17
Ophelia
Sometimes living in a van sucks.
Like right now, when my electrical system’s gone to hell, and I know I should be better about learning to fix these things on my own, and my on-call mechanic of choice is all the way back in Seattle, and everything feels awful.
It’s fucking cold in Boston tonight. The kind of East Coast cold that always catches me by surprise, especially this early in the fall.
It shouldn’t bother me so much.
I’m used to being inconvenienced like this. It’s the trade-off I make for living so simply and unencumbered.
So now, faced with an electrical system on the fritz—something I can probably get taken care of tomorrow with a little searching and a call to a repair shop—I shouldn’t feel a stupid, persistent lump of frustration settle itself into my chest. I shouldn’t glance out the window to Casimir’s big, beautiful, empty house with all its spare bedrooms.
I need to suck it up.
Opening the overstuffed drawer that pulls out from beneath the bed in the back of the van, I rifle through clothes and blankets and camping gear until I find what I’m looking for. The cold-weather sleeping bag isn’t an ideal solution, and while I could stay up and run the van’s main heating system instead of my electric heat, I don’t really feel like the inconvenience of cycling it on and off, or burning the gas and keeping the engine running.
The bag will do, and once I crawl in and get cozy, my body heat will be enough to—
A sharp rap on the van’s door startles me to attention, and the muffled command in Casimir’s voice from outside sends my heart leaping into my throat.
“Ophelia. Open up.”
I’m moving before I can fully process the option of not answering him. It’s automatic, the instinct to open the door and see what he wants, even if the stormy expression on his face makes my heart beat even faster when I do.
“What?” I ask.
He leans in and glances around the van. “What’s wrong with your electrical?”
How the hell did he… Oh, right. Watching from the window. I’m sure he saw my whole pathetic little display.
“Fuck if I know,” I mutter. “I’ll call someone tomorrow and get it looked at.”
“And until then?”
“Until then… what?”
“You plan to stay out here in the cold?”
“Uh, yeah? It’s not like I’m going hypothermic. I’ve got it handled.”
His scowl deepens. “Come inside.”
It’s not a request. And, just like it always does, having Cas order me around immediately makes me want to rebel.
“I’m fine,” I protest. “I’ve slept in colder conditions than this, and the sleeping bag I’ve got is made for temperatures as low as—”
Cas is less than impressed with hearing about my bag’s thermal rating as he catches me around the waist, tosses me over his shoulder, and slides the van door shut with a decisive slam.
“Enough.”
“What the fuck?” I demand, squirming against him as he starts toward the house. “Put me down!”
Cas tightens his hold and hefts me more firmly over his shoulder. “No.”
“No?” The goddamn audacity of this vampire. “Excuse me? Put me the fuck—”
“If you’ll agree to stop being so damn stubborn and take one of my extra rooms, I’ll put you down. But since I’m nearly certain that won’t be the case…”
I squirm again, but even on my best day I’m no match for vampiric strength. I make absolutely no progress in dislodging myself as he carries me up the front steps and into the house. All my struggling does is make me acutely, painfully aware of the muscled body beneath me, the firm grip he’s placed on my thigh, the broad expanse of his back and the taut ass I’ve got an unfortunately fantastic view of from where I’m hanging.
Once we step inside, though, into the cavernous entry hall, I find my voice to start complaining again.
“It’s barely warmer in here than it is outside. How is this any better than—”
“Give me a moment,” he grumbles, keeping his hold on me as he pauses to adjust the thermostat at the side of the room.
The faint rumble of an HVAC kicks up somewhere deep inside the house, and Cas starts toward the stairs. Apparently he’s committed to the bit of taking me all the way up to one of those guest rooms he likes to go on and on about, so I surrender to my fate with a put-upon sigh and more snark.
“What? Not used to keeping this place heated above crypt levels?”
Cas lets out an irritated grunt, but doesn’t justify the jab with an answer.
The staircase to the second floor is wide and made of dark hardwood inlaid with a sumptuous burgundy runner. The walls are paneled in deep brown wood that matches the stairs, and hung with paintings in more of the same palette. Dark and moody, perfectly fit to the brooding aesthetic of the whole house.
At the balconied landing, Cas takes a right and heads down a short hallway, stopping in front of a door and walking us both inside. He finally lets me down near a set of large, plush armchairs in front of a fireplace, but doesn’t take his hands off me.
