Page 79 of The Madness Within

Slow at first, tasting her lips like they were the very thing I’d been starving for.

Her hands moved up to my chest, pushing against me, but there’s no resistance. Only the way she leaned into me, the way her body melted against mine, telling me that she wanted this as much as I did.

When I pulled back, her eyes were darker, clouded with desire. “What do you want from me, Dorian?” she breathed, her voice trembling with a mix of need and uncertainty.

I smiled, it was a smile of kindness mixed with something more savage, more primal. “I want you, Ember,” I said, my voice low and rough. “And I’ll show you piece by piece exactly what that means.”

I pulled her closer, pressing her against the table. The wood groaned beneath us as I kissed her again, this time with a ferocity that left no room for doubt.

Her body responded to mine, every inch of her betraying the strength of her resistance. She’s shaking beneath me, but I felt the way she pulled me closer, the way she gave herself up to the moment, to me.

My hands moved down her body, and she gasped as I slid her dress up, my fingers tracing the smoothness of her skin, the heat of her thighs.

I could feel the tension in her body, the way she was holding herself back, and it drove me mad.

I pushed her down onto the table, the cold surface against her skin making her breath catch. I moved over her, feeling the delicate pulse of her body as I kissed my way down, nipping at her neck, her collarbone, her breast.

I sucked a bruise into her soft, brown skin, and she moaned, the sound like music to my ears. “You like this, don’t you?” I growled against her skin. “You like beingtakenby me.”

She didn’t answer.

She didn’t need to.

I bit down on her nipple, just enough to make her cry out, and then, as the blood rose, I licked it clean, savoring the taste of her.

She shuddered again, her fingers digging into the table, but I wasn’t done.

Not yet.

I moved lower, my lips trailing down her body, until I reached the apex of her thighs. She gasped when I bit down, her bodyjerking under me, but I held her steady, sealing the wound with my tongue.

Her blood was like fire, and I couldn’t get enough.

I pulled back, my eyes glowing with something dangerous, something that matches the darkness inside her. “Say you’re mine,” I whispered again, my breath hot against her skin. “Tell me you’re mine, just as I’m yours.”

As I stood above her, she was trembling, her eyes dazed, caught between the pleasure and the reality of what I had just shown her.

I could feel her heart racing in her chest, feel the pulse of desire still coursing through her veins. She was mine just as I was hers, body, heart, soul, and she knew it.

But then, something shifted. Her eyes fluttered closed, and for a moment, she seemed to be somewhere else, somewhere far away.

I watched, my gaze steady as the vision hit her. I feel it, too, the sudden, sharp pain of it, the jagged slice of reality breaking through.

She was seeing it. Seeingthem.

Her mother. Her true bloodline.

TheWatchers.

I leaned down, pressing my forehead against hers, my voice a low murmur in her ear. “You see it now, don’t you?” I whispered, my voice hoarse with the power of the moment. “The truth about who you are. About whatweare.”

Her breath caught again, but she didn't speak. She didn’t need to. I saw the understanding flicker in her eyes, the awakening of something deep inside her.

TheWatcherbloodline was never just a myth.

And she had always been one of them.

Chapter Thirty-Two

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