Rahnové #3
My skelva returns to their rightful place, circling faster until the only thing she can do is hold on. I drag her up the edge again, my vék hitting the little spot inside her that makes her sob my name.
“Almost, r-rahnové,” she slurs, going slack against me.
I lean down and seal my mouth over the níva leaking from her nipple; the first pull of the sweet gold across my tongue nearly sends me into bloodlust. I groan against her skin, taking greedy mouthfuls.
This is what I clawed back toward. This exact taste. This exact woman.
“Harder, Ash,” she whimpers. “So close—”
A snarl vibrates against her breast as I give her exactly what she asks for, my hips driving up brutally, burying myself so deep the tip of me kisses her cervix.
Her body arches off my arm, fingers wrapping around the curved bone where Sage’s soft green crests used to be.
Shock ripples across her face for half a second before her grip tightens and she pulls, hauling my mouth back to her breast.
“Ravenous little thing.” I chuckle against her chest. “Let’s see if I can satisfy that hunger.”
I pull free of her in one slow drag, wrenching a desperate cry from her throat. Cold air hits the slick between her thighs, and a wave of pure panic shoots down the bond.
“No, Ashán, don’t,” she gasps breathlessly, her fingers clawing at the smooth bone of my shoulders. Her hips roll, chasing my vék. “Don’t leave. Please, don’t do this again.”
“Shh, ash’kaela. I’m right here,” I soothe. Darkness pours over her, lifting her clean off my arm and turning her effortlessly until she’s suspended face-down in a cradle of my shadow. Her copper hair spills toward the frost-bitten clover below us.
She gasps, finding no purchase—nothing to brace against as the void holds her aloft at the perfect height.
I’m not going anywhere.” I line myself up against her drenched entrance. “ I’m just changing the view.”
I fill her in one long stroke. She screams my name, the new angle burying me deeper inside her lavína.
“There’s no ground. No sky. Nothing to hold onto but me—” I groan against her spine, “And I never let you fall.”
I set a punishing pace, and there’s nothing she can do but take it. Every thrust pushes her forward, and the void hauls her right back onto me, forcing her on the full length of my cock over and over again.
“You’re too deep,” she moans.
“I’m exactly where I belong,” I rasp against the back of her neck, my breath coating her skin in a thin layer of frost. Her screams echo across the meadow, and ice climbs higher along the trees.
“Listen to you.” My skelva bite into the soft flesh above her hips. “I want to remember exactly what you sound like, so the next time the dark tries to take me, I’ll have this to crawl back toward.”
“Y-you’re not going anywhere,” she pants, her words stammering on every thrust. “Don’t say that again, or I’ll climb off these shadows and leave you like this.”
A laugh slips out of me, delightedly caught off guard. My sweet mate, suspended powerlessly in my void, stuffed full of my cock, threatening me.
“Is that so?” I hum, slowing to a devilish grind. “And how exactly do you plan to manage that, ash’kaela?”
I drag a single claw down the arch of her spine, relishing the way it makes her shiver.
“There’s nothing beneath those pretty feet.
No leverage for those trembling little hands.
Nowhere to go at all.” My fangs graze the shell of her ear.
“You couldn’t climb off me if your life depended on it.
” I thrust. “You are exactly where I want you, taking exactly what I give you—and you fucking love it.”
She lets out a frustrated sound, squirming pathetically in my shadow.
“I’ll find a way out,” she rasps. “And I’ll walk back to the house alone.”
“Walk away?” I growl, shadows snapping taut and yanking her hips back against mine with a force that silences her threat. “I would tear this meadow apart before I let you take a single step. I would wrap every shadow in this realm around your ankles and drag you right back here.”
I resume the pace, but the playfulness is gone.
“You aren’t leaving, Eden. Not tonight. Not in ten lifetimes.” I bury my face in her neck, inhaling the scent of níva swirling with my venya. “You’re going to stay right here, floating in my darkness, until you forget there’s even a world outside of my arms.”
I reach around her hips, pinching her clit between the flat bones of my skelva. “And when I finally let you down, the only place you’ll want to walk is closer.”
My hips pump relentlessly, the savage slap of skin and the moans she’s trying to bite back fill the clearing.
“Ashán—” she gasps. “It’s too much, I can’t—”
I don’t slow.
“Ash, please, I—”
I don’t listen.
My skelva circle her swollen flesh so fast her skin begins to heat under my bone. The shadows tighten and pulse around her, every nerve in her body screaming until I can’t tell her pleasure from my own.
“Do you still want to get down, ash’kaela?”
“No,” she whines, “don’t—don’t put me down, don’t stop, please—”
A twisted gratification floods the void in my chest.
“That’s what I thought,” I purr against her shoulder. “No more talk of walking away. The only place you want to be is right here, falling apart on my cock. You are ním, Eden. You have always been ním.”
“I’m going to come,” she cries out.
“Soak me, ash’kaela. Let me wear what I do to you.” I change the motion of my hips so the ridges of my skal drag against the swollen spot inside her, over and over, my ribs caressing her back with each thrust, the slick, greedy sound of her clinging to my shaft each time I pull back.
“Ash—Ash—Ash—” Her fingers fist uselessly in the shadows. I lace a thin tendril through her fingers, and she grips it with every ounce of strength she has.
Her body goes rigid, convulsing around my length.
Her release floods hot over the cold cage of bone around my shaft, spilling down my thighs and dripping onto the frost below.
She clamps around me so hard she drags me straight over the edge with her.
I sink into her as far as I can, emptying every cold bit of essence I have saved while I was gone, until she is utterly filled with death.
Deep where we’re joined, the base of my vék swells, a band of vorí flaring wide, locking us together.
My shadow follows, fusing where our bodies meet until there is no pulling back, no separating, no space at all left between us.
This is new.
My shadow eases her upright, drawing her spine back, until she’s cradled against my chest. My hand slides down her chest, over her stomach, to feel where we’re locked together. She’s stretched obscenely wide around the swell of bone. I test it, shifting her upward, and she gasps.
“Ashán?” The venya keeps her totally relaxed. “Are we stuck? This feels different than Sage’s.”
“We’re not stuck,” I murmur against her temple. “We’re locked.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No, mí’maru, it isn’t. Being stuck is an accident. Something you fight to escape.” The tips of my skelva stroke over where we’re connected. “This is not an accident. My body did this on purpose.”
“I’m already pregnant though?”
My other hand snakes around her waist to cup her breast, fingertips brushing lightly over her nipple.
“My knot didn’t expand to breed you, Eden—I’ve already done that—” I smirk against her shoulder. “It expanded because it knows you’re ním, and it has no intention of letting you go until the void is satisfied.”
“How long does it take until the void is… satisfied?” she asks breathlessly, shivering as my skelva circles her peak.
“That depends entirely on you, ash’kaela.” I drag my tongue up the column of her throat, my hips giving an experimental roll that has her squeezing deliciously tight around my knot. “Ten days is a very long time. So I think the void will need you for quite a while. Hours, at the very least.”
“Ashán—”
“Shh.” I curl my wings forward, sealing us in a vault of bone and frostbitten silence. “You wanted all of me, Eden. Every piece. And now you have it, locked inside you, wrapped around you, buried in your womb. We’re not separating until I’ve made up for every second I spent without you.”
The void hums behind my ribs, finally sated for the first time in ten days.
I am not a ghost. I am not a memory. I am home.