Page 194 of May: Bloom & Bane

A twisted gratification floods the void in my chest.

“That’s what I thought,” I purr against her shoulder. “No more talk of walking away. The only place you want to be is right here, falling apart on my cock. You are ním, Eden. You have always been ním.”

“I’m going to come,” she cries out.

“Soak me, ash’kaela. Let me wear what I do to you.” I change the motion of my hips so the ridges of my skal drag against the swollen spot inside her, over and over, my ribs caressing her back with each thrust, the slick, greedy sound of her clinging to my shaft each time I pull back.

“Ash—Ash—Ash—” Her fingers fist uselessly in the shadows. I lace a thin tendril through her fingers, and she grips it with every ounce of strength she has.

Her body goes rigid, convulsing around my length. Her release floods hot over the cold cage of bone around my shaft, spilling down my thighs and dripping onto the frost below. She clamps around me so hard she drags me straight over the edge with her. I sink into her as far as I can, emptying every cold bit of essence I have saved while I was gone, until she is utterly filled with death. Deep where we’re joined, the base of my vék swells, a band of vorí flaring wide, locking us together. My shadow follows, fusing where our bodies meet until there is no pulling back, no separating, no space at all left between us.

This is new.

My shadow eases her upright, drawing her spine back, until she’s cradled against my chest. My hand slides down her chest, over her stomach, to feel where we’re locked together. She’s stretched obscenely wide around the swell of bone. I test it, shifting her upward, and she gasps.

“Ashán?” The venya keeps her totally relaxed. “Are we stuck? This feels different than Sage’s.”

“We’re not stuck,” I murmur against her temple. “We’re locked.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No, mí’maru, it isn’t. Being stuck is an accident. Something you fight to escape.” The tips of my skelva stroke over where we’re connected. “This is not an accident. My body did this on purpose.”

“I’m already pregnant though?”

My other hand snakes around her waist to cup her breast, fingertips brushing lightly over her nipple.

“My knot didn’t expand to breed you, Eden—I’ve already done that—” I smirk against her shoulder. “It expanded because it knows you’re ním, and it has no intention of letting you go until the void is satisfied.”

“How long does it take until the void is… satisfied?” she asks breathlessly, shivering as my skelva circles her peak.

“That depends entirely on you, ash’kaela.” I drag my tongue up the column of her throat, my hips giving an experimental roll that has her squeezing deliciously tight around my knot. “Ten days is a very long time. So I think the void will need you for quite a while. Hours, at the very least.”

“Ashán—”

“Shh.” I curl my wings forward, sealing us in a vault of bone and frostbitten silence. “You wanted all of me, Eden. Every piece. And now you have it, locked inside you, wrapped around you, buried in your womb. We’re not separating until I’ve made up for every second I spent without you.”

The void hums behind my ribs, finally sated for the first time in ten days.

I am not a ghost. I am not a memory. I am home.

CHAPTER 56

i have you now

—SAGE

There was no sound to mark the fall. One breath, I was home, basking in the golden warmth of Eden’s soul. The next, the floor vanished, and I was dropped into a pit of tar.

The dark here is wrong. It’s not the gentle, velvety dark of our bedroom or the comforting shadows Ashán uses with Eden.

“Saevúra!” I scream, grasping at the dark, but my fingers close around nothing. Magic spills out of me, searching for soil, for water, for anything alive to anchor into. Tendrils of my power unfurl into the nothing, my roots scrabbling against a world with no ground in it. Nothing grows here. Nothing has ever grown here.

The tether that connects my core to hers feels miles away, like a pulse muffled behind a wall of stone.

“Ashán?” I shout, the sound swallowed by the vacuum before it can even leave my mouth. I throw my weight against the suffocating barrier. “Ashán, can you hear me?”

Eventually, I stop screaming. Nobody can hear me. Silence presses against my eardrums until they throb. It’s so quiet it screams, and I find myself clawing at myself, desperate to tear through the static and find a single vibration that proves I haven’t gone deaf—or vanished entirely. My fingers scrape against skin I can’t feel, and the absence of touch only deepens my panic.