CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
I arched off the bed, a choked, broken sound leaving my throat, but his shadows held me pinned exactly where he wanted me.
He licked again—firmer, more purposeful—before closing his lips around me and sucking.
The sensation sent shockwaves through me.
"Asher—" My voice broke on his name, a desperate plea for the end and the beginning all at once.
He hummed against me, the vibration shivering through my skin and sinking into my marrow.
His tongue began to move again, alternating between long, punishingly lazy strokes and sharp, precise flicks that had me clawing at the silk sheets beneath me.
His hands tightened on my thighs, bruising and possessive, spreading me wider still as he buried himself deeper, devouring me like a male who had been starved for centuries.
When his fingers finally slid inside me—two, curling deep and perfect—my back bowed, pleasure tearing through me so fast it stole the air from my lungs.
He worked me relentlessly, his mouth and fingers coaxing and demanding every tremor, every desperate gasp, until my climax tore free from my throat.
I was left trembling and panting, completely wrecked against the mattress.
Only then did he rise.
He rose over me in one fluid motion.
His shirt was gone in a heartbeat—tossed into the shadows.
His black tattoos gleamed in the low light, but it was the bond mark on his chest that held me; it was blazing a brilliant silver. With a flicker of his mind, his shadows reached out, peeling away the ruined scraps of my lace bodice and silk skirt until they pooled like ink at my feet.
I was bare. Exposed. And already his.
"On all fours," he commanded.
Gods, I felt a fresh wave of heat hit me just from the absolute command in his voice.
My heart pounded against my ribs as I obeyed, the bed dipping under my weight as I braced my hands against the pillows.
"You're going to pay for every second you let him touch you," he murmured.
His hand ran slowly over my skin before—slap—the sharp sting of his palm made me squeal, the sound cut short by the sudden, frantic tightening of my own muscles.
“I swear, princess.” His voice was a low promise in the quiet room.
I will make you writhe until your legs shake so hard you won't remember your own name—only mine."
The ache between my thighs was unbearable, a pulsing, heavy need that made me nod desperately against the bed.
His fingers tangled in my hair, pulling my head back until my spine arched and his length pressed against me from behind—hard, hot, and unyielding.
"Gods, Ava… I can smell you," he rasped, his inhale feral as he buried his face in the crook of my neck. His tone was wrecked, his control hanging by a single, frayed thread.
"A-Asher… please…" I begged, the word a broken prayer.
He turned me around in one fluid, powerful motion, pinning me beneath him. I looked up into his face—and the breath died in my throat. The silver was gone. His irises had bled into a terrifying, pitch-black void. Entirely.
I didn't say a word. I didn't recoil. I just opened myself and let the darkness take me.
"I will give you everything, darling," he growled, the shadows in the room rising up to swallow the bed, his voice carrying the absolute authority of a king.
"The world, the crown, and every drop of the darkness that comes with it. That, I swear to you."
He slid down my body, his hands gripping my thighs with a bruising strength and spreading them wide.
"I'm going to taste every drop you've given me until you're begging me to stop—and then I'm going to make you beg me to start again."
My hips bucked as his tongue found me. He was slow at first, teasing and agonizing, before his shadows joined the assault.
They stroked my nipples into aching peaks and curled around my inner thighs, grazing over my entrance until I was writhing beneath him all over again..
"Asher—" I gasped, but he only let out a low groan against my sensitive skin, the vibration ripping a gasp from me.
Possession surged through the bond.
Mine.
His voice wasn't even spoken aloud anymore; it was echoing inside my head, carved into the very architecture of my soul.
I shattered for the second time, crying out so loudly I swore the stone walls of House Umbra would crack.
My vision blurred and my chest heaved—but before I could even begin to come down, he was looming over me again, his length hard and pressing at my entrance.
"No— I can't—I'm too far gone—"
“Yes, you can.” He smirked, pushing in slow this time, forcing me to feel every inch of the friction. "And you will. Until my name is the only thing left on your lips."
By the gods, I was already halfway there.
He moved—hard.
