Page 84 of Shadowlands Omega

Her eyes are large when she blinks at us in disbelief. “My dear, sweet, sweet children…” She shakes her head and wipes amber liquid from her bottom lip. “I do not even know how it is possible that you have not heard.”

I start to get a sick, sick, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and I no longer feel so confident as I whisper, “Heard what?”

“Ruby City has already fallen.”

22 | Yaron

The Sea Witch

Something softly wakes me, a movement against my temple.But just as quickly as it comes, it retreats, leaving me restless. Consciousness comes upon me, though I rebel against it because awake now, I do not feel well. I do not feel well at all. My skin is hot and itchy and my scalp feelstight.I’m erect, like I’ve been stuck in a whorehouse all night and been told to watch but not allowed to touch anything. And in this nightmare, every fucking whore is Kiandah.

I reach for her instinctively, a desperation luring me towards the idea that she isn’t there, that she won’t be there, that she left in the night without me, but my hand comes down on warm, smooth flesh, an arm much thinner than mine but just as powerful. Maybe more so. I know I took her too roughly last night and shouldn’t take her again but I’m going to have to. Nothing could stop me.

I roll towards her and don’t bother opening my eyes. I lean into her mouth, finding it instinctively in the darkness behind my eyelids, and I kiss her roughly.

And I jerk back just as roughly.

The smell.

My eyes fly open and see her face. Her lips are mouthing words that look likemy Lord,but I don’t give a fuck what she is trying to say to me.

Thesmell.

Not an unpleasant smell, to be sure, but one decadent and divine. Spices and wine mixed in with the natural aroma of her skin, a scent utterly incapable of being replicated by anyone else, but…she didn’t smell like this when we fell asleep last night.

She’s already speaking, but I speak over her, voice a dangerous and unsteady pitch, “Did you leave the room while I slept?”

She’s not wearing her corset, but she’s wearing her dress. My cloak and her shoes are not where they were cast wantonly last night, but lie situated before and folded over the back of the broken chair beneath the window, through which dewy morning air and the colors of a dreary daylight filter in lackadaisically, as if I’m not about to fuckingdie.

“My Lord, I need to speak with you about something very important…” Her lips are swollen with the memory of mine and close enough to scent. She’s blinking quickly, looking defenseless, entirely too vulnerable and so fuckable I can’t think straight. I want her mouth on me and I want to beg for it. I cut her off with a brutal kiss, which she tears away from me, gasping.

“Yaron…” She half laughs, then shakes her head and tries to push away from me. “It’s important. I’ve been trying to rouse you, but you were out cold and I wasn’t sure how to proceed…”

I don’t give a fuck about any of that. “Did you leave the room while I slept?” I repeat, yanking her onto her back and moving up onto my knees beneath her thighs. I throw her dress up to her chest, exposing her splayed legs and the black, glossy curls between them. I palm her core.

She gasps. “Yaron…I’m serious…”

“You’re swollen still from last night. If you tell me that you did not seduce me, fuck me and leave the bed shortly after I succumbed to sleep, then I will let your body rest. But if you tell me that you left the bed, betraying my trust, and ventured off into this dangerous inn unprotected, then I will punish you here and now and there will be no commanding me otherwise.”

Her lips part. Her pupils dilate. Her chest rises and falls rapidly. I yank down on the collar of her dress but she grabs my hand in both of hers and whispers, “Please don’t. I don’t have any others.”

Guilt and pride and rage and other emotions I don’t expect climb up from my heels, scraping their talons on the backs of my thighs and burying themselves in my balls and shaft and knot. It’s pulsing. My cock beads with precum. I lower it to her swollen lips, which are already wet enough for me to drive into her smoothly. I shouldn’t, but I will. Borne by panic and rage and feelings of betrayal, my need is all-consuming.

“Tell me. Tell me now, Kiandah.”

“I…”

“Don’t lie.”

She shakes her head, but is struggling to catch her breath, “I have something to tell you… Just please listen.”

“You left the room.” It’s not a question.

She fails the test.

I thrust forward, thighs slapping against the backs of hers. Her head tips back and all thoughts of whatever urgent thing she needed to tell me are lost as I take her to the edge, rutting her mercilessly until we are nothing more than a tangle of limbs cemented in sweat and slick, my knot once again fully inflated inside of her.

“Fuck, Yaron…the way you make me feel,” she cries, “like I’m flying…”

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