The Shadow King (16 page)

His hands cupped her face as he kissed her. She moaned in what Keeran now knew was impatient frustration. He smiled against her lips like a rake as his hand moved up her waist and chest to palm the tender curve of her breast.

He propped himself on his elbow and ran one hand along the silken smooth length of her side. She gave a soft cry when his thumb gently brushed the hardness of her deep, red nipple. He did it again and she shuddered against him, gritting her teeth.

He moved on to explore the tempting rise of her hip bone and the valley of creamy flesh beneath it before he brushed through her silken curls to the heated, waiting core of her. It gave off a radiating warmth, like flesh that had been flogged or sunburned, and a part of him went mad.

She gasped against him as he circled her slit like a shark, teasing and taunting. When she bucked and pressed toward his fingers, he deepened his kiss to drink her in with greedy thirst. Then he parted her nether lips, slick with need, and pressed inward.

The feel of her there took his madness and shook it up. The promised bliss of her wrapped around his cock was nearly unimaginable. He was throbbing hard, his manhood screaming for release.

She made a deep, delicious sound against his mouth as his fingers dove ever deeper and were squeezed with her wet tightness.

He swore softly under his breath, his mind delirious. She was so small, so hungry for him. He could wait no longer. He braced himself on the bed and reared up, pulling his fingers from between her legs. Violet’s eyes opened, and their gazes met. Her body went still in that kind of anticipation that is laced with gluttonous, glorious fear as he moved over her to press the tip of his engorged cock to her opening.

She could feel how big he was; her eyes flashed with that knowledge. But she maintained eye contact – the wolf in her was not one to back down. She was a fighter. He smiled.

It was a cruel smile, fangs and all.

Violet’s hands went to his chest, and her fingernails curled into his muscles as he breached her defenses and slowly, oh so slowly, pushed into her tight, slick sheath. Her heat infused him like another kind of magic. She gripped him so hard, every muscle in his body flexed taut.

When he was nearly all the way in, he paused and braced himself. Violet cried out against his mouth as he slanted over her in another hungry kiss and none-too-gently shoved himself into her to the hilt. He felt her arms come around him and smiled when her nails again dug into his flesh, leaving marks.

He wasted no time, pulling out of her enough to make her moan beneath him before driving into her again, harder than before. He wanted to go deeper. He wanted to claim her as nothing and no one ever could.

His vision was starring, his fingers were going numb and the only sensation in the world he could give notice to was the feel of her wrapped around him. He pulled out and drove in. Again.
And again.

Each time he took her, she arched to meet his thrust, the softest, sweetest sounds coming from deep within her and pouring across his tongue. Every gasp made him more of an animal, every moan drove him further over the edge.

A change was coming; Keeran could feel it like an ebb and flow as he took his beautiful queen. The terrible fire that had consumed her before made way for new flames. Her rage and fury dissipated, making way for pleasure and a
new
kind of pain.

And for a new kind of darkness.

It was that darkness that he wondered if she recognized as he pressed it into her, as it left him and infused her glorious, sweat-glowing body. Just as were his fangs and the glow of his eyes, that darkness was a part of him he had never shown anyone. No one but her.

The power of his many secrets swelled within him as he broke their kiss to pull back and gaze down at his mate.

My mate. I haven’t thought those words in so long.

She was covered in sweat, her lips swollen and red and parted, her eyes glazed, her breathing now more frantic and demanding.

She was entering that blissful, barely attainable place where women hovered when their bodies drew near the edge. He saw that last, hard need riding her, and he knew she was in no state to understand what was happening to her. She wanted release. She would have done anything for it.

And that fueled the bonfire that had already been threatening to claim Keeran completely. So he gave it to her. With a hard strength and a nearly cruel resolve, he shoved back into her and slipped one hand between them and found the spot between her legs that he knew would make her scream. Violet arched her back and opened her mouth. Her cry split the night as he simultaneously drove hard into her over and over – then one final time, finally impaling her so deeply, so fully, he felt he would split her in two.

The tight ring of her muscles squeezed him in her climax and the world flashed out of sight. This was not a darkness of shadow that he was plunged into, but one of delirium. His body was shifted onto a plane of pure, immense pleasure, and he came so hard it hurt.

He threw back his head and cried out harshly as a bliss he’d never known racked over him, wringing him out again and again.

And again.

It took eons for the world around them to come back into focus. Eons….

And then Keeran slowly lowered his head, his eyes burning hot in his face. He closed them a moment, riding the last of his waves back down to Earth.

Then he opened them again and looked down at Violet through a white glowing haze.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Shadow Realm was silent but for the sounds of their breathing. It was as if in reverence, the entire kingdom had quieted down and bowed its heads. The king had taken his queen.

But there, in her eyes, was the understanding he’d known she would gain from their mating.

A beat passed. Two. Three. He held his breath.

She licked her lips, her small tongue making their plump redness slick, and nearly making him hard once more. But this was too important.

She
knew
.

“You’re a werewolf,” she said.

Her gorgeous crystalline eyes were luminous, like quartz held before a candle’s flame. She looked at him through those glowing pools of promise, and he prayed she would forgive him for his response.

“I was. A long time ago.”

“
How
long?”

He smiled in a way that conveyed the years. She was fae, and time had a different meaning for people like them. “Long enough.”

But Keeran knew Violet was also aware that the warlock bit was only
part
of the twisted equation he’d been keeping inside these many millennia. There were more secrets. And she’d felt another of them as he’d taken them over the edge in his bed and forever sealed their fates. That deeper, darker mystery had brushed against the open doors of her soul like a slinking cat gauging its chances before leaping right in to make itself home.