He keeps a steady hold on my waist, tightening his grip when I try to shift away from him.
“Are you going to run, Ophelia?”
The deep, ominous rumble of the question makes something in me squirm. Something that has nothing to do with indignation or irritation.
“And if I am? Are you going to tie me to that bed or something?”
I jerk my chin to where a large four-poster bed sits along the far wall. Cas follows my gaze, the crimson of his eyes nearly black in the shadows. A wicked little smile pulses at the corners of his lips, like he’s not entirely opposed to the idea.
My throat tingles.
Irrationally, annoyingly, right at the spot where his mark is nearly healed, it warms and aches and it’s all I can do to keep my gaze locked with his and ignore the urge to reach up and touch it.
“Can you not simply accept a gesture of kindness and comfort when it’s offered?”
I snort. “Kindness and comfort? More like kidnapping.”
“So dramatic,” he says with a disapproving click of his tongue. “Sit.”
He nods toward one of the armchairs, and again, it’s not a suggestion or an invitation.
“And now you’re giving out commands? Sure doesn’t sound like kindness and comfort to—”
“Sit, Ophelia.”
Another pulse of sensation at my throat and in the bottom of my belly as he turns away without waiting to see if I’m going to obey. He takes a few pieces of wood from the rack beside the fireplace, and I watch as he builds a small pile in the hearth. When he goes back to the rack for more, plus some tinder and a box of matches, it finally registers in my buzzing, thick skull what he’s doing.
“You’re making a fire?”
“Apparently,” he says, irritated, like he can’t quite understand what he’s doing, either. “Since my home is the temperature of a crypt, and it will take some time for the heating system to catch up, this will have to do.”
“You don’t have to—”
“You are my guest, Ophelia,” he says, not taking his eyes off his task as the first sparks catch in the tinder. “The least I could do is make the room the proper temperature for you.”
He still sounds so damn surly, and I’m at a loss for how to respond, so I do the only other thing I can think of.
I sit.
The chair is even more comfortable than it looks. As I take off my jacket, set it aside, then sink into the plush upholstery, I can barely stop myself from letting out a groan of pleasure.
The van is fine. It’s adequate. It’s home.
But this house? This room? This damned delightful chair?
It’s luxury.
Cas finishes stoking the fire, flames crackling in the hearth as the first wave of delicious warmth hits me. He steps forward, stopping right in front of me with more of that pinched irritation written all over his face.
“And because I can’t warm you up properly myself, the fire will have to do for that as well,” he murmurs, and I realize.
It’s not me he’s irritated with.
One of his hands brushes over my bare forearm, and his skin is cooler than it was when he held me in the alley outside the Raven, when he was warm and flush with…
“Your skin wasn’t this cold the last time you touched me.”
“The last time I touched you, I had just fed from you.”
His voice is a low hush in the room's darkness, and he looks down to watch himself trace a path over my arm, my wrist, the backs of my fingers where they’re settled on the armrest.
“Drinking blood makes you warm?”
I’ve never really thought about it, never thought to ask dad or Cleo, but curiosity and the breathless rush of having him so close override any reservations I might have about prying.
“Yes. Without it, well…” He touches me again, a smooth press of fingers against the tender skin on the inside of my wrist. “Without it, I may as well be a walking corpse.”
I frown. “That seems a little dramatic.”
“Does it? What would you call this?”
A touch to my face this time, a firm grasp around my cheek and jaw, a hand so large the tips of his fingers reach all the way to the nape of my neck.
“You just… run a little cool.”
The ghost of a laugh, tight and humorless. “One very diplomatic way to put it.”
We fall silent, and he doesn’t remove his hand. He strokes his thumb from my jaw to my throat, right over his bite, and the air in the room shifts. It gets thinner, warmer, harder to get a good lungful as his soft, cool touch skims over the marks again and again. He tips my chin up to meet his gaze.
“Is there anything else you need, Ophelia? Anything else I could do to make you comfortable here?”
Despite the dangerous, decadent insinuation in the question, I reel myself in. I scramble to clutch at any bit of sanity I can, make a mad grab for the protective armor of sarcasm and antagonism I always wear around him.
“Hmmm, let’s see. A foot massage, maybe? Your finest bottle of wine and some caviar might be—”
Cas drops to his knees, grabbing for my ankle.
