Gleam: The dark fantasy romance TikTok sensation that’s sold over a million copies (Plated Prisoner Book 3)

I don’t know who kisses who first, but our lips come together in a clash of craving. It’s both cold from the winter air and hot from the heat of the campfire, the temperatures warring as much as our drive to fulfill the lust pumping in our veins.

Slade cradles the back of my head, fingers digging into the strands of my hair like he wants to dig deeper into me, keeping me against his mouth so that he can have his way with mine.

And he does.

His dominant hold tilts my head right where he wants me so his tongue can sweep in further, as if he’s drinking me in.

When I pull away to take in a breath, he growls, like a predator being taken from his catch. “Don’t turn away from me,” he rumbles.

Laughing, I say, “You have to let a girl breathe.”

“I want to breathe you in,” he counters. “Your every exhale, your aura, your very essence. I don’t want to miss a single part of you.”

My stomach leaps right up to my chest, his words elevating me like the climb of a mountain and taking me right to the peak. My ribbons lift up and wrap around him as much as he’s curling his arms around me, and once again, the rest of the world just fades away until it’s just us. Just here.

Bringing up a hand, I let my fingertips graze against the ashen scales along his cheekbones, marveling at the smooth texture of them. They reflect the firelight, making the fae in him stand out.

“Did your parents have scales?” I ask curiously.

“My father.”

I try to decipher the tone of his answer, but I get distracted by the light puffs of snowfall that land in his black hair. Slade looks up and glowers at the sky. “This place is always snowing.”

“It’s Fifth Kingdom, what did you expect?” I tease. “At least here it isn’t constantly blizzarding. The snowstorms have been pretty mild.”

“I can’t wait to be back in my own kingdom where I’m able to see the sun.”

Nostalgia floats over me like a warm summer breeze. “Goddess, I can’t even remember when I spent a day in the sun. It’s always overcast and cold in this part of Orea. In Highbell, it was always snowing, and even if the sun did come out, which was very rare, I wasn’t outside to see it.”

Agitation snaps in his gaze like impatient fingers. “You will see the sun again, Auren. You will see everything and anything you want.”

My heart swells at the determination in his voice, at the way his fingers tighten on my waist. “I will,” I agree.

He nods, as if we just made the same vow. “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.” I expect him to step away and just grab my hand, but instead, he sweeps me up in his arms, making me let out a noise of surprise.

Striding through the snow, he carries me toward the tent, and when we’re closer, I send some of my ribbons out to hold up the tent flaps to make it easier for us to duck in.

As soon as we’re inside, I’m wrapped in warmth from the coals simmering in the center. Slade sets me down on the furs, and I look around, noting that everything is exactly the same, except…

“Got rid of my pallet?” I wander over as I note the metal armor stacked in the corner where I used to sleep.

“Not exactly,” he replies, nodding toward where his own pallet is. “I just shoved yours against mine since our sleeping arrangements are a bit different now.”

I send him a sly smile. “Awful presumptuous to think I’ll be sleeping with you, Commander Rip.”

“Call it presumptuous all you like,” he replies smoothly. “We both know I’m going to be buried inside of you soon.”

“Is that so?” I peel off my coat, but the fae book that I’d forgotten about drops from its pocket and lands on the ground.

“What’s that?”

I lift it up, checking to make sure the pages are still intact. “A book I found in the library,” I explain, and I see Slade’s eyes light with interest. “But…we’ll talk about that later.” I place the book and coat carefully on top of his armor before I sit down on his—our—pallet. I cross my legs, lips lifting up in a seductive smile. “For now, I’d like to do something else.”

He stalks forward and then braces his hands on either side of me, leaning down until our faces are right in front of each other. “All I could think about today is what you felt like last night,” he murmurs before he leans in to run his nose against my neck, skimming over the sensitive parts ever so slightly with his hot breath. “All I could smell was your skin, and all I could hear was the noises you made while I was deep inside of you.”

I shiver, my head tipping back and my eyes fluttering closed as he begins to press his wicked mouth against my skin. He crouches down in front of me, dragging the sleeve of my dress with him to bare my shoulder. “You’ve bewitched my senses, taken over my thoughts. Every time I blink, all I see is you, like you’ve seared yourself into my eyes and I’ll never close them again without envisioning you. And you know what?”

My voice is as breathless as my thoughts. “What?”

He leans away to look me in the eye again. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

This time, it’s definitely me who presses forward to claim him for a kiss. To claim him for so much more.

He is everything I never thought I could have. Every sip I never thought I’d taste.

