Page 48 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

He stayed inside me, buried to the hilt, like pulling out would break the spell we’d cast around ourselves. Like if he let go, I’d vanish, and maybe I would. Maybe I wanted to.

The chain above me creaked again, a soft metallic groan as my body sagged forward, spent and shaking. My wrists were raw, my thighs trembling, but all I could feel washim.

Still hard. Still deep.

Still watching me like I was prey he hadn’t finished consuming.

“You’re quiet,” he murmured.

His voice slithered into my bones. It scraped across something inside me I didn’t know was waiting to bleed.

“I think you broke something,” I whispered. It was a joke, I think.

His palm slid up my back until it curled around my throat. Not squeezing this time. Just… resting. Claiming.

“I’ll fix it.”

God help me, I almost asked him to break more.

He slid out of me, slow enough to make me whimper, then caught me by the waist when my knees tried to give out. He turned me around, eyes dragging over every inch of my ruined body.

My thighs were slick with us. My chest heaved. My lips were swollen and kissed raw.

And still, he looked at me like I wasn’t enough.

Like he could still devour more.

He leaned in, brushing his nose along my jaw, then down to my collarbone, his breath hot against my sweat-slicked skin. His voice was quiet, “I should keep you like this.”

Hung up.

Open.

Ready.

My breath caught, heat flooding between my legs again like my body was too stupid to learn.

“You say that like it’s a threat,” I whispered, voice hoarse and cracked.

He chuckled. God, that sound. It was a sound made for sinners.

“No,” he said. “It’s a promise.”

He unhooked my wrists carefully like he hadn’t just ravaged me like I was fragile now. My arms fell limp to my sides, too numb to lift. He caught me before I could crumble and scooped me up, carrying me across the ruined floor like I was something precious instead of desecrated.

There was a mattress on the floor near the altar, covered with a single threadbare blanket that smelled like dust and sin. He laid me down gently like I was something fragile. Something breakable.

Maybe I was.

I curled into myself, muscles sore, skin flushed, throat raw.He knelt beside me, one knee cracking against the stone, his shadow stretching over my spine.

“I can’t let you leave.” His words were quiet.

Not cruel. Not even cold. Justinevitable.

My head snapped toward him, hair clinging to my damp cheek. “What?”

He didn’t look at me. His gaze dropped to the floor, like if he saw my face, it might change his mind. Or worse — it wouldn’t.

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