Page 64 of Shadowed

Twelve seconds for the physical tumblers. Forty for the ward—he's layered it differently, the shadow-patterns tighter, and my fingers read the new configuration the way they read a difficult fence. The palace dims its lamps around me. Not helping. Watching.

The lock opens. The ward dissolves. I push the door.

His chambers are dark. Shadow-soaked, the walls breathing with the slow pulse of the court's deep magic. The window casts faint purple light across the stone floor. He's standing at the window—the outline of his wings folded, the pale fall of his white hair, the reflection of his eyes in the glass.

He knows I'm here. The bond told him three corridors ago. He doesn't turn around.

"You picked the lock."

"Yes."

"You could have knocked."

"I know."

Now he turns. His eyes find me in the dark—lightless black, the pupils I still can't locate. His shadows flatten against the walls. Not reaching for me. Waiting. Reading.

I stand in his doorway and I let him read.

The heat is here. Not the crashing wave of the first time or the three-day fight of the second. A low thick pulse between my hips, building since I sat in the silver garden this afternoon and pressed my hands against my thighs and sat with what I've become.

I'm wearing the collar. The high one, dark fabric, stiff. Not hiding the mark—the mark is mine now, the shadow-patterns at my throat shifting and alive, and I'm not ashamed of it. The collar is armour. The last layer between who I was and who I'm becoming.

I reach up. Unfasten it. Pull the fabric away from my throat.

The mark flashes in the purple light. Dark, shifting, his pattern written into my skin. His shadows surge—one uncontrolled pulse toward me, quickly reined.

"I want everything tonight." My voice is level. The fencing voice. "All of it. Whatever you've been holding back."

His composure cracks in two places. His shadows flood three feet toward me before he pulls them back. His cock—the outline pressing against his trousers, the heavy prehensile curve already straining the fabric—twitches.

"Lilith."

"I picked your lock." I step into the room. Close the door behind me. The click of the latch is louder than it should be. "You have locks. I pick them."

His control breaks.

The shadows hit me like a wave—not violent, not gentle, a flood of living dark that wraps my ankles and climbs my thighs and circles my waist. I walk into it. Through it. Toward him. My hands find his chest—bare, he sleeps bare, the grey skin cool under my palms—and I press.

His heartbeat. Fast. Not the measured pulse of a male in control. The hammering of something old and desperate and barely leashed.

"Everything," I say again. My palm flat over his heart. "The shadows. The wings. The thing you do with the —" I stop. Start again. Clinical. "Your cock. The way it moves. Let it do whatever it wants tonight."

His groan is low. Torn. His hands find my hips—grip, lift—and I'm against the wall with my legs around him before I finish the sentence.

His mouth finds mine. Not the fight-kiss of last time. Something hungrier. His tongue traces my lower lip and I open for him and the kiss goes deep and his shadows strip me—shirt, trousers, everything—and his cock presses free against my belly, heavy, the prehensile tip already curling toward me.

I reach down. Wrap my hand around him. The velvety surface pulses against my palm and the tip curls into my grip and pre-release beads hot against my wrist.

"I chose this." Against his mouth. My hand strokes once, base to tip, and his hips jerk. "Not the heat. Not the bond. Me."

His shadows flood my throat. The cool collar—tighter than last time, tight enough that my air narrows immediately and the rush goes straight between my legs. My cunt clenches around nothing. Slick runs down my inner thigh.

"Then take it." His voice rough. Wrecked. "Take everything you picked for."

His cock pushes in.

The stretch—God. Every time. The prehensile curve finding the angle that whites my vision, the thick base opening me past the point of language. I'm full. Pinned to the wall with his cock inside me and his shadows at my throat and his hands on my hips and I chose this, I picked the lock, I —