by Laura Kaye
He held up his hands. “All right. All right.”
They turned to find Kaira standing not far behind them, eyes wide and hands pressed over her mouth. “I thought he was going to kill you,” she said, dropping her hands and glaring at Jakob. “That was stupid.”
Henrik barked out a laugh. Laughter. Actual fucking laughter. Something else she brought out in him.
His brother scoffed. “Just some good-natured rough and tumble.” He threw a wink over his shoulder, then paused next to Kaira. Pressing his hands together like he was praying, he bowed his head and whispered, “Thank you.” And then he left.
The closing of the door behind him left a ringing silence. That suddenly flashed hot.
Henrik’s eyes met Kaira’s for a long moment, their whole lives hanging on a knife’s edge.
He wasn’t sure who moved first.
Next thing he knew, they were all over each other. Devouring each other’s mouths. Clutching skin. Tugging clothing. She was warm and writhing and rubbing herself against him. She sucked on his tongue like she was ravenous, and the thought that she was enjoying the taste of her own blood in his mouth made him harder than he’d ever been in his life. He tugged her T-shirt over her head, only breaking their kiss long enough to let the cotton pass. The robe was like sand paper against his suddenly alive skin, so he shrugged it off, one arm at a time, until it fell free of his body.
The bare skin of his chest pressed against the bare skin of hers. Except for the satin of her bra. He made quick work of solving that problem and it joined their other discarded clothing at their feet.
She gasped, her hands splaying over his pecs. “This is gorgeous,” she whispered admiring the gold-and-black-inked heraldic lion wearing a crown and carrying a silver axe, the royal symbol of his lineage that dated back to the time of his medieval father, Eric Magnusson. Her gaze dragged over his face and she smiled. “Oh, Henrik.” Wonder reshaped her expression as she cupped his jaw in her hands. “I think it’s working.”
He wasn’t sure what she saw, so he just nodded, too choked up at the raw happiness rolling off of her to chance his voice. And he knew it was true.
Energy and power and vitality vibrated through him.
For the first time in years, he wasn’t hungry. Not for blood.
“Kaira, I don’t know if I can be slow about this, not this time,” he said, hope that there would be a next time burning bright within him.
Her cheeks went pink.
He pulled one of her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “What is it, kjære?”
Gaze skittering away from his, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
His stomach dropped and he took a step back. “If you’ve changed your mind—”
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s not that.” She closed the distance between them, her forefinger tracing the lion’s paws. “I’m, uh, I’ve never done this before.” She lifted one shoulder in a small shrug.
Her words hit home. Victorious heat flooded through his veins. “‘This’ meaning…?” When she didn’t answer, he tilted her chin up with his fingers.
“Sex.” Pulling away from his gentle hold, she nipped at his fingers, then dropped her gaze to the length of his rigid cock standing out straight between them. The sounds of her shallow breaths and racing heart were like a siren call, beckoning him to her. But he’d give her the time she needed to get used to the sight of him. “Can I touch—”
“Yes, always.” He guided her hand to curl around his hard-on. God, but her touch was the sweetest torture. For a few slow strokes, they worked his cock together, his big hand covering her smaller one. “Kaira,” he rasped.
“It feels nice.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Yes.”
Smiling, she squeezed him tighter. The pleasure groaned out of him.
“That’s good?” A quick study, her next strokes were tighter, harder.
He’d never last. And dammit he wanted to be inside her—her body, her heart, her life.
“Too good,” he rasped, pulling out of her grasp. Henrik scooped her up by her bottom so that she straddled the front of his hips. Holding her luscious ass, he carried her to the bed and sprawled her in the center of it.
What a beautiful picture she made, flush, tousled, aroused. He unzipped her jeans and tugged them off, removing her little pink panties with them.
Instinctively, her knees closed together and her arms crossed over her breasts.
“Ssh, kjære, open for me.” His fingers traced random designs on her knees until they fell apart, revealing to him the perfect pink folds of her pussy. Already swollen and wet. Urgent arousal kicked him in the back and had him climbing up with her, situating his widespread knees under her thighs. He splayed his hand over her lower abdomen and circled his thumb over her clit.
The moan that tore out of her reverberated directly to his cock.
She was wet and ready, her hips pressing into his touch.
He settled on top of her, bracing himself with one hand and holding his shaft at her opening with the other. “I won’t be able to resist biting you, but my control is already stronger than it was.”
Her hands curled around his neck. “You promised you’d never hurt me, and you’ve kept your word. I trust you. Besides, I like the biting.” She said that last part in a lower, throatier voice that had him pushing into her wet heat.
Go slow, be gentle, take it easy, he commanded himself.
She was a virgin, not twenty-four hours ago wracked with fever, and so much smaller than him. He didn’t want to tear her up. But the deeper he pushed in, the greater the struggle for restraint became.
She was so fucking tight he could barely form a coherent thought.
“I’ll make it better,” he managed, and then he thrust home. The maddening ache shifted from his cock to his fangs. They punched out as the instinctual urge to penetrate this way, too, had him roaring his pleasure before wrapping himself around her and piercing her throat.
