20. Chapter 20
Lola
“Lola, I’m fine,” Carter softly repeated for the hundredth time. “Ann said it happens all the time without us even noticing. I’m already feeling better.”
“She also said that it must have been an attack, because things like this might happen, but not like that.”
He looked tired as I helped him settle into his bed, but he obviously still had the energy to roll his damn eyes at my comment.
“She’s a doctor and a mother hen, she’s exaggerating,” he insisted. I shook my head, removing his shoes before pushing him into a lying position.
Should I pull the covers down? Won’t he be too hot if he sleeps under it? What about his clothes?
“Lola.”
I lifted my head to his face. He was staring at me intently, one eyebrow lifted, arms crossed over his chest. I couldn’t help but turn my gaze away.
“Were you spiraling just now?” he asked.
“Do you want to sleep under the covers? Do you need to remove your jeans? Do you have like uh—pajamas somewhere?”
“No, yes, and I sleep naked.”
I gasped, heat crawling to my cheeks. The bastard grinned. “Sure. Get a little blood and I’ll leave you to it.” I handed him my arm, taking a step closer to stop near his head.
Carter grabbed my wrist, pulling it close to his lips.
I closed my eyes, bracing for the sharp but short pain I’d feel the moment his teeth would dig into my flesh, and the inevitable lust that would follow.
But it never came. His lips brushed a soft kiss on the skin before he sighed.
“I need you to stop avoiding my eyes, Lola.”
“I’m not doing that,” I said.
“Really.” That didn’t sound like a question. “Then why won’t you open them?”
Carter lying on the floor in front of the house. Golden blood pouring out of his nose. Revulsed eyes. The crippling feeling of being powerless. Alone. Of losing everything and everyone around me.
“Because if I don’t see the dark circles under your eyes or the dried blood on your face, then it didn’t happen. It wasn’t real. Then, I didn’t feel like I was losing you before we—”
A loud shriek escaped my throat as he pulled me to him, making me fall half on his chest, half on the soft bed.
“Ouch.” He chuckled, pulling again to adjust my position, placing both my knees on the outside of his thighs, straddling his lap.
“Why are you the one complaining? You pulled me!”
“Oh, I’m not complaining,” Carter said, tugging on my arm some more to place my palm on the pillow next to his head. “Or, I wouldn’t be if you opened your damned eyes and looked at me.”
I didn’t. Instead, I buried my face in his neck, taking a deep inhale of his scent. Something like Jasmine, wood, and blueberries. Damn, I didn’t usually like how Divines smelled, but if I could stuff my head in his chest for days, just breathing him in, I would.
I’d been tossing and turning in bed for over an hour, thinking about my reaction to being faced with my brother and wondering if I should have gone to Carter’s room instead when Marcus had called me about my angel being unconscious outside.
I thought I had lost him. I thought that, somehow, I’d been cursed to lose all my mates as a late punishment for betraying the Astrals.
I couldn’t look at him. Not now. Or he’d see the tears that threatened to fall again after they already spilled as I shook him for ten long minutes outside.
His arms tightened around me, holding me close. His heartbeat was steady, thumping against my chest. He was here. Alive. No one found a way to kill him and rip his soul away.
He was here and he was mine.
I pushed my hair to the side with a shuddering breath, exposing my neck, before sliding my hand behind his head.
“Lola,” he rasped. “I’m fine. I don’t need—”
“I need it. I need to feel you’re still with me. That you didn’t disappear and leave me behind.”
His breath caught as he moved, sliding his nose along the side of my throat.
His tongue. Dropping soft kisses. But he didn’t bite, only grazing his teeth against the skin, sending shivers along my spine and arms. Hands slipped under the hem of my T-shirt and slithered up my thighs.
I didn’t hesitate in making my made-up panties disappear, and Carter whispered a curse as he reached my hip joint.
“Fuck, Lola…”
The bulge pressing between my legs felt impossibly harder as it throbbed. I couldn’t help but rock on top of him, desperately seeking friction. Searching for anything that would make me feel less cold, less scared. Anything to make him feel alive too.
I straightened up, finally opening my eyes to look at him.
He had somehow turned off most of the lights, leaving only a soft warm one on his bedside table.
My breath hitched. Carter’s skin looked almost golden, his deep blue eyes half closed and glassy, lips slightly opened in awe as I pulled the large T-shirt over my head.
It didn’t take me long to unbutton his jeans and slide them down his legs as he removed his own T-shirt in one single motion.
In all our little moments in the past days, I never took the time to properly admire him. His gorgeous chiseled body, bulging muscles, powerful arms. The innocent but lustful look in his hazy gaze.
