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They both gasped when skin met skin, his hips pressing into hers. She arched into it, the vise of his grip around her wrists the only thing keeping her upright when her tight peaks scraped across the dusting of hair on his chest.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered between searing kisses.
“It fucking hurts.” He nipped at her collar bone, her jaw. “I’ve never felt better.”
Mirth bubbled up, escaping Lunara on a breathless wheeze. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“Leave those right where they are.” He squeezed her wrists once and bent to gather her thighs, wrapping her legs around his waist.
Her fingers gripped the carved wood as he grabbed her arse and fisted himself, dragging the head of his cock to her desperate center. He no doubt planned on teasing her, if the wickedness coming from his end of their connection was anything to go by, but she didn’t let him.
Using the leverage of her hold, she locked her ankles, flexed, and impaled herself onto him with a garbled cry.
Brand loosed a choked shout and buried one hand in the hair at her nape, tilting her face up to his. “That was cheeky.”
Eyes locked on his burning, hazel gaze, Lunara bit her lip and writhed, taking him even deeper.
“Shite.” He withdrew and slammed back in. “Exquisite.” Again. “Fucking.” Again. “Creature.”
Even as pleasure built, those past moments were heavy in the air. Like a brutal storm, the cloud of their shared agonies swelled, condensing and churning. She saw it in the pinch of his brow, felt it in her welling tears.
An idea came to Lunara as her body coiled tighter, sweat slicking their bodies. She sent a question down the bond, a sort of vision with it, and let her arms fall to Brand’s shoulders.
His free hand skimmed around her waist, plastering them together. “Yes.”
She misted them the short distance, the Montriver’s spray breaking over them like a cleansing rain when they materialized. Brand’s arse hit the railing first, his lids sliding closed, movements slowing to something more primal.
“I never want to stand on this bloody balcony again after tonight,” he whispered, droplets sliding down the curling ends of his auburn hair. His eyelashes. “I want to tear the whole fucking thing down.”
“Why don’t we?” She raked her nails over his scalp and grabbed his horns, working herself over him. “We can remake it into something else instead. The most beautiful thing the realms have ever seen.”
Brand drew a single finger from her forehead, over nose and lips and chin. “The only thing more beautiful than this face,” he said, following the pulsing vein in her throat to her collarbone and across Illamiata, before splaying his palm across her chest, “is the soul of the one who wields it. How could I ever hope to do such a thing justice?”
A blush stole across her skin, heart skipping a beat as she tried to stifle a smile. “You’re a hopeless flirt, Brandir aht Bordoroth.”
He chuckled, hand cupping one breast, her flesh spilling through his large grip. “Only for you, little moon.” Swooping down, he teased the dusky tip with teeth and tongue, groaning. “Only ever for you.”
Brand spun and switched their places, the cool stone of the balustrade warping to cradle her arse as he thrusted in earnest. Lunara leaned back on a cry, utterly free as she let go of it all. For the barest second, their minds fought against it, the wounded parts of them clinging to one another amidst the last scraps of shadow.
Until Brand murmured, “No more,” and let go, too.
A wild breeze swept through, magic riding its current, every nerve ending catching fire. Lunara never felt so full, so complete, and Brand’s barked moan only fanned the flames. They stoked higher, higher, burning up from the soles of her feet, settling at the base of her spine. When the inferno of their shared rapture reached its fever pitch, they locked eyes.
The way Brand looked at her was everything.
For the space of a single breath, she let herself bask in it—a precious, fleeting moment to memorize the perfection, to realize it was hers forever—before tucking it somewhere safe and accepting that all of her dreams had finally come true.
Brand toppled forward and seized her jaw in a possessive grip. “Finally,” he rasped against her lips, and devoured her.
Their tongues clashed, frenzied in their joining. When one of her fangs scraped against him, his own lengthened and he bit back, their groans merging so entirely that it was impossible to distinguish them.
“Take it,” he growled, laving the tiny gashes he left behind, cock pounding into her. “Freely given.”
Gladly. But Lunara wanted Brand to drink her in as well. To taste her in the same way she did him.
She whimpered at the thought and, in a fit of madness, ravaged her own lip first to widen the cuts before sinking into his and fusing their mouths. Their blood mingled together, both of them feeding as one on the shared, sacred gift, and it was all over.
They broke in a radiant blaze of light, raw power blasting outwards, as if Solyrian’s rays and the iridescent beams of the twin moons were being set free from within them. It washed out the night sky and bathed the Weeping City like a lightning strike, a colossal boom shaking its foundations.
