The sprite disappeared, leaving behind a little cloud of fading stardust.
Quirking a brow, Ember crossed her arms, cocked her hip, and looked at Nyte. “How long have you known Starling was watching us?”
Chuckling, he walked toward Ember, wrapped his arms around her, and drew her against his chest. “From the beginning, but it doesn’t matter. She was always going to watch her little scheme unfold whether we knew it or not.”
He curled a finger around a lock of her hair as he lowered his face, skimming the tip of his nose over hers, his lips teasingly close to her own. “Regardless, she’s not watching us right now…”
His hands smoothed down to her ass, trailing heat, and began bunching up her short skirt, exposing more of her thighs little by little.
Ember’s breath hitched, and she grabbed his forearms to stop him. “Nyte! The store’s open. Someone could walk in.”
“I locked the door and turned the sign.” Nyte dipped his head farther and grazed her neck with his fangs, making her shiver. “I need you. Now.”
He opened his mouth wide and bit down.
The flare of pain forced a cry from her lips, but it was swiftly carried away on a rising tide of pleasure. Ember lifted her hands and slipped her fingers into his hair to clutch the dark locks. She held him closer as pleasure shot through her, going straight to her clit and making it pulse.
His fingers flexed, curling around her ass, pressing his claws into her flesh.
“Nyte,” she moaned, each gentle pull from his mouth making her core clench as the hollow ache within her grew. A breathless laugh slipped past her lips. “You said you weren’t a vampire.”
He withdrew his fangs, and his tongue slid across the wounds, making them tingle and grow warmer. With a chuckle, he lifted his head to meet her gaze. “So long as it gets me another taste of you, I’ll be whatever I must.”
Nyte slanted his mouth over hers in a hungry kiss, pressing her back against the wall. She tasted blood on his tongue, mixed with the flavor of him, and God, why was that so titillating? He lifted her off her feet, parting her thighs wide, and she wrapped her legs around his hips as she returned the kiss, parting her lips and welcoming his sinful tongue.
His tail trailed along the back of her thigh, curling in to slide beneath her underwear. Ember whimpered as it brushed over her pussy. She felt the material being tugged to the side,felt air against her heated center, and then Nyte’s cock was there, its head nudging against her.
With a growl, he pushed inside her, slowly, deeply, his girth stretching her, his length filling her, and Ember gasped against his mouth. As he’d said, he was made to fit her perfectly.
Nyte’s eyes blazed with fierceness and possessiveness, holding her gaze captive as he thrust inside her, gradually bringing them both toward the heights of rapture. Neither of them looked away even when the universe began to shatter around them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Though he heard the shower running in the bathroom, heard the sprays and splashes as Ember moved beneath the water, for once, Nyte’s mind wasn’t occupied by imaginings of her naked form. Not that he needed to imagine anymore after ten days of shared showers.
Instead, his attention was focused outside.
He lay atop Ember’s bed, staring out the window at the rapidly darkening evening sky. There were no clouds today. The last daylight persisted stubbornly to the west, bleeding from muted orange to purple to black above the buildings blocking his line of sight.
The shower turned off. What silence it left was soon enough filled by the whine of Ember’s hair dryer.
Nyte’s tail thumped on the blanket in a lazy, heavy rhythm. Humans considered patience a virtue. He tended to agree; immortality must’ve been insufferable to anyone lacking it. But his was much thinner than usual tonight.
Waiting for Ember would always feel this way. He knew it with impossible certainty, and no part of him could dispute thefact. Whenever she was out of sight, he felt a gaping hole in his chest, a void so terribly cold and empty that it burned. He rubbed at it now despite knowing his touch could not soothe it.
And that feeling was exasperated by the other thing he was awaiting.
The moon.
The binding magic roiled within him, responding to the residual power of the full moon that would rise tonight, almost as though the enchantment were as eager to be dispelled as he was to be rid of it. Because once Nyte was free…
His fingers twitched, scraping his claws over his chest, and his tail slapped down hard.
Freedom… What did it mean to him now? For while he’d only been trapped with Ember for a month, his imprisonment had lasted much, much longer than that. What was freedom? What did it entail?
Choice. Ultimately, freedom was the power to choose.
Emotions swirled inside him, powerful, primal emotions that seemed to contradict one another. Light and dark, fire and ice, loud and deafeningly quiet. And Ember was at the core of all of them. She was at the core of Nyte.
