Chapter 8
GIZLI ANLA
Ada
His fingers were inside me when I heard footsteps in the corridor.
"Hakan—" I gasped, trying to pull away, but his other hand pressed flat against my lower back, holding me in place on his lap. It was scandalous, but freeing. The old piano bench creaked beneath our combined weight.
"Ignore it." His voice was rough against my throat, lips brushing the sensitive skin just below my ear and my light was burning through my core. "They won't come in here."
"But—"
He curled his fingers, finding that spot deep inside me that made my vision blur and my magic flare, and the protest died in my mouth.
My head fell back, a moan escaping before I could stop it.
We were in the abandoned music room—our sanctuary for the past few weeks—and I was straddling him with my skirts hiked up around my waist, my small clothes pushed aside, his hand and his shadows between my thighs doing things that should have been sinful.
"That's it," he murmured, his breath hot against my throat. "Let me hear you, starlight."
Three weeks ago, I'd slapped him in the middle of the market and told him I never wanted to see his face again.
Every day I reminded myself that he was the monster who'd humiliated me in front of the entire Academy all those years ago, who'd made my first kiss into a cruel joke, who'd called me desperate and pathetic while his friends laughed.
And then came the night in the tower.
I could still feel it sometimes—the ghost of his blood on my skin, dark and warm, slicking between my legs while his fingers moved inside me with a fury that wasn't about pleasure but about claiming.
About proving that whatever existed between us was stronger than either of us had the will to deny.
His shadow blood had mixed with the wetness of my body, and he'd licked his fingers clean while staring into my eyes, tasting corruption and divinity together, and said Now I'll taste you for days.
Both of us. Together. I'd gone back to my chambers and run a bath and watched his blood dissolve in the water like ink, like shadow, and it wouldn't wash off completely—kept staining my skin in faint traces no matter how hard I scrubbed.
The next morning, I'd expected awkwardness.
Distance. The careful retreat that always followed when we got too close.
Instead, I found him waiting in the corridor outside the dining hall, and without a word—without preamble or discussion or any of the careful negotiation I'd braced myself for—he took my hand.
In front of everyone. Held it loosely, naturally, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
As if his blood hadn't been inside me twelve hours earlier.
As if we hadn't shattered something irreparable in that tower and built something new from the wreckage.
Sarp had been the first to see us. He'd paused mid-bite, looked at our joined hands, looked at Hakan's face, and then said, with perfect theatrical gravity, "Finally.
I was beginning to think I'd have to fake my own death to speed things along.
" A pause. "Which, for the record, I was prepared to do. I had a whole speech written."
That was it. No grand declaration. No dramatic confession. Just his hand around mine in a crowded corridor, and the quiet, devastating certainty in his eyes that said I'm done hiding.
Three weeks since then. Three weeks of stolen moments turning into this: his hands on me, his mouth on me, pushing me to the edge over and over until I was begging.
"Someone could—"
"No one comes here. No one but us." He bit down on my pulse point, hard enough to bruise, and a whimper escaped me. "Now stop thinking about anything except my fingers and how badly you want to come on them."
The footsteps faded. I stopped caring about anything except the pressure building low in my belly, the obscene wet sounds of his hand working between my thighs, the way his eyes had gone dark and hungry as he watched me fall apart on his lap.
He'd been like this since we'd made our truce in the tower.
Every stolen moment turned into this: his hands on me, his mouth on me, pushing me to the edge over and over until I was begging.
He hadn't taken me fully yet—I'd asked him to wait until after I'd spoken to my father, until we could do this properly, and he'd agreed with a groan that told me the restraint was killing him—but that hadn't stopped him from learning my body like a scholar learns ancient texts.
"You're so fucking wet," he breathed against my ear, and I clenched around his fingers at the crude words. "So tight, Ada. You have any idea what it does to me, feeling you like this? Knowing I'm the only one who's ever touched you here?"
I couldn't answer. Could barely think. His thumb was circling that bundle of nerves while two fingers worked inside me, stretching me, preparing me for something we both wanted desperately, while his shadows—those shadows I was still getting used to—caressed my nipples, traced bare skin along my collarbone.
