Goldfinch (The Plated Prisoner, #6)

by Raven Kennedy

“Have I ever told you that you have a magnificent cock?” His fangs flash in the night from his grin. “Have I ever told you that you’re utter fucking perfection?” “So are you,”

“Your perfect pussy is gushing around my cock,” he praises in a guttural tone that only excites me more. “Trying to milk me until I come deep inside you. Trying to squeeze me so…fucking…tight.”

“Look at you, fucking yourself over me,” he growls. “Bouncing on my cock, wanting more.” “Yes, more,”

“Fuck, look at you,” he snarls with hunger, his features sharpening with lust. “Legs spread, cunt gaping around my cock…your tits bouncing. You’re magnificent.”

“Come with me, Auren,” he orders as he presses our chests together. Fucking me with our heartbeats and panting breaths squeezed between us. “We go together, don’t we, baby? Me and you.” I thrash around the ground as he pinches my clit. “Always together.” “Come for me, you gorgeous goddess.”

“You are stunning.” My stomach dips, heart spilling over. Every time this male looks at me like this, every time he purrs out these words of adoration, it makes me melt all over again.

“Our pair bond fixed me,” he murmurs as I feel his warm breath skim along my cheek. “You fixed me, Auren.”

“Every day the sun rises, it rises for you,” he says quietly as he brushes a finger gently down my brow, over my cheek, before settling his hand against my own heart. “Every day I wake, I wake for you.”

“And every time my heart beats, it beats with yours.”

“What is that?” I whisper raggedly. He doesn’t answer, but I stand in shock as those shadows fuse and form. My hand flies to my mouth, and my eyes fly to his. “Slade. Your dragon.” He nods, looking over at the creature with a smile that reaches his eyes. With wonderment that beats through his soul. The dragon isn’t solid, it’s made up of that shadowy vapor, and it’s much, much smaller than before. But it’s here. “Look, Auren,” Slade says. I glance down to the wings at its back. Wings that are now edged with a ribbon of gold. “I don’t know how,” he says with a shake of his head as he looks back at me. “But somehow…I think you brought my dragon back to life.”

“I don’t know if it will ever get bigger or if I can even manifest anything but a splintered form, but it doesn’t matter. That hollow part of me where the dragon was missing? It’s filled again,” Slade says with a smile as he takes my hands in his. “Thank you.” My head shakes. “I don’t know that I actually had anything to do with this,” I tell him. “Maybe you just needed time to heal.” “I do know,” he counters, tapping at his heart. “I can feel it.”

Slade and I look at each other, and the stars look at us. My wings flutter, my heart soars, and I know. That after everything. After all of it. This was what I was always fighting for. This was why I kept going even in the bleakest of times. Even with every stumbling fall. Because this love? This is what it feels like… to fly.

There was a star above and a root below. And a world somewhere in between. And for a time, that’s all it was. Space, and death, and gleam. But that star began to glow, she began to burn with heat. And that root, it looked above, fought from soil then to seek. The star that burned, it beckoned him. And the root, it knew to lift. For that warmth that bled into the void, it was an ordained gift. So, from the ground unburied, it looked up to see afar. But that was when the root then saw, it wasn’t just a star. This light that burned and gave its warmth, it was a little sun. Gilt tendrils that reached across the dark, with ribbons twist and spun. And that root, it knew right then. Right there, it saw the heart. For that sun that grew so beautifully, it couldn’t be apart. So out they stretched—above, below, and somewhere in between. And through the space, and death, and time, branches tied with beams. There they are, and there they stay, Paired and tied to core. Dark and light, through realms, they hold. And to Time, they whisper, more.