Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Rocco
“Take me," she whispered. And something inside me snapped.
Mad desire had taken over. It had sunk its claws into me the moment her blood had touched my tongue, and it hadn't let go since. It was in my veins now—burning, relentless, consuming everything in its path like wildfire through dry timber.
Nothing else mattered.
Not Angelo and his threats.
Not Costin and his hunters.
Not the shard, the demons, or the war barreling toward us.
Only her.
Selena. My face was buried in between her inner thighs, warm and shuddering against my cheeks.
My tongue traced slow circles, then darted between her secret folds, tasting salt and sweetness, feeling her pulse quicken beneath my lips.
Her fingers tangled in my hair, gripping tighter with each gasp until she cried out my name like a prayer.
How could I deny her this pleasure when her every shudder was my triumph?
Her desperate pleas to take her—breathless, raw, my name spilling from her lips like she'd been holding it captive for two years—woke something inside me I didn't know existed.
Something primal. Something ancient. A predator that recognized its mate on an instinctual level no amount of denial could override.
I'd been with other women. I wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
But none of them—not a single one—had ever made me feel like this.
Like I would tear the world apart with my bare hands if it meant keeping her safe.
Like I would burn down everything I'd built and everything I'd lost just to hear her say my name like that one more time.
This was different. She was different.
And the part of me that had spent two years running from this truth finally went quiet.
I pulled away from her and stared down at her body, my chest rising and falling like a tide.
Her skin glowed alabaster in the half-light, the hollow of her throat pulsing with each breath.
I tore at my jeans, fingers clumsy with urgency.
My arousal strained against fabric, aching with need, ready to claim her depths.
She reached her trembling arms up, eyes liquid with desire.
"Take me," she whispered again, her voice husky and raw, scraped down to something honest that no mask could hide.
I crawled into her embrace, and the heat of her skin scorching against mine nearly undid me.
I settled my hips between her parted thighs, and she wrapped around me like she was afraid I'd disappear.
Her fingers dug into my shoulders, her breath hitching, her body quivering beneath mine—not from fear, but from the same desperate, aching need that was tearing me apart from the inside out.
I kissed her again. Slower this time. Deeper. Pouring everything I couldn't say into the press of my mouth against hers.
Then I pulled back just enough to look into her eyes. I needed to see her—needed to know she was still with me, still choosing this, still choosing me.
"I want you, Selena." My voice was rough. Wrecked. I barely recognized it. "I claim you. You’re mine.”
The words left me and something shifted in the air between us—something ancient, something that had been waiting two years to be spoken. The bond roared to life in my chest, so fierce it stole my breath.
She gasped. Her lips parted, her eyes widening, and tears spilled down her temples into her hair. Not quiet tears. The kind that broke free from somewhere deep—somewhere locked and guarded and bruised from years of waiting.
My heart seized. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head, a broken laugh tangling with a sob. "Do you know how long I've waited to hear that?"
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs.
Guilt swelled inside me—hot, suffocating, relentless. Two years. She'd carried this bond for two years while I'd pretended it didn't exist. While I'd called her a disgrace. While I'd walked away and left her alone with a connection she couldn't sever and a wound she couldn't heal.
And she'd waited anyway. Through all of it.
Through the lies and the silence and the years—she'd waited for me.
I pressed my forehead against hers, my eyes burning like I'd stared too long at the sun.
"I'm sorry," I said, the words cracking apart in my throat like drought-parched earth. "I'm so sorry, Selena."
She cupped my face in her hands, her thumbs brushing away the hot tears that had escaped without permission, trailing down my cheeks in silent rebellion.
"Show me," she whispered, her breath warm against my lips. "Stop telling me and show me."
I lifted my hips and pushed into her welcoming heat, the sensation making my breath catch.
Selena
"Yes. Yes."
The moment I'd been waiting for had arrived.
He filled me completely, and my whole body melted into his, a gasp tearing from my throat.
My muscles stretched and contracted around him as he pressed deeper.
The sweet burn of fullness stole my breath, my fingers gripping his shoulders as our bodies found their rhythm together.
His mouth found the curve of my throat, lips and tongue and the hot press of his breath against my hammering pulse—as I pressed into him, every nerve in my body singing.
I shivered with pleasure, goosebumps racing across my flesh like electricity.
The frenzy between us built to something primal and uncontrollable, our breathing ragged and synchronized.
It was as if our bodies recognized each other from some ancient memory, desperate to eliminate even the whisper of space between us.
Rocco's teeth sank into the tender flesh where my neck met my shoulder, and I dug my nails into his muscled shoulders hard enough to break skin.
The sharp sting melted into liquid pleasure that radiated through my core like molten gold.
It ignited a cascade of sensations that overwhelmed me—my skin electric, my breath ragged— driving me to move my hips in an increasingly desperate rhythm against him.
