Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alexandra
“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.”
- Elizabeth Gilbert
“Was that our kid?” Xander asked quietly as I stepped out of the bathroom after taking a much-needed shower.
The family had finally dispersed to their separate private sections of the castle after the intense, emotional hours of celebrating Alexi.
“On battle day,” Xander clarified, even though he didn’t have to. I got it. He needed to focus on something else. The constant sadness and pain made us all feel so lost. We needed something solid, something positive to hold on to.
Wearing a sheer, babydoll nightie over my naked body, I slowly approached our bed. “Yes, that was our kid.” I smiled softly. And when he smiled back, my heart felt lighter.
“Badass!” he said in awe.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I smiled as I let my gaze roam slowly, leisurely over his glorious figure on our bed.
Xander’s naked body, with its golden skin and the chiseled muscles in every line of his massive frame, was an erotic sight amid the black silk sheets on our bed. He was sprawled on his back, his head propped on two pillows with one of his arms flung over his head. His legs were spread-eagle in a lazy invitation, and a palm was wrapped around his blatant arousal.
My vajayjay was already humming and sleek with anticipation. I loved looking at every gorgeous inch of him from the top of his blond hair to the tips of his feet.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
He was beautiful, and he knew it. His cock lengthened and seemed to grow even harder under my scrutiny. “I love your eyes on me,” he said telepathically.
I smirked. “And I love looking at you. Win, win,” I replied telepathically because it felt much more intimate that way.
I discarded the sheer nightie slowly, knowing that he loved looking at my naked form as much as I loved looking at him. I climbed onto the bed and crawled slowly, seductively toward him. I didn’t stop until I was straddling his hard thighs.
“Well now, I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman be the aggressor.” Xander’s sexy smile and his addictive scent reached places in me that had every cell in my body simmering and bursting with need.
“Maybe it’s because I’m your woman and you’re all mine,” I teased.
“I am, and you are.” His gravelly voice made me tremble harder.
He settled a large palm over one of my breasts, and the other gripped my bottom.
“Ah, no, this is my show.” I took his hands and pinned them to the pillow over his head.
He grinned crookedly. “I’m not—”
I kissed his lips softly to shut him up. “No more words,” I admonished. Using my hands, my lips, and my body, I proceeded to kiss, caress, and taste every inch of his gorgeous, hard body. He didn’t have to tell me how much he liked it; I could feel it through our link. Only when he was writhing and begging under me did I suck his tip deep into my mouth.
His hoarse cries filled our room, which only spurred me on. The taste of his release on my tongue moments later had me soaked with need.
I settled over him, straddling his hips as, inch by inch, I impaled myself on him, slowly, achingly, loving the stretch and burn. The pleasure of his hardness in my sensitive flesh and the pain of his girth stretching my tight walls had me keening loudly. The feel of him inside me was always the most glorious sensation, and now was no different.
“Oh God!” I moaned loudly as I sobbed in ecstasy.
I lost myself in the sensations engulfing both of us. I made love to him with everything in me. With all the love I could no longer contain. My love for him was soul deep, and I wanted him to feel it, to know it.
And through our link I knew he did.
At first, Xander allowed me to set the pace, and I was wanting slow and deep, rubbing my pregnant, swollen body on his muscled, sinewy frame.
And then Xander gently flipped me to my knees before forcefully thrusting into my tight channel. He cupped the firm globes of my breasts and sensually stroked into me, rotating his hips in a snaking motion, slow and deep, driving in and out of me with long, hard strokes. I felt earth-shattering ecstasy consume me at the feel of his thick length sliding erotically along my sensitive walls. His possession didn’t just reach me at a spiritual level. His possession was a balm to my soul.
Xander was telling me with every thrust of his hips, his reverent kisses delivered on the heated skin of my back, and his oh-so-gentle caresses of my pregnant body how much he loved me.
I knew he had issues expressing his feelings. No one knew that better than me. But right here, right now, I had unfettered access to his thoughts and his senses. And everything he was feeling and his every thought were saturated with his adoration of me. Yes, I would love the words, but when a man can make your very soul sing just from a simple touch, he can be forgiven a whole lot of things.
My nipples were so hard in the grip of his rough palms as he drove in and out of my heat. His control and tenderness were soon seized by primal need and urgency. His needs fed mine, and soon, I was as feral and frenzied as he was.
The sizzling embers licking through our bodies suddenly burst into flames, and we careened over the precipice in searing ecstasy.
