Chapter 31
DESCENDING
Hakan
I looked at her—really looked at her—and the fog parted for a moment, just long enough for the full weight of her to hit me. This woman. This fierce, impossible, beautiful woman standing barefoot on a freezing tower in the middle of the night because she loved me enough to chase me into the dark.
The thing inside me that wasn't me wanted to turn away. To say something cold enough to make her leave so I could go back to the numb clarity that had become my default state.
The thing inside me that was still me grabbed her face and kissed her.
Not gently. My hands fisted in her hair and I dragged her mouth to mine and the sound she made—half gasp, half sob—cracked something open in my chest that I'd been sealing shut for weeks.
She tasted like salt and jasmine and grief and I couldn't get enough, couldn't get close enough, my tongue sweeping against hers while my shadows erupted from my skin and wrapped around us both, coiling up her bare legs, sliding beneath the hem of my shirt she was wearing, pulling her body flush against mine.
"Hakan—"
"Don't talk." I was already tearing at the shirt—my shirt, on her body—and the fabric ripped down the center because I couldn't be bothered with buttons, couldn't slow down long enough for something as civilized undressing. She wasn't wearing anything beneath it.
She grabbed the front of my tunic and pulled.
Buttons scattered across stone. Her hands were on my chest, my stomach, nails dragging down hard enough to leave red tracks, and then her teeth sank into my bicep—not playfully, not gently—biting down with real force, real hunger, and the sharp bloom of pain went straight to my cock.
"Make me feel something," she whispered against my skin, her mouth hot where her teeth had been. "I can't feel anything anymore. Everything is grief and numbness and I'm disappearing. Make me real again."
My shadows answered before I did. They wound up her thighs, dark tendrils against golden skin, and one of them slid between her legs and she gasped—her whole body jerking, her hands clutching my shoulders—because the shadows were an extension of me, feeling what I felt, and what they found when they touched her was devastating.
Soaking. Hot. Already swollen and slick and aching for me before I'd even properly touched her.
"Fuck, Ada." The words came out guttural, barely human.
I backed her against the tower wall and dropped my hand between her thighs, replacing shadow with skin, and the feel of her—drenched, clenching around my fingers the moment I pushed two inside—nearly buckled my knees.
She was so wet it dripped down my wrist, her body weeping for contact the way her eyes wept for her father, weeks of grief and loneliness and untouched need pouring out of her at once.
"Harder." She bit my jaw. Her teeth dragged down the tendon of my neck. "Don't stop. Make it so I can't think about anything except you inside me."
I freed myself from my trousers with one hand, lifted her thigh with the other, and drove into her in a single thrust that punched the air from both our lungs.
She cried out—not in pain, in savage relief—and her legs locked around my hips and her nails sank into my back deep enough to draw blood and my shadows surged around us, pinning her wrists above her head, holding her against the wall while I fucked into her with everything the fog had been smothering for weeks.
No rhythm. No technique. Just raw, brutal need—my hips slamming into hers, the obscene wet sound of our bodies meeting filling the tower, her voice breaking on every thrust into sounds that weren't words, just fragments of breath and want.
My shadows held her wrists but my hands were free to grip her hips hard enough to bruise, to rake up her ribs, to close around her throat—not squeezing, just holding, feeling her pulse hammer against my palm while I buried myself in her again and again.
Her palm cracked across my face. Hard. My head snapped to the side and the sting of it blazed across my cheekbone and the fog in my skull shattered like glass.
"Look at me, Hakan. See me." Her eyes were wild, wet, ferocious. "Come back to light. Push the darkness away."
I gave her what she asked for. I pulled nearly all the way out and slammed back in so hard the wall cracked behind her, and her light exploded beneath her skin, gold crashing into my shadows, and where they met the air turned to fire.
She came with her teeth buried in my shoulder, muffling a sound that would have woken the entire Academy—her body clenching around me in waves, nails tearing fresh lines down my back.
Before the aftershocks had even finished, she shoved me back. Hard. I slid out of her and she turned—hands and knees on the stone bench, spine curving, looking at me over her shoulder with eyes that were still blazing, still hungry, still nowhere near finished.
