Rahnové #2
“I know now that it wasn’t real. But I felt every second of it, Eden. I watched you grow round with my child, and I couldn’t even touch you. I watched you forget the shape of me.”
The tendril at her breast tightens, my skelva flexing around her hip.
“So you’re going to let your rahnové remind himself you’re still his—you’re going to let me feel every part of you that I thought I lost. And you’re going to scream so loud that the memory of that hellscape finally dies.”
My shadow at her breast tugs until she lets out a sharp cry, níva beading at the peak, welling up to meet the cold dark wrapped around her.
The instant the droplets touch my shadow, they soak into the void, flooding the emptiness behind my sternum with a warmth I’m not sure a creature like me was meant to hold.
A snarl erupts from me as my shadow turns greedy.
The tendril at her breast thickens, drinking the liquid gold straight into my core.
“Again,” I groan, my fingertips biting into her skin. “Please. Let me have what you made for me.”
The smoke pulls her hips down on me, grinding her slick heat against my vék with a slow, agonizing friction. I tangle my fingers into her hair, tilting her head back to expose the elegant line of her throat.
“I love you, Ash.”
“You are the only thing I would choose to keep when everything else is gone. What I feel for you goes beyond love, Eden—beyond even death.”
My fangs lengthen rebelliously, a groan escaping as I drag them down the sweet curve of her neck. Venya aches in my gums, begging to flood her veins and finally mark her as Death’s for every God and monster to scent.
But her words echo in my head: not until you’re whole, Ashán. Your true form. Promise me.
I wrench my mouth from her throat, my skelva trembling where they grip her hair.
“Aevún, help me. I’m running out of reasons to stop.” (Gods)
“Ashán?” she breathes, pulling weakly against the shadows bound around her wrists. “Don’t back away. Please bite me. I want everyone to see your mark.”
Temptation plagues my blood. “Do not ask me to take back the promise I made to you.”
“That was before you were gone for so long.”
“I have spent my existence incomplete. I will not make you settle for an incomplete version of me.”
“You’re not—”
“But there is something else I can give you. Something I’ve never given anyone.”
Her hooded eyes search mine.
I lift a single skelva and drag it slowly across the still-living half of my throat. Sage’s green skin parts beneath it, a thin golden line welling with the faint shimmer of my venya.
“Drink,” I rasp. The shadows at her wrists dissolve into smoke, freeing her hands at last. “If you can’t have my fangs tonight, then take this instead. Take me. Let me feed you.”
Her eyes drop to my neck, fixated on the liquid trailing down my skin.
My chest tightens as I wait for her to accept my proposal—to ingest a reaper’s venom directly from the vein is a devotion deeper than any mark I could ever give her.
Eden’s hands slide up my chest, shaking where they settle on my shoulders.
The first touch of her lips against the wound steals every coherent thought from my head. A quiet moan escapes me. She drinks me like she’s starving, one hand fisted in my hair to keep me still.
I am a creature of death. A thing that takes and takes and takes. And yet, for her, I would bare my throat without hesitation and let her drink me down to the last ember of life.
Her hips roll against me, burning my flesh as she grinds harder against my shaft.
“That’s it, ash’kaela,” I groan, my skelva splaying wide across her back. My shadows coil tighter around her thighs. “Drink. Vresh—drink me down.”
She gasps against my throat, her fingers clawing down my shoulders as the venom enters her bloodstream.
It races through her veins like wildfire chasing oil, lighting up every nerve at once.
She whimpers against me, her hips bucking helplessly against my shadow.
A fresh rush of slick wets my lap as her thighs clamp.
Her throat swallows hungrily as she chases the high of me.
“Feel that?” I purr dizzily, my head tipping back as much as she’ll allow it. “That’s me in your blood now, Eden. Flowing through you the way you’ve flowed through me since the first time I glimpsed your light.”
My vision blurs. The stars above us smear into long, silver lines, the world narrowing to nothing but the sluggish thud of my own heart while it tries to keep up with her hunger.
The more she consumes, the more her devotion pours down the open line of my throat and into the void inside me.
It climbs ravenously, dragging more of me to the surface to answer her need.
Sage’s warm green skin recedes beneath my hands, bone climbing up our ribs, swallowing flesh and replacing it with the cool ivory of my true form.
Smoke pours from the seams of where I’ve split open into the world. Three-quarters of us is me now.
The chest beneath her hollows and hardens from warm muscle to the bare cage of my vorí, her lips sealed over a throat that is barely flesh at all.
