This was natural.

This was how we were supposed to be, except I wanted him, all of him inside me.

“Kellan,” I gasped against his mouth.

Desire and pleasure pulsed through me. I felt his darkness cover us, and I even wanted more of that. He protected me. He killed for me. He would do anything for me. The messenger in me was quiet. Kellan pulled his mouth from mine. He rasped near my ear, “She’s gone. She’s letting us have this moment.”

In.

Out.

I needed more.

“Kellan,” I started to whimper. Wave after wave was crashing down on me, nearing me to climax, but I wasn’t ready. Still. I couldn’t do anything. Kellan held me in place. I couldn’t move my hips in response to him. He held me firm. I could only be there and endure what he was doing to my body.

“Shay,” he growled again, letting me fall to the ground. He caught me and laid me down gently, then bent over me.

The night cold should’ve covered me, but it didn’t. Kellan’s darkness was warming both of us, and he had woven a spell over us, and then I felt his lips replace his fingers. My back arched, and I let out a guttural scream. I grabbed his head, but he caught my hands and pinned both down beside me. His tongue began moving, licking, slipping inside. I was helpless again. All I could do was lay there, panting, trying not to scream as he made me come.

“Kellan,” I was begging. “Please.”

I couldn’t take much more.

He was relentless. I wanted him, not his mouth, not his fingers. I wanted him, and I wanted to touch him back. I was brazen now. I just wanted him. I wanted to give him pleasure, too.

After coming a third time, my body was exhausted and satiated. I was panting, and Kellan lay on top of me, smirking down at me.

I raked my fingers through his hair, grabbing ahold of him. “What did you just do to me?”

His eyes darkened. The smirk vanished, and he lowered his lips to mine. A soft kiss there. He whispered, “I made you mine.”

A delicious shiver.

Goose bumps broke out over my skin, but all I could do was shake my head, my lips to his, and I murmured, “God. You’re mine.”

“Not God. Just me.” Then he took control of the kiss again, and he started his sensual assault on me all over again.

Hands linked, we were walking back when suddenly Kellan stopped.

“Kellan?”

“We aren’t alone.”

I tried to sense out, feeling who was there, and he was right. A presence was waiting for us, just a few yards before the walking path opened back to the house’s lawns.

“It’s Damien.”

I tightened my hand over his, but Kellan pulled loose and strode forward. “Are you waiting for someone else, messenger?”

Damien sighed. “Please. Like I want to smell the two of you together, what you’ve been doing. I’m waiting for you and you know it.”

“Why?”

“There are things at work that you have no idea about. I feel it’s time you know.”

I waited, expecting Kellan to say something more, but he was only silent. His head turned halfway from us, like he was watching something beyond the woods. He moved forward a step. He was seeing something.

“Kellan?” “What is it?”

He didn’t answer me.

My insides began to churn.

Damien filled me in. “He’s seeing what I came to tell you guys. When you left, the traitor took advantage of your disappearance.”

“What is she doing?” Kellan’s voice was tight and controlled.

“You see her, too?”

I looked, but nothing. Just the black of the night and Damien’s white aura. That was the messenger emanating from within him. “You guys.” I wanted to know. “What’s going on?”

A door from the house opened, light spilled out. We could see from where we stood. We were close enough to the house and someone shouted, “Hurry! They’re coming back.”

Kellan vanished. I felt him beside me and in the next second, he was gone.

“Kellan!”

“Shay. Come on.” Damien motioned for me.

I ran and he ran with me. We got to the lawn just as Vespar was running toward the shed. Kellan appeared and grabbed him by the throat. He picked him up, pulled him close, said something. I tried to hear, but Kellan shut me out.

“Stop, Kellan.”

“Stay back, for your own good.”

I felt his murderous intentions. He was going to kill Vespar, and later he’d regret it. I tried to run faster. Damien was right beside me. Why we couldn’t vanish and appear there was beyond me, but I gritted me teeth and kept going. We got there in time to hear Vespar squeak out, “It’s too late, Kellan. She already called them.”

A deep roar erupted from the bottom of Kellan’s throat, and his hand closed around Vespar’s throat. We heard a snapping sound, and Vespar’s body went slack. He broke his neck. Kellan let the body fall to the ground, and for a moment, it was complete silence in the lawn. I sensed Aumae coming to the opened door. She wondered what was happening, but no one said a word, and in that small break, we heard moans from inside the shed.

“No.” Damien tried to rush for the shed.

Kellan flung a hand out. He didn’t touch Damien, but the messenger was thrown back. A bolt of static came from Kellan’s hand right after and when Damien tried to run back to us, he couldn’t. He ran into an invisible force field. I asked, starting to tremble, “What is that?”