27. Chapter 27 #3
I cried out as he drank in long, steady pulls.
His arm tightened across my ribs, holding me to him, his hips driving up while his mouth fed from me.
The sensation was impossible to separate into parts.
His cock inside me. His fingers circling my clit.
His fangs in my neck. His pleasure flooding back through the bond, dark and male and overwhelming.
I felt him taste me. Felt the way my blood struck him. Felt his control shudder. Mine broke first.
The climax came hard enough to tear sound from me.
I shouted, riding up and down on him because my body had taken over and apparently my new body had opinions.
My thighs shook. My inner muscles clenched around him, and he groaned against my throat, still drinking, still moving, still holding me as if I could convulse apart and he would keep me together by force if necessary.
The bond snapped wider.
For a moment, there was no clear border between his pleasure and mine. His hunger became heat in my mouth. My release became pressure in his chest. I felt my own pulse through his fangs and his cock through my body and the old law of the Goddess binding us not as a trap, but as witness.
He withdrew his fangs at last and sealed the wound with his tongue.
The wet glide sent aftershocks through me.
I twisted in his arms before weakness could persuade me to collapse. He let me move, let me turn, and I pushed him onto his back with a strength that still surprised me. Maksym landed against the pillows, eyes flaring with heat and something that looked dangerously like pride.
I climbed over him.
My thighs bracketed his hips. I took him in hand and guided him back inside me, sinking down slowly until he filled me again. His hands came to my hips, but he did not steer. He let me set the rhythm.
So I did. I rode him.
At first, slow, testing the angle, the power in my thighs, the way his eyes fixed on my body as if he were witnessing a miracle he intended to sin with extensively.
Then faster. Harder. My palms flattened on his chest. Beneath my hands, he was stone and breath and restrained violence.
His hips lifted to meet me, but the pace was mine.
My fangs descended.
The sensation startled me: pressure in my gums, sharpness, venom gathering at the tips. A bead of it touched my lower lip, cool and strange, before my tongue found it.
His hands tightened on my hips. Then he turned his head to the side, baring his neck.
The gesture stopped me more surely than any command could have.
A born vampire king, royal bloodline, centuries old, terrifying enough that entire rooms changed breathing when he entered—and he gave me his throat.
“Bite me,” he said.
My body clenched around him. He groaned.
I leaned over him, hair falling around us like a curtain. “You trust me.”
His eyes met mine. “With everything.”
The words landed deep.
I lowered my mouth to his neck but did not bite yet. My lips brushed the cool skin, the strong column of his throat, the place where his pulse did not behave like a human pulse but still answered me.
“You changed my body,” I said.
His breath caught.
“You changed my life. I was dying, and you gave me this.” I lifted slightly, then sank down on him again, and his jaw flexed.
“Strength. A future. A family I still don’t know how to stand inside without expecting the floor to vanish.
You gave me choices when the only thing I had left was not wanting to die. ”
His hands slid up my thighs, reverent and shaking.
“I thank the Goddess for you,” I whispered. “Even when I didn’t understand what she had done. Even when I was angry. Even when I hated what I had become because I thought becoming meant losing myself.” My lips touched his throat again. “I thank her for you, Maksym.”
His eyes closed. I bit down. His release came immediately.
Furious. Deep. His hips pistoned up into me so hard I cried out against his throat, my fangs buried in him, his blood filling my mouth.
It was rich, dark, powerful, old, threaded with sunlight and shadow, and something unmistakably his.
I drank, and his pleasure roared through the bond, slamming into mine until I could not tell whether the sounds in the room came from him or me.
He drove into me again and again, spilling inside me while I drank from him, hands gripping my hips, then my back, then tangling in my hair without pulling.
My body locked. The second climax hit at the same instant, more brutal than the first because it carried his with it.
My thighs clamped around him. My spine arched.
Every muscle tightened around the unbearable fullness of him.
I drank until the sharp edge of hunger softened into satisfaction.
Then I released my bite.
Instinct guided me. My tongue moved over the wounds, sealing them. The marks closed beneath my mouth, though I kissed the place after, unwilling to let it vanish too quickly.
Strength left me in one sweet, devastating wave.
I collapsed against his chest.
Maksym’s arms closed around me at once. His body remained inside mine, softening slowly, the evidence of him still warm between my thighs. I pressed my mouth to his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, not quite kisses, not quite prayers.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
His hand slid over my back.
I pressed my face to his neck, where my bite had been.
“Thank you for saving me.”