Page 15 of A Court of Ravens
Instinct takes over. I tilt my head, lips parting further, granting him exactly what he wants.
He devours the air in my lungs between stinging nips of his teeth.
This isn’t a kiss. It’s a claim. My knees buckle, but his arm snakes around my waist, pulling me closer. My body fits against his like we are made forthis.
Maybe that’s the real danger. Because Niall isn’t the kind of man you walk away from unscathed. He’s the storm, and I’m the reckless thing standing in the eye of it. A raw, aching need coils low as he kisses me with the confidence of a man who never hears no.
Then it hits me.
A soul-deep tug that makes me wonder if this is more than chemistry. More than lust. Older than either of us. Inevitable.
I don’t want to name it. Because naming it makes itreal.
I kiss him harder, like I can smother the thought between our lips, bury it under teeth and tongue and heat. Like if I let him take enough, I’ll forget I was ever foolish enough to think this was only a kiss.
But nothing about this is simple.
His hands grip me like he’s already made up his mind. Like he’d hunt me across this world and the next. Drag me back, kicking and screaming.
I’d let him.
Because with him, I don’t have to choose. I can be strong and soft, fearless and fragile, brutal and honest—and somehow, I know he wouldn’t see less of me for all the ways I never quite fit. I can take what I want. And want him without apology.
Because with him, I am not small. I’m powerful. Free.His.Darkness doesn’t just call to darkness. It sets the world on fire.
The raw, aching need? It should terrify the fuck out of me.
It doesn’t. I just want him to wreck me with it.
When he pulls away, it’s not for air but to glare at me like I’ve personally offended him. “You’re fucking torment,a stór,” he says, his voice trembling like a drawn bowstring.
His fingers flex at my waist, like he’s debating whether to pull me back or push me away. His breath is ragged. Then his teeth graze my bottom lip. Sharp. Punishing.
I gasp. Heat floods through me so fast that I forget where I am. Forget who I am.
He pulls back, but the heat lingers. His chest heaves, his face shadowed by something darker than hunger. His eyes—those amber-flecked eyes—are almost completely onyx now, and they’re fixed on me like I’m something sacred and profane all at once.
“What are you?” His voice is barely a whisper.
“A monster, if that’s what you need me to be.” My fingers trail up his chest, a wicked smile curving my lips. “I don’t know what I am. But if you’re the darkness, then I was born in it. “And all I know—” I exhale, my voice featherlight, like a secret meant just for him “—is that you feel like home. And that should scare the hell out of you.”
And from the way his breath hitches, I know it does.
He thumbs my lip. Then the vow falls from his lips. “Mo chríoch agus mo thús. Bás fillte sa dorchadas. Más ollphéist thú, is amhlaidh atá mise. Níl aon domhan ann nach roghnóinn tusa.”
Gods, it sounds like poetry. And feels like a reckoning.
I shouldn’t understand him. I shouldn’t.
And yet the meaning sinks into my bones. I know these words. Not because I was taught them at university, but because they already live inside me.
My end and my beginning. Death wrapped in darkness. If you’re a monster, so am I. There is no world I wouldn’t choose you.
The translation isn’t conscious. It’s not thought—it’s memory.
But that’s…impossible.
He stiffens, like he’s just let something slip its chains and now it’s too late to shove it back in the dark.