As if I’m worried he’ll be ripped away from me, I hold him a little bit tighter, let my ribbons wrap around him just a little bit more.

When I get too overenthusiastic with my kiss, I bite down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. But he doesn’t pull back. If anything, it just seems to spur him on even more, and I swallow up an appreciative growl right from his tongue.

“Hungry?” he teases against my lips.

“I’ve been starving for a long time,” I whisper. As soon as I say that out loud, I realize how true it is, how undernourished my soul has been. I thought it was only freedom that I craved, but it was this too.

My life was a flat, barren plain. My horizon was stale and endless, with the constraints of others’ control. There was nothing but a bland, lackluster existence with no growth, no change. Just an arid land that held no rise.

The world taught me that things could always be worse. I learned to always look up, to take what I could get, to settle.

I became too blinded by my bright sides to see the truth.

Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.

Slade’s black brows pull together, and he sweeps his finger beneath my eye, making me feel the wetness there. “What’s this?” he asks, rough voice carrying his worry like rainfall in buckets.

I shake my head through the bouts of breath I pull in, taking in his scent with it. Freshly turned soil, wood chips wet by the rain, bittersweet chocolate left on my tongue. “I’m just…happy.”

His face softens, and then he pushes me gently until my back hits the furs, and he props himself over me. He has snowfall in his cold hair and adoration in his warm touch, and if I could, I’d melt into him forever.

Slade looks at me like he cherishes me, the sweep of his thumb against my cheek like a kiss of touch.

“I’m happy too, Goldfinch.”

“There’s so much we have to talk about,” I say, letting my hands run over the supple leather on his shoulders. “But for now, I want you to be the commander and me to be the goldfinch, and not have anything to do with cages or crowns.”

Understanding dips into his expression. “I’ll stay in whatever form you like. I’ll give you whatever you need.”

“You,” I answer honestly. “I just need you.”

Slade stands up, eyes never leaving me, while he systematically begins to undress. His coat, shirt, boots, pants, everything comes off, until he’s standing naked in front of me, pale skin and dark spikes on full display.

Along his shoulders is another brush of scales I hadn’t noticed before, the gray of them swept from the blades, nearly up to the sides of his neck.

My eyes trace over every part of him, counting the six spikes up his spine, following the slight arc of them, as if they’re talons from a predator’s feet. The four spikes along his forearms jut out proudly too, but not as much as his thick cock.

Impatient to feel his body against mine, I sit up and lift my arms, and Slade grasps my dress and pulls it off. Just like the night before, he carefully removes my boots, dragging my stockings down right after. “Like unwrapping a present,” he murmurs.

His gaze rolls over me like thread on a spindle, taut against my body. I can practically feel him weaving scandalous thoughts to twine around my skin until I’m wrapped in attentive want, and it makes my whole body flush.

He kneels down on the ground in front of me, his rough fingers skimming up my thigh. “I couldn’t take it slow last night, but right now, I intend to lick your clit until you come all over my tongue.”

My eyes flare, but I click my knees together, trapping his hand. “I, umm, I’ve never…I mean…I don’t know if I’d like it…”

Slade goes still, but his aura seems to stretch out around him, a shadow converging. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never had someone pleasure you with their mouth?”

I shake my head, my cheeks heating in uncomfortable vulnerability.

Slade reaches up and grasps both of my cheeks, drawing me into his gaze. “Then I’m the luckiest bastard in the realm, because I get to be the first one to taste you.”

Before I can try to talk him out of it or voice my worries, he leans in and hooks the lace of my undergarments with his teeth and then slowly begins to tug them down. The sight is erotic, his movements smooth and confident.

Once they’re to my knees, he pulls them the rest of the way off and then tosses them away. “Have I told you how sexy you are?” he asks, black eyes moving up to my face.

He leans in and blows lightly on the inside of my thighs, making me jolt from the barest of sensations. “I don’t remember,” I answer distractedly.

“Hmm,” he hums. “Then I’ll have to make sure you remember it now. Trust me, alright?”

The second I nod, he swoops in, and his tongue licks over my clit. My hips buck upward in surprise and sensation, but Slade pushes me back down, his strong hand grounding me in place against the furs. His dark aura writhes in the air around him, easing in closer like it wants a taste of me too.

I’m wound tight, my body stiff with tension, and he looks up at me from between my legs. “Relax. Trust me to give you what you want.”

What I don’t want is to ruin this because I’m feeling so exposed. So with a hard swallow, I nod my head and let my fidgety hands fist in the furs beneath me as I lie back down. “I trust you.”

