“I can touch you forever, Lyra,” he pants, never stopping his relentless thrusts. “You were made for me.”
Yes,I think as that delicious pressure begins to build again.Yes!
His hand snakes under my hip, lifting it slightly, and the move makes him go even deeper, all the way to the hilt. And when his mouth latches on to my throat, I cry out. He bites and sucks hard, and it isn’t long before I’m vibrating, starting to shatter all over again.
“Gods!” I manage to squeak out. “Rowan! Yes…”
The pleasure hooks me with each of his deep and savage thrusts. I gasp when he withdraws and moan when he slams back in. I want it harder. Rougher.
I let the wild sensations crest and crash until I’m barely holding on. Every movement drags me deeper, until I’m shaking, lost, drowning in the bliss of it all.
And then, something ancient snaps into place.
I’m being claimed in body and soul, marked by him in a way that can never be undone. And he feels it too. I know it in the way his soul fractures and rebuilds, in the low sound he makes against my throat, in the way the forest seems to lean in around us.
As his wings stretch out, we’re both cast in shadow. He begins to move again, but this time with no rhythm. He’s thrusting into me in wild, frantic strokes. It’s enough, though, to set off another cacophony inside me. Screaming, my thighs squeeze together, entrapping his hips, and he groans low as he thrusts one more time and spurts inside me.
We stay like that for a long moment, his golden-brown eyes gazing into mine as the weight of what we just shared pushes down on us. And just like that, my heart breaks open beneath him and the world narrows to only us and the knowledge that whatever comes after this, there is no turning back.
Chapter Seven
I wake. Confused.
“What is it?” Rowan asks, making me jump. I push up onto my elbow and glance over at him still laying in the grass on his side.
The cloak lays around me to shield the world from my nakedness, and above us, the night’s blackness has wiped away the unnatural red of the sky. It sits uneasy on me.
“Did you take some of my soul when we…”
“Made love?” he asks, fingers dancing over the bare skin of my back. “No. That was us, the bond pulling us together, making it tighter and stronger.”
I’m not sure how I feel about that. Do I want to be bound to one who needs others? I may for a while, but no matter what he says, he’ll have to absorb another woman’s soul eventually.
“You mentioned the curse before,” I say, as a cricket sings. “That it could be broken. Is that actually possible?”
“Curses are meant to be broken,” he replies. “In one way or another.”
“Do you know how?”
He hesitates. “I…don’t.”
I huff out a quiet breath. “So you’re trusting that a way exists, even if you don’t know what it is.”
“I hope,” he says softly. “I always have. It’s the only thing that keeps me from surrendering to the darkness.”
That isn’t exactly comforting.
“But meeting you,” he adds, “has given that hope a new life. For the first time, the answer feels within reach.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips. Rowan is the opposite of Titus in every way.
Speaking of the monster, I glance to where his body once lay. The ground is empty now, save for the crushed grass, a faint imprint of his existence. Rowan must have moved him while I slept.
“Until then, you still need to feed,” I say.
“I’m not draining your soul,” he says, amusement running through his voice.
“Not me. Another innocent woman.”