"I think about this constantly," he continued, his voice dropping to something dark and sinful.
"Sitting in lectures, walking through the palace, lying in my bed at night—all I can think about is getting my hands on you again.
Getting my mouth on you. Spreading you open and tasting every inch of you until you're screaming my name. "
My inner walls fluttered around him. He felt it—of course he felt it—and his smile against my throat was pure masculine satisfaction.
"You like that idea, don't you? Like thinking about my tongue inside you. My mouth on your cunt while you pull my hair and beg for more."
"Hakan—" His name came out broken, desperate.
"When I finally get you in my bed," he said, thrusting his fingers deeper, harder, "I'm going to spend hours between your thighs.
Going to make you come so many times you forget your own name.
And then—" He twisted his wrist, hitting a spot that made stars explode behind my eyes.
"Then I'm going to bury myself so deep inside you that you feel me for days.
Going to fuck you until you can't walk, can't think, can't do anything except lie there and take whatever I give you. "
I wanted to respond, but I made incoherent moaning sounds as he continued with his exceptional tortures.
"Look at me."
I forced my eyes open. His face was inches from mine, green eyes nearly black with want, jaw tight with restraint. Sweat beaded at his temple. The hand on my lower back had fisted in my dress, knuckles white with the effort of not taking more than I'd offered.
He was barely holding himself together. This beautiful, dangerous man who could have anyone he wanted was shaking with the effort of not throwing me down and claiming me completely.
Because I'd asked him to wait. And he would. Even if it killed him.
"You're going to come for me," he said, voice rough as gravel and my blood was pounding in my ears. "And you're going to say my name when you do. Understand?"
I nodded, beyond words.
"Good girl."
He increased the pressure, the pace, his thumb pressing hard against that sensitive bundle while his fingers curved inside me.
Then his shadows enveloped me, spreading under the material of my dress, teasing my hardened nipples.
I shattered seconds later. His name tore from my throat—too loud, dangerously loud—and he swallowed the sound with his mouth, kissing me through the aftershocks while his fingers gentled but didn't stop, drawing out every last tremor of pleasure until I was limp and gasping in his arms.
When I finally stilled, boneless and trembling, he withdrew his hand slowly. Raised his glistening fingers to his lips. Held my gaze while he licked them clean, his tongue tracing every drop of my arousal from his skin.
"Best thing I've ever tasted," he said, and his voice was wrecked, raw with want. "Could live on this. Could die on this."
I watched him, dazed, my heart still racing.
I thought of that night in the tower—his blood on his fingers instead of my arousal, the way he'd tasted both of us mixed together with the same reverent hunger.
How we'd gone from that desperate, blood-soaked collision to this—still hungry, still raw, but with a tenderness threaded through it that hadn't been there before.
He touched me like I was precious now, even when he was being filthy.
He looked at me like I was the sun and the moon and every star ever burned into existence.
Once, this man had been my friend. Then my enemy. Then something far more complicated—a rival, a tormentor, a source of pain so acute I'd thought I'd never recover from it.
Now he was this. Now he made me feel things I hadn't known I was capable of feeling.
I grabbed his shirt and pulled him into a kiss, tasting myself on his tongue, feeling his groan vibrate through both of us. He was still hard beneath me—desperately, painfully hard—and when I rolled my hips against him, the sound he made was almost pained.
"You're going to gut me alive, my starlight," he muttered against my lips.
"You started it."
"I always start it." His hands gripped my hips, fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks, rocking me against the thick length of him still trapped in his trousers.
"Can't help myself. See you walking through the palace in your pretty gowns, smiling at people who don't deserve to breathe the same air as you, and all I can think about is dragging you into the nearest dark corner and making you beg for my shadows. "
I rolled my hips deliberately, grinding down against him, watching his eyes flutter closed and his head fall back. The column of his throat was right there, exposed and vulnerable, and I leaned forward to press my mouth against his pulse. Felt it hammering beneath my lips.
"Should I return the favor?" I whispered against his skin.