Page 197 of Under an Endless Moon

“Nothing, Raven. Nothing as good as this. You are the piece I’ve been missing.”

I turned my head toward him, taking his mouth in a fervid kiss as I arched my hips back, basically sitting on his lap as I ground against him, desperate to chase the feeling that swept through me like a windstorm.

A howling of pleasure that whipped through my body and wept in my ears.

“Otto…please. Yes…I’m…”

“I can feel it, Raven. Your sweet cunt gripping me tight. Can sense it. The way every inch of you glows. My moonflower. Most gorgeous fuckin’ bloom…shining in the darkness and leading me to the light.”

I came apart at that. The bliss breaking me in two.

A torrential downpour that gushed through me in a flashflood of rapture.

A desirous moan erupted with it, and Otto swallowed it down as he kissed and kissed me, his fucks hard as he gripped me against the fiery planes of his drenched flesh.

Pleasure throbbed and rolled, and Otto fully curled himself around me as he gave. I could feel its sparks. His own glow that burst wide open. Blinding bliss that ruptured the air and streaked through our bodies.

We both were panting and covered in sweat when the shocks finally stopped shooting through us. Otto pried me from the headboard, and I sagged against him when he picked me up.

He shifted and laid us down on the bed, facing each other.

Silence stretched between us.

An awareness.

A promise.

Just this knowing that we had no end.

“Happy birthday,” I finally whispered, no tease to my voice.

Otto reached out and ran his knuckle down the side of my face. “Best birthday ever.”

“I want to spend every one of them with you,” I admitted through the calm stillness that had taken over his room.

A soft puff of air escaped his nose, and he kept tracing his fingers over the contours of my face. “Have spent the last seven years wanting that, Raven. Wanting to belong to you. Wanting to be the lucky bastard who got to sleep next to you and wake up with you in his arms. The lucky bastard who got to love you and cherish you and give you everything in this world that you’ve ever wanted.”

“And the one thing I wanted was you.”

“Guess we spent a whole lot of time wishing for the same thing. And now, I’m gonna watch my moonflower glow beneath every moon and shine beneath every sun. Can’t wait to spend my life getting to watch you stretch those wings and soar.”

Euphoria singed through my being, scorching my heart and blistering my soul.

A dent furrowed between Otto’s eyes. “Just don’t ever want to be the one to hold you back.”

I raked my nails through the shadow that covered his jaw. “And what ever made you think you would do that?”

Those eyes had become a toiling, raging sea. Wrought with so much turmoil it was terrifying to contemplate their depths.

“Because of Sovereign Sanctum?” I asked, needing to understand every intricacy about him.

A heavy sigh suffused the air between us, and he kept caressing my face, though I was unsure which of us he was trying to give comfort to.

“Yeah. Because I always envisioned a better life for you. One above what we do.” He hesitated, then muttered, “Because of your brother, of course. But none of those things really had true bearing on my fear of giving into my love for you.”

“And what kept it from me?” I kept scratching my fingers over his jaw, letting them glide over his lips, my heart pinned to his as I waited for him to completely open up.

Shame wrenched through his expression. “This hatred inside me, Raven.”

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