“Stop,” I gasp, choking out a surprised laugh. “I didn’t mean that literally.”
“No?” He keeps his hand right where it is, squeezing lightly before sliding off one shoe, then reaching for the other. “Maybe it’s better if I don’t. I can’t imagine ice-cold fingers on your feet would feel very nice.”
As if to prove it, he strokes one of those fingers along the bare patch of skin just above the top of my sock. I shiver for reasons that have very little to do with the temperature of his skin.
“If you bite me first, it might feel better.”
Cas goes utterly still.
The words—completely impulsive, reckless, more than a little bit idiotic—settle into the silence between us. I want to reach out and claw them back to me. I want to snatch them away, laugh them off, crack a joke to cut the unbearable tension growing with each passing moment.
Instead of that, though, I do the unthinkable.
I dig my shovel in again, lifting another hunk of dirt out of the mortifying grave I’m making for myself.
“And then you could warm me up, too.”
Stupid. Such a stupid thing to say.
I’m a little chilly, not hypothermic, and with the house’s heat kicking on and the fire catching in the hearth, I’m already feeling better.
I don’t know what I’m saying, what I’m doing, what insanity has come over me, tugging at the truth lingering in the back of my mind.
I’ve been aching for it for days.
Cas’s bite.
The unbearable pleasure of what it does to me. The alchemy of blood and magick, he called it. I’ve tried to ignore it, to put the memory of what happened between us in the alley out of my mind, but it keeps finding ways to creep back in.
Every time I catch sight of two vivid fang marks on my neck when I look in the mirror. Every time he’s near and I catch a hint of cologne and fresh linen and the mouth-watering hint of his natural scent beneath—sharp and warm and irresistible.
Every time he looks at me like he’s looking now. Crimson eyes devouring me.
“Ophelia,” he says, so low and serious. “What are you asking me?”
He’s going to make me say it, isn’t he?
“I want…” The words stick in my throat, caught in a seven-year tangle of desire and fear, shame and need.
Cas moves slowly, carefully, giving me enough time that I could stop him if I wanted to. He stands and offers me his hand. When I take it, he draws me out of the chair before taking my place in it. He rests both his hands on my hips, and with focused, unerring intent, draws me down into his lap.
My body moves woodenly at first, like my limbs can’t quite decide if I want this or not. But when his fingers tighten in gentle encouragement, they go loose, trusting, melting into him as I drape myself across his thighs and settle into all the hard contours of his body.
“Tell me what you want, sweet Ophelia.”
“Your bite.”
He hums, low and approving, in the back of his throat as he pushes my hair over one shoulder to expose the mark he made.
“Here?” he asks softly, fingertips ghosting over raised pink skin.
The noise I make isn’t an answer, but the way I arch into the caress and the bolt of pleasure that races through me seem to tell him everything he needs to know.
Apparently, though, Cas isn’t done playing.
“Or here,” he murmurs, lifting one of my wrists to his lips.
He presses a kiss there, letting me feel a feather-light drag of his fangs before he pulls back.
“So delicate. You’d open so easily for me here.” His lips travel from my wrist, up the tender skin of my inner arm to my shoulder, my collarbone, my neck. “There are other places I could mark you. Places that would be our secret.”
Long, elegant fingers splay over my ribs, thumb brushing against the underside of my breast before he drags his hand lower. Over my stomach, my hip, the curve of my thigh.
“I think you might enjoy me tasting some of those secret places. I think they might make you wild for me.”
The flames in the hearth burn higher, hotter, and so do I. I’m a creature made entirely of fire, of embers and coals, a conflagration.
“But tonight I think I’ll mark you here.” His hand finds his mark once more, a firmer touch this time. “I think I like knowing the world can see it. I want them all to see it.”
The words barely penetrate the slow, syrupy pleasure swirling through me, and in some distant corner of my mind, I think I shouldn’t accept them. It should bother me more, the idea that it’s so easy for all the world to see I’ve been marked. I don’t know what it means. I should push back against it and take the time to sort it all out, but those momentary doubts burn up with the rest of my resistance.
“Please,” I whisper.
A deep, dark chuckle against my skin. “As you command, my sweet, sweet Ophelia.”
He bites, and just like last time, a shock of pain blooms through me.
