Chapter 41
Severin
MAEVE’S BODY FLOODS WITH ADRENALINE as I pierce her skin; I taste the sharp, bitter flavor in her blood as it glides along my fangs. The predator in me likes it, and my dick gets harder where it’s sheathed inside her.
Her gasp of pain makes me wrap my arms more firmly around her, holding her in place.
Even if she doesn’t mean to, she may subconsciously try to pull away, tearing my fangs free.
I pump my venom into her, filling her with it until it mingles with the blood circulating through her system.
And I feel the moment it hits her, feel the way her body softens against mine, no longer fighting against the pain.
As I begin to drink, drawing her blood into my mouth, her pussy tightens around my cock. She begins to move, rolling her hips, keeping me buried inside her as she fucks me deep and slow.
It’s ecstasy. Between her blood in my mouth and her cunt wetting my cock, I become lost in her. The world falls away from around me. Everything is Maeve. Her taste. Her scent. The sounds she makes as she reaches between our slick bodies to play with her clit.
Her blood pumps over my fangs, hot and coursing with the flavor of storms: like spring rain wetting the earth and lightning dancing across the sky. It’s so her, a taste that’s as unique as she is.
In all my years and all the necks I’ve taken from, none have ever tasted like her.
Maeve reaches around the back of my head, her fingers tangling in my hair as she presses my mouth more firmly against her collarbone, driving my fangs deeper. Her other hand works at her clit, and she rides me slowly, heeding my warning to be careful as she grinds her hips into mine.
Beneath us, the armchair groans, shifting slightly from the rhythm of our bodies.
Maeve’s skin is hot, with sweat building up along her low back where I still have my arm draped around her.
I wish I had a bathtub in my apartment; if I did, I’d bathe her after fucking her, would wash every inch of her skin clean, then would bundle her in a plush towel and make her tea to enjoy beside the fire.
The image of it is so domestic that it surprises me.
I know lust, I know desire, I know temptation. These are things I’m well-versed in.
But what I don’t know is love. Because it’s never happened for me.
Perhaps I’m the problem. I’m too cold, I push people away, I keep myself guarded.
With Maeve, though, I don’t want to keep my walls up, don’t want to feel the need to shield myself and keep her at arm’s length.
I want her here, wrapped up in my arms, as storms race across the sky and the fire crackles in the hearth.
I want her with me in the mornings when I awaken and in the evenings when I close my eyes, with her scent all around me and her head on the pillow beside mine.
I don’t just want to fuck her and feed from her. I want it all. And so much more.
Maeve’s breath catches, and she gasps out, “Harder. Fuck me harder.”
Tightening my grip on her so her body won’t move, I start to drive my cock into her, as deep as it’ll go, matching her rhythm as she continues to ride me.
Our bodies make wet slapping sounds, her slickness coating us both.
Her pussy gets tighter, and then she catches her breath before cumming around my dick with a beautiful moan.
Just hearing it makes me want to cum, steals away my ability to hold out any longer.
So I slip my fangs from her skin, grab her by the hips, and lift her off my dick, pulling her flush against me so I don’t fill her cunt with my seed. She gasps as my cum paints her ass, and I stroke myself until there’s nothing left to release.
As I drop my hand from around my shaft, my muscles soften, like I could melt into this armchair and never reform.
Maeve pulls back to look down at me, her long purple hair falling around us like a veil, separating us from the outside world and all its needs and noise.
My gaze dips to her collarbone, where blood trickles from the puncture marks in her skin, dripping down her chest toward her breast.
Quickly, I lean forward, lapping my tongue across them, closing the wound and encouraging its quick healing. Maeve winces, then shifts so she can sit more comfortably in my lap, her head against my shoulder.
“Are you okay?” I ask, pushing her hair back from her face and tucking it behind her ear.
“Mm-hmm.” She looks up at me, and when her gaze meets mine, warmth rushes into my chest. The tug I’ve felt since first feeding on her flares back to life, so strong and demanding that it almost takes my breath away.
Maeve must feel it too, because her brow furrows, and she reaches up to touch her chest. “What was that? Did you feel it?” Now she touches me, right over my sternum. The brush of her fingers sends goose bumps down the length of my spine.
I capture her fingers with mine, pressing them into my bare skin. And I tell her the truth. “Yes. And I don’t know.”
“It’s stronger than last time,” she says.
She’s right. I focus on the tug, the heat. It’s like an internal compass guiding me to her.
Then I recall that morning after I first fed from her, my awareness of Maeve as she woke up, far away from me in the castle, separated by corridors of wood and stone. But I felt it. Just like I do now. Like part of her lives inside me, and part of me lives inside her.
