Chapter 27 #2
"Celeste?" He reaches up to touch my cheek, catching a tear on his fingertip. "What is it? What did you taste?"
I should tell him. Should say the words, let him know I felt it, that I feel it too. But the emotions are too big, too overwhelming. Language feels inadequate.
Instead, I kiss him.
He tastes like blood now. Like me and him and something new, something we've created together. His hands grip my hips and pull me down onto him, and I realize he's fully hard, ready for me, and I'm ready too, more than ready, my body responding to the intimacy of the blood with renewed hunger.
"Again?" I murmur against his mouth.
"Again," he agrees. "But slower this time. I want to savor you."
He rolls us so I'm beneath him, his weight pressing me into the mattress. But he doesn't rush. Doesn't claim. He kisses me soft and deep, taking his time, letting the heat build gradually instead of crashing over us all at once.
His mouth leaves mine, traces down my throat. Soft kisses. Gentle scrapes of teeth. Nothing like the biting hunger of last night. This is worship.
"Last night was about need," he says against my collarbone. "Tonight is about want. There's a difference."
"Show me."
He does.
He maps my body like he's charting unknown territory. Every curve, every scar, every sensitive spot I didn't know I had. He finds the place beneath my ribs that makes me gasp. The inside of my wrist that makes me shiver. The dip of my hip bone that makes me moan.
"You're sensitive here," he observes, running his tongue along the crease where my thigh meets my hip.
"I'm sensitive everywhere when you do that."
"Good." He looks up at me, eyes dark with desire. "I want you feeling everything."
He settles between my thighs, and I feel exposed. Vulnerable. Completely at his mercy.
His hands grip my hips, thumbs tracing circles on the sensitive skin of my inner thighs. So close to where I need him, but not close enough.
"Maximus. Please."
"Please, what?" He presses a kiss to my inner thigh. "Tell me what you want."
"Your mouth. I want your mouth on me."
His smile is slow and wicked. "As you wish."
The first touch of his tongue tears a cry from my throat. Pleasure explodes through me, and I fist my hands in his hair without conscious thought.
He groans against me, and the vibration adds another layer to the sensation. His tongue works in slow, devastating strokes, learning my body the way his hands learned it earlier. Finding the spots that make me gasp. The spots that make me moan. The spots that make my thighs tremble around his head.
"You taste incredible," he murmurs. "I could do this for hours."
"I won't last hours."
"Then I'll bring you to the edge and back. Again and again. Until you're begging."
He does exactly that. Every time I get close, he pulls back, gentles his touch, lets the wave recede before building it again. It's torture. The sweetest torture I've ever experienced.
"Maximus, please, I can't..."
"You can." He slides two fingers inside me, curling them perfectly. "One more time. Show me how beautiful you are when you fall apart."
I shatter with his name on my lips.
He works me through it, drawing out every tremor, and before I've fully recovered, he's rising over me, positioning himself at my entrance.
"Look at me," he says.
I open eyes I don't remember closing.
His face is inches from mine. Tender and fierce all at once. "I need you to know something before we do this again."
"What?"
"When you bit me..." He pauses, and I see him gathering courage. "You tasted what I feel. But I need to say it. Out loud. In words."
My breath catches.
"I never said it to Catherine," he continues. "I was working up the courage when she turned. When I had to... I never got to say the words. I've regretted it for three hundred years." His jaw tightens. "I've had lovers since. But never someone I actually loved. Not until you."
"Maximus..."
"Let me finish." He cups my face in his hands.
"I love you. I love you, Celeste Moreau.
I've loved you since you looked at me like I was worth saving when I'd stopped believing I was worth anything at all.
I've loved you through every argument and every battle and every moment I pushed you away because I was too afraid to let you close. "
Tears are streaming down my face now. Those impossible vampire tears.
"I love you," he continues, "and I'll spend the rest of eternity proving it if you'll let me.
I'll fight beside you and protect you and drive you absolutely insane with my controlling tendencies, and I'll try every day to be worthy of what you've given me.
Because you've given me something I thought I'd lost forever. "
"What?" I whisper.
"Hope." He brushes a tear from my cheek. "You've given me hope."
I'm crying properly now. Tears streaming down my face, dripping onto the pillow beneath me. I didn't know I could feel this much. Didn't know there was room inside me for emotions this big.
"I love you too," I manage. "I think I've loved you since the training room, when you looked at me like I was actually worth something. I've just been too stubborn to say it first."