Kaira’s pained whine morphed into a surprised and approving moan as Henrik sucked long, thick draws of her blood down his throat. The sound of her pleasure destroyed the last of his restraint.
His hips flew, driving his cock into her slick channel over and over. She clutched and scratched and fisted at his back, her muscles writhing and alive with arousal. What he wouldn’t have given to slow down, explore, savor.
But he couldn’t. Not when he hadn’t felt the intense rush of male satisfaction in so long. Too long.
Not when he might not ever feel this way again.
Just another thing Kaira Sorensen had done for him. The list was long, and he’d only known her for twenty-four hours.
Now, he didn’t know how he’d go on without her. And not just because he needed her blood. He wanted to see her photographs and talk to her about mythology and lay in his bed for hours just holding her. He wanted to learn what it must’ve been like for her to lose her parents so young, and the thought that she might understand something of his loneliness was just one more thing they had in common.
There was just so much he wanted…with her.
As his hips flew and her body thrust right back, heat and energy pooled low in his belly. He drank her down in slow sucks, and her blood tasted familiar and right, like coming home after a long time away.
Unquestionably, Kaira Sorensen was his match in every way that mattered. But would she be his blood match? He swore the mystical connection had been taunting and teasing him since the first moment he saw her, but maybe that was just desperately wishful thinking.
Maybe he couldn’t tell his hunger for nourishment apart from his hunger for companionship. Because he hadn’t just been starving all these long years, he’d been so damn lonely, too.
In and of itself, the thought that they could match gave him a giant shove toward his orgasm. But her first. He gentled his thrusts enough to concentrate on making sure his pelvic bone rolled over her clit. She moaned and matched his rhythm, her hi
ps tilting and grinding. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and the sensation was so similar to a bite that Henrik unleashed a strangled groan against her throat.
He wanted her to bite him. He wanted her teeth in his flesh, her lips at his throat, for her to be absolutely ravenous for the taste of him. Another train of thought that threatened to devastate his control.
“Henrik,” Kaira rasped. “I…I…”
He clutched her left hand in his right and pressed it hard into the mattress, lifting his abdomen just enough to change the angle.
A high-pitched moan ripped out of her, and her whole body went momentarily rigid. And then the orgasm slammed into her, squeezing his cock, sending her body bucking and thrashing. The incredible, erotic frenzy of it tore through him until he was coming hard. He thrust through it, going momentarily blind with the intolerable goodness of it.
He retracted his fangs and licked closed her wound. Triumph and total satiation flowed through him. Such a rare feeling. In combination with the orgasm, it was a kind of ecstatic pleasure he’d never felt before. “Damn, Kaira, it’s so fucking good,” he said as his thrusts slowed, the end of his release still playing out.
A scorching heat erupted from where they were joined, clawed up his spine, and raced to their joined grip. Rabid tingles spread over the entirety of his right hand.
He gritted his teeth, nearly euphoric at its meaning. Kaira screamed. “Ssh, kjære, it’s all right. It’s almost over.” He held her through it as best he could.
But instead of stopping at his wrist, the sensation prickled up his forearm and across the inside of his elbow, following the path of his radial artery almost to his shoulder.
As suddenly as it began, it ended. Together, they sagged into an exhausted pile of limbs on the wide bed.
“What was that?” Kaira asked, breathing hard beneath him.
Henrik rolled them over to relieve her of his weight, pulling their joined hands where they could see them.
She sucked in a breath and slipped her fingers from his to examine the interlocking pattern of shield knots closer.
The design was so tightly drawn that the strength of the blood match could not be denied. And not even in the ancient texts had he seen a mating mark cover not just the hands but so much of the arms.
Henrik felt honored into the depths of his being.
Kaira’s pulse tripped into a sprint, fluttering against his skin everywhere they touched. “What is this? What does it mean?” Her voice and her expression were both filled with an awe that hit him right in the chest.
“It’s a mating mark, precious Kaira.” He tilted her face toward his and steeled himself for what he’d decided to say if this match came true. “And it means you have some decisions to make.”
Chapter 11
Mating mark?
“What do you mean?” Kaira asked as she studied the black knotwork on her hand and tracing the tendrils of it up her arm. It was shocking, but it was also breathtakingly beautiful, all the more so because it matched the pattern on Henrik’s hand.
It was also a little terrifying. Because her very blood seemed to sing of its significance.
How could that be? And what did it mean?
Henrik grasped her hand, showing her how their marks weren’t just mirrors, but that his actually continued onto her skin, and vice versa. “For a vampire, blood is the source of all life. It is magical and powerful. When two people with an especially righteous pairing of blood are joined together, the magic identifies them as a good match for mating, as a couple who would well sustain one another and bear strong offspring. I have never seen a knot this tight or this extensive. It is a good match, Kaira.” He trailed a finger up her arm, the touch so light it tickled her skin.
Bracing himself on an elbow, he gazed down at her face. Kaira gasped. As if the night hadn’t been filled with wonder enough, Henrik’s eyes were a brilliant royal blue and the wrinkles that had aged his face were entirely gone. The dark circles under his eyes had lightened, and the hollows of his cheeks weren’t as deep. She’d noticed his eyes before they’d made love, but he appeared to have lost twenty-five or thirty years since then.
