Page 50 of Branded By Shadow
Yes,I thought, a silent promise to the darkness.I will break her. I will cause her pain. But she will feel it from my hand, and my hand alone. Every tremor, every gasp will be mine to command. You will watch me occupy the deepest parts of her, and you will do nothing. She is my instrument, not your feast.
Slickness from her denied orgasm coated her thighs. I knelt behind her, parting the cheeks of her ass. Her tight, virginal ringpuckered at the touch, a final, defiant gate I intended to smash open.
I slicked my middle finger with her own juices and pressed it against her entrance. It was tight, so impossibly tight. I worked my finger in slowly, then added a second, forcing her ass to stretch, to accommodate the invasion.
A small sob caught in her throat as I made her ready. I chuckled. “You feel that, Cora? That’s the last boundary between us. And I am about to erase it.”
I withdrew my fingers and immediately replaced them with the head of my cock. As I pushed in, her unyielding tightness nearly drove me insane. Every inch I took was a grinding battle, a claim on the last piece of her that had remained untouched. This was not the welcoming heat of her cunt. This was a conquest.
At first, her body fought me, every muscle in her ass clenched in a desperate resistance to the unnatural invasion. I felt her tremble, her whimpers against the stone sharp with pain.
Setting a slow, grinding rhythm, I forced her ass to accommodate me, to learn my shape. “Focus on me, Cora,” I commanded. “This is mine now, too.”
Her resistance began to falter, her muscles quivering with exhaustion. She gasped, a sharp, shocked sound. And just like that, the nature of her shudders changed.
The tight clenching of her muscles around my cock was no longer just from pain. “Oh, gods,” she choked out, the words a mix of agony and dawning, confused pleasure. “What... what are you doing to me?”
“I am rewriting you,” I growled.
I felt the exact moment the sensations tipped, the moment the overwhelming pleasure from the front began to bleed into the pain from behind, transforming it. She started to meet my thrusts, her hips lifting in a desperate, involuntary seeking of more. She was chasing a pleasure she wasn’t built to feel, and I was the one forcing her to find it.
My thrusts became harder, faster, more savage. I was no longer just controlling her, but actively hunting her climax. “That’s it, Cora,” I snarled, my thumb grinding against her mercilessly. “Show them. Show them how completely you belong to me.”
“I can’t—” she sobbed, writhing under my assault. “It’s too much... Damon, please!”
Her pleas only fueled me. I drove into her again and again, feeling her body coiling tight, a spring wound to its absolute limit. The pleasure I was forcing on her was an unnatural, overwhelming force, a beautiful violation that was all my own creation.
“Damon!” she screamed, a raw, primal sound of agony and ecstasy that was my name, my sin, and my absolution all at once.Her body locked around my cock, convulsing as a shattering orgasm tore through her.
That was the final trigger. Her climax crashed against the walls of my control and brought them down. A roar that was not human exploded from my chest as my own release came.
The knot swelled at my base, a brutal, physical brand of ownership. It forced her ass open, stretching her impossibly wide. I stayed embedded in her, locked inside her by the knot, pinning her down.
And in that moment of absolute depletion, as pure instinct took the wheel, I leaned down. My lips found the bonding gland at her throat. The skin was hot, her pulse a frantic drum. My canines descended, breaking the skin with a sharp, final certainty. The taste of her blood exploded on my tongue, copper and salt and forever.
My will shattered.
The shadows I had been strangling inside me erupted. A silent, expanding sphere of absolute nothingness rushed outward, swallowing Cora, surrounding us in an impenetrable dome of black.
My heart almost stopped. I had failed. I had saved her from the rut only to let the void consume her.
From outside our dome of darkness, panicked shouts echoed, muffled and distant. “Dear gods, he killed her!” Lyra screamed.
“We should have never allowed this!” the House Artemis guard called. “Stop him!”
They thought they were witnessing a murder. But I blinked, and I realized they were wrong.
The shadows that touched her skin did not burn. The power washed over her, not as a violation, but as a cool, possessive caress. It recognized her.
On her neck, the claiming mark pulsed, shining not with corruption, but with a steady, dark light. It was a beacon of my own making, and it had become a part of her.
Slowly, the dark dome disappeared. A collective gasp echoed through the amphitheater as the shadows revealed her, unharmed and serene beneath me.
I looked up, facing all of them. In the Zeus section, Alexander was on his feet, his face a mask of disbelief and fury. Across the way, Marcus Dred simply stared, his usual arrogance replaced by a look of grudging respect.
In the stunned silence that followed, the final piece of the puzzle settled into place. A new pathway opened between our minds. A sense I never knew existed awakened in the space between one heartbeat and the next. My first thought, raw and possessive, shot across the new bridge, impossible to contain.Mine.
I felt her receive it. There was no fear in her response, no confusion. Only a wave of profound, overwhelming awe.
