Page 36 of Monsters' Manor

The vehemence in my tone startles him, and he jerks his head up to look at me again.

“Be here with me,” I coax. “Right here. Just like this. I want this as much as you do.”

Indecision and need war with each other in the harsh planes of his shadowed face.

I reach out a hand. “Please, Silas.”

A shudder moves through his shadows before one unfurls and meets my grasp.

Silas comes back to the bed, inching up my body until he’s stretched out along my full length. I raise my other hand and it’s immediately entwined in darkness, enveloped and bound as he eases them both over my head and pins them to the headboard behind me.

“I want this too, Rose. Right here. Just like this.”

Silas keeps me pinned as he makes another slow journey down the length of my body. His darkness strokes along every curve, every inch of bare skin until I’m writhing and moaning, arching against his hold.

A nearly solid tendril curls around the back of my neck, tipping my head forward so I can see the shadows gathering between my thighs. The sight is so startling, so impossibly erotic that I gasp, pussy clenching as he caresses toward my core.

“You’re wound so tight, aren’t you, darling?” Silas murmurs, brushing a shadow against my clit over the fabric of my panties, making me arch into the sensation and gasp again. “Just waiting for someone to help you release all of that tension.”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Please, Silas.”

With a surprisingly forceful tug, he strips me of my underwear and tosses them aside.

Bared entirely to him, he takes his time exploring me some more. He tests all my sensitive places to see which ones make me groan and which ones make me strain against him, silently begging for more.

His dark magick joins each shadowed touch, heightening the waves of midnight pleasure he’s drawing from me. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before, this melding of sex and magick and moonlight.

When my own power rushes up to meet it, it’s not a conflagration this time, but an ember. A heat that crests and burns, but doesn’t consume me. A flame that licks along my skin in a slow-building smolder.

And when Silas finally,finallycurls one of those shadows around my clit and draws on me, hard, it pulses in my veins like a million flying sparks. His magick and mine. Our shared pleasure as he gasps with me, moves with me, experiences every sensation with me.

My body doesn’t seem to be nearly enough to contain everything I’m feeling. Pure, dark, primal, I writhe and buck against the shadows that bind me, and Silas is right there with more soothing tenderness.

“Easy, darling. Let me take care of you.” His voice is sin and starlight, a rasp against my aching core.

He works me like that—darkness enveloping me completely, shadows teasing my clit, magick humming over my skin—until I’m stretched to a breaking point.

My back bows off the bed as I come, crying out with the force of it.

Silas releases my wrists and moves until he’s hovering over me again. His darkness keeps me anchored through every pulse and spasm, and his own ragged breath and pleasure-filled groans meld with mine.

When I slump back to my bed in sated bliss, he’s right there next to me. He stretches out beside me, soothing me with gentle caresses as the last of my tremors subside. We stay that way for a little while, basking in the afterglow.

“How was that for you?” I ask when I’m finally coherent enough to speak.

Silas brushes my hair away from my face with one of his shadows. “I feel like I should be asking you that question.”

I nuzzle into that darkness. “Well, if you were telling the truth about being able to feel the pleasure I feel, then I think I already know the answer.”

He laughs again, and we both settle back against the pillows. Silence falls, but it’s comfortable, easy. As much apprehension as I may have originally felt about how things would work between us, there’s nothing but warm satisfaction coursing through me now.

“I’m glad,” Silas murmurs a couple of minutes later, tone tinged with sadness. “I’m glad I could be… good for you.”

I frown, the quiet coziness of the moment quickly slipping away. “Of course you’re good for me.”

He makes a sound in the back of his throat that isn’t quite agreement, and I prop myself up on an elbow to look over at him.

Our earlier conversation crowds back into my mind. About what might happen if he had an anchor. About the possibility of him being solid, having a body that could touch and be touched.

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