Forged of Shadows: A Novel of the Marked Souls by Jessa Slade Page A

fingers drove muscle almost painfully against bone. He didn’t mind. If only she could leave bruises to mark him forever.
    He slid against her, down to cover her mouth with his. He tasted the lotus, sweet and innocuous, not the dream-inducing drug of legend. And yet somehow . . . He slid lower yet, his lips finding the puckered flesh of her nipple, then the taut quiver of her belly as she caught her breath, and then . . . Ah, there was the bloom he sought.
    The dark flowering between her thighs was no sweet dream but a wild fantasy of silk curls and musk. She opened to him with a sigh that started as his name and ended as a hum of passion, and his entire body zinged with the force of shared pleasure between them, a ratcheting tension that threatened to destroy his hard-won equilibrium.
    The hunger in him grew despite the attention he lavished on the core of her. This time, when her fingers raked his shoulders, urging him up, he did not resist but surged over her.
    He paused with his cock at the ready. If Sera had explained about talya sex, Jilly already knew he carried no disease and could never give her children. She’d bear no consequences from this liaison.
    Would he be able to say the same about himself?
    Poised on the desperate, heedless edge of his oblivion, he struggled to remind himself of his mission. If he couldn’t keep himself in hand, how could he hope to control the fierce and brutal talyan? If he found solace in her touch, how could he still expect those wounded souls under his command to fight on, eternally, without release?
    The bone-dust winds of the demon realm coursed around them. Right. Death and damnation, just as he’d warned Archer.
    He could not leave her to face that alone. For her sake, for the league, for the world itself. Ah, the sacrifice.
    He buried himself in her with a hiss at the exquisite hot grasp of her flesh around him.
    When he would have gathered her close, she held him at arm’s length, palm braced against his chest. The bracelet fell to her elbow, and the dull metal gleamed at him. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist where her pulse surged with frantic power.
    Another kiss, then tongue, then his teeth nipping lightly at her flesh until, with a moan, she loosened her locked arm and let him closer.
    Teasing, he withdrew, plunged himself in the heat of her again, and then again. She stared up at him, eyes wide open. He could not escape the coruscating whirl of violet and glazed gold as the demon and her climax rose within her.
    He gritted his teeth against the urge to come. He was fucking immortal; he would wait. He would wait.
    He flattened her hand against his chest again. Maybe better if she held him away. His pulse was a deafening hammer, and her fingers curled into his chest as if to hold it tight.
    For a heartbeat, gold eclipsed the violet in her eyes. Then, in utter silence, she arched her back and came. The convulsion drew a gasping shout from him as he found his own release with a shuddering violence.
    His vision grayed. Not the demon realm, just la petite mort . His strength failed him and he collapsed, half on her and half teetering off the edge of the couch.
    Gradually, his breath evened.
    “Erk,” she said.
    He grunted, his cheek nestled against her shoulder. From this angle, the shadows elongated the wings of the butterfly alighted on her breast, like the afterburner contrail of a fighter jet across the sky, but black instead of white.
    Then he realized there was nothing to cast those curling shadows.
    He sat up.
    She dragged in a deep breath. “Thanks for the air.”
    He turned her gently to her side.
    “Hey, air good, yes, but I’m not an inflatable toy here.”
    “No,” he murmured. “Not a toy. A weapon.”
    The reven unfurled from below her left breast down across her rib cage to the point of her hip, and rose up to the butterfly tattoo. The lines spiraled off, confusing his eye, though he traced a