The water splashed as he surged forward, lifting her like a rag doll, pressing her back to a boulder slick with moss. Suddenly claiming her throat with a bite of fangs. His mouth was everywhere, with a brutal tenderness only he possessed. She gasped as his dark shadows sang through her — smokey and all consuming —coiling around her soul like shadowed vines.
His hand slipped beneath her thighs, pulling her higher to align their bodies. His cock nudged her entrance. She moaned into his kiss, fingers tangling in his dripping hair. He was within her walls in an instant, establishing a rhythm. Searing pleasure melted her corewith every powerful thrust. She had been frantic for this, for him — from the moment she was pulled from his side. Her lover, and her future.
But then, something shifted. The tendrils of his hair disappeared from her grasp.
The mouth on hers changed. Softer. Cooler. A tongue darting between her lips. The weight of the body over hers eased, became languid, teasing rather than ravenous. The pace slowed to a savory pulse. The length of him suddenly reaching new places to wring pleasure from her. He pulled out his arousal slick with hers.
When she opened her eyes…
It was no longer Kael above her.
It was Alarik.
His white-blonde hair shimmered like moonlight in the mist. His violet-blue eyes burned onto her with a fire that didn’t devour but seduced. His fingers traced reverent lines down her hip, brushing over the ring Kael had given her as if to curse it from her skin.
Maris hate for him for ripping her away from her desire, her betrothed. Alarik was a temptation she wanted to refuse — but the tormented hunger she held for him refused to be cast aside. It was a sin her heart committed even as her mind raged against it. Her only solace came in the knowledge that this version of Alarik was entirely a figment of her imagination, a sweet indulgence — a safe release for an unwanted urge.
So he allowed, his fingers to draw runes along her inner thighs as he looked up at her with a silent question.
She nodded in answer. Her core throbbed pleading for his touch.
He lowered himself to her — tongue gently licking circles slowly increasing his pace. But he became desperate, pulling her closer by the back of her thighs. Wildly exploring her with each heat sealed stroke, his warm breath a crest heightening her arousal.
To her dismay, he stopped. Rising to face her.
“Let Kael haunt your sleep,” Alarik murmured against her neck. “but know I’m the one who answers your call —I can give you what you truly crave and have you gasping my name as you wake.”
Maris tried to speak, but his lips brushed hers— stealing away any retort on her tongue. The kiss was vow of longing. It was not possessive like Kael’s, but indulgent like he had all the time in the world to learn her.
His faelight hummed across her skin, stirring her magic like a tide drawn by the moon.
“You feel it too,” he whispered against her mouth. “The tether… between us.”
She trembled, lit by the spark from the heat his words carried. She surrender her defenses then, offering up her body in its entirely.
This was wrong. This was betrayal.
And yet — she burned for it.
Alarik slid his hand from her cheek, tipping her chin toward him. “I don’t want to steal you, Maris,” he said softly, eyes swirling with fractured sorrow. “I want to worship you. The way he never could.” His hand slipped down her throat to the peak of her breast, rubbing tender lazy circles.
Lightning crackled beneath her skin.
Alarik moved suddenly his mouth to her neck from behind, her body no longer pressing on stone, but against him. She could feel his hard length grazing her as he planted kisses along her throat. Another touch joined Alarik's — familiar, dominant, dangerous.
Kael.
His hands felt rough —hotter sliding up her thighs, parting her once more. His voice growled in her ear, low and commanding, “Why choose only one lover, when you can have us both?” — with that he resumed his earlier stance between her thighs.
Her body arched between them, trapped in a firestorm of pleasure and chaos. Alarik pressed a kiss between her shoulder blades while Kael dragged his teeth along the shell of her ear.
“We are yours to claim —to break —to burn into,” Alarik murmured from behind.
Kael echoed the same sentiment, a whisper into her ear. “Your desire rules us, we are nothing but willing sacrifices to alter.”
And with each command they followed her lead.
There was no logic in it, no reality. It was heat and friction, power and primal need. A dance between shadows and faelight. Kael kissed her like a king laying claim to his crown. Alarik touched her like he was crafting a spell with his fingers, pulling at her magic from within. Her body both battleground and temple.
