Chapter 25
Piper
Slade’s mouth on mine feels like a slow unraveling—careful, deep, coaxing, as though he’s learning every way I could possibly break and choosing instead to piece me together. His hands guide me with a steadiness that makes my pulse trip over itself.
When he lifts me, my breath catches. My arms wind around his neck on instinct, curls brushing his jaw, my pendant glowing faintly between us. He carries me with a certainty that shakes something loose inside my chest—something hopeful, and dangerous.
He sets me at the edge of the tub. Steam rises in soft coils. Candlelight glows against the water, petals drifting like tiny spells waiting for touch. I whisper, “Slade… what is all this?”
His gaze drags over me, slow and warm. “Something you deserve.”
The words settle under my ribs like heat blooming. I reach out—fingers trembling despite myself—and brush them against his cheek. His breath stutters almost imperceptibly. “Show me,” I murmur.
He takes my hand and lifts it to his lips, kissing the center of my palm with devastating gentleness.
Then he helps me undress—not rushed, not hesitant. Just deliberate. Learning. Mapping. Worshipping every inch of skin revealed under candlelight.
When he lowers me into the bath, the water wraps around me like silk. The enchanted salts melt into my tense muscles, releasing a sigh I didn’t realize I’d been holding for days.
Slade kneels beside the tub and rolls his sleeves to his forearms. It shouldn’t be erotic, but gods—it is. His power hums, the room thickening with warmth and something darker, possessive but held carefully under the surface.
He dips his hand into the water and pours it over my shoulder. The heat trails down my collarbone. I shiver.
“Relax,” he murmurs, thumb brushing the hollow beneath my throat. “You don’t have to be anything here. Not brave. Not ready. Just you.”
My voice wavers. “I didn’t know I could feel this calm.”
His fingers trace the line of my jaw. “You’re safe.”
The bond stirs beneath my skin—not violently, but like a heartbeat searching for another. The water ripples. The candles sway closer. Even my magic softens, reaching toward him.
I exhale shakily. “Slade… what is happening?”
He cups my cheek, leaning close enough that his breath warms my lips.
“We are.”
I drag him into a kiss—not careful, not shy. A kiss that answers a question I never let myself ask. His hand slides into my hair, tilting my head, deepening the contact until the world dissolves around the heat of his mouth.
The bond surges—heat rushing across my skin, the air crackling, the ornaments chiming a soft, high note like bells in winter wind.
He pulls back only far enough to breathe, his forehead against mine, lips brushing as he speaks.
“If we take this further,” he whispers, voice thick with strain, “the bond will snap further into place.”
My heartbeat thrums like a drum beneath my ribs. “Then why stop?” I ask.
His eyes darken—not with refusal, but desire held painfully tight. “Because I don’t want the bond to choose for you.”
Something inside me softens—aching, warm, terrified. “Slade,” I whisper, “I’m not running from you.”
His breath shudders, and he kisses me again—deeper, slower, a promise pressed to my mouth.
Water sloshes softly as he braces a hand beside me, the other sliding along my jaw. My fingers move into his hair. His thumb grazes the swell of my breast beneath the water. A gasp slips from me, swallowed into his mouth.
The bond flares hot. Magic curls around his wrists like ribbon. He breaks the kiss with effort—real effort—breathing unevenly.
“Piper,” he rasps, “I want you. Gods, I want you. But not because the curse pushes or the bond demands. I want your yes when you’re clear. When you’re steady. When you’re choosing me, not a destiny handed to you.”
My chest tightens, full and aching. “I’m not choosing destiny,” I whisper. “I’m choosing you.”
Something raw flickers in his eyes. Hope. Hunger. Devotion. He leans in, brushing his lips to mine once more—soft, reverent, almost breaking. “Then I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs.
And he stays—kneeling by the tub, kissing me slow, steady, worshipful—until the water cools and my skin hums with warmth that has nothing to do with magic.
Until there is no doubt left in me… I am falling. And the bond isn’t the thing pulling me over the edge.
Slade is.
