16
Cal
Romy’s blood sings across my tongue before gliding down my throat with both ease and excitement. As a loyal follower of the law, and a purist in my vampire ideals, this is the first time I’ve tasted the blood of a human before. Knowing it belongs to my fated mate—indescribable.
I imagine this is the magic of sharing a first time with your spouse on your wedding night for a human male—or hell, maybe it’s better.
I guess I’ll never know beyond my own experience, and for that, I’m actually grateful.
This moment. This bond. It’s incomparable, just as destiny intended.
Cutting off the flow with a swipe of my tongue well before Romy would get dizzy or depleted, I crawl up her body until my hips fall between hers. She’s breathing heavily, but her eyes are alight with pleasure.
“All right?” I ask softly, touching my lips to hers with a gentle peck.
“All right?” she repeats with a laugh. “Yeah. It was all right. Freaking hell.”
I laugh, admittedly feeling a little cocky. “That good?”
“World-changing,” she replies, her voice devoid of even an ounce of humor. Leaning down, I take her mouth in another kiss, this one deeper, sweeter, and longer.
“For us both,” I declare as soon as the kiss breaks. “Your pleasure. My pleasure…”
“Our pleasure,” she says, picking up my lead beautifully.
Pants gone in one blink of her eyes, I sink my hard cock inside her in one slow stroke. Her pussy is tight around me like a vise, and she gasps when I push through the final barrier and fill her completely.
But once every inch of my cock is fully seated inside her, I watch in fascination as her eyes fall closed in rapture.
“Cal…” she whispers, her warm breath brushing my skin. “This is…this is…”
“The best thing I’ve ever felt.” I don’t know if it’s her thought or mine or a combination of both. But they are the truest words I’ve spoken in this lifetime.
Romy and I, together, are magic.
Kismet. Fate. Destiny.
All of it.
I get the hype. I get the yearn. I get the burn.
This… this is what life is about.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice the shakiest it’s ever been. It’s nothing of the strength, power, and grit vampires are known for—but its significance is so much more.
This level of openness and consideration for another is far more impressive than a record speed, weight lifted, or ruthlessness will ever be.
“Yes, Cal. Please,” Romy begs. “Give me more. Give me all of you. I need it desperately.”
Moving slowly, I stroke in and out until the needy grasp of her fingernails grows. She scratches at my back and my arms and my chest, and the keen of her wail is growing almost too loud to conceal.
I take her mouth with mine, swallowing it down, and upping my tempo as I do. Each drive of my hard cock makes her breasts bounce against my chest and tiny gasps of air escape from her lungs.
But then she shocks the ever-loving-shit out of me by taking my hand and placing it on her neck, forcing my fingers to feel the pounding pulse near her throat. “Do it again,” she begs. “Drink my blood.”
My cock jumps inside her, the excitement almost too much to contain, but also, this is Romy. My Romy. The last thing I want to do is put her at risk. “Romy, no. I can’t.”
“Please,” she pleads, grabbing at my shoulders and pulling me even closer to her. “Just a little bit. I need to know what it feels like to have you feed off me while you’re inside me.”
I shut my eyes. “Romy.”
But she places both of her hands to my cheeks and forces me to meet her desperate gaze. “I need it, Cal. I need it more than I need anything right now.”
I want to deny her, but I can’t fucking deny her.
Mouth to her neck, I rub my lips against her neck, and let my nose inhale the undeniably addictive scent of her blood. Her pulse thrums beneath my tongue, and I can only hold back for a good three seconds before I sink my teeth into her skin.
Her blood floods my mouth, the delicious taste of it hitting my tongue and sending a flood of pleasure through my veins.
She moans and her breaths come out in erratic pants, and I don’t think my cock has ever been this hard in my entire fucking life.
I drive myself deeper and deeper, and she responds by wrapping her legs around my hips and moving her body in rhythm with mine. Her lips are parted and her eyes are hooded, and she’s so fucking beautiful it makes my chest ache.
I feed and fuck and make love to her all at the same time.
I taste her blood and fill her with my cock, and I release my teeth from her skin when I can tell we’re both on the precipice.
She shakes and moans, and as the pressure of pleasure’s explosion builds in my spine, so does her grip on my shoulders.
Physically, I could go all night and never tire. But emotionally, I need the completion more than she needs her next breath.
