Page 78 of Our Sins in Shadows (Coven of Sin 2)

“I’m not talking about your abilities. You scare me because of the way you make me feel. Unlike the others, you are in love with my humanity, and I don’t like that part of me. I think that part of me is weak, but you call it strong. You see a part of me I barely understand. You’ve ripped back my layers, and you see the beat of my heart. And still, you lust for every single cell of it, Corry Cross. You lust for it in every way a man, and a vampire can lust for a woman’s heart. And that’s what scares the fuck out of me.”

A thunderous moment of silence stretched for an eternity as we drowned in each other’s eyes.

I clutched his biceps, my fingertips shaking as they stroked over his lean brawn.

“Why?” he rasped after an age.

I worried my lip, hating how resistant I was to showing vulnerability. But with Corry, I had to if I wanted to take the ultimate step in making him mine. “Because what if you peel back another layer, and you see something you don’t like? What if my heart stops beating and I cause you pain? What if one day I’m turned into a full-blooded vampire, and I lose my humanity? Then what will be left for you to love? What if I lose touch with that part of me while my heart still beats? There are plenty of mortal monsters. It’s the pain of not knowing, the fear of losing your love, that draws me to you even more. How messed-up is that?”

Corry’s expression dissolved into something so tender and pure that tears stung my eyes. He hooked a finger beneath my chin and tilted my head until our lips were so close we were almost kissing. “Oh, Ruby Renada. Baby. Do you know why I love you?”

Tears leaked down my cheeks, bleeding with the shower spray. “Why?”

“Because you’re strength and chaos incarnate. You don’t let anyone or anything dictate who you are. You don’t do shit unless you want to. You will never lose touch with your humanity, because you don’t let anyone pry the things you hold dear out of your hands.”

“You truly think that?”

“Yeah, babe. My heart may have stopped beating, along with my brothers’, but you’ve got enough heartbeat for all of us, and it’s easily become the most precious thing. It’s not weak. It’s something to treasure.”

“If you’re so sure my human side is strong, why are you so hesitant about marking me?”

“I just want to do right by you because you deserve the best. I want you to trust me. But how can I ask you to trust me when I barely trust myself?”

I cupped his head in my hands. “I trust you completely. Implicitly. You’re my best friend. And more than that, you’re my mate.” Tears flowed freely now, and my breath rattled as I faced a frightening possibility. “Sterling’s hesitant to mark me, and I get it. I’ll never force him. I ache for it, but I don’t expect it from him. The same courtesy extends to you. If you don’t think you’re ready, you don’t have to just because Eros marked me—”

I wasn’t able to finish my sentence. Corry silenced me with a ferocious kiss as he took me by the hips and lifted me. My legs banded around his waist the moment my feet left the tile floor, and he pushed inside me.

Chapter thirty-one

Marked by the Youngblood

Corry’scockknockedawhimper from me.

The stretching sensation of my body expanding to accommodate the male’s girth hurt more than expected. Vincent’s fae endowment had been much more than this, but then again, that was when my inner queen had taken over. The capacity of my vagina on that stage must have been specific to my monster abilities, like the claws and the super strength.

But the pain here was well within pleasurable limits. A guttural groan tore from Corry’s throat as he sunk every inch of himself he had to give inside my core. I shivered against him, throwing my arms around his neck to keep our bodies locked together as deeply as this position allowed. His eyes fixed to mine, our ragged breathing and the patter of the waterfall the only movement for a moment as if something tremendously monumental held a spell over us.

The red light of the bathroom washed his face in an ominous but seductive glow, the edges of his athletic physique draped in shadows.

His gaze fell from my eyes to my lips. When they dropped lower to the hollow of my throat with unguarded hunger glinting brightly in their depths, feverish chills broke out over my skin. There were no words to describe just how fucking lustful I was for this male, for his blood, his cum, his heart, his devotion. I wanted to gorge myself on him, and I knew by the way he looked at me, he felt the same way. It was like we were standing on a cliff and staring down into a pit of total, unhinged passion.

And we were ready to throw ourselves over the ledge any breath now.

Corry pulled his hips back slowly, extracting a substantial portion of his dick from my juncture. I sobbed at the loss, arching my spine off the glass shower door to chase his hardness.

His dark chuckle tickled my lips. Then he came forward again. His hips quivered as he eased back inside me with a testing pace.

“Oh,Red.” Corry’s moaned words in my mouth were silken and sultry at first, and drawled into a growl that stretched down to my center as deep as his more corporeal parts. “You’re so damn tight. So—Fucking shit.” His curse crumbled away into a hoarse grunt as he jerked his hips with a sharp jab, impaling me to the hilt.

A primal sound ripped from my lips. I clung to him, my walls heating, thighs quivering where they clamped around his waist. Aware of the ancient act, deep-seated instincts hurtled themselves into the driver’s seat. My senses heightened, my nostrils flaring as his heady, masculine scent clogged my throat and lungs like a drug-soaked rag. I could feel every millimeter of his throbbing masculinity inside me, setting me on fire.

Corry’s pelvis pumped forward and back with a gentlemanly rhythm at first. He rocked into me, smashing my back against the glass shower pane with my bare chest tight against his until there was barely any room left for me to breathe.

He kissed my jawline and licked a path down the column of my neck to the hollow of my throat, his hot breath searing my skin. The anticipation of the inevitable bite drove me crazy.

“Where do you want it?” he rumbled in a deep octave that made the hair on my nape jolt upright.

My heart throbbed, and for just a second, I was able to claw my way out of the haze of lust to appreciate Corry’s restraint. He was asking me where I wanted his claiming mark. In Eros’ case, he’d just bitten me without asking. And Vincent and Sterling had picked out their own spots. Not that it bothered me. It was sexy that they had a strong enough preference to care where they placed their claim on my body. But Corry’s offer to have me decide for him was perfectly within his nature, and the fact that he had enough restraint to stop and ask for my two cents on the matter was the ultimate proof that the youngblood really was making leaps and bounds as far as his control over his base instincts were concerned.

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