I raked my nails from his collarbone to the waistband of his tight boxer briefs. He didn’t stop me as I slid them down, lifting his hips to help me.
His hard length fell on his stomach. My core clenched in anticipation and I bit my lip at the sight.
“Lola,” he whispered—pleaded. “Please, let me touch you.”
Our gaze locked as I climbed back up. He gasped when I rocked my hips again, moaning as I rubbed my aching clit along his hardness.
“Oh god, Fuck.”
A grin spread on my face. “Isn’t there a rule about using the name of the lord in vain?”
His throat bobbed, one hand clasping my hip and amplifying my movements while the other reached out to close around my breast.
“God could strike me right here and there. I don’t think it would stop me from wanting to fuck you.”
I tsked, shaking my head softly. “You’re such a bad angel,” I teased, increasing the speed and pressure.
Stars danced behind my eyes as his hips shifted, the tip of his finger circling my hard nipple.
“My depraved angel. Don’t you feel ashamed about giving your body like this to a Succubus like me? ”
He moaned, the sound so deep it resonated through me. “I’m giving my body to my mate,” he panted. “Nothing happening with her—with you, will ever bring me shame.”
With a last shift of his hips, the tip ended up against my soaked entrance. His eyes were plunged deep in mine as he slowly pushed himself inside.
My spine arched in pleasure, nails digging into his chest. “Oh my—fuck,” he groaned when I met his thrust, burying his cock into me to the hilt.
So many emotions passed through his eyes as I stayed still, letting him adjust to the foreign feeling.
He felt so good. Stretching me but fitting perfectly, like he belonged inside me.
“This is right,” he thought, his energy flowing into me from each place our body connected. “Nothing has ever felt so perfect. She’s my mate. She’s mine.”
His eyes didn’t let go of mine as I started moving slowly, increasing the speed with each thrust.
He wasn’t going to last long. The amount of energy already coursing through my body made it clear that he was close.
But when I thought he was going to come, he only let out a raw curse, lifting his hips to fuck me harder and brought his thumb to my clit to rub it gently.
I gasped at the warmth taking hold of my body. At the overwhelming sensations of feeling his cock moving in and out inside me, hitting a deep spot that only my mates seemed to be able to stir.
“Carter,” I breathed out, my head swirling, vision losing focus as my muscles tensed.
“Fuck, baby. Keep saying my name like this and it’ll be over in less than a minute.”
But I couldn’t answer, a deep moan escaping my lips instead as I was pushed over the edge, my legs trembling around his thighs. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t unclasp my fingers and nails digging into the flesh of his chest, leaving golden scratches behind.
“Shit,” he hissed, sitting up suddenly to plunge his teeth in my shoulder.
I cried out, my head falling backward in a mixture of pleasure and pain. My hips kept moving of their own accord, rotating, trying to amplify the sensations.
When he let go with a soft lick on the small wound, I was still a writhing, shaking mess, moaning and whimpering in his arms.
“You taste even sweeter when you’re coming,” he rasped in my ear, turning us over in one swift movement.
The breath was kicked out of my lungs as I ended up thrown on my back, my legs holding his sides and feet crossed at his back.
“Carter?” I panted right before he drove into me like a mad man, circling both arms around my waist to lift me up the bed and keep me flushed against him as his head went back to the crook of my neck.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.
“Do it again,” he commanded in my ear as he bit me once more, on the same spot he drank from a moment before.
My lower stomach fluttered, back arching even higher as another wave hit me, his name falling free from my lips in a desperate cry.
Carter growled in my neck as his own orgasm amplified mine with a hurricane of new emotions.
He didn’t stop thrusting, the back and forth both frantic and erratic.
My vision darkened as the light turned off, followed by a loud crash.
The faint moonlight from the outside didn’t reach us anymore as his glorious white wings were spread wide over us, fluttering from the aftershock of his release.
The sight made my lips part in silent awe.
His hold tightened around me as he finally stopped moving, softly kissing the small holes of my neck in reverence. Like he was trying to heal what he caused. Whispering soft praises like I was something precious he was afraid to break.
But I wasn’t broken. I felt like a piece of me had been returned after feeling incomplete for over a millennium.
If my soul was still here, the binding process would have started now. His soul would have begun weaving threads to bind us together, like Dimitri’s had a day before I lost it.
There was no doubt in my heart and mind; Carter was my mate, like Blake and Dimitri were. His whole essence seeking to find and heal the missing piece inside me.
And I decided not to let the guilt eat me alive just yet.