Chapter 6
The thump of my own footsteps rattles through my bones as I push aside branches and leap over fallen logs, but I don’t slow down—not because I’m afraid of Lucan, but because I’m free.
I’ve never had the privilege of pushing my body to this limit before.
Never felt my lungs burn like this. Even when I used to exercise at the Recreation Center, the movement was stiff and practiced, but this…
this air cutting against my cheeks and adrenaline shooting through my veins—it’s wild and chaotic and beautiful.
And when Lucan howls, I almost do, too.
His presence doesn’t just chase after me.
It surrounds me. I feel him in every shadow between tree trunks, in the way my hair lashes past my shoulders.
Every rustle of the forest has me whipping my head up, my heart ticking as my imagination blooms with all the possibilities.
The wind whistles through the trees, creating moving shapes with tricks of moonlight through the leaves.
Scared? Lucan taunts through our connection, the pounding of his chase somehow behind me and in front of me and around me all at the same time.
I laugh through the heaviness of my breaths. You’ll have to try a lot harder than this to scare me, Monster. In fact, this might be the best nightmare I’ve ever had. I’m relishing in it, waiting for his claws to reach out and snare me.
Over here, he murmurs, and a branch snaps to my right.
I stop short, panting and nearly doubling over. But when I turn, there’s nothing there.
Behind you.
Whipping around, again—nothing.
I blink… until Lucan’s monstrous shadow steps out between two trees in the distance. With the moonlight shining through the fog, I can’t make out anything other than his outline and the piercing glare of his yellow eyes glowing in the dark.
My thoughts aren’t coherent, bouncing from incomplete ideas to unformed sentences.
His mind twists with mine, and I can’t grasp on to anything concrete except the enormous pull between us.
The craving. The eagerness. The ache. The both of us trying to climb right into the other’s reality.
I want to keep running away from him and run to him at the same time.
Giving up so soon? he asks, and I can practically hear the wicked smile in his voice.
Hardly. I stand firm, refusing to back away even an inch. I’m just weighing my options.
Which are?
Fight, flight, or freeze, basically. But they all end the same way.
A low, hungry growl permeates the dark. Which is?
I can’t think anymore, my brain conjuring up images instead—lewd, filthy ones that set Lucan over the edge.
With a ravenous snarl, he lunges again… but this time his shadow shifts as he does.
His coat disappears. His torso shrinks. His strong jaw and handsome face return, his body morphing from hulking to upright—all in the span of yards as he barrels toward me.
I grin, and just for the hell of it, whip around and break into another run.
He closes the distance in a few strides, snaking two long arms around my waist from behind me. I shriek. He lifts me off my feet, and then the world spins and tilts and I’m suddenly on my back. Pinned to the forest floor so quickly and painlessly I didn’t process the landing.
“Got you,” he says, capturing my wrists and locking them above my head.
“You got me,” I repeat in a whisper.
The hairs on my arms straighten as goosebumps crawl along my skin. His warmth is magnified, and wrapping my legs around his hips, I pull him closer, heart melting, trying to get him to put his full weight on me.
Clarity starts to return for a moment.
Ferns encircle us, closing us in. Treetops fold over each other, layers and layers of leaves blocking out the night sky except for one slice where a full moon hovers above us. Am I monstrous for wanting this right here, right now? Out in the open, on the forest floor?
“Eyes on me,” Lucan says, bringing my attention back to his face. “Right here is perfect. And inside of you is going to be my new favorite place.” He drags his canines across the shell of my ear, then pulls my earlobe into his mouth and sinks his teeth into it.
I gasp, the reality of the forest melting away until it’s just him and me.
Lucan hums in appreciation, then lets his lips roam down my neck, nibbling and sucking.
“I’ve scoured your mind,” he says against my throat, “but I still have so many things to discover about your body. Like where I can put my tongue to drag the loudest gasp from you. Or which position is your favorite. Or how hard your legs will shake when you come…” Before I can voice my confusion, Lucan chuckles against my skin, applying pressure against me with his hard length. “On my cock.”
A moan rattles up my throat at the word, how exhilarating it makes me feel. One of Lucan’s hands skates down my sternum. My hips press up. His press down, his erection pressing right up against where I burn for him.
I try to squirm against him to get more friction, but he shakes his head with a devious grin and peels himself away, hovering over me.
“You’re going to make me suffer?” I breathe out.
He presses his lips to mine, then dips his mouth to the low neckline of my slip and pulls it down with his teeth. “Only the best kind. Besides, gentle isn’t in my nature.”
A bolt of electricity shoots down to my belly button when Lucan swirls his tongue over my nipples, teasing me as he switches back and forth.
“More,” I beg, even though that’s always been against the Cardinal Rules, to want more.
But Lucan’s eyes burst with pride for voicing what I want. “You deserve it all.”
And yet, he still takes his time: edging the hem of my new dress up to my waist, biting into my hip, swiping his tongue in one long drag up me.
I arch into him and reach for his pants, eager for him to bare everything to me, but he pins my arms by my side with a click of his tongue and straightens on his knees.
“You’re going to watch, Saskia,” he says, unbuttoning his pants, the zipper following torturously slowly, “as I ravage you. No touching me yet. I won’t be able to focus with your hands on me. You understand?”
I swallow thickly and nod, nearly out of mind when he reaches into his pants and pulls out his erection.