Happiness filled her heart and tightened her throat, not because he was more handsome. Bonds of affection had already drawn them together, and never would she have imagined that curing his illness meant reversing the age of his appearance. Rather, her happiness flowed from the avid hope that this was proof he was in fact cured. Or could be.
“Henrik,” she finally managed to say. “You have to see yourself.”
He touched his fingers to his face and frowned in concentration. After a moment, he rolled off the bed and retrieved his robe from the floor. He held it open to her. “Come with me?”
She nodded and eased off the bed. He wrapped the heavy fabric around her. Miles too big, she wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Infused with his scent, it was almost as good as being in his arms. Almost.
Fingers interlaced, they crossed the room to the bathroom in the corner, where earlier she’d showered and dressed. Henrik flipped on the light and froze, his gaze glued to the mirror.
At first, his expression gave away nothing of his reaction. “You should know it may not last.”
Her heart squeezed. She threaded her arm through his and met his reflection’s gaze. “I hope it does, only because maybe it means your illness is cured. Or better, at least.” She tugged him to face her and placed her hand over his heart. “But, Henrik, the man who saved my life, who attracted and intrigued me, who admired my work and who made me feel things I’ve never felt before—that man is in here.” She pressed her skin more firmly against his and struggled with how to phrase what she next wanted to say. “No matter if your eyes are dark or pale, that man will still be here, for me.”
“But you deserve a male who—”
She pushed onto her tiptoes and kissed him. It broke her heart to think he feared she couldn’t accept him because of how his illness had changed him on the outside.
Her heart?
So much had happened in such a short time, she couldn’t say for sure how she felt about all of it. But there was no doubting that her heart was involved.
When she pulled away, his eyes flashed a vivid, warm blue.
“So what does the mating mark mean in practical terms?”
He licked his lips, the tip of a fang peeking out. “I agree with the magic, Kaira. I feel like I have been waiting for you my whole life. Not just because your blood has the ability to heal me, but because when I am with you, I feel whole in my heart. I feel a peace I’ve never felt before. We know very little else about one another, and I understand this is all very fast in human terms.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his tenderness so remarkable for someone so big, so powerful. “But to answer your question, the mark gives us the opportunity—three days—to decide whether to become mates, to build a life together, with you at my side as my queen and my partner. I would share my whole life with you, my blood, and, if this healing takes, I should be able to share my immortality with you, too.”
Her brain struggled to keep up with the flow of truly amazing information. That real feelings had already taken root in his heart. That she could have a place to belong. And that she could be with him…forever. “You said the mark gives us three days?”
He nodded. “There is a ceremony that consummates the mating, but it has to be performed within three days of when the mark was made, or it will fade, and the opportunity to mate will go with it.”
Three days?
How was she supposed to decide what essentially amounted to the rest of her life—and a version of her life she never could’ve imagined before this moment—in just seventy-two hours?
He kissed her with warm, soft, commanding lips. Looking her right in the eye, he said, “This is why I said you have a decision to make. Everything about our time together has been intense and overwhelming. I know that. And I don’t want you to feel any more pressured than you already do
.” His hands slipped around the back of her neck and massaged. “I want you to go back down to Tromsø.”
“What?”
“Wait. Just listen. I want you to go into town and enjoy the rest of your exhibit and the judging ceremony the day after tomorrow.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I have been thinking about this all day, about what would happen if we matched. So much will change for you. I know the sacrifices are unfairly weighted on your side. No matter what, I didn’t want you to have to give up something you’ve obviously worked so hard at and have such a talent for.”
At those words, her heart got a whole lot more involved. She hadn’t had to say it, or beg for it, or rail about the injustice of it. He’d just known how important the show and her photographs were to her. He got it.
He got her.
And, honestly, she had no one in her life. No family. No real roots. The sacrifices weren’t as many as he thought.
“I won’t send you alone,” he continued. “One of my warriors will drive you down and get you checked in at a hotel right in the center of town where you need to be.”
“I don’t need to stay there—”
“Yes, you do. I won’t have it any other way.” He arched an eyebrow that was as sexy as it was humorous. “He’ll stay in town with you, out of sight but watching over you just in case. I will give you a phone number. After the show, call and let Jakob know what you’ve decided. I will respect your decision, Kaira, whatever it is.”
A tidal wave of emotion crashed over her. Confusion. Fear. Uncertainty. Excitement.
He was letting her go. He was setting her free. He was giving her a choice, even if it meant it might harm himself.
Those emotions lodged a knot in her throat. And they weren’t alone. There was another emotion fighting its way in there as well.
Love.
Love? Truly?
Very possibly. And that was an amazing thing to her. To someone who’d been alone for so long and had thought she’d die before she ever had the chance to experience any of this.
“I don’t know what to say,” she managed, wondering if she was alone in the whirlwind of these emotions. His words spoke of a connection, but did vampires feel love? Could they?