I slid one hand down the sweat-slicked plane of his back and cupped his balls, feeling their weight in my palm.
He moaned against my throat, his hips snapping forward with renewed vigor. He pulled away, his dark eyes boring into mine. "You're mine, Selena. Forever.”
My chest constricted with an emotion too vast to name.
I gazed up at his face—flushed, raw, stripped of every mask he’d ever worn—and saw a man completely undone.
"Rocco Palazzo, you have always been mine."
My fangs pierced the tender olive skin of his neck, breaking through like needles through silk. His blood—metallic, sweet, and warm as summer rain—coated my tongue.
I drank not from hunger but from possession, from the primal need to mark what belonged to me.
Waves of crimson pleasure crashed through my body, setting every nerve ending aflame.
I moaned his name against his throat, my fingers digging into his shoulders as the ecstasy pulsed through me like liquid fire.
I cried out again as I arched my hips, taking him deeper inside me, feeling the delicious stretch of my body accommodating his.
Rocco's muscles tensed beneath my fingertips, his back arching like a drawn bow as he spilled himself with a guttural moan that vibrated through my chest. He collapsed onto me, his weight both crushing and comforting, his heartbeat thundering against mine as fine tremors coursed through his sweat-slicked skin.
The room settled around us. Our ragged breathing. The creak of the bed. The distant murmur of Rose’s voice through the wall—and I realized with a flush that there was no way they hadn’t heard us.
I didn’t care.
Something had shifted inside me—not just the bond, not just the physical. Something deeper. I felt cracked open and whole at the same time, like I’d been holding my breath for two years and had finally, finally exhaled.
We lay there, our limbs tangled like vines, my head nestled against the hollow of his throat where I could feel his pulse gradually slowing. The comforter beneath us was damp with sweat, bunched and twisted from the wreckage we’d made of the bed.
Through the thin walls, Rose and Valentin had surely heard every gasp, every whispered plea— but the thought only sent a delicious shiver down my spine.
In the amber glow of the bedside lamp, I traced the contours of Rocco's chest with my fingertip, marking him.
He was mine now, completely. And I was his.
The words settled into my chest like a key turning in a lock. After two years of aching for this—of imagining it, mourning it, convincing myself it would never happen—the reality was quieter than I’d expected.
No fireworks.
No triumph.
Just a deep, steady warmth spreading through me like sunlight filling a room that had been dark for too long.
It wasn’t what I’d imagined. It was better. Because it was real.
He finally broke the silence, his dark eyes searching mine with an intensity that made my breath catch. Slowly, he lifted my hand from where it rested against his chest. He turned it over, pressing his lips to my palm—a kiss so gentle, so reverent, it made my heart stutter.
Then he pressed my hand against his cheek and held it there.
"I was a coward." His eyes glistened in the lamplight, raw and unguarded in a way I’d never seen before. "I pushed you away because I didn’t want to believe that we were fated mates. I thought the fates were wrong. I was a prince and I thought I was better.”
I tensed. All the pain came back.
“But then when I fell, when I hurt my mom, no one believed in me but you.” He lowered his head.
“My eyes were opened. I was the fool. You were the one who was better than me.
I was the monster, not you. If I hurt you like I did my mother, I would never forgive myself.
So I pushed you away. Stayed away from you to keep you safe. "
My eyes burned. Two years. Two years of hating myself, of wondering what was so wrong with me that my own mate couldn't stand the sight of me. And the answer wasn't that I was broken. It was that he thought he was.
I didn't know whether to hit him or hold him.
His jaw flexed beneath my palm. I felt him swallow.
"Every day I stayed away from you was the hardest thing I've ever done. And every day, I told myself it was the right thing." He turned his head and pressed another kiss into my palm, his lips lingering. "It wasn't. It was the cruelest thing I've ever done, and I've done some terrible things."
His eyes found mine again, and what I saw in them nearly shattered me. Not the mask. Not the prince. Not the swagger or the walls or the careful indifference he'd hidden behind for two years. Just Rocco—raw, terrified, and completely open in a way I'd never seen before.
"I promise you, I will never deny you again.
" Each word was deliberate, heavy with the weight of a vow.
"I will never push you away. I will never make you feel like you're not enough.
" His thumb traced across my knuckles, his grip tightening like he was afraid I'd slip through his fingers.
"You're everything to me, Selena. You always have been. I was just too broken to deserve you."
My throat closed up. Tears blurred my vision again, but I blinked them back. I'd cried enough tonight. Instead, I curled my fingers against his cheek and pulled him down to me.
"Don't you ever decide what I deserve again," I said against his lips. "That's my choice. Not yours."
Something shuddered through him—relief, maybe, or the weight of two years finally lifting off his shoulders.
"Yes, ma'am," he murmured. And for the first time in a long time, he smiled like the prince I remembered.