Page 58 of Crown of Light and Ashes
I watch, completely mesmerized, as her lips stretch around me, her cheeks hollowing with each powerful suck that threatens to drive me over the edge. One of her hands comes up to grip the base of my shaft while the other cups my balls with expert precision, squeezing just enough to border between pleasure and exquisite pain.
The bond between us pulses with her own unwilling arousal—she's getting wet from this, from having me at her mercy while pleasing me against her conscious will. My shadows respond instinctively to my awareness of her desire, slipping beneath her dress to find dampened undergarments. She moans around my cock as shadowy tendrils stroke her through the fabric, her thighs trembling with desperate need.
"Look at you," I growl, forcing her to meet my gaze as I thrust gently into her hot mouth. "So wet for me while you take my cock down your throat. What would your precious Order think of their perfect assassin now? What would Aslan think, seeing you on your knees, servicing the man who killed him?"
Without warning, I pull out completely, my cock glistening with her saliva as I haul her to her feet with bruising force. I spin heraround and bend her over my desk, shoving up her dress to expose her perfect ass, barely covered by thin silk underwear that's already soaked through.
"Is this how he took you?" I demand, tearing the delicate fabric aside to expose her dripping cunt to my hungry gaze. "From behind like an animal in heat?" I press the head of my cock against her entrance without penetrating, just enough pressure to drive us both mad. "Or did he make sweet, gentle love to you? Whisper pretty words while you moaned his name and pretended you weren't born for something darker?"
"Fuck you," she gasps, but her hips push back against me desperately, seeking the friction her pride won't allow her to ask for.
My shadow tendrils spread her thighs wider as I press just the tip inside her scalding heat, barely enough to tease. "Tell me you want this," I command, my voice rough with barely controlled lust. "Tell me you want me inside you, claiming you, marking you as mine."
"No," she refuses through gritted teeth, though her body shakes with desperate need that I can taste through our bond.
I withdraw completely, replacing my cock with shadowy fingers that stroke her clit with maddening gentleness while she writhes beneath me. "Admit it, Nesilhan. Your body knows what your mind refuses to accept. You were made for this. For me."
She bites back a moan as my shadows work her sensitive flesh with expert precision, dipping just inside her entrance before retreating, keeping her balanced on the knife's edge of need. "I—I hate you," she manages, her voice breaking with frustrated desire.
"That wasn't the question," I remind her, positioning myself again so the head of my cock parts her slick folds without entering. "Say the words or I walk away right now, leaving you empty and aching and desperate for what only I can give you."
Her body trembles with conflicting desires—pride warring withdesperate, clawing need. The bond between us pulses with her internal struggle, her growing frustration as my shadows continue their merciless teasing without giving her what she craves.
"Say it," I insist, one hand gripping her hip hard enough to bruise while the other tangles in her hair, pulling her head back to expose the elegant line of her throat. "Tell me what you need."
"I want you," she finally whispers, the words barely audible but carrying the weight of complete surrender.
"Louder," I demand, pushing just the tip inside her tight heat until we both groan. "Let me hear you admit it."
"I want you!" she cries, frustration and need overcoming her pride at last. "I want you inside me, damn you!"
I slam into her with one powerful thrust, burying myself to the hilt inside her scorching, impossibly tight cunt. We both cry out at the overwhelming sensation—she feels like silk and fire around me, her inner walls pulsing with each frantic heartbeat.
"This is mine," I growl, setting a punishing pace as I grip her hips hard enough to leave marks that will last for days. The slap of flesh against flesh fills the room like a primal drumbeat, punctuated by her reluctant moans and my own harsh breathing.
Something unexpected happens as pleasure builds within me like gathering storm clouds—the way she arches beneath me, the sound of her breathless moans, the scent of her hair reminds me dangerously of another time, another woman who moved with similar grace. The memory surfaces without warning, threatening to pull me under: Dark hair spilling across golden pillows. Whispered promises in the dark. A love I thought I'd buried so deeply it could never resurface.
"Isil," I whisper, the forbidden name torn from my lips before I can stop it, pulled from some wounded place I thought had died long ago with memories that should have stayed buried.
Nesilhan freezes beneath me instantly, her body suddenly rigidwith shock. My mind clears like ice water thrown over flame, horror washing through me as I realize what I've done, what name I've spoken aloud for the first time in two hundred years.
No one speaks that name. No one even knows it exists.
I pull out abruptly, my cock still achingly hard as my shadows lash violently around the room in response to my emotional turmoil. Vases shatter into glittering fragments. Papers scatter like frightened birds. The temperature drops so precipitously that frost begins forming on the windows.
"Get out," I command, my voice like winter death as I hastily adjust my clothing, refusing to meet her eyes because I know what I'll see there, questions I can never answer.
She turns slowly, confusion and hurt evident in her expression as she straightens her ruined dress with trembling hands. "Kaan—"
"I SAID GET OUT!" I roar, shadows exploding outward with enough force to crack the stone floor beneath us and send books flying from their shelves.
She doesn't need to be told a third time. Without another word, she flees like her life depends on it, the door slamming behind her with a finality that echoes through the suddenly empty chamber like a death knell.
I sink to my knees amid the destruction, my shadows writhing in violently agitated patterns as I struggle to regain control over powers that respond to emotion like wildfire to dry grass. Two hundred years of carefully maintained barriers, shattered by a single moment of weakness.
And now Nesilhan knows a name she was never meant to hear—a name I haven't spoken aloud since the day I buried my heart alongside the only woman I ever loved. The only woman I thought I ever could love.
The third truth can wait. Right now, I have my own ghosts tocontend with, ghosts I thought I'd successfully buried beneath centuries of calculated cruelty and deliberate isolation.