"Again. From behind. I want to feel you everywhere."
I gripped her hips and lined myself up and watched myself sink into her—slow this time, deliberately slow, inch by agonizing inch while she trembled and cursed and tried to push back against me.
I held her still. Made her take it at my pace.
Made her feel every ridge, every vein, the impossible stretch of her body opening around me until I was buried to the hilt and she was shaking, her fingers white-knuckled on the edge of the bench, her spine a gorgeous arch of desperation.
Then I pulled back and slammed in so hard her arms buckled.
"Fuck—Hakan—"
"I said don't talk."
I fisted my hand in her hair and pulled—her back arching impossibly deep, throat exposed to the cold air—and set a pace that was punishing, relentless, each thrust driving the full length of me into her so deep I could feel the end of her, feel her body clenching and rippling and trying to take even more.
The sound of skin meeting skin echoed off the tower walls, obscene and rhythmic, punctuated by the helpless, wrecked noises she made every time my hips crashed into her ass.
My shadows coiled around her body like ropes—around her waist, her thighs, up between her breasts, holding her in place while I fucked her open.
One dark tendril slid down her stomach, lower, finding the swollen bud between her legs and began circling it very slowly.
She screamed. Her whole body convulsed, her inner walls clamping down around me so hard I saw white, and I fucked her straight through it, didn't slow down, didn't stop, just gripped her hip with one hand and her hair with the other and drove into her while she shattered.
"More," she gasped, even as her body was still spasming. "Don't you dare stop. I want it to hurt. I want to feel you for days."
I gave her more. I released her hair and gripped both hips and pulled her back onto me as I thrust forward, doubling the impact, and the sound she made was guttural, animal, nothing like a word.
Her light was pouring out of her now, gold bleeding through her skin, and my shadows were drinking it in, weaving through the light like dark threads through gold cloth.
Everywhere they collided the air crackled and hissed, sparks of impossible color raining down around us.
I bent over her, my chest pressed to her back, and sank my teeth into the junction of her neck and shoulder.
She cried out—her hand shooting back to grab my thigh, nails sinking in, pulling me deeper.
I could feel her pulse thundering beneath my teeth, could taste the salt of her sweat, the faint metallic sweetness of her light.
"You want to feel me?" I growled against her skin, my hips still driving into her with savage rhythm. "You'll feel me. Every time you sit down tomorrow. Every time you move. Every time you close your eyes."
She came again—harder than before, her whole body locking up, every muscle seizing at once.
Her scream split the night air, raw and shredded, and the tower itself groaned around us, stone vibrating with the collision of our magic.
My shadows surged outward in a wave, dark energy cascading across the platform, and her light answered in kind, the two forces spiraling upward like twin flames.
I didn't stop. I couldn't. Something in me had cracked open and the only thing that mattered was her, the heat of her, the impossible tightness of her body pulling me in, the way she kept pushing back against me even when her arms gave out and she collapsed forward onto her forearms, still arching her spine, still offering herself up.
"Hakan—I can't—I—"
"You can." I pulled her upright by the hair, her back flush against my chest, my hand splaying across her stomach while I fucked up into her from beneath, and with my other hand I turned her face toward me and kissed her—messy, desperate, all teeth and tongue and the taste of tears.
"You can take all of it. You can take everything. "
Her hand reached back and fisted in my hair. She pulled hard enough to make my eyes water and bit down on my lower lip until blood bloomed between our mouths and the copper taste of it pushed me to the edge.
I came with my face buried in her neck, my cock pulsing deep inside her, my whole body shuddering against hers like something breaking apart.
Not a release—an unravelling. Weeks of fog and numbness and cold efficiency torn open and poured into her, and she took it all, her hand still in my hair, her body still clenching around me in aftershocks, pulling everything out of me until there was nothing left.
We collapsed. Not gracefully—she fell forward and I fell with her, still inside her, still shaking, my arms barely catching us before we hit stone.
I pulled out of her slowly—she hissed at the loss, her body clenching once more as if trying to keep me—and turned her over and pulled her against my chest, wrapping my arms around her while we both tried to remember how to breathe.