Page 34 of Mated to the Mad Marquess

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Hrafn punched the headboard and awoke when the wood splintered. Her knuckles smarted. She hadn’t used proper form and now her thumb was throbbing. She sat up in bed, hoping to find her familiar close by, but the room was empty. The blankets were knotted messes on the floor. Her thrashing had likely disturbed Ezra, and he’d retreated to seek his rest elsewhere.

Not his fault, but a disappointment all the same.

Her mouth was dry. The burn of loneliness worked its way up her throat, stinging her nose and eyes. The first tears that broke free were hot on her cheeks. Her vision blurred.

Bathed in moonlight, movement drew her eye to the door. The shadowy form of her mate floated there, ethereal and intimidating. She swallowed hard.

“Malcolm . . .” In the bond, she felt the slow, steady thump of his heart slumbering in some other room. Her next breath was a shuddery whimper. This was Solis, she recalled, but she also knew better. He may go by another name at times, but this being was her mate. This was Malcolm. He’d told her as much in the prison. Malcolm was Solis. Solis was Malcolm.

He came to her side first in a glide. Then as he grew more solid, footsteps landed gently on the rug. She felt his weight shift the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” she told his soul, air rattling in her lungs. “I hate that I’ve hurt you. I really, really hate it.”

The shadowy arms came around her without accusation, without judgement. These caresses were somehow more intimate than anything they’d done in the daylight, more profound. She explored his form with tentative care, first his hair, then the front of his clothing, and for the moment she forgot that her heart was breaking.

It was all an illusion. He felt the same everywhere, warm and solid and velvety soft. But his touch didn’t feel like skin, and his hair didn’t feel like hair. His body wasn’t covered in fabric. He was just shadows. Just soul. Just darkness and sweet pressure. Malcolm’s tail unfurled, winding up her leg in that way it seemed to favor.

But then it just kept winding, tendrils growing longer and longer, wrapping her thigh in a downward spiral, over her knee, then her calf.

She let him comfort her, let him pull her close, pillowing her cheek on the velvety expanse that made his body. There was no heartbeat, just the steady thump of the bond inside her.

Hrafn wrinkled the edges of her oversized shirt. “I wish things were different. I really do . . .”

Malcolm pressed a shadowy finger to her lips. Then he caught one of her tears that had escaped, and he held it before her. The single drop glittered in the starlight. He put it in his mouth and sucked on it. Then he pressed those dark lips over hers. Pressure and softness and warmth. He tasted like night air. He laid them down on the bed together, on their sides.

Her wings gave a nervous flutter. Malcolm reached out and stroked the carpal edge. The shadowy fingers seemed to move on instinct. Warm pressure brushed over each plume, following them to the bend in the appendage. Gods, it felt good. She extended the wing to encourage his exploration.

His tail was moving again, coiling and uncoiling along her leg, stroking up and down the sensitive inner skin of her thighs.

The shadows expanded until she couldn’t see through them. She could only feel. Fingers brushed over her wings. Touches plucked at her buttons, pulling open her shirt. That wicked tail grew more daring. Hot pressure pushed between her legs. She opened to the invasion as tendrils of thick living shadow teased her flesh. Pleasure pooled there, and Malcolm spread the moisture from the top of her sex to her back entrance.

Hrafn blinked, disoriented by the complete dark. A kiss of satiny softness brushed over her eyelids comfortingly, and she relented, allowing herself to be stroked, to be tended to by this man of shadow that was all hands, all touch. She reached for him and felt more softness, more pressure stroking the pulse at her wrists, wrapping them in that mystery velvet, and pulling her arms wide, opening her to him. Malcolm’s hands cupped her thighs, then spread her legs, and his tail pushed farther inside her willing body.

Her back bowed, taking him deeper while more touch, more pressure, teased her ass. Fingers of shadow stroked between the crease of her backside, exploring the sensitive flesh without penetrating it. Her shirt was pulled open and pushed off her shoulders. Flickers of heat lapped at her exposed nipple.

And then he was moving over her, rocking her body, brushing heat against the needy bud at the crest of her thighs while finding sweet places inside her with those tendrils of darkness.

“Yes,” she whispered. She was climbing higher. The peak of pleasure was in sight, nearly in her grasp. A shiver broke out along her abdomen. Just a little further now . . .

And then Malcolm slowed down again. His tail began to retreat from her body. Her aching clit was abandoned.

“Don’t you dare,” she growled. “You terrible tease.”

Shefelthis amusement, the trickster, and she pouted at him.

Then all at once the pressure was back again. His mouth claimed hers. His tail filled her aching pussy to bursting. He shook the bed with his thrusts, and still the tender touches continued stroking her wings; teasing fingers at her backside played with her. He palmed both of her breasts until all of her was covered in satiny darkness. Hrafn rose to meet him, feeling plundered and glad for it.

When she orgasmed, her back left the bed. Her wings flared. She cursed in three languages—one of which was an invention of her own created right there in that moment. The tendrils shrank from her body, his tail retreated, returning to his usual size and shape, a replica of her mate in every way.

He put her bed back together, gathering the blankets and tucking her in, and then he climbed under them with her.

The shadows weren’t afraid of her thrashing, she realized. She could be as violent as she needed to be with them.

“Thank you, Malcolm,” she whispered to the dark.

The dark whispered back in a voice so faint she couldn’t make out the words, but they soothed her anyway.

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