Page 59 of Grabbed By the Guard

He sucks in a breath as I grab him there next, angling him until the head of his cock is tucked inside of my heat.

Then I meet the strained yet hopeful look on his shadowy face.

“If you don’t want to do this, tell me. Not with your essence. With your words. I know you’ll never deny me, and I want you to know that I’m not gonna do that to you, either. But if you don’t want me to fuck you right now… to promise myself to you… then tell me. I’ll find another way to get the chains off and get you out of here.”

I mean it. I need to hear him say the words. I need to know that it’s not his demon instincts that have him eager to bury himself inside of me, or the promise of sex that makes him want to take a mate.

Glaine palms my ass cheek with one hand. With the other, he lays his palm on the small of my back, pushing me gently at the same time as he jerks his hips, filling me halfway with his shadow dick before he nuzzles his chin on the top of my hair.

“I love you, my Billie,” he repeats. “And I’ve made you the mate’s promise in my heart every second of every day since the distrust in your eyes turned to affection. You say to use my words. Then I shall.” I’m fully seated on his cock, stretched out deliciously as he dips his chin lower, rubbing it along my temple. “My soul will be yours.” A kiss to my cheek as he withdraws about an inch of his cock before thrusting back up into me. “My heart is in your hands.” His moves his hand from my back, slipping it between our bodies. He holds my breast, squeezing it just enough to have me gasp loudly… or maybe that’s the sincerity in his words as he finishes his promise: “Our lives will be forever intertwined. I give myself to you. I give you everything.”

On the word ‘everything’, Glaine pulls out halfway, then slams back in. I bounced on top of him, digging my nails into his chest.

“Yes,” I whisper, arching my back as I press my groin against his, getting as close as possible. “Yes.”

He stills for a moment. “But that’s my promise. You’ve had it all long. Without your words?—”

Oh. Right. I was so distracted by how good that felt, I forgot this wasn’t just sex for fun. We’ll have plenty of that, but this is different. It’s important.

So, clinging to Glaine, tilt my head up and repeat everything he just said to me.

The second I do, something snaps into place. And though I’ve seen firsthand what a truly demonic demon looks like, I get a glimpse of it in my demon when he groans, then spins on his heel, searching for somewhere to lay me down.

The cot is narrow and small. It could never fit two figures side by side, even if one is a measly human. But with me on my back, and Glaine using one leg as purchase on the floor to pin me to the bed… we fit well enough.

“I knew it,” he says, panting softly as he quickens his strokes, rocking into me as though knowing that our bond won’t be completely finalized until he nuts inside of me. “All along, I knew you were meant to be my mate.”

I grin up into the focused face of my demon. Everything, from those vivid green eyes to the double pair of horns that I will never allow him to hide again, belongs to me. No one else. And maybe that makes me selfish to think like that in this moment, but that just means that the two of us were meant to be all along because, well, isn’t he doing the same?

We’ll have to figure out how to get out of here. Now that we’re bonded mates, Duke Haures has no reason to keep Glaine in the dungeon, and if it turns out fucking in the cells is frowned upon, I’d rather us be on our way before I find that out. The shadows are hiding everything that counts in case a guard does come to check on us, but at the rate that Glaine is racing toward his orgasm—and his shadowy claw rubbing my clit to help me on my way—he might be expecting them to pop their horns in soon.

For now, though? I enjoy this moment while it lasts. After all, it’s only the beginning of forever—and after everything we’ve been through since I was grabbed by the guard, we definitely deserve it.

EPILOGUE

MEANWHILE IN MAVRO…

Haures tilts the crystal crown on his head, nestling it against the base of his horns, a small smile tugging on his lips as another bond snaps into place.

It took the first hundred years of his existence to learn how to control his power. To ward against the crowded village he was born into, the odd colorless demon left as a sacrifice to the shadows. Only the shadows were even more afraid of him than his fellow demons, and he stayed with his adopted kin until he knew that he would do better if he found solitude where the bonds didn’t pluck at his white skin constantly.

For the first hundred years, he built the ward. For the next hundred years, he built a home in Mavro.

By the time he was three centuries old, he’d challenged the previous ruler—King Yelios—for his crown and his throne, taking both back the Mavro after Haures triumphed over Yelios…

That was two millennia ago. To this day, Haures wears the same crown, parks his rump on the same throne, and he lords over the demon realm for the same reason as he has done for the ages before: because it makes him the most powerful Sombra demon in the entire realm.

And he clings to that power because of her.

He waited two thousand years for her.

He made the arrangement he had with the doppelseers because of…

Haures glances down at his mate. She’s curled up against him, her naked back nestled against his side, her tanned skin and black hair standing out against his starkly pale coloring.

As always her nose is in a book. Even after he had her keening from pleasure, panting his name, once he finished and tucked her against him, she stretched and yawned and reached for another book from her bedside table.

His mate hungers for knowledge. She thirsts to learn. Susanna loves him—the gods know he’s so fortunate that she does—but after these years together, he knows that she’d give up the palace, the power, and their titles in an instant if given the choice so that he wouldn’t feel the need to hide her in order to protect her… but she could never give up her access to the royal library.

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