“But—”
I half fell into his lap, his shadows catching me, and landed with his hardness pressed against my entrance.
He held me at that teasing point, my back on his chest. With his shadows taking my weight, I couldn’t even sink down onto him, and I gave a frustrated little huff at the fact.
His low chuckle reverberated into my back. “Haven’t I told you before about patience?”
I managed to circle my hips over his tip, moaning at the pressure so close to entry and yet not quite. It raked through me, making my breaths come harder, faster. “We don’t have time for patience.”
“I don’t care,” he growled in my ear. “We’re doing this properly this time. Me, not my shadows. Look.” His shadows tilted the mirror so I could see myself suspended over him, his shadows dimpling my thighs as they lifted and parted them. His length stood ready, my wetness coating its tip. The steel of his piercing glinted, coiling my anticipation tighter.
Just as we’d been at the inn, but his cock instead of one made of shadows. This was what he’d imagined that false night, and now we could make it real.
He’d thought of me, just as I’d thought of him. My heart kicked up in speed.
“Please, Bastian.” I bit my lip, holding his gaze in the mirror.
Groaning, he reached between my legs. “You and that word.”
His middle finger circled my clit, and as I let out a blissful “Oh,” he pulled me onto his dick.
His teasing had me wet, but his thickness still stretched me in the most delicious way, and I arched into it, taking more and more.
Watching him disappear inside me, knowing we were joined in a way beyond simple fucking, only drew me tighter. I whimpered when his piercing rubbed against my inner walls, lifting me closer to the bright joy we found together.
Once he was fully buried in me, he kissed my cheek. “Even better than I imagined. You’re so perfect, love.”
With his praise, I could only pant, gripping the edge of the chair as he played me. My pussy clenched around him, the fullness building my pleasure higher, faster—almost unbearably so.
“I… I can’t…” I tried to lift off him a little to ease the rising pressure, but he clamped an arm around my waist and held my thighs with his shadows.
“Oh, I think you can. I can feel you’re close.” Dark tendrils spread over my breasts, teasing my nipples. He grazed his lips over my shoulder, and tremors ran through me. “Stop fighting it, love.”
All at once, he bit my shoulder and his shadows tightened around my nipples, and he broke me apart.
He groaned as I cried out and arched in his hold. Every part of me tensed and shattered, bright and fractured into perfect shards of bliss.
Yet he didn’t let up, and a second climax chased the first, their edges blurring as I broke around him, muscles contracting, while the rest of me burst into oblivion.
“There. Such a good flame, burning for me so brightly.” His tongue lapped over the place he’d bitten, and his shadows soothed the tight peaks of my breasts.
He shifted his grip, bringing my thighs together and looping his arm under my knees so I was bundled against him. It brought me even tighter around his dick. “Now you get a little reprieve.” He lifted me up until his piercing slipped out, glinting with my wetness, and my eyelids fluttered at the intensity of it.
For a moment, without him filling me, I could breathe fully, and I let my head fall against his chest, nestling beneath his chin. “Bastian… I’m yours.”
I’d said it before, but this time…
His eyebrows squeezed together, and his fingers tightened around my thigh, and I knew he understood.
This time, there was only us.
No Robin. No contract that said I belonged to anyone else.
In every possible sense I was my own woman and I could say what I gave, if anything, to anyone else.
And I was Bastian’s.
I chose him.
And now no one could get in the way of that.
“Yes, you are.” His canines flashed as he pulled me down his dick, wringing a strangled cry from me. “Mine, Katherine. Mine.” He said it with each thrust, gaze flicking between mine and the point where he disappeared into me.
The pleasure in me soared, no longer building—that was a mundane, limited thing—but flying higher and higher, untethered by anything so tedious as gravity, almost at the sun.
“And I’m yours.” He said it savagely, like he dared the world to tear us apart again. “Yours,” he bellowed as he filled me so thoroughly, I thought I might die from it.
I reached that bright and obliterating place, body burning up with pleasure, heart too full, mind fractured and unable to hold things like fear or thought.
All I knew was Bastian’s body locked with mine in ferocious joy, and my fingers digging into his arms like that would stop me spinning away into space entirely.
He went rigid as he gushed into me with a hoarse cry, joining me in the overwhelming oneness of us.
Slowly, like a feather, I drifted back to earth. Slick and sticky with sweat, we caught our breath. He smiled and kissed my shoulder as he lifted me off himself and watched as his come spilled from me.
I bit my lip, something fascinating about the sight. I felt at once completely powerful and utterly filthy, like maybe the second of those two things wasn’t bad like I’d been told but actually a secret path to the first one.
“Katherine,” he murmured against my skin, “I love you. Beyond all reason. Beyond all control. Beyond everything. I love you.”
My heart didn’t just skip—it tripped and fell. I broke away from the mirror and turned in his lap, meeting his gaze directly. “And I love you. There is no reason when I’m with you. I give up control. I give you everything, and I love that you give everything right back.”
We kissed, slow and deep—deep enough to touch my weary, broken soul.
And perhaps Bastian’s hobby wasn’t only contained to his workroom, because I felt a little less broken than I had before coming to Tenebris.
Eventually, he pulled away, cupping my cheek. “We should have a wash and get ready.”
I scoffed and nudged my nose to his. “I was ready until someone had other ideas.”
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about.” He grinned. “We have time for a shower… together.”
The promise of it fluttered through me. Bastian had a shower in his bathroom and its warm rain was my new favourite thing. The water spilling over my body and my scalp was like a thousand touches, and the first time I’d used it, it had brought me to my knees.
I glanced at the orrery on the mantelpiece. Barely enough time. Though a glint in his eye told me that he was ready for more.
Eyes narrowed, I pressed a hand to his chest. “Just a shower.”
78
Kat
It was not just a shower.
And we were late to the meeting.