Light enough to feel benign. Dark enough to command. To devour.
Let me in,a whisper into my thoughts.
Let me see it. Let me break it.
I jerk in Lucien’s hold, gasping at this new sensation, beautiful and obscene in the way his voice echoes inside my skull, his body claiming mine—and it rips a cry from my throat. “Y-you can speak into m-my mind? H-how…?”
“How?” His voice curls around the question like a hand at my throat. “By drinking you. By fucking you. By calling you home. And this is only the first surprise, little one.”
Heat spirals low and wild, the beginnings of an orgasm already clawing up my spine.
Then—
I hear another voice.
A slithering whisper that’s not mine and not Lucien’s.
He cannot save you. You aremine.
The sigil burns. I gasp.
Lucien snarls. “There you are.”
He thrusts harder, deeper, dragging a strangled moan from me.
Show yourself,he commands, even in the privacy of my mind.Face me like a real predator instead of hiding inside what’s mine.“She is not yours!”
The creature answers Lucien’s growl with a hit of scorching pain across my spine that almost folds me in half.
Lucien catches me, pulling me upright against him. His hand clamps around my throat, a restraint, a welcome anchor and a vicious claim.
“Don’t you dare lock yourself away,” he rasps, lips brushing my ear. “You belong to me. You give me every sound, every tremble. Let it feel you choosing me.”
He bites my neck in a fast, brutal, claiming. I scream, pleasure exploding through my veins as he drinks. And then…liquid erupts into my own mouth.
It takes a moment to realize that I’m tasting Lucien.
His blood floods my mouth from the punctured wrist he brings to my lips.
With a rabid moan, I latch on, feel instinct takes over. Then deep, pure magic.
Lucien groans into my skin. “That’s it, my love. Drink. Take everything.”
The bond snaps open like a star going supernova. Images of his hunger, his fury, his devotion pour into me.
So do the creature’s.
A vision of chains.
Of an altar.
Of witches chanting as they poured their coven-soul into me.
Of them whispering:If he comes for her again, we take him.
Lucien sees it too because now we aremerged.
His roar is wordless, primal and annihilating, and it tears through our joined mind.Over my dead eternity.