She’d regained her magic; he’d given it back to her, and he could sense it in her. Hell, it was all around her, flowing free and strong. There was her darkness lining it, vibrant in its sparkling sableness, like stardust on black velvet. But alongside that beauty of hers was something else. Something even darker.

“Wolf…” she whispered.

His body tensed. Though she gazed steadily up at him, he knew she was only speaking to herself. She was whispering, working it all out.

“Wolf,” she repeated, and then she took a breath. “
Wolfram
….”

There it was. The sound of that name coming from between her lips stiffened every muscle in Keeran’s tall frame. It struck some deep, portent of a chord within him and stilled him above her.

“You’re Wolfram Lovelace.”

Oh gods.

He found himself wanting to grab her wrists, hold her down. He just wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t suddenly jump up and run or use her magic to teleport away, leaving him alone in his bed. Anything but that.
Please
.

But he didn’t do that. In fact, he stayed absolutely still, and answered her like a man.

“No,” he told her. “Wolfram Lovelace is dead. I killed him.”

A beat. A hard silence.

Then, “I am his shadow.”

*****

Keeran had filled the coffee table before her with everything from buttery scones to rainbow chocolate fudge, ooey-gooey caramel, chocolate and nut covered apple slices, small cakes and mini-pies, and seven different kinds of ever-hot tea paired with an ever-full pot of milk. She had tried to eat a few things at his behest, but she was literally still tingling from their time together, and even being near him kept that tingling going, like a battery too close to a charger. And there was so much going on, her head was spinning. Food was the last thing on her mind.

So she curled her legs under her, held a cup of tea in her lap so her hands would have somewhere to go, and waited for Keeran to make sense of things.

The flames in the Shadow King’s fireplace were blue. Violet found herself staring into them with mute fascination, but there was more to her stunned silence than that. There was
everything else
.

“It was before the werewolves were cursed. Eons ago. It feels like forever, and it feels like yesterday,” Keeran told her. He was adding logs to the fire, which was a surreal thing to watch. He wore dark jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt that hugged his corded muscles as he worked. The logs he was adding were pitch black, as black as his name, but in every other respect, appeared to be wood. It was like wood that had already been burned.

“My host’s name was Wolf then,” he said, peering into the flames himself. She looked at his strong, handsome profile and was struck with his beauty. He seemed lost in that moment, captured by the sticky tendrils of the past. “And so it was mine. We were one, as all shadows and their hosts are. What he experienced, I experienced, physically and mentally.”

He paused so that she could fully understood. When he said “my,” he meant Wolf. When he said “I,” he meant wolf. As a shadow, he was a living, breathing part of his host, and vice versa.

“My werewolf parents had a sense of humor, naming me as they did. But it was a name I wore proudly. I became the alpha of my pack, a pack that had run strong and healthy for sixty years.”

He placed the last of the logs in the fire, watched as the flames licked high, and then rested his arm on his bent knee and looked at her. “Two years later, I met my mate.” He paused, turned away, and stood. “Her name was Adelaide. She was fast and strong, a werewolf by birth, as was normal for us before the curse. She gave me nine children, and each of them went on to lead their own packs in time.”

He moved to the sofa beside her and sat down, again choosing to look into the fire. “We lived blissfully, and would have been content to grow old together. If not for the Hunters.”

Violet blinked. “The Hunters were around that long ago?”

He looked at her. “When something is different, it is intrinsically hate-worthy by those who either don’t have it for themselves or don’t understand it. The Hunters are nearly as old as time itself.” He turned back to the flames. “They came en masse to our camp while most of the men and some of the women were hunting. We returned to find our children and mates slaughtered. Then, while we were weak with grief, they attacked again.”

He fell silent, and the flames in the hearth darkened, going from sky-blue to indigo. Violet could sense the pain in Keeran; it was so thick, it choked the life from the fire.

“I was the only one to survive.”

Violet’s gut clenched. She didn’t realize she was doing it when she reached up, ever so gently, and placed her hand on his arm.

It seemed to shock him, that tender contact. He inhaled and glanced down at her hand, stiffening. For a very brief moment, Violet considered withdrawing the touch – but before she could, he placed his hand over hers, holding her there. The touch was so warm, so different from any Violet had ever felt from a man. There was no magic exchanged, no forced give and take. There was something else.

She looked up to meet his gaze, and for the second time since she’d met him, she saw past the mirrors of his eyes to the silver-gray underneath.

Beautiful
, she thought.
He’s so beautiful.

“I left the slaughter of the camp after burying every one of my brethren. With every blister my hands bled, my pain deepened. And my anger grew stronger. By the time I was walking out of the forest, I was resolved.”

She knew what he’d resolved to do. She knew because it had happened, and because if it had been her… she probably would have done the same thing.

“I apprenticed with the only magic user willing to take me on. The others could not see the need to teach a werewolf magic. I scared them. Though looking back, I’ve wondered whether it was the beast I was by blood or the one I’d become in spirit that truly worried them…. In the end, only one man would take me under his wing.”

“A warlock.”

He nodded, just once. “The spells of the craft came more than naturally to me than they should have. They were like sustenance, inhaled easily and expelled with even more ease. After a while, I craved them more than food. More than air.” He shifted, running his hand over his face before he again gazed into the fire. “As Wolf’s shadow, this was where I began to feel a separation between us. For thirty years, we had been one and the same. But now, his thoughts were not always
exactly
the same as my thoughts. They were slightly off, just barely different. But it was enough for me to notice. The change was small at first, but grew larger with every spell learned, every day that passed.”