His hands slid down my spine, possessive, settling at my hips. He nudged against me, slick and seeking. My body opened, remembering the exquisite stretch as he entered in one smooth, deep thrust.
A choked cry tore from me. The angle drove stars behind my eyes, filling me completely, a claiming so total it felt etched into my bones. He stilled, buried deep, letting the reality of it sink in.
Then he moved.
Slow retreat. Hard drive forward. The force pushed me against the desk, pleasure and pressure colliding with every thrust. The sound of skin on skin filled the cabin, loud and rhythmic against the groan of the ship.
One hand slid from my hip to my belly, then lower, finding me again. His fingers circled with devastating precision.
“I want to hear you,” he demanded. “I want to hear what I do to you.”
“Alaric—gods.”
His fingers and thrusts fell into a merciless rhythm. Pleasure spiraled, tighter and hotter than before. He was everywhere—inside me, around me, the scent of sea and him filling my lungs. Pain, fullness, skill—it blurred into one overwhelming sensation of being utterly taken.
The coil snapped.
Pleasure ripped through me in a blinding wave, a scream tearing free as my body clenched around him, shuddering apart. He followed with a ragged shout, thrusts turning frantic as he spilled deep inside me, his arm locking tight around my waist.
For a long moment, there was only sound—the wind, the ship, the quiet rhythm of us. Slowly, the world steadied.
He pressed a kiss to my shoulder, lingering.
The scent of us—salt, sweat, skin, and something wild—hung heavy in the air, wrapping around us like incense in a shrine. The lantern flame flickered, casting golden shadows across the wood-paneled walls, dancing over the curve of his shoulder, the lines of his jaw, the curve of my thigh draped across his hip. Somewhere beyond the hull, the sea groaned and whispered, a low rhythm syncing with the heartbeat beneath my hand.
I traced the ink with my finger, the same way I’d traced it with my eyes a hundred times before—every curve and shadow committed to memory, yet still capable of leaving me still.
I turned my face toward his, lips brushing his jaw, voice barely above a whisper. "You're not as bad as people think you are."
His arm tightened around me slightly. "No.. I'm much worse."
I smiled into his skin.
31
Alaric
The Black Marrow
One perfect, impossible night with her—and the sea, the gods, the whole damned universe rushes in to remind me what I am. I can hold her, feel her heart steady against mine, taste a future I was never meant to touch… and still know, with every shard of this curse grinding through my bones, that she deserves a man of light, not a creature forged in blood and shadows.
Wanting her isn’t just longing—it’s a sentence. It’s the ocean whispering that the greatest torment for a monster is to finally find something pure … and know he will never be worthy of it.
She lay curled against me, silver hair threaded with whispers of violet and blue, spilling across my chest like liquid starlight. The curve of her hip and the sweep of her waist were bare to the cool air, lit faintly by slivers of sunlight filtering through the porthole. My shirt still lay on the floor where she’d torn it from me. The cabin smelled like us—salt and sweat, skin and something wild I’d never find anywhere else.
One of her hands rested over the ink she’d traced again and again in the dark, memorizing me by touch. I’d memorized her too—the sounds she made when I kissed her throat, the way her breath caught when I said her name. I’d learned the difference between hope and illusion the hard way. This didn’t feel like either. This felt like a door I’d never seen before.
Andthatwas the problem.
Loving her hurt. Losing her would hurt worse. Either way, I bled. Every moment I kept her here was a coin tossed into a storm—sooner or later, the sea would take its due.
I eased away from her, though every instinct screamed to stay. The sheet slipped from her shoulder, golden light catching in the hollow of her collarbone. I could feel the monster rising. The hunger clawing its way out. I would rather starve than take her that way.
She stirred, eyes half-lidded, her voice rough with sleep.
“Running off already?” she teased, a lazy, knowing smile tugging at her lips.
The sound almost undid me. I turned toward the washbasin, gripping its edge to keep from going back to her. “Couldn’t sleep.”
