Her hand caught the back of his neck and she pulled him towards her. Her mouth seized his, stealing his focus, sending pleasure blasting through him again that had him pressing deeper, shuddering as his cock slid into her and her heat encased the full length of him. He didn’t miss the way her breath hitched, and a flicker of her pain reached him, but it was gone in a heartbeat, replaced with the same bliss that rolled through him.
And then she pressed closer.
And he slid deeper still.
Definitely enough.
Gods, it was too much.
He held her backside in his right hand, pressed her against the tree with his body and eased out of her. She moaned, and it only grew louder as he slowly thrust back in. Her lips stilled against his. He breathed against them, hot air puffing back at him as he grew accustomed to being inside her, feeling her gloving him. She was so wet, so warm, so perfect around him.
He dropped his forehead to her shoulder as he thrust, struggling to control himself when an urge to take her, to find release inside her, rose inside him. She moaned each time their hips met, her body fluttering around his, clenching him at times in a way that had him close to the edge. He wanted to tell her not to do it, but gods, it felt good when she did, when she gripped him as if she didn’t want him to leave.
“Fuery,” she murmured, all the pleasure he could sense in her ringing in his name, spurring him on.
She liked the feel of him inside her, stretching her.
Claiming her.
He groaned and grunted when she tightened again, body fisting his shaft, stealing his breath. He clutched her backside harder and thrust deeper, angling his hips so he could drive more of his cock into her. He wanted every inch inside her, wanted to fill her up so she would never want another.
So she would be his forever.
Marked by him.
Wanting only him.
He shuddered and gasped as her tongue stroked up his neck, and pumped her harder, unable to stop himself as primal needs flared inside him, instincts that stole control and had him wavering on the brink of doing something he couldn’t take back or erase.
Something unbreakable.
Eternal.
His fangs punched long from his tingling gums and his senses zeroed in on her thundering heartbeat as he drove into her, her soft moans ringing in his ears together with the sweet rush of her blood.
He grunted and growled against her throat, gripping her harder and pumping her deeper, drinking those moans he elicited as he wrestled with himself, battling the instincts that battered him.
His mouth watered, thoughts of Shaia’s blood making his fangs ache.
He wanted it.
But he couldn’t take it.
Pain seared the left side of his neck, tearing a vicious grunt from his lips, and a thousand sensations bombarded him, throwing his head into a spin as his heart missed a beat and he froze, overloading and lost, struggling to comprehend what was happening.
Pleasure rolled through him, so intense it kept his mind scrambled, a combination of Shaia moving against him and something else.
Something that rocked him to his soul.
Her fangs in his throat.
She pulled them from his flesh, wrapped her lips around the wounds and sucked.
Hard.
It was over for him.
All control he had managed to claw together fled in that instant.
The feel of his blood rushing towards her, the feel of the connection blooming between them, and the emotions that coursed through it from her into him, was too much. His knees weakened beneath him and he had to lean his weight against her, pressing them both into the tree, to avoid collapsing as she drank from his vein.
And drank deep.
Her nails bit into his shoulders as she moaned and sucked harder, as if she couldn’t quench her thirst for him now that she had started, as if she would never get enough of him.
He would never get enough of her.
A bright blinding flash detonated inside him as the bond formed, triggered by her taking his blood, and their hearts fell into unison, his racing to match the beat of hers. She rocked on him, reminding him what they had been doing before she had tipped his entire world off its axis, and he growled as he drove her against the tree and thrust into her, his grip on her hip fierce now as his need to claim her mounted.
She would be his.
He couldn’t leave the bond incomplete, didn’t have the strength to do that when he knew that she wanted it.
He would claim her.
She writhed in his arms, her instincts flaring and need skyrocketing as his blood entered her system and the bond demanded completion. Her lips left his throat and seized his, and he groaned as he tasted his own blood in the kiss. It drove him on, until the need to claim her became a fierce roar in his blood.
He needed to bite her.
He pulled back, his gaze zeroing in on her throat.
He dropped his lips to it. Parted them as he thrust harder into her.
Sense cut through the roaring in his mind, a ray of light that brought with it a flicker of control. As much as he wanted to mark her throat, he couldn’t. Her parents didn’t know about them yet, and he was due to leave with the legion soon. If he bit her throat, they would see it, and he didn’t want to think about what they would do to Shaia while he was away, unable to protect her.
He pressed a kiss to her throat and savoured her sweet moan as he vowed he would bite her there one day.
But for now, her mating mark would have to be somewhere more private.
She growled when he pulled out of her and dropped to his knees before her, but it died on her lips when he pressed his to her left thigh. She gazed down at him, her lips painted sultry red with his blood, and moaned as she pressed her leg forwards, urging him to do it.
“Bite me,” she murmured, a throaty plea that he was all too happy to fulfil.
He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and sank his fangs into her soft flesh.
