Page 49 of The Edge of Darkness

He tugged my head to the side by my hair, exposing my neck to him. “Tell me what you want, my love,” he said, licking a line from my collarbone to my jaw and sending shivers rippling across my chest.

“I want . . . your darkness.”

His hips halted and he lifted his head. When his eyes met mine, they pulsed with a feral need. A mechanism within him had been triggered, unlocked with my words.

Ever since Benmoor, he seemed different in a way that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. He was saying all the same things, but his actions were slightly off. It was as if he was warring with something inside him. Something that was fighting to take over.

His lips parted as if to speak, but his hands moved first, and he flipped me onto my stomach so quickly that I gasped. The darkness that I asked for seemed to take control of him, and it sent a thrill through me as he grabbed hold of my hips and drove himself deep.

He grunted in satisfaction, then in a breathy rasp, he said, “You are a goddess.”

I grinned at his words.

His hand gripped my neck, pulling my head back to him as he leaned forward to my ear. “Tell me you’re mine.”

The mix of pleasure from what I felt between my thighs, coupled with the dominating grasp he held on my neck, made me sprint toward release. I was burning from the inside out. Burning with pleasure, aching with need, succumbing to ecstasy.

“I’m yours,” I said.

His shadows seeped out from his shoulders and wound around me, caressing my skin and making me writhe before him. I felt him everywhere all at once. Every inch of my body was wrapped in his shadowy embrace as his hands held me steadily.

I had the fleeting thought that I needed to have control over my emotions as I approached my climax, so I willed my power to stay down, but when a shadowy tendril coiled around the aching bud at my core, just above where Niall was still gloriously sliding in and out, I lost focus. There was nothing more I could do as I became overwhelmed by the sensation.

The shadow flicked the sensitive area ever so lightly, over and over, until I was crying out at the intense ecstasy and gushing where we were joined.

To my surprise, my power obeyed and stayed tucked away. I didn’t believe it at first, and I waited for some sort of light or energy to burst forth from me as a delayed reaction. But it remained calm, despite my emotionally heightened state.

I sank forward onto my elbows when Niall finally let go of my neck, but instead of finishing himself, he pulled out, and brought my hips up to his face. His tongue indulged in the slickness that seeped from between my thighs, before sucking on that same spot that the shadows had focused on. An intense pulse shot down my legs, and I quivered against his mouth, but after a few more movements of his tongue, I was climbing toward oblivion once more.

He sent me over the edge again, savoring my pleasure on his lips, then he lowered me back to the bed, and promptly slid back inside me to the hilt.

I moaned at the feel of him spreading me open again, too strung out and floating amongst the stars in my mind as I reveled in pleasure. He could do this all night if he wanted to, and I’d let him. I was his to take over and over again, as much as he pleased.

“You’re mine,” he said as he pounded into me, seemingly reading my thoughts. And with one last thrust, he pumped his release inside me with a guttural groan, and his shadows flowed out around us like waves crashing onto the shore.

I gathered my breath next to my mate.

I wanted nothing more than to just lay tangled up with her for all eternity. My entire body shuddered as my shadows returned to me, disappearing beneath my skin.

My mind was calm for the first time in days. Auren had that effect on me from the very first moment I’d seen her lying amongst the tree roots, utterly exhausted.

The Woodlands were the last place I would have ever thought I would find my mate. And at Elandrew’s Lumeri nonetheless.

Every year, the High Lords extended invitations to one another out of respect, and for many years before this one, I had routinely declined the majority of them. But this time had been different. Something had nagged at me from within. Like a stubborn whisper, praying on my heart, telling me to accept the invitation. I hadn’t stepped foot in Elandrew in decades, and yet I’d made last minute plans to attend Lumeri, all in order to find out what the tugging on my soul was about.

And gods I was thankful that I did.

I’d arrived early, catching Killian completely off guard. And then I’d found myself standing on the steps to The Woodland House, staring out into the woods. Soon after, I found myself at the footfalls of The Veil, scouring the damp land for what felt like a tether to my very soul.

When I saw Auren lying against the roots of that tree, I was overcome with a mix of emotions—curiosity, longing, fear . . . The last one struck me. I didn’t know who she was, but she looked like she was dying, and that had sent a pang through my chest. And the feeling—that thrumming—was something I’d never felt before. It overpowered, thrilled, and frightened me at the same time.

I had never encountered a human in all my years. She seemed helpless . . . or so I thought. And she was on our side of The Veil. That fact alone had set off more alarms in me than the pull I felt to venture out into the trees in the first place.

Aremis’s Aura had come with me. I had been about to speak to it over my shoulder, to ask him how this was even possible, but then Breck had shown up and all my plans went to shit.

The panic that flooded Auren’s eyes when that tree limb snapped behind her had me wanting to scoop her up and take her straight to the mountains, away from Killian’s greedy grasp. But the more I watched her, the more I got the sense that she could take care of herself. And though it killed me to leave, I promised myself that I would find her again. Something within me had already decided that fact. I knew for certain that Breck would take her to Elandrew, and it wouldn’t be hard for me to find her from there. I’d momentarily questioned my own sanity as to why I was even so amused with a human in the first place. But then I found myself following her scent through the hallways at The Woodland House on my way to Lumeri, and fuck if I couldn’t keep myself from being nosy.

The door to her chambers had been left unlocked. She had already been escorted to the event. So I let myself in and perused—lifted the lid on a wooden box that had been left on her bed, examined the craft of the sword that was propped against the bedside table. Before I could browse further, though, the door handle turned, and I vanished, leaving the weapon against the fireplace hearth.