29. Bella with Darius
Chapter twenty-nine
Bella with Darius
The fire crackles behind the ornate grate, sending sparks spiraling upward like tiny dying stars, and I watch his face—that impossible, beautiful face.
He just said he wants to protect me, with all his might. I feel my heart flutter.
He stands before me in his sitting room, surrounded by Persian rugs that have probably witnessed centuries of secrets, and his black eyes hold mine with the steady weight of a man who cares about me.
The reality is that I’m standing in the mansion of a man who claims to be about two hundred years old, on an island where a mysterious blood disease is taking over and where something is attacking people.
I need him. He’s under my skin, and I admit that on some level I am always thinking of him now.
“Bella, dear, can you remove your silver necklace?”
I understand immediately, and take it off. He told me that silver burns vampires. I place it carefully on the nearby table.
The distance between us collapses from feet to inches as I go to him, the scent of sandalwood and something darker, washes over me.
His hand rises, long fingers with that heavy signet ring and he frames my face.
His cool palm cups my jaw, and his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone with a slowness that makes my breath stutter.
Then he kisses me. Not gently. Not with the careful tenderness he showed me the first time, when he held himself restrained.
This kiss is hard and sexual and needy. His mouth claims mine. His lips move against mine with a demanding rhythm, and his tongue slides between my teeth not to explore but to take, to possess, to consume.
A sound escapes me. A moan. A breathless noise that rises from my throat without my permission.
My hands find his chest, fingers pressing into the fine fabric of his shirt, and I feel the muscle beneath, the coiled strength that he usually keeps leashed behind that regal stillness.
It’s unleashed now. The restraint has slipped, and what remains is need—raw, ancient need that presses against me like a physical force.
The rational part of my mind, the physician who diagnoses and categorizes and explains, rejects the word vampire as impossible, as a delusion or a manipulation.
But I’m not thinking with that part of myself right now.
I am thinking with the body that arches toward him, with the hands that grip his shirt and pull him closer, with the pulse that pounds in my throat like a drum demanding more.
He told me his truth—whatever that truth is—and the honesty of it, the risk he took in speaking it aloud, has cracked something open inside both of us.
The dreams. The recurring dreams that have visited me for years.
You made your way back to me.
And now I’m here, and the boundary between sleep and waking has dissolved like fog in morning light.
He walks me backward. Each step is deliberate, his body guiding mine, and I feel the Persian rug shift beneath my boots as we move across it.
My heel catches on the edge of something and he catches me before I can stumble, his arm snaking around my waist with a speed that should be impossible but feels utterly natural.
His grip is iron. His fingers spread across my lower back, pressing me into him, and the hardness of his body against mine leaves no space for doubt about what he wants. I want it, too.
The wall meets my spine. He presses me to it.
The wallpaper is textured beneath my shoulder blades, a pattern of vines and flowers that I cannot see because my eyes are closed, because I am lost in the kiss that deepens as he traps me between his body and the wall.
His mouth devours mine. There is no other word for it.
He kisses me like a man who has waited centuries for this moment and cannot afford another second of patience. And I drink it in.
My hands climb him. Fingers sliding from his chest to his shoulders, from his shoulders to the back of his neck, getting lost in that thick dark hair that feels like silk weighted with storm-clouds.
I pull him closer—closer, though we are already pressed together, though there is no space left between us—and he responds with a low sound that vibrates through his chest and into mine. A growl. Almost a growl. Something animal and hungry that makes my thighs tighten and my breath come faster.
I jump and wrap my legs around his waist, ankles crossing at his back, thighs gripping his hips.
He holds me effortlessly, one arm beneath me, hands cupping my ass through the fabric of my trousers, and the strength in his grip makes something inside me clench and release, clench and release, a rhythm that matches the frantic beating of my heart.
He’s so solid. So immovable. As though I am clinging to a pillar of ancient stone that has weathered storms I cannot imagine.
We make out against the wall, and the kiss becomes something fiercer.
His touch sends electricity skittering down my spine.
He nips at my lips and I nip back, a small sharp press of my teeth against his upper lip, and the sound he makes is darker this time, rougher, a rumble that I feel in my bones.
His fingers tighten on my ass, pulling me harder against him, and I feel the evidence of his arousal pressing between my thighs—hard, insistent, separated from me by layers of fabric that suddenly seem obscene.
The first time we did this—the first time we kissed—he was careful. Gentle. He held himself like a man balancing on a knife's edge, every touch measured, every movement controlled. I felt the restraint in him like a physical barrier.
This is not that night.
I know what he is now, and he seems released with the truth.
He lifts me. One fluid step, then another, and I am carried across the room, still wrapped around him, still kissing him with a desperation that surprises me. The chandelier lights our moving forms, and the candles flicker as though disturbed by the air we displace.
Then we are falling. Not a collapse—a controlled descent, his body twisting to take the impact, his arm cushioning my head as we meet the Persian rug.
The wool is soft beneath me, centuries-old fibers that have cushioned feet and fallen bodies and negotiations I will never know about, and the rug absorbs us like a tapestry swallowing its own figures.
He is above me. His weight presses me into the floor—not crushing, but present, undeniable, a reminder that this is happening. His eyes are black pools in the candlelight, reflecting the flames. It’s the hunger of a predator who has finally cornered the prey he has been tracking.
"I've dreamed of you," he says, and his voice is rough, stripped of its usual velvet cadence, reduced to something rawer.
"For years. For longer than your entire lifetime.
I have seen you in shadows, heard you in silence, and I have—" He stops.
His jaw tightens, and I watch the muscles shift beneath that pale luminous skin, and I understand that he is fighting something within himself, some instinct that demands more than words can provide.
"I know," I whisper. My voice is breathless, barely audible above the crackle of the fire and the distant murmur of the sea. "I've dreamed of you since I was thirteen."
His expression changes. A crack in the composure, a fissure in the mask he wears so effortlessly. His lips part, and for a moment he simply looks at me—looks at me as though I have handed him something precious and terrifying, something he doesn’t know how to hold without breaking.
Then he kisses me again with no restraint.
His mouth takes mine with a ferocity that steals my breath, and his hands move with purpose—pulling at my top, tugging it upward, sliding beneath the fabric to find the bare skin of my waist. His palms are cool against my warmth, a contrast that makes me gasp into his mouth, and his fingers trace the curve of my ribs with a touch that is both exploration and a claiming.
I reach for his shirt. My fingers find the buttons of his crisp white shirt, fumbling with them.
I pull at the fabric with a need that bypasses coordination.
He helps me and then his shirt is open and I can see the expanse of his chest, the pale skin stretched over muscle that is lean and hard and defined with a precision that speaks of centuries of discipline.
My palms press against him, feeling the smooth surface warm beneath my touch, and the contrast—my heat against his coolness, my mortal softness against his immortal firmness—makes something in my core tighten with a want so acute it borders on pain.
His mouth follows the path his hands have traced—down my throat, along the curve of my collarbone, across the upper slope of my breast where my bra still creates a barrier of lace and fabric.
His teeth graze my skin. Small nips that make me jerk and whimper, that leave tiny marks of pressure that will fade but that I feel with an intensity that suggests they will linger in memory long after they vanish from my body.
"Darius—" His name escapes me like a prayer, like a plea, and he responds by pulling the bra down, exposing my breasts to the candlelit air, and then his mouth is on me. His lips close around one nipple, his tongue circling the peak with a wet heat that makes my back arch off the rug, and his hand claims the other breast with a grip that is firm and possessive. I am pinned beneath him—pinned by his mouth, by his hands, by the weight of his desire—and I don’t want to move. I want to be exactly where I am.