Page 60 of A Crown of Darkness

And Wren kissed him back, returned his passion in equal measure, just as she had always done. Right from the start, right from the first time he held her and kissed her and had lost his mind with desire for her. This was what he wanted. Her in his arms, his lips on her skin.

The gown tore under his hands, the fabric ripping with a noise that was drowned out a moment later by her moan of need, which tangled with his name. Her head fell back, exposing the long line of her throat and he kissed her there, his mouth exploring her, his tongue on her flesh until she writhed against him.

She surrendered to him.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. Something deeply ingrained in him told him that. He belonged to her, hers to command, hers to do with as she wished. He had given himself to her body and soul, to the Nox and to Wren and…

But Wren was not the Nox. Not really.

She was his beloved, his light, his dream. She was the one thing that kept him sane. She was his everything.

His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs caressing the nipples until they hardened to peaks, which he captured in his mouth. She arched, her hips pressing to his as if urging him onwards. Lowering her back onto the bed, he tormented her body, every noise she made spearing through him, making his desire climb higher.

He wanted to hear her pleasure, to make her cry out. He wanted her shaking and desperate against him. He wanted her body to ache for him until she couldn’t stand it any longer. That was the way he felt all the time.

‘What would you do with me?’

He would love her. He would protect her. He would try in every way to make her happy, to make her fulfilled, to keep her safe and let her be…let her be whoever she would be. Not the Nox, not a queen, not a princess or a goddess.

She was Wren. Just Wren.

And she was everything.

Wren opened to him, her body his, his name on her lips. He sank into her, filling her, and stilled, just marvelling.

She lay beneath him, her hair spilling all around them on the bedclothes, her eyes wide with need, pupils huge as her desire consumed her. One hand gripped his shoulder, and then fell back beside her head, the long elegant fingers curling. Strands of her hair wound about her wrist and her palm. Finn felt her fingertips trace patterns along his side, where the scars of the shadow kin bite still marked him, and then she released him entirely.

Wren arched her hips to him and he began to thrust into her, each movement a torture of the utmost pleasure.

His. She was his.

Completely.

He wanted to savour this, to cherish each and every moment, to fix it eternally in his memory, that she was his, that she gave herself to him without any conditions or complications. That he didn’t have to obey her, or worship her.

That it was something he wanted. She was what he wanted. It wasn’t an obligation but a wonder.

The dark and endless shades tangled in her hair moved, drawing the shadows around them into its lengths, absorbingthe magic of the Nox and making it part of her. Wren opened her mouth, his name the only sound she could make.

His body tightened, a tingling in the base of his spine warning him that any moment now he’d lose that control he clung to and then?—

He didn’t know where the light came from. There shouldn’t have been any light left in him. The Aurum was trapped and he’d given himself over to the Nox.

But suddenly everything was made of light. It roared through his body like a firestorm, blinding him, light which came from everywhere, bright and brilliant, every colour and every hue, all of it sparking along his nerves and rippling beneath his skin.

Finn threw back his head and cried out.

All around them the ground shook, the walls trembling. Lightning arced in the air and Finn knew none of that. He knew only that all-consuming, blazing glory.

CHAPTER 34

WREN

Finn’s touch was different. Determined and knowing, but still so gentle it felt like he was going to drive her out of her mind. But this time he took what she offered and Wren let him. She wanted him to know that she was his, as much as he was hers. That this went both ways.

The greatest pleasure lay in giving him everything he could desire. She had tasted his submission and it was sweet indeed, but it wasn’t everything. Her lover was strong and skilled, he knew how to make her cry out or sigh, and he knew every nuance of sound in between. There was no restraint this time. He held back nothing in deference to her.

It was more than she had ever imagined. Finn filled her, surrounded her. The weight of his body moving against hers stimulated every part of her. Somewhere deep inside her he touched some place of pleasure which robbed her of sanity and she cried out his name. Light grew inside her, light which could not be contained. The shadows too, all that darkness that was part of her, reached out for him. She held it back, denied it the control it so craved. She pulled the shadows from him, back into herself. Her hair coiled around her limbs, holding her back from reaching for him, the Nox inside her howling with need. It didn’tmatter. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t let it take Finn again. Not her Finn.

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