Page 46 of What Hunts Inside the Shadows

He groaned, pulling himself away as he fought with the instinct consuming him, refusing to be the monster who took me when I didn’t want him. He wouldn’t be the man from my nightmares, even if there wasn’t a trace of humanity inside of him at present.

I cupped his face in my hands, moving forward to touch my lips to his. He sank into the kiss, his teeth crashing against mine with the ferocity with which he returned it. His tongue plunged into my mouth, dominating me in the way I knew he would with his cock within a few moments. “You’ll take my blood every day,” he demanded, slashing his nail across his palm.

He held it over my mouth, letting the blood drip down onto my lips as he waited for my response. It was just one more concession, another part of me that I would give to him, but he’d already received what mattered the most. My mind was his, my heart belonged to him, and my body was liquid in his arms. “Okay,” I agreed, watching his gaze lightened a fraction when I gave him that.

Caldris pressed his palm to my lips, letting his blood flow onto my tongue. The sweet taste of him seemed even stronger with the connection flaring brightly between us, cool and crisp in spite of the warmth of the viscous fluid as it spread over my tongue and slid down my throat. He stared down at me, his eyes glinting with satisfaction as a little bit of the haze faded away from them.

As his lust for blood settled, his hand remained at my mouth so that I continued to drink from him. I dropped my hands to the laces of his trousers, pulling them open slowly as he studied me. It felt like toying with a cornered animal, waiting for it to strike. I was placating him, giving him what he wanted in the hopes of avoiding the worst of his wrath, but it would be a lie to say I didn’t want this part of him too. That I didn’t want the swollen shaft I pulled free from his trousers as his feral gaze watched me.

“There you are,min asteren,” he said, using his other hand to cup my cheek in his massive palm. I wrapped trembling fingers around him, unable to banish the lingering fear that wouldn’t seem to leave me.

The wound on his hand healed far too quickly, the taste of him addictive as I licked his skin and sought out more. He chuckled, dropping his hands to my pants and tearing them open with frenzied fingers as I stroked him. He yanked them down my thighs, leaving them bunched at my knees as he flipped me to my stomach and pulled my hips up.

Driving inside with a single thrust, he shoved my body down into the snow beneath me. My face stung from the ice pressing back against me, and from the frozen blades of grass beneath the snow as they dragged over my cheek.

“Gods!” I yelled, pushing up to my hands. He didn’t relent, pulling back and thrusting into me all over again with hard, fast drives. This would be no smooth seduction, but the quick, manic fuck of a Fae male driven by his instinct.

To claim. To take.

“What have I told you, my star? I am yourGod.” The words caused a shock to roll through me as he leaned over my back and wrapped an arm around the front of my body, pulling me up until I knelt in the snow. His chest pressed into my back as he drove up and into me relentlessly, he wrapped his palm against the front of my throat. The reminder of who he really was, especially when he was buried inside me, shouldn’t have made my body clench around him. I’d been drawn to him from the first moment until this one, my soul recognizing what my mind couldn’t comprehend.

He was mine. He’d always been mine. Since the dawn of creation, since I’d been born into this world for the first time.

Portraits flashed through my mind, a collage of all the moments we’d already shared, and all those that had yet to come. “Now do you see, Little One?” he asked, his grip tightening as his cock drove through me. His mind tunneled into mine, reaching into the depths of my soul.

The connection we’d shared the night before, taking my breath away in that moment, was a pale imitation of this. Now he showed me how much he’d held back with every portrait he painted in my mind. With the promise of a future I hadn’t even known I wanted. In my mind’s eye, the skin above his heart gleamed with strange black markings, an extension of the Mark we shared as it curled over his bare chest.

Caldris squeezed my throat, drawing me back from the haven he’d created inside my mind. The reality of my knees freezing in the snow was so much more painful than the utopia that he showed me waited for us on the other side of these hardships to get there. “I asked you a question,” he said, his voice dropping deeper as he lowered his mouth to the skin just above my ear and sank his teeth into it. He bruised the skin, worrying it between them.

“Yes, I see it,” I admitted, fighting back the sting of tears. I understood now why he was so angry when I fought our bond, why he wanted me to give in and be his mate. Accept him for all he was, above all else, because he saw what waited on the other side.

He saw the beauty in the madness.

But I saw the coming struggle to get there. I felt my lingering heartbreak like a phantom pain, tearing at my insides and trying to claw its way out. Something lived inside of me, and I couldn’t shake the notion that it would be freed more and more with every step I took toward my mate.

“Accept me,” he ordered, lowering a hand to the apex of my thighs. He stroked the flesh between my legs, bringing me closer to an orgasm as he used my body to find his own pleasure.

“I can’t,” I said, protesting on a sob. Not in the way that he wanted; not in a way that would commit me to him permanently. There were too many unknowns, too many secrets still hanging between us. I barely knew the male who existed beyond the Veil or the life that he lived there. There were too many questions about who or what I might be, as well.

Caldris growled, the sound feral as he shoved me forward into the snow. I landed on my hands as he placed a hand against my spine, pushing me further down until my stomach touched the snow and only my ass remained in the air. The position was animalistic; it was brutal.

I felt him in the deepest part of me as he drove inside, showing me how gentle he’d always been when he’d fucked me. “Estrella,” he warned, malice tinting his voice.

“This has to be enough for now,” I forced out, turning to look up at him from over my shoulder. “You have my body. You have my mind. I’ll take your blood, but I can’t accept you fully until I know everything.”

He growled but didn’t argue. Even in his half-feral state, he knew I’d already given him everything I could for now. Giving him that last part of me felt like signing away my soul, like making a deal with a daemon from the underworld, knowing I would never get that piece back.

He slid a finger inside of me alongside his cock, pressing into the spot that made me see stars. “Oh my fucking Gods,” I whimpered, squeezing my eyes closed, the unbelievably tight fit sending me crashing over the edge. I hadn’t even known that could be possible.

I screamed my orgasm into the clearing surrounding us, my legs twitching with the force of it as I came down from the high of my ecstasy. While I recovered, Caldris removed his finger from my drenched core, slipping it free from beneath my body. I jumped when he touched it to theotherplace that no one had ever touched.

The one he’d threatened to take one day.

“What are you doing?” I asked, diving forward. His cock dislodged from me as I tried to escape, wincing when he followed after and slid back inside. That finger pressed against my rear entrance all over again, the pressure steadily increasing as he moved his hips, slowly gliding in and out of my pussy with smooth, passionate lovemaking.

The note of somethingotherthat had filled his voice was gone when he answered me. “If you will not give me all of you in this way, then I’ll take it in another,” he said, pressing more firmly. He never breached my flesh, keeping the pressure there as if he simply wanted to get me used to the feel of it. To the forbidden touch as he slid his cock through my wet, swollen tissue.

“You are not sticking your fucking cock in there,” I protested, shaking my head.

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