Page 66 of Below the Shadow of the City

My underwear rip open with little resistance, he’d done me the kindness of stocking extras at his place since this was now a routine of his.

“Look at you,” he growls with a smirk. “Already dripping for me.” My thighs clench, and I have no snarky comments to say in rebuttal. He drags a teasing claw along my slit, eliciting a whimper that I attempt to cover up. He smiles and shakes his head as he bends his finger and circles his knuckle around my clit. With an impish grin, he meets my gaze and licks his finger clean before firmly placing his hands on my hips. The force of his clasp pins me to the bed, my twitches suppressed by his bulking arm muscles. I whimper a bit at the mere feeling of being pinned beneath him.

His licks are slow and intentional, back to front with his wide, flat, and rough tongue. I’m still forced flat on the bed, and each motion he offers with his mouth bucks my hips under his leathery palms. With his desperate exhales I feel the heat of his breath practically curl up inside me and make a home. I’m rapidly chasing an orgasm just from the way his tongue circles itself around my clit like an anxious animal pacing to find somewhere to rest.

Each thrust of his tongue brings a wave of pleasure that rocks my entire being. From above my hips his eyes narrow, and in this second he looks as ferocious a creature as ever. He bites his lip and groans with the motions. Instinctively, I reach for him, and he expects I’ll grab his horns for stability, instead I hold my hands on his cheeks. His beastly nature breaks into a grin, a chuckle erupts that’s mixed with a moan and a growl, a sound so Maddox it’s like music. I shake with an orgasm and he pulls himself out from between my legs and against my body.

He rumbles a purr against my chest as I’m wrapped against him. My hands burrow deep into the soft fur around his neck. I know his body well enough now to know what each piece of him feels like. His mane is silky and soft, his neck fluffy and thick, his cheeks and ears velvety, and the rest of him is somehow a perfect combination of all of it. At night when I’m alone in my bedroom I shut my eyes and try to remember how every inch of him feels. His heat and his touch are permanently imprinted on me, making any absence of him that much harder to deal with.

Traits I initially had been startled by are now incredibly comforting. It’s strange, but I can’t picture him any other way. There’s no one hiding beneath his fur, or other form to shift into. There’s only Maddox. Perfectly wonderful, oddly beautiful, stupidly sexy Maddox.

Things I never thought possible are now things I can’t imagine no longer having. The way he holds me like I’m weightless and how right now as he embraces me he’s so big that his arms cover most of my torso. This very purring that hums deep in his chest when our bodies are close is a wordless reassurance of how he feels about me. In a way I can’t entirely explain, it’s like his more animalistic traits make this all feel more real somehow. When he growls with primal desire when we’re in bed or when he purrs with contentment in the afterglow of our lovemaking, there’s no question as to whether or not his reaction is authentic.

His muzzle burrows deeper in my neck and his hands travel to my ass, they grip each cheek just tight enough that I can feel the slight pinpricks of his claws below me. I sharply inhale then bury my own face into his neck, surrounding myself in his softness and pine scent. We’re intertwined like a vine wrapping around an oak tree. He kisses along my shoulders and neck, each one savoring my taste.

“Maddox,” I whine, “am I crazy for feeling like you were made for me?”

“Not even a little,” he chuckles in reply. “I’m yours and you’re mine and we’re perfect for each other.”

His thumbs track along my nipples and I repeat with a gasp, “I’m yours. You’re mine.” That statement seems to drive him wild, because his cock is immediately in his hand and dragging precum along my slit.

“You’re mine, Maddox, and I need you to fuck me, fill me, knot me,” I moan.

“As you wish,” he answers and grabs my waist and flips me on top of him.

I straddle his waist, dropping myself centimeter by centimeter onto his cock. When it eases into me, it nearly fills me past my breaking point. I groan out his name, and he guides my hips to slide it out of me as I’m needy for more of him. Claws dig into my ass as he holds onto me with a vice grip.