He lifts my leg, his spikes curved from his forearms like the glint of predatory fangs. When he sees me watching them warily, he gives me a wink. “They won’t hurt you, but for now…” In the next blink, his spikes sink back into his skin until his arms and his back are just smooth skin again. All that’s left are the tiny ones above his eyebrows, stubs of black that somehow make him look even sexier.

Slade drapes my right leg over his shoulder, securing me while also ensuring I’m spread before him. The scruff of his jaw scrapes lightly against my inner thighs as he kisses his way up again before a slow drag of his tongue licks up my slit.

“Oh!” My hands claw into the furs, and my knees try to snap together again, but since one is draped over Slade’s shoulder, they can’t. His tongue drags up again, tasting my wetness, and I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. This is wicked and intimate, and I don’t know if—

“Relax,” he commands again, voice vibrating against my center.

I’m honestly not sure if I can, but then, his mouth descends on my clit again, and I buckle. He goes at it like he knows exactly what I need to make all my thoughts disperse. With his tongue lapping, flicking, and swirling, I forget to think, forget to be unsure, and I just start to feel. And when he presses a finger into my opening and thrusts it inside of me, I let go of the insecurities and the unknown, and I finally just melt into the sensations.

“Good girl,” he growls against me, masculine pride jutting through his voice. “Your taste is my new favorite flavor. I want you on my tongue every night.”

His dirty words are followed immediately by his mouth fastening onto my clit again. And then…he ravages me.

Slade licks and sucks, and my body comes alive with bliss. Squeezing my eyes shut, I let go beneath his devouring devotion. It’s like he’s worshipping my body, kneeling in supplication with earnest faith in the skill of his divinely decadent tongue. His hand stays braced on my hip to keep me in place, while the other pushes his finger in and out, dragging with my slick. Everything else blacks out as he works me up a high peak, even as his hand pins me down, demanding my pleasure.

Two of my ribbons delve into his hair, twisting and tugging, keeping him right there, while my hands fist more and more of the furs, my spine arcing up.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop.” I squirm against his mouth, my scattered thoughts of need bursting through my mind one after another.

When he thrusts his finger in, he curls it this time, hitting a spot against me that makes me see stars. “Slade!”

“Come, baby,” he purrs with dark decadence. “I want you to come with my tongue lapping at your clit and my finger in your sweet cunt.”

“Oh goddess…” I groan, feeling like a bubble about to pop.

His digit thrusts into me like a prelude of what’s to come, and when he drags the flat of his tongue against my clit one more time, I fall into bliss.

I cry out, without any idea of what I say or what noises I make. I’m too lost in the gust that sweeps over me, tossing and turning, pushing me deeper into a spiral of pleasure.

I’m still riding the waves of its invisible tempest when I feel Slade rise up, knees bracing, and then his cock pushes inside of me an inch.

My eyes pop open, and I look down, biting my lip. “More,” I pant, needing it, needing to feel that connection with him. Needing to make him feel as good as I just did.

His lips twitch, but his black eyes flare. “Don’t be greedy, Goldfinch. Just take what I give you.”

Heat coils in my belly, even as I raise an indignant brow. “Then giveme more,” I retort.

With a widening smirk, he leans down and nips at my lips. “Always so impatient.”

Hooking my legs around his ass, I try to pull him deeper, but he just chuckles and shakes his head and then moves out of me before dipping back in with the same shallow thrust. “I should make you writhe and beg for hours.”

I blink, horrified. “No, you absolutely should not.”

The sexy-as-sin smile he flashes me behind his dark stubble would make me melt if I weren’t growing increasingly impatient. He eases out and pushes in again, only going another inch deeper.

“Slade.”

“Yes, Auren?” he croons teasingly.

That’s it.

I bring up my ribbons from my left side and wrap them around his body, and before he can so much as tense, I use their strength to flip us over so that I’m on top. The second I’m in control and straddling his body, I sink down on him all the way, making him hiss out a breath.

My head tosses back with a gasp. “Yes…”

He reaches up to grip my waist, fingers digging into my skin. “Look at my wanton female riding my cock,” he says, tone trimmed with pleased arrogance. “It’s sexy to see you take what you want.”

I barely hear his words, too caught up in lifting myself over him. One of his hands comes up to stroke over my breast, thumb dragging over my nipple, making it go hard and stiff against his touch.

“Harder, baby. Fuck yourself on me harder,” he demands. He uses his other hand to help bring me up and down over his cock, making my body start climbing that pinnacle again.

I let my palms graze against his muscled abs before I brace my hands against his bare chest, using it for better leverage. I do exactly what he said, fucking myself on him hard and fast, while he continues to help lift my body over his thick length.

