The deep, humming pull in her belly wasn’t just recognition. It was a demand. It throbbed in time with her pulse, a dark, insistent rhythm that made her clench around emptiness, slickness flooding her anew. Her storm-grey eyes glazed, not with thought, but with a primal need to be re-claimed, to feed the root he’d planted with more of his essence. “Again,” she gasped against his mouth, her hips arching shamelessly, her witch’s power surging not to cast, but to beg.
Silas’s answering growl vibrated through her chest, through the very soil of the circle. His hand, tangled in her ink-black hair, tightened. Not to hurt. To anchor. “The root is awake,” he murmured, his voice the scrape of ancient stone. “It knows its source. It hungers for it.” His other hand slid down her spine, over the damp cotton of her dress, and cupped the curve of her ass. He pulled her flush against him, and she felt him—hard, thick, and urgent—through the layers between them. A low, desperate sound escaped her throat.
“Show me,” she breathed, her fingers digging into the sleek fur of his shoulders. “Show me the hunger.” Her magic coiled inside her, a live wire seeking ground in his darkness. It reached for him, a shimmering, silver tendril of want that had nothing to do with spellcraft and everything to do with the aching void between her legs.
He obeyed. The air thickened, charged with ozone and deep earth. The humanoid guise bled away like shadow under noon sun. Sleek, dark fur rippled over the powerful expanse of his chest. Amber eyes held hers, unblinking. And from the gloom around his form, his tentacles emerged—not one or two, but several, sinuous and muscular, their velvety tips brushing the ground, her ankles, the small of her back. They moved with a possessive intelligence, encircling her without yet taking.
One broad, warm tentacle slid up her inner thigh, pushing the ruined hem of her dress higher. The velvety skin found her heat, her soaked cleft, and traced her outer lips with a torturous, knowing slowness. Eva cried out, her head falling back. It wasn’t enough. The root inside her pulsed, a deep, internal fist clenching on nothing. “Silas,” she pleaded, the word raw and broken.
“I know,” he said, and the promise in it was absolute. The tentacle at her core pressed inward, not yet entering, just applying a firm, perfect pressure against her entrance. Stretching her just to the brink. Her whole body shook, suspended on that threshold. Her magic roared in answer, a storm contained within her skin, begging for the breach.