Her cry echoed around the canyon, rang in his soul.
He growled as the first drop of her blood hit his tongue, as sweet as ambrosia and more addictive than any drug. He withdrew his fangs, wrapped his lips around the wound and sucked, tearing another sweet cry from Shaia. Her blood flooded his mouth, slipped hot down his throat and lit up his veins like wildfire. He groaned and shuddered, hips rocking forwards as his cock grew harder, the air cool against it.
He wanted to be inside her again, needed it with a ferocity that stole his breath.
But he couldn’t tear himself away from her thigh, from her blood.
He knew the moment their bond completed, felt the link between them grow stronger and her emotions grow clearer, and heard her heartbeat fall out of sync with his, pounding faster as she writhed against him. He forced himself to pull away from her thigh and swipe the twin puncture wounds with his tongue to help them heal as he felt her need mounting, and his instincts pushed him to satisfy her.
His female needed.
He delved between her thighs, so swiftly that he stole a gasp from her as she went up on her toes and her hands flew above her head to grip the thick bark of the tree. She moaned as he briefly plundered her with his tongue, stealing a taste of her honey, unable to stop himself as his own needs rose. He needed her. All of her.
He shot to his feet, spearing her with his cock, and swallowed her moan in a kiss.
She grasped his shoulders and cried into his mouth as her body shook against his, her sheath quivering around his rigid length and growing more slick. He groaned and drove into her, his blood on fire with her release as it rolled through her and into him, and the need to give her another rushed through him.
He curled his hips, withdrawing almost all the way out of her before driving back inside, giving her every inch of him. Her moans mingled with his more animalistic grunts as his balls drew up, release rising to the base of his cock, and she kissed him. He focused on the feeling building inside her, the need he
could feel spiralling beyond her control again, determined to hold back somehow and bring her to another shattering climax.
Shaia took it out of his hands when her mouth left his and she sank her fangs back into his throat.
Stars winked across his vision as release blasted through him, a thousand tiny bombs that detonated to leave him shaking as he throbbed and pulsed inside her, spilling himself. She moaned and clenched him, sending a fiercer wave of pleasure through him, and he thrust into her, wanting more. Needing to do it all over again.
She tensed in his arms.
Her nails dug into his flesh.
Her cry filled his ears.
His own hoarse shout joined it as she quivered around his cock, milking it as a hot rush of honey scalded him, and pushed him back over the edge. He clutched her to him as he spilled again, throbbing in time with her, hard fast breaths matching hers.
He wasn’t sure how long he clung to her and her to him, both of them frozen in place.
Shaia moved first, pulling her nails from his flesh and sinking against him. She kissed him, freeing him too, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her, mind, heart and soul still struggling to come to grips with what they had done.
She had given herself to him.
He drew back, lifted his left hand and brushed the tangled strands of her black hair from her face as his eyes searched hers. Love shone in them, coloured with a touch of fear.
She feared losing him.
Never.
“I will come back to you, Shaia,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with the raw emotion burning through him, the need to reassure her and to remain with her combining with his love for her. “When I return… I am taking you with me… because… I love you, and I will be yours forever… and you are mine now.”
The colour on her cheeks darkened, and the love that shone in her eyes grew brighter, near-blinding him.
“I was always yours,” she husked, the warmth and love in those words touching his heart. “I always will be.”
She always would be.
Fuery opened his eyes as the dream faded, slipping from his grasp.
Her words echoed in his mind. In his heart. His blackened soul.
She had kept that promise.
He had broken his. He had left her, had travelled with Prince Vail and the legion to Valestrum, and he had never come back.
But she had waited for him.
His eyes slowly widened.
She was still waiting for him.
She was right there for the taking, if only he was brave enough.
His mate. His life. His light. She was still there for him.
The darkness surrounding him, gripping him, parted as that realisation went through him, cutting through it like a shaft of light to drive it back.
The inky tendrils were quick to try to seize him again, but he fought them as he pushed himself up, gritting his teeth against the inferno that swept through him in response.
Cold chased on its heels as he saw the black castle looming over him, obsidian mountains spearing the grey sky of Hell beyond it.
The scent of blood and entrails hung heavily in the stifling air.
He didn’t want to look.
He wanted to go back to that dream, ached to return to a time when the darkness had been only a seed inside him, not the monster it was now. He wanted to be that male again.
Because Shaia had loved him then.
She had given herself to him.
He forced himself to lower his eyes to the carnage that surrounded him.
A ring of bodies formed around him, broken and battered, stretching at least twenty metres in all directions.
The hope that had been building flickered and died like the light inside him, and left a single thought ringing in his mind, one whose answer felt as if it would spell life or death to him.
Could Shaia ever love a monster like him?