We took another shower together a few minutes later and made love again against the shower wall, lazily, slowly, savoring every feeling that we could glean from the other.
We stepped from the longest shower I had ever taken in my life more than an hour later. Someone would be pissed at our water wastage. After gently dabbing the moisture from my skin with a soft towel, Xander placed me on the cooling sheets of our bed and sank down beside me, as naked as I was.
“Are you ready to talk about what happened to you?” I asked softly. I had access to his mind, so I knew most of it already. I wanted to hear it from his lips though.
Xander didn’t pretend that he didn’t understand or even seem angry that I asked. “Even before the attack, I wasn’t a big fan of talking about my feelings. And I’m not sure I ever will be that man.”
“Tell me.”
Xander sighed and settled my back against his broad chest as he wrapped his arms around my waist. “I had been going to the Chamber for years. When it first was created, it used to be a peaceful place where immortals could, for a short time, enjoy the feeling of their mortality. Yes, as immortals our senses are enhanced, but they can sometimes get dull with complacency. As you know, immortals don’t feel the effects of alcohol or drug use. But our time in the Chamber allowed us to enjoy that sensation of weightlessness and an uninhibited buzz of happiness of both substances. Many immortals got addicted to it, and that’s why the Chamber became so popular.”
“Did you get addicted?”
“No.” He laughed in self-disgust. “I wish that was my excuse. I was just plain idiotic. Papa and my brothers knew nothing of my habit of disappearing to the Chamber on Boggs’ days off. It was a rule that whenever one of our personnel bodyguard wolves weren’t available that we either replaced them for the period or we protected each other. I got in the habit of ditching my guards to get that buzz every few months. It happened when I was on one of those benders…” He closed his eyes as his memory became crystal clear.
Xander was walking up the hidden stairway that led to the underground. He was singing in a drunken but surprisingly in-tune rendition of a song that sounded incredibly similar to Harry Style’s “Watermelon Sugar,” but of course it wasn’t that song as it hadn’t existed back then. Anyway, as soon as his head cleared the surface, a targeted mist enveloped him. He dropped like a stone down that fifty-step cement staircase and lost consciousness on impact.
It was only because of his protective shield that he didn’t break any bones from such a jarring fall.
“I woke in the same room that you were taken to, strapped to the same table, even though all this happened more than a century ago,” Xander muttered and tightened his arms around me. “Whatever that damn table was made of was fucking amazing because it still was strong as ever.”
He grinned suddenly, and I felt it in the shift of his body and in his voice. “I went back there after you left me. It took a few hours, but I hacked that shit into tiny pieces with my damn sword and then burned it.”
“Good for you,” I praised and smiled along with him. “Did it make you feel better?”
“Surprisingly, no,” he breathed. “What happened out there on that battlefield with you and my family around me, and a seemingly indestructible enemy, made me face my greatest fears.”
“You were magnificent out there,” I told him soothingly.
“I’m glad you thought so.” He smiled and hugged me closer. “I realized something out there though.” He sucked in a breath, his hesitation even more poignant than his admission. “I was afraid. Not for me, but for you, our baby, and my family. God, Alexandra, if anything had happened to those kids…”
“They are fine. The baby and I are fine. We never suffered what you did.”
“Sure, what those bastards did to me was more pain than any being should ever have to suffer in their life. Once they dispensed with my natural shield, that is. The broken bones, the body parts sliced until dangling, and finally being tossed in boiling lava…”
I pushed up from him and turned so that I could stare at him in horror. “How the hell did you survive all that? And survive without losing your damn mind?”
“Who is to say that I’m not insane?” He laughed mockingly. “It happened a long time ago. I healed. Although they had stripped me of my shield by magick, within days, the magick wore off in the Chamber and my shield rebuilt naturally. They didn’t notice, nor did I because usually self-heal takes seconds, not days. So, when they tossed me in the lava, my shield had already sealed about ninety percent of my body. The remaining ten percent was the worst fucking pain I’d ever felt. I couldn’t scream for fear of swallowing that shit. Out of my mind in pain, I was so filled with rage at what was happening to me that I had no idea when or how the sword came into my palms. Suddenly, I was gripping the broad handle and cutting through that steel tank with no thought of what I was doing.
