Chapter 26
EIRA
His mouth crashes down on mine before I can decide whether to fight, surrender, or weaponise a smart remark, and for one molten second all I can do is gasp into him and hold on.
The kiss turns feral fast.
One moment it’s heat and challenge, his body caging mine, the delicious threat in his voice still crackling under my skin.
The next it’s Netheris-hot and ravenous, tongues tangling, his grip shifting from my throat to my jaw to the back of my neck, dragging me where he wants me and somehow making it feel like I hurled myself there.
He kisses like a man who has lived too long, denied himself too often, and abruptly decided that was a poor use of eternity.
I kiss him back like I have no sense and even less restraint.
He lifts me so fast I squeak, all air and indignation, and then I’m on my back in the vampire’s bed, the vast decadent monster of a thing swallowing me whole in dark linen and silk while he looms over me, upper half bare, hair falling over his face, larger than life and older than empires.
It should be absurd that I can still think while he looks like that.
I cannot, in fact, think.
I can only stare.
At the hard planes of his chest. The scars. The cursed, mesmerising mark over his heart. Shoulders broad enough to block half the chandelier light. His mouth swollen from kissing me, eyes dark and rimmed in silver like hunger wearing bling.
He looks less like something that belongs in a bed and more like a masterpiece painted onto cathedral ceilings to frighten sinners into behaving.
Instead, he’s above me, one hand planted beside my head, the other sliding down my side with devastating purpose, and my body is already halfway gone.
He kisses my jaw, my mouth again, and every touch feels amplified by what I now know. The mark. The bond. The countdown. The way death is stalking him in a language older than reason.
It should cool this.
Instead, it sharpens everything.
I should be afraid in the old way. The run-until-my-lungs-tear way. But the old fear belonged to the shadow in my bedroom, the rumour, the debt collector, the vampire my father sold me to. This man has teeth, yes. Power. Hunger. A mark that could drag us both into Hell.
He also stopped.
Again and again, when it mattered, he stopped.
It does not make him safe. It makes him something worse.
Possible.
And maybe that’s why I’m still here. Not because I’ve stopped being afraid, but because fear is no longer the only thing in the room.
My fingers drag over his shoulders, his chest and ridged stomach, tracing muscle and heat and old scars. When I make it back to his ribs and up over the mark, he shudders hard enough to make me feel powerful and reckless all at once.
I trail my hands up the corded column of his throat, and blurt, because my mouth is apparently no longer supervised, ‘You’re hot. How are you so hot?’
A wicked smile curves his lips at the double-entendre.
‘I can read minds, manipulate time to a small extent by moving at near-lightning speed, glamour weaker wills, still a room, hear a pulse shift across a crowded floor, scent fear before a blade is drawn, and kill a man before his body understands it has died. Regulating blood temperature is child’s play for a vampire of my age. ’
His thumb drifts along my lower lip.
‘Those who remain cold-blooded are either posturing or unimaginative. Do you like that I’m hot, little hunter?’
His voice is velvet and sex. So damned effective my pulse trips over itself. ‘I don’t know. I have nothing to compare it to.’
The words are out before I can stop them. Too close to confession. Too close to I have never let anyone get this close before.
Panic sparks.
I hurry on. ‘I mean, can you switch it off? So I have something to compare it to?’
He says nothing.
Just watches me while the heat beneath my palms ebbs, then drains, leaving coolness.
Then cold.
I gasp, not from pain or discomfort. Shockingly, the opposite. The slick cool press of his body against mine sends lurid, immediate thoughts tumbling through my head. What that cold would feel like lower. Deeper. Against the places already throbbing and oversensitive from earlier.
Like being fucked with a cold dildo.
Sweet Netheris.
His mouth curves with predatory delight.
‘Why, little hunter,’ he murmurs, leaning down to kiss my bare shoulder while his hand slides over my hip, ‘I believe you have several kinks that require exploring.’
I make a strangled sound halfway between a scoff and a squeak. ‘I do not—’
‘Do not what?’ he asks, kissing his way to my jaw. ‘Blush? Clearly false. Fantasise? I can smell otherwise. Crave? A lie by omission, at minimum.’
