Chapter 16
Tess
I felt it—the shift. Bloodlust becoming heat. His pupils were blown wide, almost swallowing the silver. His breathing hadn't slowed. If anything it had gotten rougher, his chest heaving against the black fabric of his shirt.
I knew what this was. Not violence redirected—a pivot. He'd been seconds from losing himself completely back there, and this—me—was the only thing he could grab onto that wouldn't end in blood. So I didn't pull back. I leaned in.
He moved.
One second I was standing on the path holding his arms. The next, his hand was around my wrist and he was pulling me off the gravel, into the trees, into the dark spaces between the oaks where the shadows pooled.
I stumbled over a root and he caught me without breaking stride, his grip shifting to my waist, hauling me deeper.
"Ciaran—"
"I need—" He cut himself off. His jaw worked. The shadows thickened around us, layer after layer, until the path was gone, the light was gone, and we were somewhere outside normal space. Cold bit through my shirt—his magic or the night, I couldn't tell.
He backed me against a tree. The bark was rough through my shirt. His body caged mine—hands braced on either side of my head, his hips pinning me, every line of him pressed against me. He was hard. I could feel it against my stomach, and my breath hitched.
From this close, he was devastating. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see every tendon. Silver burned down at me hard enough to make my stomach flip.
The black fabric of his shirt strained across his chest with each ragged breath, close enough that I could see the shift of muscle underneath. He looked like he was barely holding himself together.
His hands came to my face. Nothing like before. No cold calculation, no dominance play. Ciaran's fingers were shaking. He traced my jaw, my cheekbones, the line of my throat. Checking. Reclaiming. Replacing every ghost of that cold, predatory touch with his own.
"Are you hurt?" His voice was stripped raw.
"No."
"Did he—" His thumb dragged across my lower lip. "Here. He touched you here."
"I'm okay. I'm—"
He kissed me.
Hard. Desperate. His mouth crashed into mine and there was nothing gentle about it—teeth and tongue and the taste of cold shadows and fury.
One hand fisted in my hair, pulling my head back, angling me where he wanted me.
The other dropped to my hip and gripped hard enough to bruise.
I gasped against his mouth and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding against mine.
I kissed him back. My hands clawed at his shirt, dragging him closer, pouring every ounce of leftover adrenaline and fury into the press of my mouth against his—and the noise he made against my mouth was barely human.
A growl. A snarl. From the part of him that was ancient and predatory and had just watched another predator put hands on what was his.
His shadows curled around my wrists. They weren't restraining me—they were touching me. Everywhere. Along my ribs, across the small of my back, feathering over my collarbones. An extension of him. I arched into it with a moan I couldn't suppress.
One of the shadows found my left shoulder. Found the mark. The mate mark answered—heat blooming under his touch, the design beneath my skin coming alive. Ciaran made a sound against my mouth and I felt the design shift faintly, the way it always did when he pressed his claim into it.
"Mine," he said against my mouth. Not a question. A fact.
His hand left my hip. Dropped to the front of my pants. He didn't fumble—his fingers found the button, the zipper, and had them open in seconds. His hand slid under the waistband of my panties and I sucked in a sharp breath as his fingers found me.
"Damn—" The word punched out of me.
"So wet." His voice was raw gravel against my ear. His fingers slid through the heat of me, parting me, two fingers pressing along either side of my clit. "Tell me you want this."
"I want this." The truth came out breathless. Certain. My hips rolled into his hand involuntarily, chasing the friction, and he rewarded me with a harder stroke—his fingers circling my clit directly now.
His mouth moved from mine to my jaw. My neck.
He kissed the place where I'd almost gone to my knees—the hinge of my jaw, the pulse point below my ear—and the claiming intent of it sent heat flooding through me.
His teeth scraped my throat and I whimpered.
His free hand shoved my shirt up, pushed my bra aside, and his mouth closed over my nipple.
The sound I made wasn't dignified. I didn't care.
His tongue was hot against the cool air and the shadows that slithered across my exposed skin. The contrast was maddening—cold dark silk on my ribs, the furnace of his mouth on my breast, and his fingers working between my legs.