Steam curls around me as Slade lifts me from the bath, his hands sure, steady, possessive in a way that feels like worship disguised as restraint.
The towel is warm when he wraps it around me, but his hands are warmer—slow against my hips, guiding me back into the bedroom where candles flicker like they’re bowing to him.
He doesn’t rush—doesn’t speak. He just watches me in that molten, hungry way that makes something inside me unspool completely.
When he reaches me, he takes his time unwrapping the towel from my body, letting it fall soundlessly to the floor. His gaze drags down the length of me like he’s memorizing every inch, and his breath deepens—barely noticeable, except I’m watching him as closely as he’s watching me.
“Come here,” he murmurs, voice low, velvety, and threaded with something darker. Something inevitable.
He backs me toward the bed with unhurried steps, his fingers brushing up my sides as if he’s checking that I haven’t changed my mind—without actually asking. I don’t pull away. My body knows exactly what it wants.
He sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls me forward by the hips, guiding me to stand between his knees.
Then his hands slide behind my thighs. And the shift in him is immediate. His voice drops, roughened by want. “Piper… I’m done waiting.”
The words melt straight through me. Heat blooms across my skin. Every nerve stands awake.
Before I can answer, he leans in and kisses the inside of my thigh—slow, lingering, reverent. His fingers flex against my hips, urging me just a little closer.
Another kiss, higher. Another. Then his breath ghosts over the very place I’m aching.
I grip his shoulders automatically, my knees threatening to give out. “Yes, Gods, I want this.” Slade groans—a low, broken sound like tasting me is the first relief he’s had in centuries. And then he drags his tongue against my heat.
My breath hits the air in a sharp cry. I feel him smile against my skin, dark and pleased and utterly undone. “Slade—”
“Lie back,” he murmurs without lifting his mouth. “Now.”
The command threads through me like a spell, and I obey without thinking, sinking onto the bed as he pulls me to the edge, hands strong under my thighs.
Then he tastes me again. And again. Slow at first—deep, unhurried strokes that pull helpless sounds from my throat—then more insistent, more claiming, like he knows exactly how long he’s wanted this and has no intention of pretending otherwise.
His grip tightens when my hips arch.
“Good,” he breathes against me. “Don’t hide from me. Let me feel you.”
The dominance isn’t sharp. It’s velvet wrapped around steel. It makes me want to melt into him, to open for him, to offer more without being asked.
His tongue circles me, deeper this time, and my hands fly to the sheets, twisting. I’m shaking by the time he finally pulls back, his mouth wet, his pupils blown wide.
He wipes his thumb along his lower lip, tasting me there too. “Piper,” he says quietly, intensely, “I’ve wanted that since the moment you summoned me.”
He crawls over me, caging me in without touching me fully, his breath warm against my cheek.
“And now,” he whispers, voice like dark silk sliding over my skin, “I’m going to give you what you’ve been wanting.” He kisses me—slow, deep, tasting of me and hunger and the promise of what comes next. “And you’re going to take it,” he murmurs against my lips. “Every. Last. Bit.”
The room tilts, my pulse stumbling under the weight of him. Slade finally lowers his full body over mine, his arms locking mine above my head into place.
He nudges me apart with his knees, leaning back, spreading my legs wider before seating himself at my entrance.
I whimper, reaching to touch him—only to receive a sharp smack to my thigh.
“Tsk, tsk. I haven’t given you permission yet, little witch.”
I snarl, and he grins, running his hands along my body, cupping my full breasts before teasing the nipples with feather-light flicks that make my breath stutter. I squirm beneath him, crying out when he pinches one, then smacks the other.
“Yes,” he murmurs, satisfaction dripping from every word. “Let me hear you.”
I lift my head, eyeing his dick—because I absolutely did hit the luck department with Slade. I bite my bottom lip, and he instantly tracks the movement like it’s a spell cast just for him.
“Piper, be a good girl,” he warns, taking his thumb and circling my clit once in a motion that steals my breath. His tone drops to something dark and dangerous. “Or I’ll withhold your second orgasm.”