‘Oh my Gods, you are offensive.’
‘And yet you remain here.’
His hand strokes slow and wicked over me, never quite where I want it, then exactly where I want it for one brutal second before leaving again. Touch. Tease. Retreat. The rhythm makes me want to bite him just to feel like I’m participating in my own ruin.
He kisses me deep and carnal, all heat and possession and slick, flickering tongues. When he lifts his head, his nose grazes my cheek, his inhale deliberate.
‘You smell more intoxicating each time,’ he says, voice roughening. ‘Do you know that?’
‘Do I know I have a pulse?’ I shoot back, breathless. ‘Yes. Congratulations on your advanced senses.’
His mouth flashes at the corner. ‘Not your pulse.’
The look he gives me strips the rest of the joke from my tongue.
Then his fangs descend.
Fast and slow at once. A subtle shift in his mouth, and suddenly there they are. Sharp and pale and impossibly elegant. Not grotesque like cheap horror, but primal in a way that makes my entire body lock in startled, electric awareness.
My heart slams as bracing realisation dawns.
As I register why I’m no longer trying to bolt. Not because I’m no longer afraid of him. I am. Gods, I am. But fear is no longer the only thing in the room. There is proof now, too.
Proof that he can stop. That he can honour a boundary. That the monster I built in my head from whispers and terror is still a monster, yes, but not the simple one I ran from.
And maybe the most dangerous part is that I want to know the difference.
And Gods help me, it’s hot.
Terrifying, yes. Deeply. The old mammal part of my brain starts screaming predator predator predator and preparing a formal complaint. But layered over that is the shameful, incandescent truth that seeing him like this, beautiful and monstrous and barely leashed, is insanely arousing.
His eyes darken.
Of course he knows.
‘Hush, little hunter,’ he says, voice low enough to vibrate through my bones. ‘You will remain intact. Today is not the day I will break you open.’
Alarm and heat crash together so violently I almost laugh. ‘Cool. Super comforting phrasing. Love that for me.’
His fangs linger another second, then retract with visible effort.
Before I can decide whether to be relieved or weirdly disappointed, he moves.
The world tilts.
One heartbeat I’m flat on my back in silk sheets, trying to remember my own name. The next, he’s flipped us so he’s on his back, spread out across that monstrous bed like a decadent feast laid out for a queen with terrible judgement.
His arms stretch above his head, one hand gripping the iron bars of the headboard, the movement pulling every muscle in his torso taut and making the mark over his heart glimmer darkly.
Indecent and deliberate. Dangerous in a wholly different way.
He watches me from beneath lowered lashes, all command wrapped in invitation, disarmingly, fucking sexy, then beckons with his other hand.
‘Come here, sexy human.’
My snark is gone, drowned beneath the torrent of his insane hotness.
So I do. Mostly because my body has resigned from management.
He hooks a hand at my waist and settles me over his thighs with brutally lazy power. My knees sink into the mattress on either side of him, and the position is suddenly, wildly intimate.
Me above him. His body beneath mine. His gaze fixed on my face like he’s studying what kind of havoc I’ll choose.
Then he says, calmly, like he’s discussing meeting logistics, ‘Touch me however you please. Pleasure yourself on me if you wish. You have ten minutes.’
I stare. ‘Umm… what?’
‘Either you make us both come in that time,’ he continues, one dark brow lifting in pure challenge, ‘or I take over.’
It’s a dare.
And shit, I am weak at refusing dares.
I’m also, catastrophically, a virgin currently straddling a centuries-old vampire who looks like he was handcrafted by a consortium of indecency and old money.
I’m not a nun.
I’ve read things. Heard more. In moments of weakness, I’ve bookmarked things. I’ve also bought a toy or two, one I threw away when the battery died and the other I use sparingly because, dammit, it did not deliver what it said on the box.
So pleasing a vampire this old, this skilled, this composed while he’s hard enough to dent steel and apparently capable of timing orgasms like a military operation?
My confidence flickers.
His smile deepens, as if he scents that too. ‘Tick tock, little hunter. We will not leave this room until we both come.’
A reckless plan sparks.
