His control snapped, as he drove into me, hard and fast. Relentless. The pleasure built, a tide rising higher and faster than before. I was close again. So close.
“Come with me, Riven,” I begged him.
He buried his face in my neck, his thrusts becoming erratic, desperate.
The climax hit us both at the same time.
I screamed his name as my body convulsed, clamping down on him. He groaned, a ragged shout torn from his throat, and poured himself into me.
Our magic erupted.
A shockwave of power blasted outward from the bed. It should have blown the windows out. It should have torn the roof off.
Riven contained it.
Even as he came, even as he unravelled, his shadows flared. They formed a dense, impenetrable sphere around us, containing the explosion. The light and dark crashed against the barrier, mixing, churning, filling the room with a blinding, silent maelstrom.
Nothing seeped out. Nothing was visible to the world outside.
It was just us. Here. In the eye of the storm.
We collapsed. Riven settled over me, his solid warmth entirely welcome. The shadows receded, drifting back into the corners like a retreating tide, leaving the room dim and quiet.
He rolled to his side but didn’t pull away. He kept an arm draped over my waist, his leg tangled with mine, refusing to put even an inch of space between us.
We lay there in the cooling air, skin slick with sweat, chests heaving in sync.
I turned my head on the pillow to look at him. His eyes were closed, his dark lashes resting against pale cheeks, the sharp lines of his face softened by a bone-deep relief I hadn’t seen in him before.
My hand moved of its own accord, fingers trailing down the line of ink on his bicep, tracing the dark swirls over the corded muscle.
Madness, a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispered. He was dangerous. He was a weapon forged by Highspire, the right hand of the very people I was supposed to be fighting. Sleeping with him should have felt like walking into a trap, or at the very least, a tactical error I would pay for in the morning.
But it didn’t.
It felt inevitable.
I thought of the men who came before him—fleeting connections that never truly took hold, leaving me lonelier than before I’d met them. I had always kept a part of myself in reserve, guarding the restless heat in my blood. With Riven, those defences had simply vanished. His touch went deeper than skin; he had reached into the silence I had carried for decades and finally occupied the space.
I lacked a name for the weight existing between us—that terrifying, primal tension that pulled as tight as a wire. Watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, I knew I wouldn’t have changed a single moment. I needed him for the case and the magic, but most of all, I needed him for the simple reality of this.
For the way the jagged edges of my soul seemed to smooth out only when he was near.
Riven’s eyes opened. The silver swirls had slowed to a lazy driftin the blue depths. He caught my hand where it rested on his arm, bringing my knuckles to his lips.
He looked at me with a raw, unguarded intensity that stole the air from my lungs. He pulled me closer, tucking my head under his chin, his hand stroking the length of my spine.
It felt like I finally belonged. Here. In his arms.
We lay like that for a long time, listening to the city breathe outside the window, neither of us willing to break the spell. I drifted into a doze, safe in his arms, the connection between us settling into a warm, steady calm.
He woke me an hour later, his mouth pressing a hot kiss to the curve of my shoulder, his hand sliding slow and possessive between my legs.
I turned into him, answering the touch without hesitation.
We did it again. Slower this time. Deliberate. A mapping of new territory we both knew we would never want to leave.
We lost track of time. The night became a blur of touch and taste and magic, a conversation spoken in skin and breath.
