Page 84 of Skyshade
He slowly rose from the floor, and she watched him with wide eyes, beyond words. She watched as he slowly climbed up the bed, leaning over her. Then he tucked his arm beneath her and dragged them both to the head of the bed.
He slowly kissed his way up her body—her stomach, then her sensitive chest, peaked with need. He took his time there, and she gasped as he scraped his teeth, then his tongue across her. She was molten, squirming below him, desperate for more.
“Please,” she said. She locked her legs behind his back, reaching for him. In response, he slowly, very slowly, took one of her arms and placed it above her head, her knuckles pressed against the silk sheets. Then he did the same with her other arm.
He reached between them, and she gasped as she finally felt him push against her. He slowly inched forward. His thumb swept across her palm, and he moved carefully, gently, his body shaking with restraint. He went in and in and in, until she couldn’t think around the pressure, couldn’t breathe around it; and then he sighed against the crown of her head, and she groaned as he reached a place that made her spine feel like a bolt of lightning.
Then he started to move, and nothing in the world had ever felt so good, so right, so saturated. She was breathless, breaking, mending, and it was better than she remembered, this feeling, this fullness.
He held her by the wrists as he drove into her, and she moaned into his mouth, panting, lost for words, lost for sanity. She knew he could feel her emotions, every crest of pleasure, every inch of need and want.
He growled as he hauled her up against him, as if he couldn’t feel enough of her; and she groaned at the contact, her sensitive chest scraping against his cold skin with his every movement. She hooked her arms around his neck and bit down against his shoulder to keep from making even more noise.
In a flash he sat back on his feet, lifting her upper body to face him. At this angle, she could feel everything, every inch of contact between them. He moved, and her head fell back as she took everything he gave her, his body finding every aching spot in hers and filling it.
Grim grabbed her by the side of her face and kissed her deeply, his tongue stroking the roof of her mouth as she shuddered against him,all of her going taut, then loose. He pulled her back onto his chest, and kept going, faster, and she kept kissing him, as if she could show him with her lips and tongue how good this all felt, because words would never be sufficient.
She bit his bottom lip as he found a spot that felt like the place between stars, and he kept going, never tiring, muscles hard as stone beneath her. She met him stroke for stroke, grinding her hips, chasing her pleasure; and when she found it and cried out against his mouth, he flipped them over and drove into her again, pulling her close. He gasped as he pushed into her one final time, his shadows flaring around him, shuddering through the room.
On their wedding night, he had broken all the windows. Tonight, it seemed he had remembered and taken precautions against it.
“Again,” she said, panting, not a moment later. “Do that again.”
He laughed darkly in the space between her neck and shoulder. He kissed the length of her neck. “So impatient,” he said against her skin. But then he flipped her over, and he did.
WINTER
The winter palace was made of harsh arches that mimicked the mountains around it. A thin layer of snow clung against the stone and glass exterior as if it was wearing a sheer blanket, and the windows were as dark as lifeless eyes, like the entire castle was sleeping.
Howls of wind blew her hair back and clawed at her cheeks. The cold was voracious, striking in a thousand swift bites. Grim didn’t seem to mind it as he took a few steps forward. “It wasn’t always empty,” he said. “I remember it full.”
“What happened to everyone?” she dared ask.
“They died. Every single one.”
She felt a bite of pain, remembering what he had told her. Everyone Grim had ever truly known was gone. Everyone except for her.
“Did you spend a lot of time here as a child?”
He nodded. “From the time I was born, until I started my training. This area is called the Algid, the northernmost part of Nightshade. Here, it snows all the time.”
The forever winter here was a reminder of her fate. Of the limited time she had left to change it.
“Has it been abandoned for long?”
“Not completely. The grounds are maintained, and the main chambers are attended to, in case of a visit.”
She turned to him. “I don’t remember coming here. Why didn’t you take me?”
He frowned. “It’s cold. You hate the cold.”
The moment Grim stepped foot inside the castle, flecks of silver lit up within the stone of the interior, a million lights around them, like stars buried in the night sky. Isla gaped at them.
“It’s a special stone,” Grim said, glancing at her. “Lights up when it senses Nightshade power.”
It reminded her of Starling. She told Grim, and he nodded. “The realms aren’t as different as we make them out to be.”
Grim showed her down hall after hall, room after room. She saw a few attendants who bowed, then went on their way.
