Page 56 of Her Shadow so Dark and Lovely
“Lorel,” she murmurs.
“What I want,” I say, breaking the kiss, blinking as I hear my breath again for the first time in months. I relish the feel of each sound in my mouth. “Is for you to devour me. Consume me. Show me that I am yours. Ruin me for any other, because there never will be. I am yours.”
She is still all over, eyes wide, mouth a soft shape of surprise. “Your voice,” she says. “It’s sweeter than I remember it.”
“It will be all the sweeter for calling your name,” I insist, tugging her closer. Demanding her skin against mine, her limbs tangled with mine. Because she is mine. “Give me everything.”
“Alright,” Sila says softly, and she suddenly seems more. Where the shadow begins and she ends, I do not know. Her mouth is on mine and she’s kissing me like she did that first time, leaving my mind blank as she ensnares every wisp of thought.
She presses against me, presses her thigh between my legs where I am damp and aching and I moan into her mouth. Her nails drag over my skin, her fingers press into my hips as she holds me there and grinds against me. She licks up the skin between my breasts, over the curse mark.
She kisses it as if she can suck the mark from my skin with her mouth alone. Her mouth on me, her hands firm against my body, her thigh grinding against me. It leaves my thoughts nothing but the faintest wash of watercolour. I can barely breathe, barely think, and then the pressure of her thigh gives.
“Sila,” I gasp as the edge of building heat slips away. So very different from anything I’ve ever done for myself.
“Tell me you are mine,” she says, her mouth demanding against my skin. It leaves me gasping and writhing against her.
“I am yours,” I say, breathless. “Sila?—”
Her name turns into a moan as her fingers slide between us, against me. Press into me. I thought I had known what pleasure was. Satisfactory, but nothing to bother another being with. Something to barely bother myself with. But as I gasp Sila’s name, as she gives me everything I want, everything I have asked for, I know there is nothing, and there never will be anything that compares to this. There will never be anything I want more than her.
And if she is condemned, then I will be condemned with her.
Sila sends me tumbling, gasping, crying out into release and I am everything, and nothing, all at once.
I gasp beneath her as I come back to myself and she bundles me against her as she rolls onto her side. My limbs are as loose as warm honey and I drift a little on the soft and hazy bliss of it, enjoying the press of her body against mine, the tangle of our legs, and her fingers, gentle and soft as they comb through my hair. Fingers that can tear through flesh just as easily as they can bring it pleasure. I press my face into her neck and feel the slow, determined beat of her heart through her skin. I feel her laughter through her chest.
“You are exactly as lovely as I thought you would be,” she whispers. I smile against her and bite at her jaw. Lick at her skin. She tastes of salt and earth under my tongue.
“You taste of the grave,” I tell her as her breath catches. “I like it.”
Sila’s fingers curl into my hair again, pulling me away so that she can look at me.
“Little mouse,” she says, wicked and dark eyed.
“I want to touch you,” I tell her. I don’t know if I’m still allowed to make demands.
“You may touch me however you wish, if it will please you,” Sila says.
“I want to pleaseyou,” I say. “But I don’t know how, exactly.” I had thought I knew some of it, but I had not realised the depths of my inexperience.
Sila kisses me and it’s soft and sweet, and cold as mountain water. Then her arms come around me as she rolls onto her back, pulling me astride her. She smiles up at me from under long dark eyelashes. “I can assure you that at this moment there is little you could do that would not please me. So why don’t you start with what you would like to try most?”
It shocks me, that little revelation. That this lovely creature of darkness is just as wanting, just as aching for me, as I am for her. She takes my hands and kisses my injured fingers.
“Be careful with these. You might have to be creative,” she says, pleased.
I lean down to kiss her, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind as I stare at her mouth. Sila lets me. She doesn’t push back or try to take control. She permits me to make my demands.
Chapter 33
Sila
Lorel runsher hands down my body, her touch feather light— tentative. It is as sweet as she is. As she had been gasping beneath me.
A little frown creases her brow as she makes a study of me. Traces the shape of my body with her fingers and her mouth like a feverish dream. I grip the sheets tightly, gasping at her gentle worship. Her short dark hair curls are damp, sticking to her cheeks as she looks up at me, dark eyed. Ravenous. Tentative, but not nervous. Not afraid. She really is a magnificent creature.
“Sila?”