Arella’s voice returns to me. It smells like you’re carrying her magic in your veins.
What do I smell like now, I wonder. And what does it mean that I’m carrying her essence with me long after it should’ve dissipated?
Maeve shifts in my lap, drawing me back to the present moment. She’s still covered in my cum, and her skin remains glisteny with a sheen of sweat.
“Let’s get cleaned up,” I tell her. Then I wrap my arms around her and lift her smoothly from the armchair.
She laughs as I carry her across my apartment, but she doesn’t complain.
In the kitchen, I set her down, then wet a cloth in the basin and use it to clean Maeve’s skin, being careful to avoid the marks I left on her collarbone, just above her heart.
“You care for me,” Maeve whispers as I wring the cloth out, then do a second pass over her skin, until I’m sure she’s clean.
I glance up at her from where I’m wiping her thighs. “Did you just realize this?”
She smirks, then takes the cloth from me, using it now to wipe my skin clean.
“No. But . . . I feel it now. How much you care.” Without meeting my eyes, she says, “Do you feel it too? How much I care?”
Her fingers guide the cloth over my skin, each swipe tender and slow. And I don’t have to consider her question for more than a moment. “Yes.”
Now her lips form a gentle smile. “Good.” She drops the damp cloth into the basin, then tips her head back to look up at me. “Because I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Her admission, so sudden and startling, makes my heart leap in my chest, and she takes a breath at the same time, like she felt it too.
She’s . . . falling in love with me?
Two emotions war for victory inside me: fear at what this means, at having allowed myself to become entangled in this way; and so much joy that I feel I could die now, after 333 years, and feel like finally, finally I did it right.
“You don’t have to say it back,” Maeve says, leaning back against my kitchen counter, still naked, her pale skin catching the firelight. She glances away, averting her eyes. “But I wanted you to know.”
“I’m in love with you, Maeve.”
I say it without hesitation, because it’s the truest thing I can say.
Even before this moment, before she opened that door, I knew I was on the other side, knocking. I’ve been falling in love with her since she challenged me that first day in class, since I smelled the storm on her skin and saw the way her eyes look in the starlight.
“I love you so much it . . .” I curl my fingers into fists at my sides. “So much that it scares me.”
Maeve is looking at me again, and she presses away from the counter to wrap her arms around my middle, her head coming to rest against my chest, where my heart is pounding out a frantic rhythm. “Maybe that’s not so bad,” she whispers.
I stroke a hand over the top of her head, then glance into my sitting room, where the fire she lit still crackles in the hearth. “How do you mean?”
Her arms tighten around me. “Fear means it’s real.”
Fear means it’s real.
I continue to stare into the fire, turning her words over in my mind.
Fear may also mean I’m losing control. But I’ve known that for a long time now. And fear also means I’m alive, after so many decades of feeling like I’m just drifting through each day, unmoored and untethered, more a phantom than a man.
As if in response to my thought, there’s a tug in my chest, like a thread pulling taut.
Maeve pulls away from me, her brows pinching together. “This feels different from last time,” she says, tapping her chest. Her gaze flicks up to meet mine.
I agree. Whatever connection lingered after the first feeding, it feels intensified now, like something that before was drifting has now anchored itself.
“Is this normal?” she asks.
I give one small shake of my head. “No. I’ve never experienced this before.”
“Then what does it mean?”
I don’t have answers for her, and I’m not used to not having the answers. It makes me flex my jaw and grit my teeth.
“I don’t know,” I say, even though it pains me. For a brief moment, concern flickers through her eyes, mirroring the discomfort sitting inside me. I take her chin in gentle fingers and tip her head back, tracing my thumb over the soft spot beneath her vivid violet eye. “But I’ll figure it out.”
She offers me a small smile, then wraps her arms around me again, pressing her ear to my chest, where my heart beats in rhythm with her own. “Are you worried?” she asks.
My gaze flicks again to the fire in the sitting room. And as I watch it dance, something stirs inside me, a sensation I’m not familiar with.
It feels like a storm. Like the first hint of lightning crackling across the sky.
This isn’t how feeding works, I think, slipping my arms around Maeve’s body and holding her tight to my chest. The thought takes up residence in the back of my mind, refusing to be kept at bay.
As we stand there, I determine it best not to answer her question.
Because I don’t want to lie to her. And the more closely I pay attention to the sensation inside me, the more certain I become of one thing: Whatever connection ties us together, linking our two hearts as if they’re one, it’s not fading. It’s growing stronger.
And I have no idea what it means.