His Darkest Desire

by Tiffany Roberts

To everyone with wonder in their eyes and magic in their hearts.

And yet being here felt…right. All her life, she’d always had this vague sense of an invisible tether tugging her in this direction, leading her to these ancient lands. Now that she was no longer resisting that call, it was like… Like she was meant to be here.

“Everything may seem dark and scary,” she whispered, “and you may not always be able to see the sun, but it is there.”

“In exchange for your life, Kinsley Wynter Delaney, you will be bound to me. You will be my mate, and you will take my seed into your body until it bears fruit. Do you swear it?”

And she couldn’t… Her hand dropped to settle low on her belly. Over her…her womb. The one thing this monster wanted was the one thing she could not give him.

She is my mate. Kinsley carried a piece of his soul within herself, and it had meant nothing. She’d disobeyed him. She’d rejected him. She’d looked upon him like he was a monster.

But most of all, he yearned to protect and care for his mate. His brows fell, and the corners of his mouth ticked down. “You suggest I demean myself further by…wooing a human?”

“Vex.” “What?” “Vex,” he repeated through clenched fangs. “It is both what you do to me, human, and what you may call me.”

All the world will look upon you and never know the crushing weight of your broken heart.

Would it be so terrible to… To what? To be with her. To want her. To make her his mate in truth.

More than that, she sensed in Vex the same deep desire she harbored—to make a true connection with someone. She’d thought she’d had one for so long, yet in the end, it just…hadn’t been enough.

But Kinsley…Kinsley wanted him. And he wanted her. He craved her. Needed her.

“You are mine, Kinsley Wynter Delaney,” he rasped, reaching for her.

One touch would never be enough.

The way he was looking at her… It was as though he’d tear apart the whole world to spare her from pain, as though he’d move the heavens and earth for her.

She was his mate. It mattered not that he’d forced that bond, that it had been made under dire circumstances. How it had been formed was inconsequential because now it was

“When next I spill my seed, it will be inside you, my Kinsley,” he vowed. “My mate.”

There is always magic to be found in the darkness.

Now he could not imagine his bed any other way. He could not imagine his home any other way. She had already become such an integral part of his life

that even he, an immortal who’d watched centuries pass like leaves falling in the autumn wind, could not fathom existence without her.

Tonight, he would make Kinsley his.

“I’m still dreaming,” she said. Why else would Vex be here in bed with her, half naked, caressing her face with such gentleness? Vex cradled her cheek in his big palm, drawing her eyes back up to his, and flashed those white fangs in a smile. “If this is a dream, Kinsley, surely it is my own.”

“You flee as though I’ve burned you, Kinsley,” he said, his voice low and husky. “But it is I who burns.” Something fluttered in her belly. I burn too.

“Then come to me, my moonlight.”

“This is perfection,” he said, voice low, thick, sultry. “You are perfection.”

“Your beauty is far more brilliant, my moonlight. You outshine even the brightest of stars in the night sky.”

“If I’m your moonlight, what are you to me?” she asked. “I am your darkness. Your cloak, your protection. The shadow that shields you from the ravages of the day, the shroud that lulls you to sleep so you may wander in the bliss of your dreams.”

“I hunger for you. Thirst for you.”

“I want you lost to ecstasy, awash on a sea of pleasure. No room for thought, only sensation. Only me.”

He grasped her chin and growled, “I will never have enough of you.”

“I was lost in the shadows, alone and bereft, until you brought light into my world, Kinsley.”

“How perfectly we fit,” he said, brushing her clit again to wring a whimper from her before his hands covered her breasts. “How beautiful you are.”

He bared his teeth, and his wings twitched. His eyelids fluttered, but his eyes remained open and locked with hers. “We were made for each other.”

Kinsley could not make it all go away, could not make him forget, but she made it bearable. She made healing seem possible. She made living seem possible.

Without books, the shelves were desolate, robbed of their purpose. Only sorrow and loss lingered in the empty space—a jarring reminder of the richness and wonder they’d previously held.

It was an unsettling sight. It was…wrong.

It was a glimpse of life with...

Kinsley was the piece that had always been missing. She was the key—not to unlocking his curse, but his heart. She was the final word of a spell he’d unknowingly been chanting for most of his life.

“I’ve no need for freedom,” he said, “no need for release from this curse.”

Kinsley was his mate. Her heartbeat was the sensual rhythm of his yearning. Her laughter was the song of his soul. Her passion was the wind that filled his wings, carrying him high into the night sky, where earthly matters held no importance. This place, which Kinsley looked upon with such wonder, could be their home. It was not an eternity of damnation stretching before them, but of life. A shared life. A happy life.

“I know.” She sighed before lowering her hand and looking at Echo. “I am worth it, though. I’m done thinking I’m not. I’m tired of feeling lesser. I… I’m not a baby making machine. I’m not defined by what people want from me. I’m a person with my own feelings, my own wants, my own dreams.”

“You deserve everything,” Vex said.

He was a vision of dark sensuality—long black hair, glowing red eyes, tempting, sculpted lips, claw-tipped fingers, powerful, batlike wings… He wore only a pair of dark trousers, leaving his lean, toned torso bare. Kinsley found herself fighting a wild, insistent urge to lick him.

“I want no other. You are all I desire, Kinsley Wynter Delaney.”

Kinsley’s heart quickened. “I-I don’t understand. You’re…you’re choosing me?” He squeezed her hands. “Yes. With all my heart and soul.”

“Love me, fear me, command me, obey me. I will be your master and your slave, your worshipper, your equal. I will be your everything, just as you will be mine.”

“Something urged me into the woods that night before the wisps ever told me what they’d found. That pull strengthened as I approached the strange carriage, and the moment my gaze fell upon the mortal within, I knew. I knew she was mine. The female who sat there terrified, dying, desperate, whose light would be extinguished before ever I had a chance to know her, belonged to me.

“You agreed to be bound to me. To be my mate. Yet you were my mate before that moment, and you

will be forever after.” His expression darkened, and shadows coalesced in his eyes. “And I’d have done everything in my power...

You are my mate. You are Kinsley Wynter Delaney, you are my moonlight. Naught else matters. And I will spend our eternity atoning for the wrongs I have done you.”