finally occupied the space.
I lacked a name for the weight existing between us—that terrifying, primal tension that pulled as tight as a wire.
Watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, I knew I wouldn’t have changed a single moment.
I needed him for the case and the magic, but most of all, I needed him for the simple reality of this.
For the way the jagged edges of my soul seemed to smooth out only when he was near.
Riven’s eyes opened. The silver swirls had slowed to a lazy drift in the blue depths. He caught my hand where it rested on his arm, bringing my knuckles to his lips.
He looked at me with a raw, unguarded intensity that stole the air from my lungs. He pulled me closer, tucking my head under his chin, his hand stroking the length of my spine.
It felt like I finally belonged. Here. In his arms.
We lay like that for a long time, listening to the city breathe outside the window, neither of us willing to break the spell. I drifted into a doze, safe in his arms, the connection between us settling into a warm, steady calm.
He woke me an hour later, his mouth pressing a hot kiss to the curve of my shoulder, his hand sliding slow and possessive between my legs.
I turned into him, answering the touch without hesitation.
We did it again. Slower this time. Deliberate. A mapping of new territory we both knew we would never want to leave.
We lost track of time. The night became a blur of touch and taste and magic, a conversation spoken in skin and breath.
Only when the grey light of dawn began to knock against the window did the fever finally break.
Riven drew the duvet over us. He pulled me against his chest, his arm a heavy band across my waist.
I curled into him, exhausted, sated, my magic quiet and content beneath my skin.
“Sleep,” he whispered into my hair.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me. The fear that had stalked me for weeks finally went quiet. I was safe.