Page 23 of Ravished By the Reaper

His magic flickers in his eyes and across his body, a shimmer of lightning and darkness all at once. “Forever,” he echoes with a thrust.

His shadows pulse, teasing my body as he pumps into me with the strength of a supernatural being. When he rolls my clit between two shadows, I shatter around him, my body going taut and tight, and still he takes me in slow, sure thrusts. He strokes deep into me, dragging against the places I need his touch most and drawing waves of ecstasy into one never-ending surge that has my core rippling with spasms that seem unending.

His shadows tighten on me, binding us together even as his slow circles on my clit threaten to trigger yet another orgasm. To the point I almost beg him for mercy.

Except he hesitates.

“I love you.” He says the words like a confession.

My heart flutters. There’s a vulnerability in this version of my reaper.

“Say it back,” he commands.

“I love you. I have for years. You are the best of my fantasies, come to life.”

The magic in his eyes sparks and flickers with violet lightning, the darkness in his shadows becoming a mist like smoke as he pulls a scream from my lips, as he spills himself inside me with his own release, as he sinks his fangs into the curve where my shoulder meets my collarbone.

The claim causes a blinding rush of euphoria that feels so much bigger than the burn of the bite. When he laps at it, sucking and soothing the bite, I surrender myself to his shadows, letting him hold me up.

We did it.

A connection stronger than sex, more hypnotic than any fantasy, deeper than anything I could have imagined settles between us.

Wren wraps his darkness around me as if he’ll never let me go. I give myself over to the tangle of shadows, to the tenderness of this new certainty. When he gently lays me on the bed, I whisper, “You’re mine now.”

“As you are mine. My love. My heart. My home.”

His home. I rest my head on his chest, tracing the charm on the bracelet he gave me. “I wish I could see your home.”

My vision blurs, the world around me goes cold, and the solid muscle beneath my cheek vanishes.

“Wren?” Panic shoots through me. “Wren!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wren

Hayden disappears from my hold, vanishing as though she has become shadow.

“Hayden?” My roar brings Maximus, Glenda, and all the ghosts.

“Where is she?” Glenda asks, flickering in a frantic pattern as though she’s searching multiple spaces at once. Or so terrified she can’t keep her form.

Maximus barks with one head, howls with another, and whines with the last.

The ghosts all talk at once.

“Quiet,” I demand. “Nothing could’ve gotten through the wards. Whatever magic took her?—”

“Pardon me, don’t rend me, Sir Reaper, but…” Bertie the Bard sweeps his turkey leg in an odd bow.

“What?” I snap.

“I read the matching contract Hayden signed with the demon.”

I donotwant to discuss Theodopolis right now. “Get to the point, ghost.”

“What if this is related to the mating magic mentioned in the contract? It seemed very important in the terms of the agreement?—”

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