by Laura Kaye
His expression absolutely dripped with arousal—mouth opened, flashing eyes hooded, fangs stretched low.
For just an instant, she imagined leaning in and kissing him. The idea of kissing one vampire while the other fed from her, both of them holding her down, liquefied her insides and destroyed her effort to sit still. She squeezed her thighs together, offering the tiniest, tormenting relief to her immense need for friction.
She met Jakob’s eyes. And knew it wouldn’t be right.
Beautiful as he was, he wasn’t the one her lips yearned to taste.
Henrik was. He might not have possessed his brother’s physical perfection, but she wanted him. Simple as that. Impossible though it seemed, some sort of bond had formed between them in the short time since they’d met. Maybe it was the understanding their shared illnesses created. Or the fact that the aurora had captured both of their fascinations. Or that he’d saved her life, and now she was saving his. Tingling erupted on her left hand again and she jerked. He drank deeper, held tighter, and wrapped himself around her calf and thigh more completely.
Something hard and long pressed urgently into her shin.
At the proof and feel and size of his desire for her, she couldn’t hold back from moaning his name. “Henrik.”
“Jesus,” Jakob groaned.
Henrik growled, and the vibration rocked through her arm and against her leg.
Hot pressure grew within her core. Without meaning to, her hand fisted hard in his hair. He rocked his hips, a sinuous writhing that painted pictures in her mind’s eye of what he would look like moving over her, in her.
She was going to come. She was going to come so hard. And she wanted him in her when she did.
“Henrik,” she whimpered. Words hung for a long moment on the tip of her tongue. And then she shoved the fear and uncertainty and debate away and gave them voice. “I want you.”
Chapter 10
It was only because he was so acutely aware of Kaira that he heard her speak over the roar of the white noise driving him to feed.
And then the words sank in. I want you.
The answering growl that rolled out of his chest was pure sexual instinct. And he was so fucking ready. From the moment his fangs had penetrated her flesh, he’d been all sexed up.
But his physical hunger waged war against his sexual hunger. He couldn’t stop drinking. He couldn’t make himself pull away. The taste was too sweet, the relief too great, the fundamental satisfaction of nourishment too overwhelming. He told himself each swallow would be the last, but then he sucked again, and again.
Panic skittered down his spine. He was going to kill her. He was going to bleed her dry.
After a decade of virtual starvation, his body was trapped in the stranglehold of survival mode. He unleashed a desperate whimper stifled by a thick swallow of blood.
“Tell him again,” Jakob rasped. “Again, Kaira.”
“I want you, Henrik,” she whispered, a note of fear entwining with the arousal roughening her voice. Her fingers carded through his hair, her nails scratching his scalp. “I want you.”
It was more than he’d hoped. Not just her acquiescence, but her desire. Not just her willingness, but her eagerness. Warm pressure filled his chest.
But he still couldn’t stop.
Even now her blood was rebuilding and reawakening him. More, more, more was the constant mantra filling his head.
“It’s like before, Kaira,” Jakob said, panic lancing into his voice. “You have to convince him. You have to bring him back to you. Tell him.”
Under his touch, she was shaking now. And the intense scent of adrenaline joined the sweet smell of her arousal.
“Okay, okay.” She slid her hand under his hair, massaged his neck, and leaned in as close as their position would allow. “You can have more. I’m not going anywhere. But right now, I need you. I want you, Henrik, so you have to stop.”
His breathing and heart rate picked up their pace at the promise of her words.
“Show him,” Jakob urged.
She rained kisses down everywhere she could reach. His head, his temple, his shoulder. He clutched harder to her, the need for sex beginning to outweigh his need for blood. Grasping the hand pressing down on her forearm, she said, “Let me.” Tentatively, he gave in and allowed her to pull his right hand. He twisted just in time to see her kiss the backs of his fingers, the Magnusson crest ring.
“Use your teeth,” his brother said.
Henrik growled, a warning to Jakob, an encouragement to Kaira.
She heeded them both, sucking his middle finger into the wet heat of her mouth and lightly scraping her teeth against his flesh as she withdrew.
“Harder,” Jakob said, his voice heavy with arousal. Henrik was going to kill him, he was going to fucking—
Kaira sucked his pointer and middle fingers in to the second knuckle. And then she sank the sharp edge of her teeth into his skin. She bit and nibbled at the fleshy pads of his fingers until Henrik was shaking and moaning and sweating.
Just stop. Just pull away. Just st—
“Jesus Christ, Henrik, this woman is fucking phenomenal. Either you take her or I will.”
Henrik’s eyesight went red with rage. He extracted his teeth, licked her wound closed in a single swipe, and launched himself at his brother, taking them both to the ground in a tangle halfway across the room. Kaira shrieked as they rolled and fought to pin one another. Jakob was saying something Henrik couldn’t hear over the angry static his brother’s words had unleashed.
For just a moment, he pictured it. Jakob removing her clothes, laying her beneath him, opening her legs...
A lightning bolt of power surged through him and he slammed Jakob to the floor and wrapped both hands around the younger vampire’s throat.
Jakob looked up at him...and smiled. “Dum faen. Just...needed a way...to motivate you...to stop,” he said around sucking gasps for breath.
Henrik released him and shoved to his knees, breathing hard and glaring at the smug-ass expression his brother wore. Then the vampire’s face shifted, something more like awe settling onto his features as his eyes scanned over Henrik’s face.
“Welcome back, brother,” Jakob said.
The king got to his feet and hoisted the other male up with him. Even though his rational mind knew his words had been a ruse, the primal part of his brain had its hackles raised. “Thanks. Now get the fuck out.”
Jakob grinned, looking happier than he’d seen him in a long time. “You sure?”
“Out.”
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. 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.
His eyes meet 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 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—”
“Ja, 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. “Ja.”
In her giggles, 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 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.
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.
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.
The thought that they could match alone 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 hips 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. 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 said.
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.
Her pulse tripped into a sprint, fluttering against his skin everywhere they touched. “What is thi
s? What does it mean?”
“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 said, studying the black knotwork on her hand and tracing the tendrils of it up her arm. It was breathtakingly beautiful, all the more so because it matched the pattern on Henrik’s hand, but also terrifying. Because her very blood seemed to sing of its significance.
He 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?”
