39. Chapter Thirty-Nine - Divine Awakening
When I woke, I came back into myself like I’d been dropped there, dazed and suspended in a stillness that didn’t feel like sleep or sedation but something stranger, heavier.
The heaviness settled in my limbs and chest, making it hard to tell if I was really back or still floating somewhere in between.
It wasn’t the foggy pull of drugs lingering in my veins.
It was sharper than that. Like I’d been taken somewhere else entirely and returned with pieces of myself shifted just enough that I could feel it in my bones.
Light spilled through the room in muted gold, soft and dreamlike, catching on the edges of the bed and walls like morning had decided to tread carefully around me.
But everything inside me felt painfully real.
When I tried to move, even just to roll my hips, a sharp hiss slipped out before I could stop it.
My body protested in a way I didn’t recognize.
It wasn’t normal soreness. Not period cramps, not the dull ache of sleeping wrong.
It was low and deep, settling beneath my waist like something inside me had been shaken loose and hadn’t quite found its way home again.
I blinked slowly, trying to orient myself, trying to reach for understanding before the sensation could spiral into panic, my mind groping for some sort of anchor in the haze as I lay there feeling pressure from every side.
But before the thought even finished forming, the mattress shifted beside me.
Culver moved.
I nearly yelped, startled despite myself, but he was already there, leaning over me, his movement careful, like he was afraid I might splinter if he wasn’t gentle enough. His hand lifted, hovering for half a second before his fingers brushed my cheek with regret that made my chest tighten.
“I knew it,” he murmured, his voice thick and warm, honeyed in a way that sank straight into me. “I was too rough.”
His touch grounded me, even as the ache reminded me exactly why he was apologizing.
Culver had fucked me so thoroughly that my body hadn’t let go of him yet.
I could still feel the memory of him inside me, vivid and persistent, like my muscles refused to forget the shape of him.
The stretch, the fullness, the thick, demanding weight that had filled me so completely.
The deep pull low in my belly kept the heat alive, making my skin flush just thinking about how he’d buried himself inside me, every thrust leaving me stretched and aching in the best way, blurring into this tender soreness I couldn’t help but crave more of.
My insides throbbed with a raw sensation where pleasure and pain tangled together.
He must have emptied himself into me so completely that I could still feel the heaviness of it lingering low in my stomach.
My skin felt sensitive everywhere, my thighs tender and aching in a way that made me hyperaware of every breath, every shift against the sheets.
I didn’t even need to look to know there would be marks.
His grip stamped into me in quiet, unmistakable proof.
Bruises I’d wear like trophies, aches that made me want more instead of less.
A soft sound slipped from my throat, barely there, breathy and unguarded.
Despite the protest of my exhausted muscles, I dragged myself up just enough to curl into him, my arms winding around his shoulders as I let my body melt into his chest. I didn’t care that I hadn’t brushed my teeth or washed my face.
I didn’t care what my hair looked like or that I hadn’t seen my reflection since everything had happened.
All I cared about was making sure he knew I was okay, that he could feel it in the way I kissed him, slow and deep, reassurance pressed into every second of it.
My fingers slid into his hair, tugging gently through the dark strands before I pulled back, breath coming a little fast, my core still pulsing with the memory of his fullness.
“I just realized,” I whispered, my voice threaded with playful confidence even though I felt completely wrecked, sore, and satisfied in equal measure. “Vampires can handle the sun?”
Culver chuckled, the sound low and rich, vibrating against my chest as his hand slid along my arm in an absent, soothing rhythm. “There are only limited weaknesses for vampires,” he murmured, his green eyes half-lidded, softened in a way that made my stomach flip. “I quite enjoy sunny days.”
I rolled my eyes, a sleepy grin pulling at my mouth as I traced slow patterns across my collarbone.
My body still felt like it was drifting a little, like his nearness was the one thing keeping me from floating right off the bed and into whatever came next.
We looked at each other in the quiet, the silence folding around us like velvet, and it hit me then that I wasn’t just giddy.
Something invisible between us had snapped and reformed into something permanent, and there was no pretending otherwise now.