Make him come first. Blow his mind. Get him off, then touch myself and, given how close to the edge I already feel, surely I can tumble over with minimal effort.
Efficient.
Strategic.
Win-win.
I reach for his zipper.
His hand tightens at my waist and he shakes his head once, almost lazily. ‘No. You first.’
I blink at him, fingers hovering over the hard outline of him. ‘I didn’t realise this was a timed practical exam in advanced vampire hospitality.’
My fingers skate over his cock as I say it, because if I’m going to be mouthy, I may as well be thorough.
The effect is immediate.
He grunts low in his throat, grip tightening painfully at my waist. At my involuntary wince, he releases me at once and raises his arm to join the other on the headboard.
His fingers tighten on the iron bars hard enough that tendons stand out in his forearms. The movement ripples through his chest and stomach in one brutally beautiful line of tension that makes my mouth water.
There’s power in this.
Real power.
Watching how much I affect him. Watching this ancient, dangerous creature strain beneath my touch and let me see it.
It would be easy to get drunk on that. Also very stupid to forget what he is so making him snap is probably not my best idea this week.
So I slide off him before I do something reckless and stand at the edge of the bed, pulse skittering, skin hot, trying to look like I have any idea what I’m doing.
He watches me like a starving king trying to remember his manners as I peel off my top.
His gaze drops, slow and measured, over my skin. Somehow more intimate than if he’d lunged. By the time I unhook my bra, his mouth has gone still.
When I free my breasts, his cock jumps.
He licks his lips and mutters something under his breath in a language I don’t know.
I toss the bra away because if I hold on to it, I might put it back on and flee the country.
My hand goes to my trouser zipper.
Then I remember, belatedly, with a hot flood of embarrassment, that he tore my panties to shreds earlier.
So I’m naked beneath my trousers.
I glance at him.
His smile is wicked enough to qualify as a felony. Hot enough to have melted my panties if I’d still been wearing any.
Face flaming, I tug off my boots first because I suddenly need another task and boots are practical. Then socks. Then back to the trousers. The awkward shuffle of getting one ankle free without face-planting in front of a vampire who could stop time enough to witness every humiliating angle.
When I straighten, I’m naked.
Completely naked in front of this man for the second time today.
The room goes very quiet.
Valentin doesn’t pounce.
There’s no smug male satisfaction. No vulgar comment meant to make me feel small, which I did not expect but still weirdly braced for.
Instead, his arms strain tighter, muscles pumping beneath his skin as his expression changes.
There is hardness there, yes. Hunger. But also something reverent and intent that makes my breath catch harder than any filthy line could have.
‘Fucking beautiful,’ he growls, low and unhurried. ‘No. More than that. You are…’
His gaze moves over me again, slower this time, silver rimming his eyes like firelight when they settle on the narrow strip of hair guarding my pussy.
‘Exquisite. Every inch of you. Fierce and lush and entirely too lovely for my peace of mind.’
The flush in my face turns molten.
But the shame I expected never lands.
He keeps going, those dangerous, precise words turned towards appreciation instead of intimidation.
How my body was made to be worshipped and wreck his restraint.
How my mouth was an insult to his control before he ever tasted it.
How the sight of me standing bare in his room is enough to make old instincts turn savage.
By the time he’s done, I’m not hiding.
I’m breathing hard. Blushing, yes. But smiling a little against my will.
And when I climb back onto the bed, it is with something closer to confidence than panic.
I settle over him again, straddling his thighs, and his hands remain on the iron bars where he put them.
‘Good girl,’ he says softly, gaze locked to mine. ‘Now show me what all that bravado can do, little hunter. Let us see whether your mouth is as talented as it is insolent.’
I know exactly what he’s doing. And still, I rise to the bait, bend and kiss him first, slow this time, tasting the heat and danger of him while my hands explore without the franticness of before.
I stroke his jaw, trace his throat, linger over the pulse point that isn’t really a pulse but somehow feels like one beneath my fingers.
He watches me through half-lowered lashes, body taut beneath me, giving me the illusion of control.
And maybe, for this moment, the reality of it too.
My hand drifts to his chest.
To the mark.
It throbs under my touch, dark and alive, and his breath catches again.
Then I go lower.