Page 131 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

I choked and gasped when he pulled them out, and in a flash of movement Rune had me flipped onto my forearms and knees. He shoved my legs apart and entered me brutally as I arched. I let out a startled cry as he shoved my head down into the comforter and took me hard from behind.

“Such a perfect little slut,” Rune praised. “You’re taking me so well, Little Flame.”

I could still hear the hunger in his voice, the thirst that reached for me just like his shadows. I screamed at the sudden depth, the impossible fullness. His fingers, slick with my saliva, reached to rub my clit. He continued to cut the pain with pleasure as I re-acclimated.

“Every vampire and mortal in that dungeon wanted you, Scarlett. They all coveted what belongs to me,” he said with visceral wrath. “And as I watched them all watch you, all I could think about was punishing you for advertising yourself as unowned, unmarked, unclaimed. I would’ve gladly taken you in front of all of them. I would’ve shown all of Aristelle what a good little whore you are for me.”

I moaned, his words driving me higher. He’d paused, still inside me, as he drove me up to another orgasmic peak. I pushed back against his fingers, my face still pressed into the bed like Rune had willed. It was only when he’d forced me over another edge and I came undone on his hand that he continued his assault, more ruthless than ever before.

He grabbed my hands and pushed my wrists together on my lower back, holding them there as I gasped from the bruising grip. Every thrust had my legs shaking, my mind slipping into a pool of ecstasy, agony, and surrender that I didn’t know was possible.

Then he released my arms and pulled my torso up to his chest, treating my trembling body as if I truly was a doll.

A guttural, animalistic sound escaped his lips, and I felt another tenuous cord of restraint snap as he clamped down on my neck.

From there, I was nothing except Rune’s toy, existing only for pleasure. He maneuvered my body how he wished, drank from my neck, my breasts, the inside of my thighs. He stole my moans and screams just as greedily as he did my every orgasm. I was melting away, fading into Rune and allowing him to hold my life in his ironclad grip.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before my connection to my body faded and splotches reached my vision, my heart slowing and blood pressure plummeting. But Rune felt it too, and he was quick to clot every open bite, licking the blood that had idly leaked as he went. On the last mark, he was slow to flit his tongue against the stream of blood, his cock twitching inside of me as I continued to drift away in a sea of pleasure and pain.

With a growl Rune finished inside of me, his hand around my throat.

I’d thought that Rune and I had already rooted ourselves in each other as deeply as we could dig, but I’d been wrong. With my essence flowing into him, and his now spilling inside of me, we became corporeally bound just as inseparably as we already were in our souls.

60

RUNE

Icared for Scarlett tenderly, devotedly. She was now my most prized possession—my partner and my soul—the woman I wanted at my side when war finally washed up on Valentin’s gods-blessed shores.

I didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought, not even Sadie or Mason. Not anymore. My connection to Scarlett might’ve been intense and disorienting, but I found the inexplicable serendipity of it all the most beautiful thing about us.

As Scarlett leaned against me in my spacious shower, her back to my chest as I bathed her, I thought about my run-in with Mason in the secret tunnel from Odessa to the castle.

She’d looked at Scarlett in my arms with a coldness that had my fangs bared. Her eyes had homed in on the bandage around Scarlett’s limp calf.

“Perfect,” she’d said.

The sconces had illuminated Mason’s determined face, her voice echoing against the cavernous underground walls. Scarlett and I had been so close to the guarded, hidden castle entrance, so close to avoiding yet another tiresome conversation with my second-in-command.

“What?” I’d asked through a clenched jaw.

“Let me take that bandage,” she’d said. When I’d tightened my hold on Scarlett’s unconscious body with a warning glare, Mason had taken a step back and relaxed her features. “Let me bring it to a blood witch to verify her identity. Once we confirm she’s truly human, then I will stop. I will leave it. I will let you do with her what you wish without question. Keep her around until she dies of old age, turn her and make her one of us, I don’t care. I might even grow to like the girl, as I’m sure there’s a reason you’re so fond of her.”

I’d snorted, still rigid as I considered Mason’s request. If I let her do this, then she’d stop giving me a daily headache. There was no true risk to Scarlett. In fact, she was in greater peril if those closest to me didn’t trust her.

“Let me ensure she is who you think she is.”

The memory faded away, and I kissed the top of Scarlett’s head. I knew who she was, which is why I allowed Mason to walk away with her blood.

Her sinfully potent, irresistible blood that was pure sex, everything at once dark and sweet just like her. I’d truly never tasted anything like it. At first, I thought it tasted better because of how much I loved her, but the more I drank, the more I realized how undeniably special my Little Flame was. How special she’d always been.

She burned with a fire that would never die, and I was honored beyond words that she trusted me to tend to her radiance. To drink from it, pull her scorching, bright soul inside of my icy, shadowed one. That may have been the dirtiest, filthiest act of all.

I traced over the various bruises I’d left on her fair skin, and she sighed against my touch. I’d been much gentler with her than I ever would be again. She’d needed me to be, for her first time. And I would always put her needs above my own twisted desires.

I wasn’t only addicted to her blood. I was also addicted to her pretty little cunt, the way it clenched impossibly tight around my fingers and my cock. The sight of her collared and leashed. The curve of her body melding into mine. Her lips. Her adorable little moans. Those earth-shattering eyes.

I hadn’t told Scarlett yet, because I didn’t want to get her hopes up. But I’d received word from Talomon, a border district, of a promising lead on Isabella. A blonde woman who fit her description in one of Durian’s sex dungeons claimed she was from Crescent Haven. She was heavily drugged and watched intently along with several other women who were new to the scene. After saying where she was from, she’d been taken into a back room by multiple born, and hadn’t been seen the rest of the night. She hadn’t been seen at that club again either. But one of my shifter eyes tracked her scent back to a home belonging to Evangeline Naya, one of Durian’s wealthy inner circle descended from a powerful, ancient bloodline. Evangeline was extremely close with Liza and Frederick—back when he was still alive. If I hadn’t pushed the born out of power, all of these men and women would’ve been lords and ladies at court. They would’ve been Valentin royalty.

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