It’s breath-stealing, searing, and a strangled cry lodges itself in my throat. Cas strokes a thumb over the nape of my neck, his hand squeezing lightly where he’s holding me still. It feels like an apology, a touch meant to soothe away the hurt, even as that hurt fades in a few quick seconds.
Only to turn into something more wicked.
The pain of his bite melts into a rush of warmth that spreads from my throat, down my neck and chest and lower, settling into the bottom of my belly in a clawing, insistent heat.
Cas draws from me, a low rumble of pleasure breaking in the back of his throat, and that heat spikes into hunger, into need. I drag my fingers through his hair and squeeze, needing to have him closer, deeper.
It’s not enough. His bite. It’s not enough.
It’s just the beginning, a strike of flint and a cascade of sparks, but I need more.
Shifting restlessly in his lap, a low whine rasps out of me. Wordless want, a plea I can’t even begin to figure out how to form.
Cas leans back, lips and eyes shining crimson in the firelight.
“Do you need to come?”
I nod, desperate for it, shifting again as his hand lands on the fastening of my jeans. It’s a bit of an awkward tangle, but he manages to work them down my thighs, tugging them off me and tossing them to the floor.
He cups me over my underwear, hand warmer now, and lets out a low hiss.
“You scorch me, Ophelia.”
Those go next, pulled off and thrown carelessly aside, and when he brings his hand back between my thighs, there’s nothing between us but firelight and gentle darkness. His fingers work over my pussy, exploring, learning each and every way I like to be touched.
When he finally dips inside, a ragged, broken groan echoes in his chest. “Just soaked for me. I wonder if you’re sweet here, too.”
He doesn’t give me time to fully process those words before he brings his fingers to his lips, sucks them clean, holds my gaze with flames in his eyes that match the ones destroying me from the inside out.
“Delicious.”
The word is a shot of ecstasy in my veins as he lowers his hand and starts to tease me again. Light, slow circles around my clit, shallow plunges into my pussy.
Still not enough.
Not nearly enough.
“Cas,” I breathe. “Please. I need… I need…”
“I know.”
He doesn’t make me beg anymore, doesn’t make me ask for exactly what I crave.
A firmer touch this time, the pad of his thumb giving me just the pressure I need as he sinks two fingers deep. I ride his hand, shameless in pursuit of the climax that’s already coiling low and hungry in my core.
“Fuck, Ophelia.” Cas’s sweet profanity breaks across the overheated skin of my throat, taut and aching for him as he lowers his fangs to his mark.
The bite isn’t quite so sharp this time. A slow slide, a warm invasion as he claims me with fangs and fingers, insists on my pleasure while he draws from me.
I feel more than hear the growl of approval that rumbles up his throat when I arch into his bite, grind my hips down onto his hand and let myself go.
The reasons we shouldn’t be doing this, the over-thinking and warning bells demanding I put a stop to it, they all go silent and far away. My entire world narrows down to this moment.
Cas. His bite. The flames burning higher, hotter, consuming me completely.
The insistent press of his fingers hitting that sweet spot so deep inside that makes a sound somewhere between a moan and a sob rasp from my throat.
He pulls back a bare inch, runs his tongue over his mark, and whispers into my skin. “Just like that, Ophelia. Take just what you need from me.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
Angling my hips to get more of his touch where I need it most, Cas chases my every movement, murmurs more sweet encouragement, and I’m undone.
My climax rips through me. Shattering, obliterating, stars break behind my closed eyelids, along with a new, unexpected sensation.
Cas’s lips are warm and firm as he slants them over mine. The faint copper tang of my blood fills my mouth as he strokes into me, devouring all my cries with one hand clasped tightly into my hair to hold me just where he wants.
I kiss him back.
Even though in some distant, sane corner of my mind I realize I should probably be repulsed by the taste of my blood on his lips, I can’t make myself care.
It takes a few long, languid minutes for all the tremors to subside, and as I finally settle back into my body, all my muscles are loose and pliant. A stark contrast to the marble strength of the vampire beneath me.
And it’s not just his strength that feels like marble.
Against my hip, the firm ridge of his cock presses into me like a brand. Hard, thick, and probably aching just as much as I was, I slide a hand between us and squeeze.
Cas hisses, hips jerking away like I’ve burnt him.
