Because this rhubarb bear kissed and licked and punished and had a seemingly unending list of things he wanted to do to me. Including rolling me over and wrapping one of my legs around his waist to make love to me on a picnic blanket while the sun set behind us.
Love.
We both gasped when he filled me up. Then groaned. I still hadn’t adjusted to his size, and the tightness of my channel made him have to stop and breathe, “So I don’t embarrass myself.”
But maybe we were getting used to each other, because he began moving on top of me after only a few held moments.
“By the gods, I love you,” he whispered, dropping tender kisses on my lips. “And I swear to you, I’m going to earn your bite.”
As he rolled his hips between my legs on that blanket, he told me his intentions. That he would send me to the Shadow Castle, then to the Mountain Fortress. That he’d spend the next twoweeks plotting ways to woo me intowantinghim inside my head.
“Oh, have I got plans for you,álainn.”
Plans.Uh-oh…
As Declan kept reminding me, I was a great ruiner of those.
And it felt like the most natural thing in the world to maw my teeth and sink them into the space between his shoulder and neck before he was ready.
But as I soon found out—when all his emotions and history downloaded into my mind—he was never ready for me. He doubted there’d ever be a time he’d look at me and consider me anything less than a surprise.
“Thebestsurprise,” he corrected, right before he seized up on top of me…
And sealed our official bonding with a cum.
It was Declan’s week, but Tadhg was the one who walked me over to the Shadow Castle the next night, stopping for several lingering kisses when we reached its lowered drawbridge.
“You’ll have to tell me what it’s like in there when I return to pick you up,” he said after the third or fourth goodbye.
Not for the first time, I wondered about the absence of our bond bites. Tadhg hadn’t even brought it up, despite having practically moved into the palace during Declan’s turn. But right before I was about to disappear for a week was probably not the time to introduce the subject.
“You’ve never been inside the Shadow Castle?” I asked instead.
Tadhg shrugged. “Like we said, when he’s not throwing the whole kingdom sideways to make you his queen, he’s a proper hermit, so he is.”
His gaze drifted over my shoulder, and my nose filled with the scent of lemons.
I turned to find the Shadow King standing at the halfway point of his drawbridge. He wore a pair of leather pants and nothing else. His chest, bare and carved like stone, had a fresh tattoo inked directly over his heart:
Shadow Queen, our mutual bear bite bond relayed, written in the strange, ancient language of his gods.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him until I was running, loosening the front of my wrap dress so my chest was also bare by the time I leapt into his arms and wrapped my legs around his waist.
He’d missed me, too. That was why he wore no shirt—he wanted to feel my skin against his.
And thank goodness I didn’t have a bra that went with the green dress yet. I wanted what he wanted, without ever needing his words. We stood like that for nearly an hour, just holding each other and letting our scents merge, before he finally set me down and took my hand to escort me inside….
…only to escort me back out, what felt like mere moments later. But this time he was dressed in a black-on-black tuxedo with full tails paired with a silver crown that gleamed under the glowing, red god-tech symbols on the castle’s exterior wall.
I found Tadhg in his usual jeans, t-shirt, and open button-up, waiting on the other side of the drawbridge.
“Did you decide to come early?” I asked, brow scrunching in confusion.
“No, you were definitely in there for a week,” Tadhg insisted, offering his hand as he helped me down from the lowered drawbridge onto the solid ground. “Longest one of my life.”
But not mine. I turned to wave at my moon god, but he disappeared from the castle’s entrance, and the drawbridge was already closing with a soundless, electronic speed.
“What was it like?” Tadhg asked again, this time more sincerely, as we circled the lake toward the Mountain Fortress, walking side by side.