He had been incredible. The best sex of my life, without question.
Not just because of how it felt, although that had been unreal, but because of the way he held me.
The way he moved me like I weighed nothing.
The way he made me feel worshiped and devoured at the same time, his mouth claiming every inch of my skin, his cock filling me until I couldn’t breathe.
He’d looked at me like he was born to be inside me, like he’d waited centuries to fill that exact space.
He’d stretched me open in ways that left my whole body humming, made me feel split and sanctified all at once.
The wet heat of him spilling deep, the possessive grip of his hands on my hips, the way he’d driven into me again and again until I shattered beneath him.
Even now, lying there sore and spent, I could feel something else moving through me.
A quiet pulse of energy that didn’t feel normal or mortal, tying me to him in ways that went beyond the physical ache and the warmth still pooling low in my belly, the lingering slickness of his seed coating my insides.
Maybe it was the soulmate thing he’d mentioned. Fated mates…
He was a vampire. Not just a dark, beautiful man with ancient eyes and a temper that cut sharp.
He fed on blood and lived off it. He was something other, something old.
And that meant his family was too: Anna, Rupert, Soroush, Eunice, Julius…
all of them walking that thin line between civilization and something ancient that didn’t belong to my world… but he did.
And still, there I was, tangled in sheets that smelled like Culver and sin, wanting him with an intensity that bordered on frightening. The pull toward him grew stronger despite the questions swirling in my head, as if my body and heart had already decided he was mine, no matter what.
“I’ve got questions,” I murmured, reaching for his arm and tugging him closer.
I needed the closeness, the proof that he was real and present and not something I’d imagined in some fevered spiral.
When he lowered himself to my level, I smiled, wicked and sleepy.
“You were born in 1340? How old does that make you?”
His laugh came easily, breathless and dangerous. “600 years young,” his voice threaded with affection.
I grabbed his shoulder and used my hips to pull myself on top of him, my body aching even as it responded to being that close again. “Young?” I whispered with a grin, my fingers trailing down his chest as I leaned in. “You’re too full of yourself.”
His hands went to my waist automatically, steadying me. “Perhaps I should fill you once more,” he said wickedly, the heat in his eyes growing. “It would help remove some of this ‘fullness’ from me.”
I arched into him, pressing my chest to his, letting him feel exactly how unbroken I was. I purred, tilting my head. “You didn’t fill me up even after I passed out?” I bit my lip, playing it up.
His body went rigid beneath mine, eyes widening like I’d dared him to something reckless. The hunger flashed there, sharp and unguarded, before softening again. “Or do vampires hate that sorta thing?” I added quickly.
“We have morals,” he said, though his thumbs were already rubbing slow circles into my hips, guiding me into movement before I could think better of it. Warmth bloomed low in my belly as I rocked against him. “If that is what you are asking.”
“So…” I gasped as I felt him harden beneath me, answering for himself. “Does that go against your morals?”
“We have minimal morals,” he breathed, hips lifting just enough to create maddening friction. “Flexible ones.”
I hummed, needy and content, leaning down to kiss him slowly, deeply, hungrily.
I really enjoyed the way his fangs pierced me the night before.
It was hot and insistent, my neck burning with a delicious ache.
Maybe it was because of his fangs, or because I was already addicted to the feeling, to the pleasure that had coursed through me in that moment.
I was desperate for it again, so I didn’t think twice.
“I need your bite,” I murmured against his lips.
“Gladly,” he whispered back.
Then he flipped us.
His body pressed me into the mattress, solid and caging, the coolness of him sinking into my skin as his weight settled over mine in a way that felt both possessive and inevitable.
His arms bracketed me in, forearms planted on either side of my head, and the slow roll of his hips sent a shudder through me.
He ground himself against me with maddening patience, his hardness unmistakable through the thin barrier of his briefs, dragging friction exactly where I was already too sensitive for it, each movement a teasing promise of more.
“Annh,” I moaned, my hands sliding up my own chest as I shifted beneath him, pressing my breasts together just to relieve some pressure. The ache between my legs pulsed insistently, soreness and need tangling together.