It snaps some more sanity back into me and I still my hand. “Don’t you want me to—”
Cas is rock hard against my palm, straining at the seam of his pants, but he wraps two gentle fingers around my wrist and draws my hand away.
“I want you to rest , Ophelia.” He settles me deeper into his embrace, one sturdy arm around my back and the other soothing strokes over my hair.
We stay that way for a few long minutes, and as the buzzing pleasure of my orgasm and the lingering effects of his bite fade, a deep, contented peace settles over me.
“You’re warm,” I murmur, already feeling the first faint stirrings of sleep slipping in at the corners of my mind.
Cas chuckles. “Better?”
“You felt nice before, too.”
Another soft laugh, the press of lips against the top of my head. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, and I’ll try not to hold it against you when you’re back to hating me tomorrow.”
“Don’t hate you.” My eyelids are heavy. So heavy. And the words bubbling up on my tongue seem to come from somewhere very far away. “Never hated you.”
“Shh, Ophelia. There’s no need to—”
The words won’t stop, spilling out of me with all the regret I’ve carried around for the last seven years.
“I was a little afraid of you,” I confess, and Cas stills beneath me, hand pausing in its stroke down the side of my face. “And really sorry for what happened. For what I did. But I never hated you for it.”
“I wasn’t particularly kind to you,” he murmurs.
“I wasn’t kind to you either.” My heart clenches in my chest with the memory, with the idea of what it must have felt like for him to be seen for what he was and what he could provide me with his bite, and not for who he was.
“You were young.”
“I knew better.”
He hums low in his throat. “Well, then, I accept your apology. If you can accept mine.”
“Yours?” I peer up at him in confusion.
“Yes, mine. I was unkind and quick to judge you that night, and that was wrong of me. So, if you’re willing to accept my apology as well, perhaps we can move on.”
More protests swirl in my mind, more self-recriminations and reasons I need to keep apologizing.
Like he can feel the turbulent tangle of those thoughts, Cas starts moving his hand again—through my hair, over my jaw, down my throat, pressed to my collarbone. Warm touches make it all melt away until one question pushes itself to the front of my mind.
“Move on. What does that mean?”
He’s quiet for a moment before he answers. “I don’t know, Ophelia.”
Silence falls again, and Cas keeps up his slow caresses. His lips follow, ghosting over my cheek, brushing faintly against my mouth, dropping to my neck where he runs his tongue over his mark. Sleepy warmth spreads through me, but it feels less like arousal and more like comfort this time.
“Why does it do that to me?” I reach up and run my thumb across his bottom lip, then over his fang when his mouth falls open in a small, surprised inhale. “Your bite. Why does it do that to me?”
Cas takes my wrist in his hand and presses the tip of his fang into the pad of my thumb with just enough force to draw a single drop of blood to the surface. He catches it with his tongue, eyes dark and hungry as he watches the flash of heat climbing my cheeks and no doubt hears how my heart rate ticks up at the pleasure-pain of the small hurt.
“I don’t know.” With another flick of his tongue, the wound closes. “I don’t know why it does that to you, Ophelia.”
I open my mouth to ask another question, but he catches my lips in a slow, languid kiss before I can. By the time he pulls away, I’ve forgotten what it is I wanted to ask.
I’ve forgotten anything but the waves of exhausted pleasure settling themselves into my muscles and bones, tugging my eyelids even lower.
Dimly, I feel Cas stand with me still cradled in his arms.
Dimly, I’m aware of him walking across the room and pulling the covers back on that huge, luxurious four-poster bed.
Dimly, I’m aware of sinking into soft down and clean, crisp sheets. I’m aware of the weight of his body settling in beside me and the steady band of his arms pulling me into him.
But none of it registers, not really.
I’m still lost in a blissful haze of satisfaction and pleasure and bone-deep relaxation as a pair of firm lips press to my temple. Sleepily, I shrug out of my t-shirt and bra, way beyond caring that it leaves me completely naked in a bed that’s not mine with a vampire I absolutely should not be naked around.
But Cas doesn’t seem to care, either. He lowers his lips to my shoulder and murmurs something into my bare skin that sounds like sleep , or it’s alright , or I’ll be right here , or maybe some soothing combination of all three.
It’s the last thing that registers before I turn to face him, snuggle up against him, and finally slide into a dreamless sleep.