Page 17 of Branded By Shadow
I counted my heartbeats in the rhythm of his hips. Our bodies made music together, the primal music of claiming, of mating. His teeth grazed my throat, a promise of more marks to come. I welcomed the pain. I deserved it for what I’d become, an animal in his arms, a mindless, desperate creature driven by need.
“You’re mine now.” He punctuated the words with a particularly deep thrust. “Say it.”
“Yours,” I cried out. “Yours.”
Take me. Break me. Claim every piece until nothing remains but you.
His hips slammed into mine, but the pain was just another sensation in the overwhelming flood. I met his dominance with greedy desperation, my soaked pussy clenching around him, demanding more. His grip on my hips bruised my skin as he pounded into me, claiming me as his own. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the feeling of him inside me, breaking down every barrier I’d ever known.
I sobbed from pleasure, my body raw and wide open for him to take. My power rose to meet him, a wild heat coiling in my gut. It was a raw surge of life so potent it felt like it could sprout roots and tear through me from the inside out. It had no direction, no form. It was just pure, chaotic energy, a storm inside me that only he could contain.
Demeter’s ancient bloodline screamed inside of me. The plants that had tried to push Damon away vibrated, their primal knowledge demanding his closeness.
His shadows answered, pouring from the corners, reaching for me. The living cold they emanated clung to my feverish skin, a chilling counterpoint to the fire he was driving into me.
The lines blurred. Between his body and mine, between the searing heat in my core and the chilling shades on my skin, between the pleasure and the utter annihilation of self. I wasn’t just losing myself. I was being unmade, every defense I’d ever built dismantled with each perfect, punishing thrust.
I was losing myself, melting into him, consumed by the primal need and the brutal beauty of my own surrender. This wasn’t likeany fantasy I’d ever had. It was messy and desperate and real. This was what it meant to be claimed by an Alpha like Damon Blackwood, to be stripped bare of everything but need and want and the knowledge that without him, I would shatter into a million pieces.
The vines coiling around the bedposts tightened in response to my mounting pleasure. Swirling darkness clung to each thorn, dripping from the greenery like blood.
He locked his hands on my hips as he fucked me into the mattress, plunging deeper with every stroke. When he angled his hips, he hit something inside me that made stars explode behind my eyes. My entire nervous system lit up like lightning as our bodies collided over and over again. “Right there,” I cried out, clinging to him. “Don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
“Not stopping.” He was vicious and relentless, hitting that spot again and again. “Not until you’re ruined for anyone else.”
The taste of magic coated my tongue like ambrosia laced with ash, bitter and sweet all at once. The shadows slithered across the walls, closer, always closer. It was almost ironic. They were just as drawn to the maelstrom raging within me as I was to their master.
In his eyes I saw a reflection of everything I feared yet desired most. I was someone who could strip away the lies I told myself and see the truth beneath. I was a woman desperate to be claimed by an Alpha like him. Despite my better judgment or station in life or any other excuse I could conjure up, I couldn’tdeny the truth. I wanted him more than I’d wanted anything in my life.
And then I felt it. The base of him thickening, swelling as he drove closer to his own release. It was the most natural thing in the world, something that was supposed to happen to every Alpha when claiming their Omegas.
It almost drove me insane, pushing me to the limit, making my already oversensitive skin flare with renewed need. “Damon,” I screamed between ragged breaths as another orgasm threatened to tear through me. “I can’t…”
“You will,” he snarled. “You’re going to come on my knot and thank me for it.”
The swelling at his base was pressing against me with each stroke. Pleasure and primal terror mixed together. My Omega wanted it, demanded it, clamping down on him.
He drove into me one final time and his knot swelled fully, stretching me impossibly wide until I was locked around him, unable to move or escape. My orgasm detonated at the same moment, violent and consuming. There was no self, no name, no past. Just his body in mine, his fire flooding me, and the terrifying relief of no longer having to hold anything back.
“That’s it.” His groan vibrated against my skin as he spilled inside me, hot and endless. “Mine. Completely mine.”
The world narrowed to sensation, to the pulse of his knot, the flood of his seed, the vines twisting around us as my magic answered the storm. He drove through my orgasm, prolonging it until I couldn’t tell where one wave ended and the next began. “Give me everything.”
My throat was raw from screaming his name. The thick heat of his release filled me, mingling with the slickness between my thighs.
The air vibrated with a hum of magic and shadow energy. The very room seemed to tremble. Vines erupted from every surface, twining themselves around us both in a verdant cocoon that both restrained and cradled us together.
As our breathing slowed to ragged gasps, we remained joined. Neither of us willing or able to break the connection. Sweat cooled on our fevered skin.
And through the haze of my afterglow, my rational side finally returned.
It was like surfacing from drowning, that first desperate gulp of air before plunging into freezing water. The weight of what had happened crushed down on me.
I lay beneath Damon’s weight, my body still humming with satisfaction that made me sick to acknowledge. The desperate heat was gone, replaced by bone-deep contentment that felt wrong. Every nerve ending still sang with his touch. Every muscle was relaxed in a way that felt like surrender.
The air tasted of sex and shame. Evidence marked my skin, his scent everywhere, phantom sensations that reminded me how thoroughly he’d possessed me. The burning emptiness was gone, filled with something that made my throat close even as my body celebrated.
I had spent years building suppressants specifically to avoid this. To maintain autonomy over my own body. To never be reduced to this mindless, begging thing I’d become.