I gasp as he slams into me, crying out in pleasure when he moves again—his hips finding a rhythm that has me seeing stars.
“Slade!” I cry out, arching my hips to meet his.
He growls, leaning over me, pumping harder, faster, securing my hands again above my head as if I might break apart without his hold. Slade leans down, kissing my neck, biting across my chest, claiming every inch, kissing me again until I’m breathless and filled with nothing but pleasure and need.
The pressure keeps building, the sensation growing too big—too much.
“Slade, I—”
“Come for me, Piper. I want all of the Ninth Realm to hear you become mine,” Slade says, voice low, husky, and thick with desire.
I detonate, crying out his name over and over as my release takes me. The first orgasm was bliss, but this—this is something else entirely.
It still trembles through me, rolling in slow, powerful waves, when Slade groans—a sound pulled from somewhere raw inside him. His body tightens above mine, muscles straining as if holding himself back.
I drag my hands from his grip and cradle his face—finally touching him—and the moment my palms meet his skin, something shatters.
A pulse erupts between us. Soft at first. Then… blinding.
Heat unfurls from where our bodies join, a molten ribbon of magic threading through me like liquid light. Shadows curl up his spine, coiling around my hips, my ribs, sliding beneath my skin as though searching for a place to anchor.
Slade freezes, eyes widening—dark green irises glowing with an inner gold I’ve never seen before.
“Piper,” he breathes, voice breaking, “the bond—”
It snaps further into place. Not like a chain, or a cage. Like a star collapsing inward and reforming around us—a fusion of heat, desire, recognition, and something older than either of our bloodlines.
His power surges, sweeping through me in a warm, shadow-soft tide. My own magic rises to meet it, bright and wild, flooding out of me in a flare of heat that prickles across my skin like embers waking after centuries of sleep.
The moment they touch—our powers don’t collide.
They converge.
Shadow melts into light. Light sinks into shadow. A perfect, impossible symmetry.
I feel him. Not just his body, or his desire. His fear. His reverence. His aching, desperate hope that I’ll choose him. His vow—silent but absolute—that he will burn the realms before he lets anything touch me.
The depth of it steals the air from my lungs.
“That’s you,” he whispers, forehead falling to mine as he thrusts again, slower now, deeper. “All of that—gods, Piper, that’s you.”
The pleasure swells again, threaded now with emotion so potent it makes my eyes sting. Every movement he makes sends another ripple of power through the bond, another strand weaving into place, tightening, anchoring.
His shadows curl around my wrists, gentle where they had once been firm. My magic flows into his chest with every breath. Our hearts sync—first by accident, then by instinct, then because the bond demands it.
His voice thickens. “I’m inside you everywhere.”
And he is.
Inside my mind, my magic—my soul in a way that feels terrifying and holy.
I cling to him, legs tightening around his waist as he thrusts deeper, the bond tightening with every push, pulling us closer, closer, until I can’t tell where my magic ends and his begins.
The world narrows to heat. To shadow. To the man above me who feels like home and inevitability.
The pressure builds again—a rising, spiraling pull that gathers at the center of my chest and between my thighs all at once.
The bond flares—and I break. Pleasure tears through me like the sky splitting open, bright and consuming.
I cry out, the sound echoing through both our bodies as Slade follows, groaning my name into my neck as he spills into me.
Magic explodes outward in a burst of gold and black. Candles flare. Lights hum. The air itself ripples, bowing to the force of what we’ve become.
Slade collapses onto me—not heavy, but holding me, grounding me as the last threads of pleasure ripple through the bond, locking into place like a final, perfect stitch.
His breath warms my shoulder. My heartbeat pulses against his chest. Our magics curl together like two flames choosing the same wick.
“Piper,” he murmurs, voice hoarse, reverent. “You’re mine.”
I slide my fingers into his hair, tugging him close. “And you,” I whisper, breath trembling with the truth of it, “are absolutely mine.”
The bond settles between us like a constellation.
Alive… and waiting.