Page 156 of Taken By Shadows

No. Why would I want that?

I shook my head and pulled a little on my wrist restraints.

“I need to hear you say it.” Kaed looked like he was the one bound, straining against something holding him back.

He might have me tied to his bed—finally, I laughed to myself—but he had just let me know I had the power to restrain him. If I wanted him to stop, he would.

“Do. You. Want. Me. To. Stop?” Every word was punctuated by the thrust of his hips.

“No,” I breathed.

“Say it.”

“I don’t want you to stop.”

A single breath passed between us, but my heartbeat thundered in my chest as he moved to part my legs.

His hand hovered over me. Not yet touching me where my body was screaming for it. Was he uncertain? Did he want this?

His eyes fell to me as I writhed against the hold of his shadows on my wrists. I wanted this. I needed this. And I begged him to read that in my eyes because no words at all could form with the desire for him choking me.

Finally, his fingers landed on me, pulling the fabric of my panties aside, even as my skirts still covered me. A strangled and shuddered breath fell from him as I coated his fingers with my arousal as soon as they brushed my entrance.

Our eyes locked and something rumbled between us in the air. I could feel it pulsing in his magic as it wrapped around me. Please I wanted to beg.

“Kaed …” I pulled uselessly on the power that held me as my hips reached for him.

And then the same finger I’d sucked on when he’d caught me in the glasshouse pushed inside me until every bit of my desire flooded over him.

My body arched at his command, his touch moving inside me, and I lost all sense of time and words.

It took nothing for me to shatter. I had wanted to feel him for so long that my body was wound tight. It felt like forever and no time at all before the constellations overhead were exploding all around me, and a moan shot across the skies as I found my release. I broke with the slightest touch from him.

The second I came undone, my hands were free, and I peered up to see a ravenous look cross Kaed’s face. As though drawing my wave of pleasure from me had just awoken a part of him, not satiated it.

For a moment, I didn’t move; I just relaxed into the warmth of the stardust in my blood.

Kaed’s shadows played with the air around me, and I felt him want to move to keep me here. Heat flooded my body again at what he’d just done to me and threatened to drag me back to bliss.

He sat up as my eyes focused on him, though it took a minute with everything swimming inside me. His lips were red, his eyes wild but then he buried whatever lust was gathering behind his eyes and locked it away.

“I’m not watching you parade yourself into a room full of people—half of whom probably want to hurt you.” That seemed like an overstatement. “I can’t let you attend the Seeds and Starlight Celebration.”

Kaed giving me pleasure had been welcome and entirely unexpected, but he had just killed the mood with that overbearing comment.

“Let me?” I sat up, fixing my skirts around myself and I stood up from bed. “You said I was free to leave. That means I’m free to make my own decisions, Kaed.”

He groaned as his shadows trailed after me like discarded streamers.

“I am going to that party.”

Kaed sighed so heavily I thought he might collapse into the bed. “I’ll remember this if you’re going to insist.”

“Remember what?”

His eyes stayed fixed on the mess of sheets I had left in my wake. “You. My bed. Tied down. I didn’t say it would be just once.”

I swallowed, and my blood vibrated through me.