My thighs tremble as I glide in and out. He’s jutting his hips with force and circling his claw around my clit. The sharp pain blurs into pleasure and I bite my lip to keep myself from screaming.

Quickly this rollercoaster is ascending to its precipice, and every move he makes brings me closer and closer to climax. He’s mine, I’m his. We’re moving together as one, we’re both feeling this passion as one. Never in my life have I felt so interconnected with a body.

I let the crashing orgasm wreck me entirely. He places a hand on my shoulder to keep me steady as I shake above him and he finishes inside me. His knot plugs me as I collapse atop him. My entire body trembles and I use his torso as a pseudo bed for myself. He’s mine, I’m his.

CHAPTER 27

Maddox lays on his back with one arm behind his head and the other wrapped around me as I lay across him. It’s this precise moment that I want to capture forever. The warmth of his body, the cool darkness of his room, the way I always feel loose and limber after we fuck.

The afterglow is bliss, I curl up closer into him and rest my head on his chest. I listen to his heart beat and the rhythm of his breathing while I close my eyes for a moment and take it all in. I still worry that somehow one day I’ll wake up and realize it was a complete hallucination.

His fingers slide up from my ass and he drags his claw in circles around the small of my back. Music quietly plays in the background, delicately soundtracking this dalliance.

He traces the shell of my ear, heat swiftly inching up my body to the point where I’m downright positive my ears are vermillion. I didn’t think I could flush more than I already am, and even the slightest touch from him, despite his dick being firmly lodged inside me, sends a shiver down my spine.

I reach out in turn, rubbing his velvety ears between my thumb and forefinger in a way that’s become so comforting for me. It’s a small piece of him that’s reserved just for my touch in these sweet intimate moments.

We’ve had more of them as of late. The flickering sparks of our earlier encounters have turned into a steady, warm flame. When I leave he kisses me and says the softest, sweetest goodbye. When I told him I needed to remake the chocolate torte and I showed up last minute on a Monday, he gleefully opened the door and allowed me to scribble changes to my recipe in a frustrated huff while he read on the couch. My mixer has a dedicated corner on his countertop, and my supplies have slowly overtaken his storage.

The second time I’d come over to bake I told him his tools were subpar, and he immediately came to my apartment with me to gather my own as a replacement. We snuck through the halls together, he dodged passersby and stood twiddling his thumbs in my living room as I hastily tossed items into a large bin. Which, of course, he carried down back to his place without a singular complaint.

He’s deep in thought now, I notice his jaw twitch as the words marinate. His choice of words are always hand selected and thoughtful when they need to be, despite his impish inclinations otherwise.

“When I was a kid my grandparents had told me about this old fae belief of fated mates,” he says softly. “It was thought that biologically you would know when you’d found the one you were supposed to be with. I’d written it off as old folklore, something that generations before would use as an excuse to coerce someone into marriage. Our kind had a bit of a history of trapping women in castles. Sigrid, there’s something about you, that the very moment I’d met you, I knew you were meant to be mine. There was this magnetic pull to you, as though I physically couldn’t stop it. And after all these years of writing off these antiquated ideas as complete nonsense, I think they’ve been proven correct.”

“…you think I’m your fated mate?” He’d brought something to light that I had yet to even consider. Though I’d been born without a molecule of fae blood in me, there was a way that I knew Maddox was the one. The times I ran I always wanted to turn around and go back to him. The way I could never get him off my mind. The nights I laid confused about why I’d been so drawn to this literal monster immediately made sense.

I’d been quietly ruminating on the idea too long and he quickly stammers to clarify, “I know, I know, it sounds like something you’d read in a fantasy novel. And maybe the old folklore is a bunch of bullshit but⁠—”

“No, no, I think I understand,” the idea brought about a sense of relief in a way. As silly as it sounded, maybe there was literal magic to whatever was between us, and maybe it was fate that brought me into the laundry room late that night.