My nails dug into tattooed muscles of his shoulders as he drove into me, this time slower and deeper, like he was savoring every desperate gasp I made.
The light in the room began to dim, the corners swallowed by thick, swirling shadows until the furniture vanished and it was just us, suspended in a void of his making.
"Asher…" I breathed, my voice trembling with both raw need and absolute awe.
His black eyes glittered in the darkness, the only anchor I had as the world outside ceased to exist.
"Say it again," he growled, his hips snapping forward to meet mine.
I moaned it louder, my head tipping back as shadows climbed the bedposts like living vines, spreading across the ceiling.
His power was suffocating in the most delicious way.
"Up," he commanded. His shadows obeyed before I even processed the word—hauling me upright until I was straddling his lap, still joined with him.
My breath caught. I could feel every throb of him inside me as his hands slid up my sides and gripped my waist.
"Ride me, darling. Show me exactly who you belong to."
I started to move, rolling my hips slowly at first, dragging every inch of him through me until my thighs trembled with the effort.
His hands tightened, forcing me to take him deeper and faster, until I was bouncing on him in the pitch-black room.
My cries echoed back at me, sounding like the walls themselves belonged to him.
The bond flared—hot, possessive, and dangerous. His voice wrapped around my mind like a physical weight.
"Look at me."
I opened my eyes—I didn't even remember closing them—and was met with the full force of his gaze was black and endless, a void that promised ruin and worship in equal measure.
"You feel like sin," he groaned, his thumbs brushing my nipples, which were still sensitive and aching from before.
His shadows wrapped around my throat, not squeezing—just holding, a cool, silken reminder of exactly who owned me in this moment.
I shattered again, clinging to his sweat-slicked shoulders as if I were about to fall into the very abyss he'd created for me. But he didn't stop.
He didn't slow when I whimpered, not even when my nails raked desperate marks down his back.
"Again," he said, the word less of a request and more of a pure, dark command. His voice was rough with hunger, stripping away what little resolve I had left.
"I want you to fall apart for me until you forget the gods themselves ever existed."
And with the way my body moved against his—unspooling and lost to the shadows and the male who wielded them—I was already forgetting. The world, the journal, the throne... it all vanished.
There was nothing left in the universe except the dark, the fire, and Asher.
···
For the next few days, Asher brutally devoured me every morning and every night.
Gods, did I revel in it.
His hunger for me was a physical thing, finding me in closets, showers, and baths.
There wasn't a single corner of the Academy we hadn't claimed as our own.
It was primal. Insatiable.
The kind of heat that left me bruised in all the best ways, my voice a permanent rasp from moaning his name.
Ember nearly choked when I told her just how feral and unhinged Asher was behind closed doors.
We were walking back from training for the Trials, sweat clinging to our clothes and my braid sticking to the back of my neck.
Luna and Aether trudged behind us, their paws heavy on the stone stairs. Ember was already muttering about a nap.
Me? I needed to look at my brother's journal.
Asher still didn't know about it, thank the gods.
Jules had provided the perfect cover for what we'd actually discovered down there, letting everyone believe the catacombs had only led us to the antidote, not Jax's dangerous secrets.
Asher had gone back to House Umbra to grab more clothes. He essentially lived here now.
His scent was everywhere, clinging to the sheets, the pillows, and the very pores of my skin.
Jules had tucked the journal under my bed before the ball; I'd noticed it the moment I returned the next night, but I'd been far too busy being claimed over and over again to touch it.
Now, I had maybe an hour before the shadows returned for me.
I pulled the journal from beneath the bed, the worn leather warm under my fingertips.
From the weight of it, it felt... different.
Heavier. When I opened it, I saw that Jules had worked tirelessly; the first few pages were fully translated, though dozens of others remained a cryptic mess of Veyari script.
Aether stretched out beside me, curling his sleek body against my hip. "Finally," he purred into my mind, his golden eyes half-lidded.
I smirked faintly, turning to the section marked just after the antidote notes. The next line made my pulse stutter.
Scott recovered, and I believed the infection caused by the drug could be reversed, but I haven't told Father or Uncle yet. I need more proof. I need to go beyond the borders again.