She’s pulling me out—after reaching for her through bars and cages of someone else’s nerves, my mate is dragging the monster into the light with bare hands and her hungry mouth, and she isn’t afraid.
“Look what you summon, ash’kaela,” I rasp, curling a skeletal hand around the back of her neck. I draw her off my throat until her eyes meet mine. “No one has ever wanted the parts of me that aren’t pretending to be him. No one but you.”
Her drunken gaze roams over the new planes of bone and shadow.
“There you are,” she breathes. “My dark prince.”
“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you to say that,” I rasp, my thumb tracing the gold dripping from the corner of her mouth. “To have you look at me like I’m all you crave. You have claimed my soul, ash’kaela—now let me show you what you’ve done to my body.”
The shadow at her hips hauls her down as I drive up, the first thrust seating my vék fully inside her.
The shadows inside my shaft writhe against her molten heat.
She lets out a choked sob as her body stretches to take all of me.
And then my shadow swallows her whole. It pours over every inch of her, sealing her inside me where nothing in any realm can reach her: no light, no Sage, no phantom future clawing her away.
And through every tendril, I feel her: the pebbled skin of her breasts, the give of her waist, the frantic flutter of her pulse.
There is no inch of her I am not drowning in—she is wearing me like a second skin.
“There it is,” I whisper while my hands clamp around her hips. “That’s all of me, ash’kaela.” I pull back achingly slow, every ridge of my skal massaging her inner walls. “Your dark prince is finally where he belongs.”
Down the bond, my darkness floods her soul, anchoring deep into her thoughts, while a tendril of my purest shadow wraps around our daughter’s tiny spark. I have them both back. And I intend to make up for every second I spent without them.
“Look at me, mí’maru,” I breathe, brushing my mouth along her temple as I thrust slow and deep. “I spent two days as a ghost you couldn’t see. Now I need your eyes on me so I know you feel exactly who’s inside you.”
Her glassy eyes lock onto mine, pupils swallowed by black—whether from the venya or the sight of me, I can’t tell, and I don’t care—she sees me.
The slow, savoring strokes give way to something harder. Every deep thrust pulls whimpers from her throat. My shadow holds her open so I can watch the slick length of myself disappear into her over and over.
“Every inch of this cock belongs to the monster you summoned back from the void,” I purr, pulling back until only the tip of me remains, then slamming back in hard enough to make her sob. “The dark will never let you go now.”
“Ash… nnggh—mmm,” she babbles deliriously, her hips fighting the shadow’s grip to chase more of me.
I bring one hand between us, and she stills, watching the sharp points rest over the most vulnerable part of her.
“I would carve out my own void before I ever let these hurt you.” I drag the flat edge of a single skelva over her kísh, featherlight and infinitely careful, the tip circling her sweet, swollen clit.
“Ohh,” she moans, her thighs trembling around my waist.
“Look at you,” I breathe, my rhythm never faltering, skelva circling in perfect time. “Taking my cock, my claws, and trusting me with all of it. My brave girl. My perfect ash’kaela.”
Her walls flutter at the praise. I drag her right up to the edge, my speed building until she’s gasping for air—and then I stop.
“No!” She screams, her hips bucking uselessly against the shadow’s grip. “Ash, please. You never make me wait.”
“I know.” I force myself to stay still inside her, my fingertips motionless against her swollen clit.
For once, I’m not on my knees for her. She’s the one unraveling at my mercy, and the starving thing inside of me is drunk on it.
“Ten days in the dark changes a male, ash’kaela. Tonight you’re going to beg me for it.”
“That’s not—nghh—fair,” she sobs, trembling on the edge.
“No, it isn’t. Is it?” I agree, dragging my skelva in a slow, cruel circle. My heart aches to give in. “But I want you to beg anyway.”
She stares up at me, disbelief warring with the venya crawling through her veins.
“I need you.” Her nails drag down my vorí, her hips straining against my shadow. “I missed you every single night. Please, don’t make me wait any longer than I already have, rahnové.”
Rahnové—the name her soul gave me. I am pitiful. Even Sage would have held out longer.
“How am I supposed to say no to that?”
Frost thickens across the meadow, crystals racing across the flowers in a beautiful, silver death.
My shadow pulls her up just enough for my tip to tease her entrance, and then I slam her back down onto me. My vék buries itself as far as it can go, my hips bucking up to meet her as the shadows drive her down.
“Just like that, Ash,” she moans.