"Stubborn." He's smiling now, his own eyes bright. "I've noticed."
"You like it."
"I love it." He leans down, kisses me soft and deep. "I love everything about you. Even the things that drive me crazy."
"Good. Because I plan to keep driving you crazy."
"I'm counting on it."
He pushes inside me.
Slow. So slow. Inch by inch, giving me time to feel every moment of it. The stretch. The fullness. The intimacy of being joined with someone who just handed me his heart.
"Celeste." My name is a prayer on his lips. "You feel... I can't..."
"I know." I wrap my legs around him, pull him deeper. "I know."
He bottoms out and goes still.
For a moment, neither of us moves. We just exist in this moment, foreheads pressed together, bodies joined, connected in every way possible. The ring is caught between our chests, metal pressing into both our skins.
"Move," I whisper. "Please move."
He moves.
We find a rhythm together. Give and take. Push and pull. He rolls his hips against mine, and I rise to meet every thrust, our bodies speaking a language we're still learning. The pleasure builds slow, deep, amplified by everything we just shared.
"I felt it," I tell him between kisses. "In your blood. Everything you feel for me."
"And?"
"And I feel it too." I pull his face down to mine. "All of it. I feel all of it."
Something breaks open in his expression. The last wall. The final barrier.
He moves faster, but it's not desperate. It's purposeful. Like he's trying to fuse us together, to make us one thing that can never be separated.
"I want you to feel it," he says against my ear. "Every night. I want you in my bed, in my arms, in my life. I want to wake up to you. I want to fall asleep inside you. I want everything."
"You have it." My voice breaks. "You have all of it."
The pleasure crests. I feel myself starting to fall.
"Together," I gasp. "I want us to..."
"Together," he agrees.
We shatter at the same moment. His groan and my cry tangling in the air between us, our bodies pulsing in unison. The pleasure whites out everything else, and for one endless moment, there's nothing but sensation and connection and him.
We collapse together, still joined, neither willing to separate.
I run my fingers through his hair, feeling the silk of it, the way he shivers slightly at my touch.
"I want to taste you too," I say eventually.
He lifts his head. "You already did."
"No, I mean..." I gesture vaguely. "What you did to me. I want to do that. For you."
Understanding dawns. A smile curves his lips. "You want to worship me?"
"Don't get cocky about it."
"Too late." But he rolls onto his back, arms spread wide. "I'm yours. Do what you will."
I take my time.
I explore him the way he explored me. Kissing down his chest, tracing the lines of muscle with my tongue. He's built like a warrior, lean and hard, every inch honed by centuries of combat. Scars mark his skin in places, pale lines that have faded but never fully disappeared. I kiss each one.
"This one?" I press my lips to a jagged line across his ribs.
"Battle. Before I was turned."
"This one?" A smaller scar on his shoulder.
"Training accident. Luciano's training." His voice goes flat.
I kiss that one twice. Then move lower.
He tenses when I reach his hip. His breath catches when I trace the trail of dark hair that leads down his stomach.
"Celeste..."
"Let me." I look up at him. "You worshipped me. Let me return the favor."
I take him in my mouth.
The sound he makes is gratifying. A groan that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest. His hands fist in the sheets, knuckles white with restraint.
I learn the taste of him, the feel of him, the sounds he makes when I do something he particularly likes. For all his control, all his centuries of discipline, he comes apart under my mouth with gratifying speed.
"Enough." His voice is strained. He pulls me up, flipping us so I'm beneath him. "I need to be inside you again."
"So romantic."
"I'll give you romantic later." He slides into me in one smooth thrust, and we both groan. "Right now I just need to feel you."
"Then feel me."
Afterward, we lie tangled in the ruins of his bed.
The sheets are destroyed. Torn in places where we gripped too hard. Neither of us cares.
My head rests on his chest. His arm wraps around me, fingers trailing lazy patterns on my shoulder. The silence between us is comfortable. Full of things that don't need to be said.
"Thank you," he says eventually.
I lift my head. "For what?"
"For not giving up on me. Even when I made it difficult."
"You were worth the fight." I settle back against him. "You still are."
His arms tighten around me. A shudder runs through him.
"I'll spend eternity proving you right."
"I'm counting on it."
He loves me. Really, truly loves me. I felt it in his blood, deeper than words could ever reach.
And I love him. Whatever comes next, whatever Konstantin throws at us, that doesn't change.
The last thing I feel is his arms around me, holding on like he'll never let go.