I groaned, gripping her hips, watching her face as she filled herself with me. She threw her head back, a ragged gasp escaping her lips, her neck exposed, the vein fluttering wildly beneath the skin.
She set the pace. She began to move, riding me, grinding down hard. The friction was electric.
Our magic rose to meet the pace. As she moved, golden light began to bleed from her skin, cascading down her body like liquid fire. My shadows erupted from the mattress, uncoiling like smoke, wrapping around her hips and anchoring her down harder onto me. They caressed her thighs, her waist, reacting to every hitch in her breath. We were tangled in a storm of gold and black, the air in the room vibrating with the force of it.
She moved faster, desperate, chasing the release. I held her hips, my fingers digging into the glowing skin, thrusting up to meet her, driving deep until she cried out, her inner muscles clamping down on me as she shattered.
She collapsed against my chest, panting, trembling in the aftershocks.
But the current between us only intensified. The magic hummed against my skin, a magnetic demand for total immersion. I needed to be closer.
I stood up, holding her against me, and laid her down on the mattress. I turned her over, curling my body around her back, fitting my shape to hers. I held her tight, my arm wrapping around her waist, my hand finding her breast again.
I entered her slowly, filling her completely, sealing the bond.
She gasped, arching back into me, her head resting on my shoulder.
When I began to move, the magic erupted.
The tether roared between us.
Golden light cascaded down her skin, illuminating the sweat sheeting her body. My shadows rose to meet it, weaving through the brilliance, binding us together in a storm of amber and obsidian.
The sensation consumed me. I sent my shadows lower, letting them slide between her legs, adding a cool, phantom caress to the heat of our bodies.
She cried out, her hips grinding back against me.
And then I saw it.
On her left shoulder blade. The scar.
It started to shine. At first, a pearlescent shimmer under the skin. As her magic surged, turning her skin to gold, the light of the scar intensified.
I watched it, mesmerised. Beneath the angry tissue of the burn, a shape was forming in molten silver—a jagged, broken arc. My mind stuttered, unable to track where I had seen that curve before, but the sight of it felt like a memory I hadn’t lived. It was a fragment, an unfinished piece of something ancient.
It reacted to me, awakening under my touch and the raw pressure of my magic. The pleasure spiked, turning blinding as my shadows answered her call, tightening around us in a frantic embrace.
I felt my own magic reaching out to find its mirror inher. It pulsed from my chest, answering the pull of that silver arc on her shoulder.
A sudden, crushing gravity took hold. It was a terrifying, immediate recognition—a sense that the hollow space I had carried for years was finally colliding with the only thing capable of filling it. I stood on the edge of a threshold where the boundaries of my own soul began to bleed into hers.
Then she turned her head. Her eyes were open, burning with that molten gold. She met the intensity with fierce certainty. She saw the same truth I did. She looked right at me, and she drew the shadows in.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped, the words breaking against the air. “Don’t you dare stop.”
The words were a command to break the last seal.
I surrendered. I poured everything I was into the starving space between us. The circuit detonated.
A torrent of power eclipsed the room. My shadow crashed into her light, two storms merging into one crushing, radiant pressure. It vibrated through my bones, rendering me weightless.
I felt her shatter. A cascade of pure light that vibrated through me as if it were my own.
“Selene,” I choked out.
I followed her over the edge. The rush dragged my focus out of my body and pinned it to the warmth of hers. I collapsed against her back, burying my face in the curve of her neck. My heart hammered against her spine—a thundering rhythm that was no longer just mine.
The room was silent,save for the distant drip of condensation.
