Page 27 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

His mouth traced down my neck, teeth grazing where my pulse hammered, then moving lower. His tongue flicked over my nipple. The unexpectedly rough texture making me arch, a cry escaping my lips.

“Gods, Soph,” he growled. “The things I want to do to you…”

“Then do them,” I urged, my fingers tangling in his hair, now longer and wilder. “Please.”

His mouth traveled lower, leaving a blazing trail across my abdomen. His hands parted my thighs with deliberate gentleness, the bite of his claws a tease rather than an attack. When he settled his shoulders between my legs, golden eyes gazing up with naked hunger, I thought I might combust.

The first touch of his tongue through the thin cotton of my underwear tore a sound from my throat I barely recognized. In this form, the texture was different—rougher and possibly ribbed, perfectly suited to drawing pleasure. His clawed hands held my thighs apart as he teased me with devastating precision, soaking my underwear with a combination of his saliva and my arousal.

“Bastian,” I moaned, my hips rising to meet each stroke of his tongue. “Please, I need—”

With a dark chuckle, he hooked my underwear with a claw and tore the fabric, baring me to him. His pleased rumble sent shivers cascading over me. The first stroke of his altered tongue made me tremble. The sensations were so intense, so different from anything else I’d experienced. Rough against my soft. Ridged against my swollen.

He growled against me, the vibration sending shockwaves through me. His tongue circled my clit before he wrapped his lips around me and sucked none too gently, flicking the tip of that rougher tongue over the sensitive bundle of nerves. The combination of sensations sent me over the edge. My release crashed through me in waves, my body arching as pleasure radiated outward from my core.

Before I could recover, he moved higher, pushing his pants down and positioning himself between my thighs. The head of his cock pressed into my swollen heat, and he fucked my slit, dragging his shaft back and forth over my clit, letting me know his tongue wasn’t the only thing ribbed in this form. Making me desperate to have him inside me.

“Show me, Bas,” I groaned, my nails digging into his back. The texture of his skin had changed, becoming somehow both smoother and bumpier. Scales, I realized. Another layer of his mask removed. “Show me all of you.”

“Like this?” He changed the angle of his hips and pushed inside me, making us both groan. The stretch was delicious, overwhelming, perfect. The ridges added an extra layer of sensation as he pulled out and pushed back in, going deeper with each thrust. “Is this enough of me?”

I touched his face, tracing the sharper angles. “Mmmm…no,” I moaned. “All of you, Bas. Oh my fucking god, let me see all of you.” I lifted my hips to meet his thrusts. “Let me fucking see you.”

His control slipped further. Curved horns like burning metal sprouted from his curls, and wings erupted from his back, black as midnight, each feather dusted with gold around the edges. The muscles beneath my hands grew more powerful as he surrendered to what lived within him. His thrusts became deeper, more primal, forcing sounds from my throat I hadn’t known I could make.

“Mine,” he growled. “You’remine.”

“Yes,” I gasped, my fingers gripping the top edge of his wings, where they sprouted from his back. They flared out before curving over me like a sheltering cocoon. “Yours. Always yours.”

His rhythm faltered. He lowered his head, grazing his teeth along my neck, and the teasing threat of pain catapulted me into another climax, more powerful than the first. My inner muscles clenched around him, drawing his own release with a roar.

Wave after wave of pleasure washed through me, carrying me away into an ocean of ecstasy. As I floated back to reality and my awareness returned, I found Bastian still above me, his form gradually shifting back to normal though his eyes remained gold.

“I didn’t hurt you?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion.

I laughed out loud. “Ah, no. Unless you count my sanity, because apparently, I like to fuck around with monsters.”

Bastian relaxed visibly, his familiar, cocky grin sliding into place. “Sophie, Sophie, Sophie,” he practically purred. “You come every time a vampire sinks his fangs into you.” He traced his own elongated canines along my jawline, and I shuddered out my next exhale. “We already know you like to fuck around with monsters.”

I laughed again, low and throaty, running my fingers through his tousled curls. “I like the horns,” I admitted, dragging my nails over the part of his scalp where they had been.

“Somebody watchedBeauty and the Beasta lot as a kid, didn’t she?” he teased, nuzzling my neck.

I snorted a laugh. “I can neither confirm nor deny that,” I said, despite it being one hundred percent true.

Chuckling, Bastian stretched out beside me, blunted claws drawing sigils lightly on my abdomen. “I lied earlier,” he confessed. “I think I knew it was inside me, thisbeast, especially after my mom… Like it was just waiting for the right moment to break free.”

“How old were you?” I asked softly, curling toward him to lay my head on his shoulder. “When she…”

His heart beat steadily, marking time as he gathered the courage to respond. “I was seven when her shift went wrong,” he finally said, words carrying the weight of decades of silence. “It didn’t happen all at once. Each time she changed, she came back lessher. Morebeast.” His voice caught. “Until one day, she didn’t come back at all.”

I held him tighter, my silent acknowledgment of such painful truths.

“Abomination,” he continued. “That’s what they call it when a shifter gets stuck between forms. Veris had her exiled to Atlantis.” His voice hardened. “Exile—a pretty way to say execution by drowning. The city’s been underwater almost as long as the Houses have existed, and she didn’t have sea form, so…there’s no way she survived.”

“Was it the curse?” I asked, fearing the answer but needing to know. “Is that what caused her to lose herself? Did my people take your mom from you?”

He was quiet long enough that I lifted my head to see his face, his pained expression.

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