Chapter 156: Hopeless
With a low growl, he withdrew his hand, covered my body with his own, and pushed inside me. It was one deep, ravenous motion that stole the breath straight from my lungs, turning the world into a blinding flash of white light.
"I can’t get enough of you... You ignite a hunger in me that is impossible to fight," he growled against my lips. After that, reality shattered into brilliant shards of pleasure concentrated at the very core of my soul.
His kisses were scalding, the rhythm of his powerful hips excruciatingly sweet. It was a torture of pleasure—slow, heavy, almost cruel in its intensity. He pulled back for a fleeting second before hooking my legs over his shoulders and driving deep once more. In that exact instant, I forgot how to breathe.
The way he held my hips suspended in the air, the way every sensation shifted and deepened—it became completely overwhelming. The fire coiled tightly wherever his fingers pressed into my skin, every thrust hitting precisely where I was already trembling in desperate expectation of release.
I was close. So desperately close that I grew terrified of the fragile, pulsing edge upon which I hovered. And he felt it. Of course he did. His strokes became jagged, raw, and punishingly deep. I wasn’t just moaning anymore—I was screaming, my nails digging into his arms because skin-to-skin contact wasn’t enough. There wasn’t enough air. There wasn’t enough of him.
With a guttural roar, he crushed his body down against mine, pinning me into the mattress until I gasped for air. I had never imagined my body could be so flexible, as yielding as a vine in his hands.
It took only a few more relentless thrusts and the scorching heat of his mouth covering mine for the last thread of my sanity to snap in a brilliant flare of white light. I fractured into a thousand pieces beneath him, my body wracked by wave after wave of intense contractions, and he plunged right into the madness alongside me.
He growled into my mouth as a searing rush poured inside me. We breathed in ragged unison, our gasps breaking into breathless cries as if we had been running for miles and had only just collapsed at the finish line.
Magnus held me in a vise-like grip, as if he had no intention of ever letting me go—and somehow, that was just as grounding as it was maddening.
"Good morning, my sweet girl," he whispered, pulling me tight against his chest.
I pressed myself closer, burying my face in the crook of his neck. As I drifted right back to sleep, a faint thought crossed my mind: after a morning like that, I really do need more rest.
***
Waking up for the second time proved far more difficult. My body felt heavy, languid, and thoroughly spent. Every muscle served as an aching reminder of how my morning had begun, and a single shift beneath the sheets sent a fresh wave of heat flushing across my cheeks.
I lay still for a long time with my eyes closed, bathed in Magnus’s steady, powerful warmth, listening to the muffled life of the house beyond the drapes. Faint footsteps. The distant, low hum of voices.
When I finally forced myself to sit up, the afternoon was already well underway. The bathroom, the cool splash of water on my face, the plush bathrobe—it all passed in a hazy blur.
By then, Magnus was already dressed in dark trousers and a crisp black shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his damp hair still slicked back from the shower. On the side of his neck, barely hidden by his collar, was a distinct scratch mark left by my nails. The moment my eyes landed on it, a strange, possessive satisfaction bloomed deep in my chest.
He caught my reflection in the mirror.
"What?" he asked, a low, dangerous purr slipping into his voice. "Enjoying the marks you left on me?"
"You’re hopeless," I muttered, turning away, because looking him in the eye after this morning felt entirely impossible.
"But you like it," he added nonchalantly.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I simply pulled the lapels of my bathrobe tighter across my chest, as if that could somehow shield my reaction from him.
We went downstairs for breakfast late—so late that I felt a sharp pang of guilt over Matthias, worried he had woken up earlier and gone looking for me. That was why, as I stepped into the kitchen, I instinctively picked up my pace.
"You guys sure sleep a lot! Uncle Sayan and I went to Caramel’s en... en... Uncle Sayan, what’s that word again? It’s a difficult one!" My son sat at the table, pressing the tip of his fork against his lips, looking entirely grave and focused as he tried to recall the word.
I froze at the doorway, my cheeks instantly catching fire. As it turned out, the little guy had woken up and, finding our room empty, had set off to look for us. He got dangerously close to the room, and if it hadn’t been for Sayan—who, as I quickly realized, had been babysitting him in the living room the entire time... I didn’t even want to imagine what Matthias might have heard.
Anxiety squeezed uncomfortably in my chest, but an instant later, Magnus brushed past me toward the table, bending down to whisper against my ear.
"My room has excellent soundproofing," he murmured, so softly only I could hear. The calm, assured way he said it made me simultaneously want to hit him and let out a massive sigh of relief.
"Enclosure," Sayan supplied grumpily, taking a sip of his coffee while boring a near-glare into Magnus. He looked as though the role of babysitter had severely offended his sensibilities. He was slouched in his chair, wearing a light t-shirt with his hair disheveled, sporting the expression of a man who felt personally wronged by the morning itself.