Chapter 26 #2
"Maximus." Her free hand comes up, touches my face. Traces the line of my jaw, the corner of my mouth. Her fingers come away bloody; I didn't realize I was wounded there. "You're hurt too."
"It's nothing."
"Now who's minimizing?"
"I've had six centuries to practice."
"Show-off."
I laugh. The sound startles me.
She smiles, and something in my chest cracks open.
I finish cleaning her wound in silence. Apply pressure until the bleeding stops completely. Cover it with a clean bandage, my fingers lingering on her skin longer than strictly necessary.
"You should drink," I say. "Blood will speed the healing."
"Later."
"Celeste."
"I'll drink when you let someone look at your ribs." She nods toward my side, where my shirt is still soaked through with blood. "Deal?"
"I don't negotiate…"
"Deal or no deal?"
I sigh. "Deal."
She smiles again, and I realize I would agree to almost anything to keep that expression on her face.
"Sir."
Marcellus's voice cuts through the moment. I step back from Celeste, not far, not fast, but enough to establish some semblance of professional distance.
He stands in the doorway, his expression carefully blank. Blood streaks his face and arms, evidence of his own fighting, but he moves without obvious pain. Whatever wounds he took, they're already healing.
"Report," I say.
"All positions secure. Final count: six of ours dead, twelve wounded."
Six. The number lands like a blow. Six names to add to the list I carry. Six faces I'll see when I close my eyes.
"Who?"
Marcellus recites them. I listen to each name, commit them to memory. Victor, who'd been with me for seventy years. Maria, barely out of her first decade. Edward, Julian's protégé. Others whose lives stretched back decades, centuries, reduced now to bodies awaiting burial.
"Konstantin's casualties?" I ask.
"At least thirty confirmed. Possibly more, some retreated with wounds that may prove fatal." Marcellus pauses. "He wasn't present. Led the assault remotely."
Coward. Or strategist. The line between them has always been thin.
"That wasn't their real push," Celeste says. She's pulled her ruined shirt back on, holding it closed over her bandaged shoulder. "They pulled back too clean. Too organized."
"Reconnaissance," Marcellus agrees. "He wanted to test our defenses, see how we'd respond."
I nod slowly, processing. Konstantin is smart, always has been. He won't make the same approach twice. Whatever comes next will be different, unexpected, designed to exploit whatever vulnerabilities tonight revealed.
"Double the perimeter watch," I say. "Four-hour shifts, fresh rotations. I want damage assessments from all positions by dawn. And contact Lord Dmitri. His intelligence was accurate. I want to know if he has more."
"Already in progress." Marcellus hesitates, his eyes moving between me and Celeste in a way that suggests he sees more than I'd like. "Sir. You should rest. You took damage."
"I'll deal with it."
"You're bleeding through your shirt."
"I said I'll deal with it."
Another pause. Longer this time. Then Marcellus nods once.
"I'll handle the reports," he says. "Take the night. Both of you."
He leaves before I can respond to what is clearly not a suggestion.
The compound settles into the exhausted quiet that follows crisis.
I walk through the corridors with Celeste beside me, surveying the damage as we go. Broken windows, blood-streaked walls, furniture splintered from combat. My people move past us, some injured, some whole, all wearing the hollow expressions of survivors.
We should stop. I should talk to them, offer reassurance, be the leader they need me to be.
So I do. A hand on a shoulder. A nod of acknowledgment. Brief words to those who need them. "You fought well." "Get that looked at." "Rest while you can."
It takes longer than I'd like. Every moment, I'm aware of Celeste beside me, waiting. But these are my people. They bled for me tonight. They deserve more than my back as I walk past.
When I've done what I can, when the immediate needs have been addressed, I finally let myself keep walking.
Celeste matches my pace without comment. Her shoulder must be throbbing, vampire healing or not, a wound that deep takes time, but she doesn't slow, doesn't complain. Just walks beside me, close enough that our arms occasionally brush.
Each contact sends electricity through my skin.
We pass the conference room. Through the open door, I see Julian and Nadia bent over the maps, already planning for the next assault. They look up as we pass. Julian opens his mouth to speak.
I shake my head slightly, keep walking.
We climb the stairs to the residential wing. The sounds of the compound fade behind us: voices, movement, the organized chaos of aftermath. Up here, it's quiet. Private.
