Page 190 of May: Bloom & Bane

A dark smile curves my half of our mouth, fangs gleaming in the moonlight. The shadow beneath her tightens, dragging her hips against my vék. Her gasp ripples straight through my spine. “Have you been learning Luvárun while I was away?”

“Hm?” She blinks slowly. “I didn’t learn anything I just felt it. What does it mean?”

She didn’t study our language. Her soul chose it.

I’ve spent the last two days convinced I had been erased, and now the name of what I am is falling from the only lips I’ve ever wanted.

“Rahnové,” I rasp, shadow pulsing once in an involuntary flex. “Means my dark prince.”

“You are my dark prince, Ashán,” she whispers, caressing the vorí of my chest.

The whole world recoils from my bones, but she strokes them like they’re precious.

Grief, relief, and ten days of starvation collapse into a single, ravenous point. My shadow erupts, coiling up her wrists, winding around her throat, and sliding between her thighs all at once until she’s caged in me from every direction. Frost spreads in a wide ring across the clover.

“Then let your dark prince make up for lost time.” I purr against her jaw. “I want to take my time with you, ash’kaela.”

The tendril between her legs thins until it’s only a whisper of dark silk, brushing over her aching center.

Her head falls backward, copper hair spilling onto my shadow.

“Look at me, mí’maru.”

Her heavy eyelids lift. She tries raising her hips, but my shadow holds her just out of reach. A frustrated whine escapes her lips.

“Ashán… please.”

“Please?” I repeat the word against her throat, my shadow stilling entirely. “Tell me what you felt when I was gone,” I rasp, my fangs catching on her earlobe. “Tell me how much you missed the dark, Eden, and maybe I’ll give you what you want.”

“I missed you every night, Ash. Please just touch me.”

“Not yet, angel. I haven’t told you yet, but I was stuck watching a phantom timeline the last two days I was under.” A tendril of smoke creeps upward, finding the swell of her breast, circling the peak just enough to make her nipples harden. “In that timeline, I couldn’t lay a finger on you. You moved on with Sage, and I missed the birth of our daughter.”

Her body goes rigid on top of me, the haze of arousal replaced with pure heartbreak.

“Ashán… no,” she whispers. “That would never happen.”

She tries to wrench her wrists free from my binds.

“Don’t,” I breathe. My shadow tightens around her wrists, refusing to release her. “Don’t pull away from me. Not when I can finally feel you again.”

I pull her down until her forehead meets mine.

“I know now that it wasn’t real. But I felt every second of it, Eden. I watched you grow round with my child, and I couldn’t even touch you. I watched you forget the shape of me.”

The tendril at her breast tightens, my skelva flexing around her hip.

“So you’re going to let your rahnové remind himself you’re still his—you’re going to let me feel every part of you that I thought I lost. And you’re going to scream so loud that the memory of that hellscape finally dies.”

My shadow at her breast tugs until she lets out a sharp cry, níva beading at the peak, welling up to meet the cold dark wrapped around her.

The instant the droplets touch my shadow, they soak into the void, flooding the emptiness behind my sternum with a warmth I’m not sure a creature like me was meant to hold. A snarl erupts from me as my shadow turns greedy. The tendril at her breast thickens, drinking the liquid gold straight into my core.

“Again,” I groan, my fingertips biting into her skin. “Please. Let me have what you made for me.”

The smoke pulls her hips down on me, grinding her slick heat against my vék with a slow, agonizing friction. I tangle my fingers into her hair, tilting her head back to expose the elegant line of her throat.

“I love you, Ash.”