He wasn't teasing. He wasn't building slowly. He was driving me toward the edge with single-minded intensity, and my body responded like it had been waiting for exactly this—for the tension to have somewhere to go.
"Come for me," he said against my breast. His fingers pressed harder, faster, two of them sliding inside me while his thumb ground against my clit, and the orgasm slammed through me hard.
I cried out. My back arched off the tree, my hands fisting in his hair, my thighs clamping around his wrist. Every muscle in my core seized—a contraction that radiated outward, my inner walls clenching hard around his fingers, the pressure cresting and breaking in a rush that left my legs boneless.
The shadows around us pulsed in time with my body, and Ciaran's mouth found mine again, kissing me through the aftershocks while his fingers kept moving, drawing out every last tremor.
I was still shaking when he pulled his hand free.
His fingers dragged out of me slowly and I felt every inch of the withdrawal—the slick slide, the sudden emptiness, the cool air rushing in where his hand had been.
My body clenched around nothing. Still trying to remember how breathing worked. And then he turned me around.
"Hands on the tree."
My palms hit bark. My shirt was bunched under my arms, my pants shoved halfway down my hips, and I felt exposed in a way that should have made me self-conscious but instead made heat flood through me all over again. The shadows slid over the backs of my thighs.
He dropped to his knees behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder. Couldn't help it.
He was kneeling in the dark—his black hair falling across his forehead, his silver eyes burning up at me from between the shadows.
His shoulders were broad enough to block out the dark behind him.
His lips were swollen from kissing me and his expression was wrecked.
I heard fabric tear. My panties. He'd ripped them.
"Ciaran—oh fuck—"
His mouth was on me. From behind. His tongue dragged through me in one long, slow stroke and I nearly collapsed.
My fingers scraped against bark, my forehead dropped to the tree, and my knees buckled—just gave out—before the shadows caught my weight.
They wrapped around my thighs, and his hands locked tighter on my hips, tilting me back toward his mouth exactly where he wanted me.
He was relentless. His tongue worked me open—licking, sucking, fucking into me with a thoroughness that left no part of me unclaimed.
When my legs started to shake, the shadows tightened, and the sensation of being supported by his magic while his mouth destroyed me was so overwhelming I couldn't form words.
"Right there—" My voice broke. "God, don't stop—don't you dare stop—"
He groaned against me in answer, the sound vibrating straight through my clit, and his grip on my hips tightened like he was the one coming undone.
My spine curved deeper, my back arching as the pressure built—tightening low in my belly, pulling every nerve ending toward his mouth. My fingers cramped against the bark, nails digging in until I felt rough wood bite under them. He groaned against me and the vibration rippled through my body.
His tongue circled my clit—flicking, pressing flat and dragging—and the second orgasm built with a ruthless momentum I couldn't have stopped if I'd tried.
It hit differently than the first. Slower to crest but deeper, dragging through my entire body—my inner walls clenching in thick, rolling pulses even though nothing was inside me, my abs seizing so hard my back bowed further.
The shadows pulsed once.
Ciaran's fingers dug into the curves of my hips hard enough that I felt each one individually—five points of pressure sinking into soft skin, anchoring me to him like he was afraid I'd dissolve.
The pleasure pulled from somewhere past my muscles, past my bones.
When it broke, it broke me open. My core locked down in one long, devastating contraction—I felt it in my teeth, in the backs of my knees, in the sob that tore out of my throat before I could stop it.
I was gasping, trembling, held upright only by shadow and his hands and the tree I was clinging to.
He stood. I felt him rise behind me—the heat of his body replacing the cool air, his chest pressing against my back, the hard length of him against my ass. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling my hips back, and his other hand swept my hair aside so his mouth could find my neck.
"Stay just like this." His voice was barely recognizable.
I heard him free himself—the rough sound of a zipper—and then he was pressing between my thighs.
Not inside me. Between my legs, the thick, hard length of his cock sliding through the wet, swollen mess he'd made of me, my thighs pressed together around him.
The groan he let out against my neck vibrated through my spine.
"Squeeze," he breathed, and I did—clenching my thighs tighter around him, and his hips snapped forward.
The head of his cock dragged against my clit on the first stroke and I choked on air. "Harder," I gasped. "Don't hold back."