Her door seemingly materializes in the shadowy distance, a slab of wood breathing in the darkness. Years of training urge me to knock, but all that is overruled with the long, thin whine of pain.
I throw open the door.
The hallway light spills in behind me, a filmy, yellow stain cutting a narrow rectangle across the bed. Everything else crawls with oppressive nothingness. An opaque and endless black that feels unnatural in every sense. It presses against the walls, swallows the corners. It’s a virus that clings to everything, except the bed.
It’s like a stage, visible for my viewing.
She’s on her back. A beautiful, pale silhouette bathed in the light I give her. Body arched, long, slender legs splayed wide, arms held above her head. Heels dig into the mattress, liftingher up, bowing her to the invisible force moving against her with deep, greedy plunges. Her skin glistens with perspiration and desperation as she chases her pleasure against the thing slamming the frame against the wall.
Her big, glossy eyes turn in my direction and bloom wider at the sight of me. Her features tighten with her approaching climax, a frantic hitch in her gasp I recognize.
“Don’t … don’t look … Marcus, please…”
The words fracture around a gasp, a choked wheeze that sends her head back.
Her spine arches off the mattress, nipples sharp points extending high as her thighs tremble. She seizes around the thing inside her … whatever it is and shudders with waves upon waves of ecstasy.
I can’t move. My feet are rooted to the floorboards. Heat floods my face, my chest … lower. Traitorously lower. The dick in my trousers tightens even while a part of me screams of the wrongness.
But she’s so beautiful. So perfect like this. The very lines of her are made for this pain, this brutality of pleasure so intense, her body gushes.
And her assailant never stops. Never slows. It takes her with the same hungry plunges that make her scream and pulse. Tears cut down her temples as the pressure overwhelms her and she can’t breathe.
A low, guttural roar fills the room. It vibrates in my bones, possessive and triumphant. The temperature plummets and I choke on the taste of iron and ozone. Wood splinters as the frame finally reaches its limit.
“Mine!” The voice is thunder wrapped in velvet and screamed directly inside my skull and around the room. “She. Is. Mine!”
It jolts me, bringing me crashing back to reality and the actions I should be taking.
“Lenora!”
My growl is swallowed by her howl, by the seizure of her limbs, stiffening, back hooking off the soaked sheets as the creature sends her over again and she begs it not to stop.
I take a step forward to stop this, to save her … to see her up close. My head is a vortex of desire and protective instinct willing me to snatch her away, while desperate to see the wet state of her core. The mess she’s creating between her thighs. The entire scene is obscene and unholy, and I am powerless to stop the need to wait my turn and feel the heat of her sex clasp me.
But it’s all I am allowed when the serrated winds of the arctic backhand me from the room. The door is slammed shut and I plummet.
I pitch backwards.
Something cold and solid slams into my spine. The wall, I vaguely think, but it gives as if I’ve torn through it and I tumble.
No floors.
No walls.
Just a weightless fall into an abyss that smells of wet stone and old blood. Shadows wrap around my arms, my throat, my legs, pulling and dragging me deeper.
I try to scream, but the darkness swallows the sound before it leaves my mouth. Somewhere above, in the room I can no longer reach, I hear her cum again. A damning sound that echoes down with me until it’s all I can hear. A mocking song meant to torment me to my death.
Then … silence.
Only the dark and the knowledge that whatever has her … will not let me near her.
Chapter Sixteen
Marcus
Thefallendsabruptly.
