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Ciaran’s hand slides down to my aching nipple, still ringed with his teeth marks. I thrust myself on his cock once more, and this time, he meets me halfway down.

“Does it feel... right?” I ask, my voice thin and desperate for any sign that I’m not failing him. “Please tell me it feels right.”

He shakes his head, and my heart drops in the half-second of silence. Then he reaches up, cupping my face with a look of pure, shattering heat. “It feels like everything, baby. I can’t take any more of this.”

His hands clamp around my waist, and in one fluid motion, he flips us without pulling out. My back hits the mattress with a gasp caught in my throat while Ciaran braces himself above me, muscles tightening beneath sweat-slick skin as he rises just enough to keep thrusting deep inside me.

“I have to take you properly, mark you properly, possess you properly.” His hips jerk as he moves with shallow, relentless thrusts. “You feel your hole clenching around me as if it was made for this?”

“Mm, Zory… harder.”

“Harder?” He grunts low, driving into me with more force. “Want me to wreck you, baby?”

“Yes,” I gasp, my fingers digging harder into the muscles of his back. “Please.”

A growl tears from him before he thrusts deep enough to make my vision blur.

I can feel him everywhere, stretching me open, filling me so completely it almost hurts. The force of it keeps knocking broken sounds from my throat while my body tightens helplessly around him.

He does it again, hitting that same spot hard enough to send heat crashing through me.

“More…” I breathe out.

“More?”

“Please… more…”

“Light, baby. You’re starved for this, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I confess.

That drives him crazy. He slams into me with an intensity that leaves me breathless. “I’ve wanted this since the moment I saw you,” he says between thrusts, one of his hands wrenching at my hair. “I’ve spent every night since then picturing this—imagining you breaking under me, taking every inch of me until you couldn’t remember your own name.”

“You’re insane,” I whisper, even as I dig my fingers into him deeper, coming apart in shudders as he wrecks me.

Literally. Figuratively.

I don’t tell Ciaran this, but I’ve been fixated on him too, ever since that invitation. I wonder now why I called him when the panic set in—why I keep running straight into the fire when I’m trying to escape the lurking shadows. I sought out the one person in this city who should terrify me most to protect me from a ghost.

It’s only now that I realize my obsession was never really about the danger around him. It was the way he kept looking at me like I mattered, like somehow the most untouchable person at Caervast had decided I was worth watching.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting that attention to end.

The thought is terrifying. It’s dark and heavy and entirely too much. I shouldn’t think like that. I should be smarter, safer. But as he holds me, I realize I’d rather be ruined by him than saved by anyone else.

“If I’m insane, and you’re still so dangerously hard for me, what does that make you, mouse?”

I open my mouth, but he shoves a hand under my back and hoists me up so I’m sitting on his lap while he plunges into me from beneath.

“Don’t answer that,” he rasps before smashing his mouth to mine, kissing me with the same raw intensity as his thrusts, until sparks burst behind my eyelids.

My fingers claw into his back, my nails gouging his skin, but he doesn’t flinch and keeps going like he’s starving.

“Stay with me a little longer,” he groans against my lips, forehead dropping against mine.

It’s my turn to laugh, and his eyes widen. He kisses me again while he reaches between us, locking his hand around my cock.

My spine locks. “Yes... just like that. Take me.”