Page 67 of Corrupt Shadows

I turn my widened gaze on him, but he’s already moving. I follow, his long legs eating up the ground too quickly for me to keep pace with him without jogging every couple of steps.

“Where are we going?”

His shoulders stiffen beneath his black shirt. “Somewhere safe,” he answers cryptically.

“How do you know it’s safe?”

“Because it is a place where the demons dare not tread,” he bites out.

“Why don’t they go there?”

Lorcan faces me and throws up his hands. “Are you capable of holding your tongue? You’re such a fucking nuisance. Why do you continue to question every single one of my motives after I just rescued you from no less than twenty demons?” He growls, baring his teeth below his mask.

The demon turns away sharply.

Fair enough. For now.

I have plenty of thoughts to keep me occupied that don’t require questioning him. I roll my eyes, pushing my heavy, wet hair over my shoulder.

The sidewalk ends, and Lorcan angles his steps until we are walking down the center of the road. I squint at the chipped, double yellow lines and follow their path with my gaze until the road curves out of sight in the distance.

The rain falls harder. The wind slaps the drops against my face, causing it to sting from each tiny assailant. We walk in silence for several miles.

Although he saved me from certain death in the Human Realm, I am now wholly at his mercy. The hope of getting back to repair the mirror diminishes the farther we travel away from it. I squint through the rain, unable to recognize my surroundings. Panic flares inside me again. My heart sinks as I pat my wet pockets. I don’t have any benzos. What the fuck am I going to do?

The storm clears slightly, and I’m finally able to take in my surroundings. The lush forest of home has been replaced with a much darker forest. It seems deeper somehow, even though most of the trees have shed themselves for the season. Deep plum-colored leaves encircle their bases.

Goose bumps cover my skin, and dread skates down my spine. I trudge along with Lorcan, but the adrenaline has fled my system. Exhaustion weighs down on me, and the effort to pry my eyelids open with every blink keeps me on edge.

Maybe if I time it right, I can sneak off into the forest and find my way back to town.

A tree crashes to the ground somewhere in the distance, and I whip my head in its direction. Lorcan stares into a shadow just off the road, which quicky dissolves from sight under the weight of his gaze.

“These demons are even more dangerous than the ones you’ve seen in town. Their thirst for violence and destruction is unmatched. They hunger for it. In fact, they often feed on their own kind, if they get close enough to the edge of the forest. The forest demons use their own suffering as fuel, pitting themselves against each other regardless of the demon’s hierarchy,” Lorcan explains and brushes a piece of hair behind my ear with a wisp of shadow.

I try to remain calm and casually step closer to him. My eyes dart from the trees to Lorcan, unease settling deep into my bones. I cover my obvious show of fright by distracting him with his favorite thing, more questions.

I groan, my shoulders slumping. “How much farther? I don’t understand why we need to hike the whole way. I’ve seen you travel through shadows.”

Lorcan stops suddenly and turns on his heels. I barely stop from colliding into him by instinctively shoving my hands into his chest. The fabric of his shirt clings to his broad, defined muscles, and one of his hard nipples presses against my palm. I attempt to pull my hands away, but he covers both of them with one of his. He stares at me, fury radiating from him.

He growls ferociously, then pins me to a nearby tree by the throat.

“The reason we can’t simply fucking appear at our destination is your fault. If you would quit being such a disobedient brat and use your shadows, as I have been suggesting for weeks, we could shadow-walk there.”

“How am I supposed to know how to shadow-walk with no practice?”

“You could have been practicing this entire time. Now, you are in a rather precarious situation and have no other choice than to cling to me.”

His body presses against the length of mine. I am intimately aware of his anatomy, the wet clothes clinging to his muscular body like a second skin. His breath ghosts my lips as we stare at each other, neither of us breaking the prolonged eye contact. Something shifts in his gaze, and his mouth parts slightly before he licks his lower lip. An involuntarily moan leaves me, and his eyes dilate in response.

A shadow replaces his hand, keeping me pinned to the tree by my neck. The unusual gray bark of the Shadow Realm tree is somehow soft and sharp at the same time as it scrapes against my cloth-covered back. Lorcan shoves his knee between my thighs and presses it firmly against my clit. My eyes practically roll back into my head, desire flooding my core. I sink my teeth into my lip as he grinds his knee against my pussy. A sharp sting registers when he tugs my lip from between my teeth with his sharper ones. My eyes snap open, meeting his far-too-close stare through the holes in his mask.

“Mine,” he says into my mind, still holding me hostage between his partially shifted teeth. He continues to speak in my mind and drives my need higher as he rubs his knee on my clit at a maddingly slow pace. “Do you know what you do to me, little witch?” He retracts his razor-like teeth. “There is not a moment that I am not absolutely consumed by lust for you.”

He groans, and the evidence of said lust throbs against my hip as he practically fucks me with his knee, but it’s not enough. I need more. I’m so wet, my hot, slick arousal soaks through my rain-dampened panties.

“Every time I catch you biting this fucking lip…” He moans and nips the front of my throat. “I will bloody it for you and then smear your blood all over my cock as I fuck your face.”

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