My mouth waters, imagining my lips wrapped around his shaft, my own tongue teasing the head.
“Let me taste you,” I plead.
Lucan strokes himself, eyes blazing as they bounce between my mouth and lower down, where my dress has tangled up around my knees, exposing me. And then his lips curl.
“Not yet.” Dragging the head of his cock through my arousal, he lets out a harsh breath. “Fuck. You’re so perfectly wet for me, Saskia.”
A sharp flame of pure need singes up my spine. “Lucan,” I whimper.
“Say it,” he rasps. “Say you want the Monster to fuck you.”
I can hardly get the words out as he presses his tip against me. “I want the Monster to fuck me.”
“Good girl.”
Then he drives into me, punishing me with one long stroke without letting me adjust to his size. His hips slam into mine just as my gasp echoes through the forest, and my entire body rages like a wildfire.
“I was right.” Lucan holds himself there, his expression crumpling as if the bliss borders on the point of pain.
His eyes fasten to where we’re joined, the gold in his irises molten.
Finally he begins to move, his pupils simultaneously eternally satisfied and hungrier than ever.
“My. New. Favorite. Place,” he says with a harsh thrust between each word.
Breaths are forced from my lungs. All my senses heighten.
Inhaling sharply at the pressure, I arch my back, trying to somehow get closer to him when he’s inside of me, all the way to the hilt.
The intensity on his face makes me want to reach up and trace every line of his desire etched into it, grab fistfuls of his hair, and feel his heartbeat under my palm.
But I obey him and keep my arms above my head, because no touching. That’s one rule I can follow. For now.
Lucan’s thumb drags quick circles over my clit, and the sensation blinds me. Stars flicker in my vision, and heat builds in my core.
Lucan increases his pace until my legs shake uncontrollably.
“Come on my cock, baby.”
With wild moans that carry on the wind, my entire body obeys, shuddering through shockwave after shockwave as I clench around him.
When I go still, Lucan slips out of me slowly, but I’m quickly using the opportunity to wrap my palm around him. The weight of him in my hand. The heat against my skin. The massive size of him.
It all makes me want to wrestle back control.
Releasing a little pressure, I glide my hand up and down his shaft, using soft strokes at first. Then I grip him firmer, smiling at the way Lucan’s chest heaves and his abs contract.
He groans when I run my thumb over his head and through the pre-cum beading there before following with my tongue. The deep sound shoots through my core, but Lucan’s eyes shoot open.
“Teasing me?” he chuckles. His left eyebrow curves upward along with his smirk. “You want to suffer, don’t you?”
I nod honestly, my heartbeat stuttering as it waits for my next welcome punishment. With hope in my chest, I part my lips expectantly, but Lucan only chuckles darkly.
“I’m not going to come in your mouth the first time, Saskia,” he tells me plainly.
Suddenly, he flips me over, maneuvering my body however he wants with ease. On all fours, I spread my legs for him, desperate for him to be inside me again.
Thankfully, he doesn’t waste time.
His cock fills me again, pressing against me with shallow pumps of his hips, until he can’t take the slow pace anymore.
His fingers twist into the roots of my hair, before he wraps his palm with the strands of my hair—once, twice.
He tugs my head back, forcing me to look up at the treetops and night sky. Even though he’s not entirely gentle, a content sigh leaves my lungs.
“That’s it,” he coos, his lips against my ear. “You love it when you’re mine, don’t you?”
I try to nod but his grip is so tight on the roots of my hair, my head can’t move.
“Yes,” I pant, as my body heaves forward from the force. “I’m yours.”
My hips grind back, chasing the orgasm he’s building, like the electricity that usually joins us is overflowing beneath my skin.
“Are you going to come with me, Saskia?” he asks, voice low.
But he doesn’t need an answer.
His hand settles around my neck, squeezes slightly, as he turns sloppy and his fingers find my clit. Instantly, the pleasure stacks on top of itself, shooting up my core, from each sensation where Lucan is connected to me in some way.
The rhythm becomes chaotic as we both moan out each other’s names into the dark.
The pleasure building becomes other-worldly, out-of-body, almost as if it’s too perfect, too right, too everything.
And maybe I wasn’t meant to ever find it, and the Wall was merely a barrier to prevent this cataclysm from ever happening—a higher power interfering, like always. Because how can I feel this much?
“I’ve been starved of you for centuries, little nightmare,” Lucan rasps.
And then he sinks his canines into my shoulder, and we both unravel together, like the threads of the very universe coming undone.
We’re still lying here silently over half an hour later, curled into each other and watching the moon through the treetops as the dark clouds drift by.
Every second that ticks by is just one more moment that reality doesn’t creep back into our lives. But even when you delay it, time always has a way of yanking off the wool you’ve put in front of your eyes. Ignorance isn’t bliss forever.
So when Lucan finally scoops me off the forest floor, my body spent and poorly fighting sleep, I manage to whisper, “We still need to save Xantera.”
I expect him to say we can’t. I failed to get the key from Arad, and our method of communicating to those within the Wall still hangs around my neck. There’s no way to know if Eleni and Claudia followed through with the plan.
Maybe seconds or minutes go by until I’m deposited onto his soft bed and tucked beneath the blankets. I squint up at Lucan, my vision hazy with exhaustion.
“I know,” he finally answers instead, dropping a kiss on my forehead. “And we will.”