Page 71 of The Madness Within

Not once.

When his spine cracked and his chest split open like a sacrificial bloom, she didn’t run. She stared. Breathless. And Ismelledit.

Her arousal hit me harder than the blood, thick and warm on my skin, sticky across my chest and knuckles. She was trembling not with fear, but withneed. A dark, wicked part of herwantedthis.

Wantedme.

The beast in me rose.

I turned to her, and before she could speak, I had her against the wall, lips crashing into hers with the force of everything I’d held back.

Her fingers fisted in my shirt, yanking me closer like she’d snap in half if I let her go.

She whimpered when I bit her neck, not enough to draw blood. Not yet. Just enough to make her gasp.

“Say it,” I ordered, my breath hot against her ear.

“I liked it,” she whispered, a shiver racing through her. “God help me, I liked it.”

That was all I needed.

I threw her over my shoulder, shadows coiling at my heels, and vanished us from the warehouse in a blink. The night cracked around us. When we landed inside the estate, I didn’t wait.

Iclaimed.

Clothes were torn. Not removed.

Torn.

My hands mapped every inch of her, memorizing the slope of her spine, the curve of her hips, the way her breath caught every time I sucked a bruise into her skin. Her body writhed beneath mine like it was made to betaken.

And I did.

I sank my teeth into her breast, just enough to taste the copper bloom of her blood. She arched into me, moaning my name like a spell.

“You’re mine,” I whispered as I licked the wound closed. “Every part of you.”

Her fingers tangled in my hair, yanking me down as she gasped, “Then prove it.”

So I did.

I gripped her throat, not hard, not cruel, just enough.

Enough to make her breath shallow and her eyes flutter half-shut as I drove into her, again and again, worshiping her like she was the altar and I was the sacrifice.

The blood on her breasts, her pulse against my tongue, the way she whispered my name like a curse, I was unraveling.

“Marry me.” I begged against her skin, breathless. “Say you’ll be mine, Ember.”

She didn’t answer. Not right away.

So Imadeher answer.

I slowed the rhythm, grinding deep as my hand slid from her throat to her jaw, forcing her to look at me, into me. “Say. It.”

“I—” She moaned, her body tightening. “I’ll marry you, Dorian.”

I growled, the sound low and feral, and when I came, it was with her name on my lips like a vow.

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