My quarters are at the end of the hall. I've walked this path thousands of times over the decades. Tonight, it feels different. Charged.
I stop in front of my door. Turn to face her.
She's watching me with those dark eyes, waiting. Patient. The ring glints at her chest, catching the dim light from the wall sconces.
"You should rest," I say.
"So should you."
"Celeste."
"If you're about to tell me to go to my room like a good soldier, don't."
Something shifts in my chest. A lock turning. A wall crumbling.
I tried to do this right. Tried to give us time, space, the opportunity to come together without fear or adrenaline clouding the decision. I wanted our first time to mean something. To be a choice, not a reaction.
But she almost died tonight. The memory of it hits me fresh. The stake buried in her shoulder. The blood soaking through her shirt. The split second where I thought the next blow would find her heart, and I wouldn't reach her in time.
I'm done waiting.
I close the distance between us. Her back meets the door, and I brace one hand beside her head, leaning in until my mouth is inches from hers. I can smell her. Blood and underneath it, something that's purely her. Something I want to drown in.
"I wasn't going to tell you to go to your room."
Her breath catches. I watch her pupils dilate, feel the subtle shift in her posture as she leans toward me.
"Then what were you going to say?"
I don't answer. I'm done talking.
I kiss her like I've been starving for it. Because I have. Weeks of restraint, of pulling back, of telling myself I was being noble when really I was just terrified. All of it burns away the second her mouth opens under mine.
She gasps against my lips, and I swallow the sound, my hand fisting in her hair, tilting her head back to deepen the kiss. She tastes like blood. Hers and mine and theirs, all mixed together, and I don't care. I want more of it. More of her.
Her hands grab my ruined shirt, yanking me closer. The movement pulls at my wound, and I don't care about that either. Pain is nothing. Pain is background noise. The only thing that exists is her mouth and her hands and the sounds she's making against my lips.
I reach behind her and shove the door open.
We stumble through together, still kissing, her fingers working the buttons of my shirt with desperate urgency. She gets three open before she gives up and just tears. Buttons scatter across the floor. The sound of them hitting wood is obscenely loud in the quiet room.
"That was expensive," I manage against her mouth.
"Bill me."
I laugh.
She pushes the shirt off my shoulders, and her hands find bare skin. I shudder. Her touch is cool, but it burns everywhere it lands, tracing the planes of my chest, the ridges of my stomach, the edges of the wound across my ribs.
"Does it hurt?" she asks.
"Yes."
She kisses it.
Something snaps in my chest. The last thread of control I was clinging to.
I walk her toward the bed, my mouth never leaving hers. Her knees hit the mattress, and she falls back, pulling me down with her. I catch myself on my forearms, hovering over her, looking down at her face in the darkness.
Blood on her cheek. Fire in her eyes. The ring glinting gold at her throat.
Mine.
I tear her shirt open the same way she did mine. The fabric gives easily, already weakened from battle. Underneath, just a simple black undergarment and the bandage on her shoulder, spotted with blood.
I should be careful with her. She's wounded. She almost died.
I can't be careful. Not tonight. Not after everything.
I lower my mouth to her throat and bite. Not to feed. Just to mark. Just to taste the salt of her skin, to hear the sound she makes when my fangs graze the spot where her neck meets her shoulder.
She arches into me, her nails raking down my back hard enough to draw blood. The pain lights up my nerve endings. I growl against her throat and bite harder.
"Maximus." My name comes out broken. Desperate. "Please."
"Please, what?"
"More. Everything. I don't care, just don't stop."
I drag my mouth down her body. The undergarment disappears.
I'm not sure if I unclasped it or tore it.
Doesn't matter. My lips find the swell of her breast, the peak of her nipple, and I suck hard enough to make her cry out.
Her hands fist in my hair, holding me there, her hips rolling up against mine.
I want to take my time. Want to taste every inch of her, learn every sound she makes, find every spot that makes her shake.
I can't. The need is too sharp. Too many years of loneliness compressed into this single moment, this single woman, and I can't wait another second.
I work my way back up her body, kissing and biting as I go. She's writhing beneath me now, her hands everywhere, tugging at my belt, shoving at my pants, making frustrated sounds when the fabric doesn't cooperate.
I help her. Clothes disappear. And then there's nothing between us, just skin against skin, cool against cool, her body pressed along the length of mine.
She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me closer. The pressure of her against me makes my vision blur.
"Now," she says. "I need you now."