Chapter Eleven

Hayden

Wren wraps shadows around my arms, my thighs, even my hair to tug it so that I'm forced to tip my head back in surrender. Like this, I feel him everywhere . He pins me against the van, and I push against his hold, testing the bonds while not wanting him to release me.

His warm breath against my throat makes me shiver. "Stay there while I fix the wards," he orders.

He can demand whatever he desires. The promise in his voice tells me I'll get what I want, what we both want in the end.

A swirl of his shadows lifts me in the air like I weigh nothing to him. His darkness cocoons mein heat, a sharp contrast to the cool metal at my back. The thin fabric of my shirt and panties seems so confining when all I can think about is pushing against him to show him how much I crave him, need him. The adrenaline rush from the fight with the revenants and our argument has me buzzing.

Turning his attention from me, he keeps me pinned while patching the wards where I drove the van through his beautiful designs.

My brain knows he's doing this to protect me in case we haven't seen the last revenant, and the artistry and detail of his warding sparks my curiosity. But the brat in me wants to demand he pay attention entirely to me. I squirm against his shadows, trying to force him to focus on me.

The shadows tighten, one slipping to rub against the cotton of my panties. "Stay. There." The rumble beneath his words, the dark command in his voice makes me wet, so wet there's no way he won't discover it as he brushes back and forth over the fabric.

"I want?—"

"I'll give you what you want. As soon as the wards are finished." Despite the bossy, detached way he says the last, he continues teasing me with his shadows—a sweep beneath my panties, a pinch of my nipples, a stroke of my collarbone, a rougher hold on my hair.

My legs shake, and my knees threaten to buckle, but he holds me steady, toying with me while he painstakingly repairs each line and curve. He drags my pleasure to the precipice of a climax, only to withdraw and leave me panting.

"Don't you need to concentrate on the spell?" I ask, gasping past the godawful ache in my core so I might fake the same level of control he possesses.

"Spells are about intentions. Intentions are everything." He keeps teasing me, using his intimate knowledge of my body to edge me again and again. "I intend to protect you, to fight for you, to love you for the rest of our lives."

Love me.

He loves me.

No matter how restrained he might be in his sweet torture of me, his easy admission spirals round and round in me.

Instead of letting the ecstasy building inside me spark and blaze into the inferno simmering beneath my skin, he leaves me writhing and wanting. Sweat dampens my face, the nape of my neck. I drag my nails over his shadows, the van, my shirt, anything that might bring relief if I can just come. "Please, Wren."

He rolls a lingering touch over my clit, and my core clenches as he says on a growl, "I intend to pleasure my mate, to cherish you, to worship you forever and a day. I will take my time. I will drive you as insane with desire for the rest of our lives as you have me for the last ten years. Because you are mine. Say it."

"I'm yours." It's the truth, but right now, I'm pretty sure I'd say anything, do anything if he'll simply stop teasing me.

He drags a shadow through my folds, dipping inside and spreading me open for him like he owns me until he taps my clit, and my body rockets like a fireworks show. My breathing goes erratic; my muscles twitch and tremble. His magic, his darkness, his everything has me drowning in him. In pleasure.

I tense from my toes to my jaw, and an orgasm breaks me apart as though I've shattered into a thousand pieces. Pieces he strokes and pets back together with a tenderness that feels like worship.

His eyes flash brilliant violet. A dark intensity I don't understand shines from his gaze. "If you promise me forever, I'll spend every day making you glad you did."

"Yes," I whisper, boneless still from the mind-shattering orgasm he pulled from my body. "Claim me."

"A true claiming would require a bondage bite. It goes beyond the mating bond which is more than I've ever hoped for."

"A bite?"

"It would mean everything in my world."

"The reaper world?"

"No, the Shadow Realm. Shadow beings aren't all reapers, and reapers aren't all shadow beings. But a bite mark? A claiming? It would show the world we're bound for life."

A visible symbol for everyone to see. Like a wedding ring. "Do I get to bite you?"

His gaze goes wild, hungry. "Anywhere you wish, anytime you wish."

"All right, then. I expect a claiming," I tell him. "No more holding back."

He trails shadows along my jaw while undressing me as though I'm a present he has waited ten long years to unwrap. "What would you like, my beauty? We've tried it all in fantasies—knotting, double dicks, tentacles. What does my mate want for a first time in this form? Our first time of forever?"

"You." I reach for him, the light of his magic glinting off the bracelet he gave me. "I want you."

With a dark growl, he catches my wrists, stretching my arms above my head. He binds my ankles so my legs are spread wide for him.

A delicious shiver ripples over me when I try to close my thighs but can't. I'm at his mercy.

He uses his shadows to explore me like he's memorizing my body. He rubs me from my breasts down over my belly, then between my thighs until I'm squirming to rub against him, to get pressure where I need it for another release.

He leaves me for a moment, moving his head as if admiring his handiwork—his shadows pinning me in place for him.

"You have never been more beautiful," he murmurs.

A whimper leaves me when he drags his erection along my inner thigh. I strain to meet him, but I can't get free. He holds me spread and open for him, pinned and captive. He makes a sound of appreciation when I struggle against him. I can't do anything more than writhe, and he likes that.

With my arms stretched above me and my back arching to rub against him, his shadows spread over me like a second skin. "I have waited a decade for this." He presses the tip of his cock to my entrance and holds there. "You. Are. Mine."

He shoves inside me with one thrust—stretching me, filling me, making my body give to the point of pain. Only he twists, his shadows finding the most sensitive parts of me, sending pleasure shooting through me.

I cry out, my inner walls rippling around his length like he belongs here. Like I've waited ten long years for this. Like I'll crave it the rest of my life and never get enough.

"Forever, Wren," I whisper.

His magic flickers in his eyes and across his body, a shimmer of lightning and darkness all at once. "Forever," he echoes with a thrust.

His shadows pulse, teasing my body as he pumps into me with the strength of a supernatural being. When he rolls my clit between two shadows, I shatter around him, my body going taut and tight, and still he takes me in slow, sure thrusts. He strokes deep into me, dragging against the places I need his touch most and drawing waves of ecstasy into one never-ending surge that has my core rippling with spasms that seem unending.

His shadows tighten on me, binding us together even as his slow circles on my clit threaten to trigger yet another orgasm. To the point I almost beg him for mercy.

Except he hesitates.

"I love you." He says the words like a confession.

My heart flutters. There's a vulnerability in this version of my reaper.

"Say it back," he commands.

"I love you. I have for years. You are the best of my fantasies, come to life."

The magic in his eyes sparks and flickers with violet lightning, the darkness in his shadows becoming a mist like smoke as he pulls a scream from my lips, as he spills himself inside me with his own release, as he sinks his fangs into the curve where my shoulder meets my collarbone.

The claim causes a blinding rush of euphoria that feels so much bigger than the burn of the bite. When he laps at it, sucking and soothing the bite, I surrender myself to his shadows, letting him hold me up.

We did it .

A connection stronger than sex, more hypnotic than any fantasy, deeper than anything I could have imagined settles between us.

Wren wraps his darkness around me as if he'll never let me go. I give myself over to the tangle of shadows, to the tenderness of this new certainty. When he gently lays me on the bed, I whisper, "You're mine now."

"As you are mine. My love. My heart. My home."

His home. I rest my head on his chest, tracing the charm on the bracelet he gave me. "I wish I could see your home."

My vision blurs, the world around me goes cold, and the solid muscle beneath my cheek vanishes.

"Wren?" Panic shoots through me. "Wren!"