He smiles, the lines at his eyes growing deeper. “All the way to you,” he repeats, and for once I’m not mad that he read my thoughts. He deserves to hear it all.
He kisses me again, harder this time, a hunger that he’s kept at bay is now sneaking through, and I respond in kind, feeding off of it. My hands roam over his rock-hard shoulders, nails scraping lightly over his chest until he moans, his lips now at my neck, gently biting, sucking, nibbling, bringing my body to new heights, my back arching off the bed.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers in awe, his mouth working its way down between my breasts, over my stomach. “Most beautiful being that I’ve ever seen. You really do bring me to my knees, Lenore.”
My name on his lips sounds like a prayer.
I close my eyes, leaning back into the bed as he goes between my thighs.
Kisses me gently at first, then his tongue and mouth are lost to a feverish intensity that has me coming, the bedroom ringing with my cries.
I expect him to be rushing after that, but he’s taking his time now, because we have all the time in the world. His kisses turn to words of adoration, devotion, worship, and he places them all over my body, from the delicate bones of my ankle, to my stomach, to the soft skin under my breast. He kisses me with such reverence that I’m practically shaking from it, the same as any orgasm, but this time it’s my heart that’s being rendered.
I don’t know how it is with vampires, I barely know how it is with people. But this, right now, this feels so much more than what is happening. This feels like the two of us are being bonded beyond blood now, bonded by love, bonded by something that’s greater than us both.
And when he brings his face up to mine, gazing down at me in such a way that my heart does cartwheels in my chest, and kissing me like a dying man on his last breath, I know he feels it too.
His hands slip down over my sides, skin skimming skin, then he’s parting my thighs and pushing himself inside me.
I gasp, taken aback, having forgotten his size, how commanding he is, even when he’s not being rough. He slides inside me, my body seizing around him, my chest out, hands fisted in the sheets.
His breath is shaky as he pushes in to the hilt, sliding over every raw nerve, making my heart dance again and again. And he stares at me, in me, and I’m meeting his eyes, lost in how dark they are, both warm and cold. Like a fire made of ice.
Then he lowers his head with a low, shuddering groan, and presses his chest against mine, our skin leaping at the contact, and he buries his mouth in my neck. Biting but not drawing blood. Just holding on.
I am so in love with him I never realized how wonderfully terrifying that is until now. To know that I have him, that I could lose him, lose us.
But his movements steal my fears, bring me back around and then he’s moving faster, knees planting on either side of me, his large, strong body looming over mine.
I feel safe.
Loved.
Wanted.
Not alone.
And then he’s moving faster and I’m holding back, wanting to come with him at the same time. I’m whispering to him in my head, Please. Now.
And he’s responding with another groan, this one sounding from the depths of him, and then his fist is in my hair and he’s holding tight, breath trembling, mouth open as he stares at me, thrusting in and out, shaking the bed.
What he means is not now, but soon.
So I dig my nails into his back, holding on, holding back as he fucks me slowly, and then fast, and everything in between, and I’m feeling everything at once, all my sense overwhelmed, drowning in him.
“I’m coming,” he rasps, staring at me with so much intensity I think I might come just from his eye contact alone, but it’s too much for him, and he’s throwing his head back, neck arched, letting out a rumbling cry as he comes, his muscles straining as he holds himself together above me.
And I, I let myself go, the crescendo at the peak, the music inside me coming to a pitch, and then I’m shaking, screaming, crying, feeling it all, moving with it all, in synchronicity, like we once did across a dance floor, but this time it’s different, this time it seals us to each other in ways maybe we’ll never really understand.
I open my eyes, gasping, seeing the golden stars falling from the ceiling, landing on our skin, melting before they disappear.
I let out a giddy laugh, half-drunk with my love for him, half dazed because of the orgasm, and I wonder if I’m hallucinating.
But I realize it doesn’t matter.
Because what this is between us, that’s what’s real.
I feel it in my blood.