“At that point, Malachi and Sophia had long gone and left their minions to dispose of what was left of me. No one expected me to survive what they did to me. I not only survived but I became stronger. My shield, my strength, my increased gifts, hell, even my speed got better. But you’re right, it altered me. I felt immense shame for being captured in the first place. A shame that never went away, or even allowed me to talk about this. I’ve never been able to tell my family.”
“That’s dumb.” I scowled at him, hating that he had felt anything but proud of surviving. “You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. You were a victim. Would you blame a woman for being raped or a child for being molested?”
“Of course not, but—”
“No but. You were a victim, and you did what any victim should do. Survived. Be damn proud of your strength in doing so.”
He smiled and kissed me gently. “I guess I should have told you about this long ago.”
“You can talk to me about anything.”
“To be honest, I’d been feeling so many things since you came back to me. I didn’t think of my attack once. And that is saying something, when that dominated my mind since it happened.”
“I’m glad you find me so distracting,” I teased. I leaned forward and kissed him, wanting to alleviate his pain again. Sliding my fingers into his hair to hold him more securely to me, I reveled in the feel of his hard body under me and the taste of him on my tongue.
Xander took it as an invitation to explore our passions to stinging satisfaction.
A few hours later and, this time, after a brief shower with Xander tenderly taking care of me, we returned to our bed to rest.
As we had been doing every night since we came back to St. Petersburg, Xander squirted the Mederma crème with a bit of vitamin E oil into his palm and started massaging it into the skin of my growing belly.
“I don’t know whether to be impressed or scared shitless.” Xander smiled down at me as he rubbed the crème and oil into my skin. “The thought of our baby having such power…” Yeah, the miracle of what we’d created overwhelmed me too.
“I was certainly impressed.” I smiled softly. “I only wish that I’d had control of the astral projections and destroyed Sophia before she killed Alexi. That failure will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“You are in no way to blame for Papa’s death,” Xander said emphatically. His hand on my stomach stilled as his sea-green gaze held mine steadily, ensuring he had my attention. “If you were to blame, then my brothers, my niece and nephews, the wolves, and I are equally to blame. But none of us could have prevented what happened two days ago. Hell, if it wasn’t for you, all of us would be dead.” Xander breathed out sharply.
“No, the only person responsible for Papa’s death is Sophia and probably Adam because he brought her there for that purpose. Although I’m reluctant to give that asshole any credit because I know he would have loved to know that he finally killed Papa.”
“Thank you for saying that, but—”
“No but,” Xander growled. “We don’t blame you, and I forbid you to blame yourself.”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you hundreds of times that you’re not the boss of me,” I muttered, only I couldn’t quite put any conviction behind it because it really turned me on when he went all alpha on me. Moisture was already coating my folds.
“I will boss you when your stubbornness threatens to override your common sense.” He delivered a gentle kiss to my ginormous stomach and smiled when the baby immediately kicked with enthusiasm. “My family and I are very grateful to you for helping us achieve this peace, which none of us have ever known. For the first time in our existence, we have a chance to live a somewhat normal life. Or as normal a life as a dhampir can live in the mortal world.”
Feeling achingly emotional, I trailed my fingers through the silky strands of his hair. “While I appreciate the gratitude, I certainly don’t need it. I fought alongside you because you all are my family, too, and I love you.” And just so he didn’t misunderstand me, I said it again. “Xander, I love you, and I couldn’t bear losing you.”
His jeweled gaze blazed brightly back at me. “Love is too mild a word to express what I feel for you,” he said hoarsely. Evidently, he was as emotional as I was. “You restored me. You gave me a life I never thought possible for us. And the addition of our baby… You are the mate of my heart and my soul. I can’t imagine spending a single moment of the rest of my life without you. I love you, Alexandra.” He bent his head and kissed my lips softly before pulling back to hold my gaze again.
The emotions—love, adoration, lust—flowed through our link like hot lava.
“God, I love you so damn much,” Xander said huskily.
“Oh, Xander,” I whispered, fierce emotion making my voice clog in my throat. Unable to speak another word, I kissed him, conveying all that I felt for him in the passionate slide of my tongue intertwining with his.
“Will you marry me and not just be my fated-mate but also spend eternity being my soul mate?” Xander asked softly when we came up for air.
“Are you forgetting that Alexi married us already?” I laughed.
“No, I haven’t forgotten, but I also know that I never asked you. I want to remedy that now. So, will you marry me?”
Tears leaked from my eyes, as I couldn’t contain my absolute bliss any longer. “Yes,” I finally whispered after another heated kiss.