I gasp as he slams into me, crying out in pleasure when he moves again—his hips finding a rhythm that has me seeing stars.
“Slade!” I cry out, arching my hips to meet his.
He growls, leaning over me, pumping harder, faster, securing my hands again above my head as if I might break apart without his hold. Slade leans down, kissing my neck, biting across my chest, claiming every inch, kissing me again until I’m breathless and filled with nothing but pleasure and need.
The pressure keeps building, the sensation growing too big—too much.
“Slade, I—”
“Come for me,Piper. I want all of the Ninth Realm to hear you become mine,” Slade says, voice low, husky, and thick with desire.
I detonate, crying out his name over and over as my release takes me. The first orgasm was bliss, butthis—this is something else entirely.
It still trembles through me, rolling in slow, powerful waves, when Slade groans—a sound pulled from somewhere raw inside him. His body tightens above mine, muscles straining as if holding himself back.
I drag my hands from his grip and cradle his face—finally touching him—and the moment my palms meet his skin, something shatters.
A pulse erupts between us. Soft at first. Then… blinding.
Heat unfurls from where our bodies join, a molten ribbon of magic threading through me like liquid light. Shadows curl up his spine, coiling around my hips, my ribs, sliding beneath my skin as though searching for a place to anchor.
Slade freezes, eyes widening—dark green irises glowing with an inner gold I’ve never seen before.
“Piper,” he breathes, voice breaking, “thebond—”
It snaps further into place. Not like a chain, or a cage. Like a star collapsing inward and reforming around us—a fusion of heat, desire, recognition, and something older than either of our bloodlines.
His power surges, sweeping through me in a warm, shadow-soft tide. My own magic rises to meet it, bright and wild, flooding out of me in a flare of heat that prickles across my skin like embers waking after centuries of sleep.
The moment they touch—our powers don’t collide.
They converge.
Shadow melts into light. Light sinks into shadow. A perfect, impossible symmetry.
I feel him. Not just his body, or his desire. His fear. His reverence. His aching, desperate hopethat I’ll choose him. His vow—silent but absolute—that he will burn the realms before he lets anything touch me.
The depth of it steals the air from my lungs.
“That’s you,” he whispers, forehead falling to mine as he thrusts again, slower now, deeper. “All of that—gods, Piper, that’s you.”
The pleasure swells again, threaded now with emotion so potent it makes my eyes sting. Every movement he makes sends another ripple of power through the bond, another strand weaving into place, tightening, anchoring.
His shadows curl around my wrists, gentle where they had once been firm. My magic flows into his chest with every breath. Our hearts sync—first by accident, then by instinct, then because the bond demands it.
His voice thickens. “I’m inside you everywhere.”
And he is.
Inside my mind, my magic—my soul in a way that feels terrifying and holy.
I cling to him, legs tightening around his waist as he thrusts deeper, the bond tightening with every push, pulling us closer, closer, until I can’t tell where my magic ends and his begins.
The world narrows to heat. To shadow. To the man above me who feels like home and inevitability.
The pressure builds again—a rising, spiraling pull that gathers at the center of my chest and between my thighs all at once. The bond flares—and I break. Pleasure tears through me like the sky splitting open, bright and consuming. I cry out, the sound echoing through both our bodies as Slade follows, groaning my name into my neck as he spills into me.
Magic explodes outward in a burst of gold and black. Candles flare. Lights hum. The air itself ripples, bowing to the force of what we’ve become.
