Page 183 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

Starting right now.

“You made your choice.” I bind her to me with my shadows, remembering what she said the first time I touched her in this form.Prove it.Her playful taunt repeats in my mind, a teasing challenge I’ll never stop trying to meet. I tighten my grip until she lets out a sigh of submission. “Let me prove to you why it was the right choice.”

“Yes, Shadow Daddy.”

I can’t wait to claim this woman. She’s everything.

Minx.

Miracle.

Mate.

Mine.

Hayden

Wren wraps shadowsaround my arms, my thighs, even my hair to tug it so that I’m forced to tip my head back in surrender. Like this, I feel himeverywhere. He pins me against the van, and I push against his hold, testing the bonds while not wanting him to release me.

His warm breath against my throat makes me shiver. “Stay there while I fix the wards,” he orders.

He can demand whatever he desires. The promise in his voice tells me I’ll get what I want, whatweboth want in the end.

A swirl of his shadows lifts me in the air like I weigh nothing to him. His darkness cocoons mein heat, a sharp contrast to the cool metal at my back. The thin fabric of my shirt and panties seems so confining when all I can think about is pushing against him to show him how much I crave him, need him. The adrenaline rush from the fight with the revenants and our argument has me buzzing.

Turning his attention from me, he keeps me pinned while patching the wards where I drove the van through his beautiful designs.

My brain knows he’s doing this to protect me in case we haven’t seen the last revenant, and the artistry and detail of his warding sparks my curiosity. But the brat in me wants to demand he pay attention entirely to me. I squirm against his shadows, trying to force him to focus on me.

The shadows tighten, one slipping to rub against the cotton of my panties. “Stay. There.” The rumble beneath his words, the dark command in his voice makes me wet, so wet there’s no way he won’t discover it as he brushes back and forth over the fabric.

“I want?—”

“I’ll give you what you want. As soon as the wards are finished.” Despite the bossy, detached way he says the last, he continues teasing me with his shadows—a sweep beneath my panties, a pinch of my nipples, a stroke of my collarbone, a rougher hold on my hair.

My legs shake, and my knees threaten to buckle, but he holds me steady, toying with me while he painstakingly repairs eachline and curve. He drags my pleasure to the precipice of a climax, only to withdraw and leave me panting.

“Don’t you need to concentrate on the spell?” I ask, gasping past the godawful ache in my core so I might fake the same level of control he possesses.

“Spells are about intentions. Intentions are everything.” He keeps teasing me, using his intimate knowledge of my body to edge me again and again. “I intend to protect you, to fight for you, to love you for the rest of our lives.”

Love me.

He loves me.

No matter how restrained he might be in his sweet torture of me, his easy admission spirals round and round in me.

Instead of letting the ecstasy building inside me spark and blaze into the inferno simmering beneath my skin, he leaves me writhing and wanting. Sweat dampens my face, the nape of my neck. I drag my nails over his shadows, the van, my shirt, anything that might bring relief if I can just come. “Please, Wren.”

He rolls a lingering touch over my clit, and my core clenches as he says on a growl, “I intend to pleasure my mate, to cherish you, to worship you forever and a day. I will take my time. I will drive you as insane with desire for the rest of our lives as you have me for the last ten years. Because you are mine. Say it.”

“I’m yours.” It’s the truth, but right now, I’m pretty sure I’d say anything,doanything if he’ll simply stop teasing me.

He drags a shadow through my folds, dipping inside and spreading me open for him like he owns me until he taps myclit, and my body rockets like a fireworks show. My breathing goes erratic; my muscles twitch and tremble. His magic, his darkness, hiseverythinghas me drowning in him. In pleasure.

I tense from my toes to my jaw, and an orgasm breaks me apart as though I’ve shattered into a thousand pieces. Pieces he strokes and pets back together with a tenderness that feels like worship.

His eyes flash brilliant violet. A dark intensity I don’t understand shines from his gaze. “If you promise me forever, I’ll spend every day making you glad you did.”

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