Page 41 of Cast in Shadow
He said my name again in a growl that sounded barely human before his body jerked hard.
My world imploded when he detonated inside me. My orgasm tore through me like a tornado, ripping my strength to shreds. I collapsed onto the mattress, pressing my forehead into the blanket as he came down over me with a final, rough thrust of his hips.
His chest rose and fell at my back, then his ragged breath caressed my neck just before his words carved me open. “I have missed you so fucking much.”
16
Emerson rolled to the side, taking me with him, maneuvering me until my head rested on his outstretched arm. I could have handled the closeness. Probably. If it wasn’t for the tears burning behind my eyes, threatening to break free. I clenched my jaw, willing them back, but the weight of everything I’d kept bottled up through the years—the heartbreak, the longing, the hatred—was too much.
And yet, no matter how much I wanted to pull away, to run and hide from this moment, I couldn’t make myself leave.
He ran his fingers through my hair and down my neck, tracing the same path he’d followed a thousand times in the past. It was the most conflicted torture I’d ever experienced.
I’d dreamed about moments like this more times than I could count. More than I would ever admit to anyone, no matter how many lifetimes I lived. But in those moments, he’d always talked to me. His warm voice was there soothing me, anchoring my bruised heart.
Instead, a painful silence stretched between us, turning whatmight have been a moment of relief and reconnection into something else.
He let out a huff that sounded an awful lot like disappointment. “You’re still locking me out.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, cursing the tears soaking into his shirt. So, hehadbeen trying to talk to me, just not out loud. I eased my inner walls down a little, just enough to hear him through the connection he’d forged over a century earlier.
“Senna.”He winced even as his voice whispered through my mind. His arms came around me, pulling me tighter to his body.“That’s better, but you’re still holding back.”
I swallowed back the sadness and regret that were threatening to swallow me whole.“It’s the best I can do.”
He went rigid behind me. Everything in the room seemed to still. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” Aside from giving into a wholly destructive passion that I had no business playing with again.
“It’s the best I can do,”he echoed.It took me a second to realize when I’d thought those six words, he’d heard it.
Shit.
I shoved away from him, and he let me go, suspicion clouding his features as it doused the smoldering embers of our moment in ice. Swinging my legs off the bed, I stood and dragged my panties and pants up my shaking thighs.
What the hell was I thinking?
Oh right, I wasn’t.
“Wait,” he said. It was a request, not a command, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn around.
I’d fucked up.
I’d given him a taste of what I was capable of back in the alley, but that was intentional. Controlled. It was meant as a warning.
He knew I was more powerful now than I’d ever been whenwe were together, but our mental connection had always been one way. He could get in my head, talk to me and muck up my thoughts, not the other way around. It had been infuriating some days, and that one-sided access was part of the reason I’d worked so hard to build up my walls.
Communication via the mind, initiating that kind of communication, was a talent reserved for incredibly powerful beings. Gods and demons of the oldest order. When it came to humans, I didn’t even think it was possible. A connection like that, human and demon or human and god, was the stuff of legends.
And it wasn’t like I’d ever tried it before. Why would I?
Exceptionally strong witches could call on pure light. That was nothing new. Tapping into the ribbon, while risky, wasn’t unheard of. But I’d taken it a step farther all those years ago, and it must have triggered something inside me that only Emerson could break loose.
My heart hurt. My emotions were a tangled mess. I was raw when I’d shoved those six words at him, and in that moment of weakness, I’d tipped my hand.
“Senna, for fuck’s sake, look at me.”
I finished buckling my belt and squared my shoulders. “What?” I wheeled around ready for a fight, but I wasn’t prepared for the heat that was rolling off him.