“Give me your eyes, Auren,” he commands.

When I don’t listen, he sits us both up, dragging me impossibly deeper as I sit in his lap, my legs shifting to wrap around his waist. His hips jut up into me, stealing a groan from my chest.

“That’s right. Look at me with those gorgeous golden eyes of yours. I want them on me when your perfect pussy wrings out every drop of my cum.”

A needy noise leaves my throat, his filthy words their very own aphrodisiac that heightens my desire.

Hands trace down my spine, his touch feathering over the base of each ribbon, right where they grow from my back. His fingers pluck them lightly like a harp, making my body sing, but only he can hear its song. Chills scatter down my skin, ribbons shuddering with ecstasy.

Bracing my arms on his shoulders, I bend my elbows so my hands can dig into his soft hair. I’m so overwhelmed with needy fervor and the intensity of our connection that my eyes burn with it.

Both of his hands come back to my waist, biceps bulging. This time when he thrusts his hips up, he goes so deep that it’s like he’s rooted inside of me, causing my pleasure to sprout up higher.

And I want more, I want this.

Using my thighs, I start bucking on top of him as fast as I can, spine undulating, hips grinding, my swollen clit being pressed against him every time I slam down.

“Fuck…” Slade grits out, and the curse from his lips just spurs me on to go faster, and then I’m nearly there, so close…

“Slade!”

“Come again, just like this,” he growls. “I want your pussy to choke my cock, Auren.”

My whimper slips out from the filth of his words, and I feel myself become impossibly wetter, my core going tight. My body purrs for him, back arching, hips in his grip, pussy clamping down around him. Our gazes fasten, gold and black anchored together like ships to the sea.

“That’s it, Goldfinch,” he purrs.

Utter rapture overtakes me.

My orgasm washes over me like crashing waves until I become submerged entirely. I cry out, nails scraping down his skin as my entire body seems to clamp down around him.

“Fucking yes…” He roars in my ear, burying himself deep, stretching me around him. He groans out my name like a rugged prayer as he comes, while the last of my rippling orgasm laps over me in lingering licks.

I’m floating in the depths he brought me, basking in the weightlessness of it all, in awe of the force of our joining. As I shudder and pant against him, I let my forehead rest against his. We sink against each other, breaths shallow, feelings deep, wading in waters that are completely uncharted.noveldrama

So this is how it can be with the right person.

All my life, I thought sex was just…sex. A commodity to be sold, a job to perform. With Midas, sex was the only time he’d give me the touch I so desperately craved, a way for me to make him love me. But I never felt anything like this before. No one ever gave me such pleasure or made me feel so treasured, so sexy, so wanted.

I watch him with a sweep of sated awe, his aura languid, flowing from his shoulders to drip across mine like a cool stream. We breathe together, chests rising and falling in tandem. My ribbons lazily stroke up his back, playing with the spikes that are once more protruding from his spine, and I hum in pure happiness.

Once again, this is a moment I never want to end.

But I know it has to.

As if he can see it in my face, Slade lifts his forehead from mine, eyes searching my expression.

“We should talk,” I tell him, my voice filled with regret, even as it still carries a husky note to it. Those three words break the spell we’re in, and then it’s not simple anymore. It’s not just him and me.

All too soon, we’re breaking apart, bodies separating, my ribbons drooping like they’re mourning the loss of him. I don’t blame them. All I want to do is curl up beside him and fall asleep in his arms, but we don’t have that luxury. I don’t know if we ever will, and that thought hurts my heart.

Maybe these stolen moments of a forbidden romance are all we’ll ever get. Moments where we forget about the outside, but the outside doesn’t forget about us. The world has a way of blowing past your bubble, poking and prodding until evaded reality pops its way in.

So, as much as I want to keep on ignoring, keep on melting into him, I don’t. If I want him, if I want me, it’s time to face those harsh realities, because there is no future with Slade if I don’t fight for it.

Which is why I clean up and get dressed in heavy silence, letting every concern and thought and worry rush back in as violently as churned rapids from the falls.

Slade watches me from his pallet, pants on, shirt off, spikes out, an army commander waiting for a problem he can attack.

“Tell me.”

Not a command. He says it in a way that lets me know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s here as my ally. That he’s not just my lover, but someone I can depend on, can trust, and that’s what gives me the strength to finally unburden myself and let my tongue unravel from the secret knots that have tied up my throat.

“Midas has him,” I say, and the weight is like a boulder dropped from my hunched shoulders. “He has Digby.”