Page 105 of The Dark Lord's Guide to Dating

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed the underside of his jaw, finding another rune there to map with my tongue. “I suppose one of us should be practical.”

“My—our—chambers,” Kaz’s voice was strained. “The tower is warded more heavily.”

Nyx’s disgruntled huff behind us was probably disapproving, but I could only manage a half-laugh, still lost in Kazimir’s taste.

His stride was purposeful as he carried me into the fortress. Each point of contact sent a fresh wave of desire pulsing through me, and his grip only tightened. The staff either fled our presence or pretended not to see us. Fine by me. My brain was consumed by the memory of what it felt like to have him inside me, how the magic had magnified until I was certain we’d both die from the glorious overload.

Halfway up the spiral staircase of Kazimir’s tower, he pressed me against the cold stone wall and kissed me until I almost forgot my own name. I felt him tug at his belt. His tunic fell away as I wrapped my legs around his waist, not caring about the precarious angle of our bodies on the narrow steps.

“I can’t wait,” he rasped, voice low enough to stroke pleasure through my nerves.

I braced my hands on his shoulders. “Then don’t.”

He thrust into me with no further warning, forcing a cry from my throat that echoed up the narrow stairwell. Electricity practically sparked where our skin met, gold meeting black in a dance of energy. The tower quivered, dust raining down around us. Kazimir gave a dark laugh, his breath hot against my neck.

“We’ll bring the entire citadel down,” he muttered, driving into me again.

I tried to respond, but he followed with a powerful thrust that made stars burst behind my eyelids. Conversation ceased. There was only the frantic sound of our breathing, the echo of flesh against flesh, and the building wave of raw power that crackled through every thrust.

When we both reached the brink, Kazimir clamped his jaw, redirecting the raging magic upward. I felt the tower’s wards flare to life, absorbing much of the chaos we unleashed as firstI spilled over the edge, and he followed. The pressure in the air was deafening for a moment, but the walls held.

He remained pressed against me, panting, as my ears rang with our combined pulse. “That was easier,” he said raggedly. “Maybe the fortress will survive the two of us after all.”

Instead of putting me down, he adjusted my weight in his arms and continued upward. I clung to him, a dizzy swirl of satisfaction and leftover arousal tangling in my head.

When we finally reached the top, Kazimir shouldered the heavy door open to carry me across the threshold like some dark parody of a traditional wedding night. His eyes never left mine as he kicked the door shut behind us.

When he turned, though, his confident stride faltered at the carnage that had been his bedchamber. Feathers lay strewn over the floor in snowdrifts, glass shards sparkled on the fireplace mantel, and half-wilted black roses drooped from shattered vases.

“What happened here?” he asked, mildly astonished.

Heat suffused my face. “I might have… had a tantrum after you left me. It was a low moment.”

Expressing no judgment, he set me on my feet and locked the door. Then he turned to me, pulling open my shirt and letting it slide to the ground. “Every second I was gone, I could think of nothing but the taste of you.”

He lifted me onto the bed, sending a puff of feathers swirling into the air. “How wet you’d be for me,” he continued, his voice dropping to a ragged whisper as he shed his own remaining clothes, never taking his eyes from mine.

Kazimir lowered himself beside me. His hand slid between my breasts to brush away a feather, then continued up to grip my throat possessively. “The sounds you’d make when I finally buried myself inside you.”

His lips brushed mine in a kiss, surprisingly gentle compared to the urgency of his words.

“Slowly this time,” he said. “I want to learn every inch of you.”

And he did. Over the next hours, he mapped my body with meticulous attention, discovering places I hadn’t known could bring pleasure, never losing that edge of possessiveness, but allowing me to meet him as an equal.

I returned the favor, continuing my exploration of his runes, learning which ones made him tense and which made him hiss in pleasure.

“These never bothered you,” he said during a moment when we were relatively still. It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.

“Why would they? They’re part of you.” I traced the one over his breastbone. “You never told me how you got them.”

He was silent for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the dim light of the bedchamber. “My mother carved them into my bones when I was a child,” he said finally, his voice carefully neutral.

My hand stilled, and I sat up to look at him properly. “That’s... that’s barbaric.”

He shrugged, the casual gesture at odds with the darkness in his eyes. “It was necessary, according to her. Magic requires sacrifice.”

“No child should have to sacrifice like that,” I said fiercely, thinking of my own childhood, of the tower and the isolation and the fear. It had been cruel, yes, but at least my father hadn’t carved spells into my flesh.

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