CHAPTER 19
Pain blazed through every inch of him, but Fuery forced himself onto his feet as he shut out the grim sight of the carnage that surrounded him. When he placed weight onto his left foot, fire blazed up his bones, and he clenched his molars. Something was broken in it. He eased his weight onto his right foot, and grimaced as he commanded his armour to peel away from his hands so he could check them.
Bruises littered his right hand. A vicious black and purple mark and grotesque bump in the middle of his left hand warned that he had broken something in that too. He swallowed, drew in a breath to steel himself and pushed his right thumb against the bump.
Agony, white-hot and searing, rolled through him and he threw his head back and roared as he forced himself to continue, to push the two bones back in line so they could heal.
The darkness threatened to sweep back in to seize him but something held it back.
Shaia.
He could feel the link between them as it grew stronger and drove light back into his heart, just enough to keep the darkness at bay.
He wanted to reach for her too, but couldn’t bring himself to do it when so much death surrounded him.
Death wrought by his hands.
The fight had been brutal, worse than his usual battles, and gods, it had been everything he had needed at the time.
But now?
He had emerged the victor, but it didn’t feel like a victory for him.
It felt like a victory for the darkness.
He had let it consume him again, had allowed it to steal control so he could only watch, a prisoner in his own body as he had taken the lives of his marks, another large group of demon mercenaries.
He didn’t remember passing out.
He only remembered the dream.
A dream that had brought light back into his soul, enough to purge the darkness from it again and give him the strength to wake, to claw himself up from the abyss once more.
Fuery lowered his gaze to his body, slowly growing aware of all the bruises beneath the tight black scales of his armour, and the cuts on his face and neck.
Gods.
He wanted to sink to his knees and remain there, wasn’t sure he had the strength to move, or the will.
He had never felt so weary.
So battered and bruised, and broken.
The light that echoed inside him pulsed brighter.
Fuery obeyed it.
He turned on his heel and trudged through the battlefield, boots slipping on parts of his foes as he picked his way through them, heading towards the portal he had taken to reach the stronghold. He lost track of time as he walked, his body struggling to heal his wounds, weak from his constant fight against the darkness.
It felt as if he was going to slip into it at any moment.
Only he wouldn’t come back this time.
He reached the portal near the mountains and stepped into it, and came out of the darkness in the town close to the guild hall.
Fuck, he wasn’t sure he had the strength to keep fighting, to go on existing like this.
It was taking its toll now.
He was weak, constantly on the verge of collapse, a slave to the darkness, and he was afraid of where he was going.
He feared the dark path he was treading.
He reached the arched entrance of the guild hall but didn’t stop walking. He kept going, following his feet.
His heart.
He needed to see Shaia.
He needed to see her, needed it in case this was the last time he came back, and in case Vail was right and she could do for him what Rosalind had done for his prince.
He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to become the beast all elves feared. He wanted to purge the darkness, to fight it and free himself of it at last, but he was bone-deep afraid that he wasn’t strong enough.
Could Shaia give him the strength he needed? Could she give him a reason to go on, to keep fighting? Could she do for him what Rosalind had done for Vail?
Gods, he hoped that she could, because he wanted that with all of his blac
k heart.
He wanted her back in his life, from this point forwards until the end of time.
Fuery slowly clawed himself back from the darkness as he limped through the village, tracking her scent that was ingrained in him, branded on his soul.
He ignored the innkeeper as he entered the three-storey building opposite the guild, feeling Shaia there. The male demanded to know what he wanted and Fuery drifted past him, tracking Shaia, drawn to her as if she was the light. He mounted the steps, following them as they turned, and didn’t stop until a door blocked his path.
He stared at it, fear rising inside him, together with a voice that whispered to turn away, because the female whose heartbeat he could hear on the other side of the door was going to make him leave rather than welcome him with open arms.
She was going to push him away.
Because he was a monster.
That heartbeat was steady, a soothing tick in his mind, calling to his.
It remained steady even as she opened the door while he still struggled with his desire to remain and the need to leave.
Her violet eyes were soft, as if she was pleased to see him, but there was a flicker of fear in them too. “I am glad you came.”
Was she?
The fear he could sense in her rose as she ran her eyes over him, and that damned voice urged him to leave now, before she could wound him.
She reached for him, and took his right hand in hers, and he could only stare at her as she pulled him towards her, into her room, and closed the door behind him.
Relief crashed through him, vanquishing his fears, and he almost sagged to his knees on the wooden floor.
Her soft smile as she rounded him kept him standing though, gave him strength and courage.
Gods, he knew he was a ghastly sight, and his sweet mate should have been horrified by his appearance.
Only she wasn’t.
She lured him away from the door, her hand gentle on his, her awareness of his injuries touching him deeply, more deeply than she could ever know.
“We need to get you cleaned up.”
Those words leaving her lips brought awareness with them.
Awareness that there was a large tub in front of the fire, filled with steaming water.
Unchained by a Forbidden Love Page 19