I need to fill her with my come. Every cell inside my body wants to breed her, wants to fill her belly with my baby, wants to make her mine in every fucking way I can.
As she crashes over the edge again, cascading into pleasure and climax and relief, I drive my cock as far as I can go and come deep inside her, marking her, claiming her, making her mine forever.
And the bond between us seals like a closing door.
Here, like this, as one with her, I am complete.
“Romy.”
“Yes?”
“I love you,” I tell her, even though those words don’t even come close to what I feel for her. “Body, mind, soul, fucking everything. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispers back.
“And thank you.”
She quirks an eyebrow.
“For the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in my life.”
She giggles lightly before shrugging. Her joke is soft and loving as she says, “You’re welcome.”
I gently tuck her hair behind her ear, touch my lips to hers, but then freeze.
My head snaps toward the door, every instinct in me shifting in an instant. There are extra footsteps in the hall, and I fear the perfect cocoon we’ve been living in has just fallen from the fucking tree.
“Fuck. Someone’s coming,” I say so quickly, it’s harsh. My hands tighten on her body, unwilling to let go.
I don’t move right away. Every part of me is screaming to stay, to damn the consequences and keep her exactly where she belongs. With me.
But I have to. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
She nods fervently, even as her fingers clutch at me for a half second longer.
“Push the cabinet back,” I order, already moving, already fucking hating it. I dress and climb onto the edge of the window with inhuman speed.
She jumps up and runs on tiptoes to follow me, stopping me for one final kiss that almost undoes me entirely.
I almost don’t stop.
I almost don’t leave.
But instead, I nod for her to shut the window and put my palm against the glass, mouthing, I’ll see you tomorrow.
She nods and pulls down the shade, and with no other option, I drop directly to the grass below.
The fantasy of tonight has ended, and reality is back with a slap.
But the bond doesn’t loosen.
If anything, it tightens and tugs and threatens to pull me back toward her with every step away I take.
My muscles shake and my mind frenzies as I work my way through the woods toward my brothers’ villa on the far side of the property.
I knew leaving Romy after completing the bond would be bad—but I had no idea of the intensity.
Withdrawal makes my skin pebble, and my brow shines with sweat. I feel nauseated, and the pit in my gut sits heavy like lead. My movements are still sharp but notably sluggish, and my chest rages with a burning tightness the likes of which I’ve never felt before.
I don’t regret what we did, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t underestimate the effect.
With one last burst after surveilling the open space between the edge of the hedgerow and their villa, I run to the door and through it, Kane having been standing at the ready as I arrived.
He puts a finger to his lips in welcome and then ushers me to the living room, where Blair and Kylie are both sleeping.
They look like they’re out—exhausted, no doubt, from days on end of isolation, fear, and helplessness—but the last thing I want is for one of them to awaken to my brothers and me strategizing while I look like this.
I jerk my chin toward the women. “Maybe we should leave them out of this.”
“Let’s go in the kitchen,” Kane agrees, prompting Rook to extricate himself from Kylie and follow along.
I go straight to the cabinet for a glass, fill it with water from the tap, and down it in one swig.
Kane wastes no time pointing out the unorthodox action. “Okay…so…you’re drinking now? Like…a human? What the hell is going on, Cal?”
I shake my head. “I’m…feeling sick. And I thought it might help.”
“Feeling sick?” Rook interjects. “We don’t get sick.”
I close my eyes and scrub at my face, beating him back as he tries to get inside my mind with a familiar hammer.
It’s a cheap bastard move, attempting to get the answers to all his questions without giving me a chance to speak for myself, but if I saw him in this condition and had his ability, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.
I look as rough as I feel and, put simply, that can be summed up in two words—like hell.
“Okay, Cal. What’s going on? What the hell happened after the mixer tonight?
Last time we checked in, you were talking to the Viking-looking brothers from Hanover and listening to Lucian and the Council wax poetic about tomorrow’s ceremonies .
Is it Romy? Did she not make it back to her room safely or something? ”
“I…” I shake my head.
“Spit it out,” Kane insists. “We can’t deal with it if we don’t know.”
“Romy’s safe. At least…as safe as this shit gets. But after we were dismissed from the mixer, and after things quieted down in all the vampire villas, I went back to Romy’s room.”
“You snuck in again?”
I nod. “Not only that. We…mated.”
“Oh shit,” Rook groans. “You completed the bond. Tonight.”