As soon as I placed my hand in his, he pulled me against him and crushed his mouth to mine. He kissed me with a fierce possessiveness that made me burn with feral need. Tightness fisted at my belly, and I clenched my thighs together as I tangled my hands in his hair.
He pulled away with a growl. “I don’t need him,” he nodded his head toward the minister, “to tell me you’re mine.” He licked my bottom lip. “You’ve always been mine.”
I stroked his cheek with the front of my finger and smiled. “Can you behave? Just for five minutes?”
He grabbed a handful of my ass and squeezed, then he looked at the minister. “You have five minutes.”
The tall, slender minister swallowed hard, then cleared his throat and began the ceremony. The words were nothing more than background noise. All I cared about was the man in front of me, his eyes, that smile, the way he was looking at me right now.
The minister stopped talking, and Caspian tilted his head toward me.
He swiped the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip. “Wanna know why I call you my little troublemaker?”
I swallowed. The heat was blazing now, coursing through my veins. My heart was pounding and full, so full of love for this man.
“From the first time I saw you, my heart knew it was in trouble. It was like Fate knew our souls were destined to wreck the world together. You’re the only one who’s ever challenged me and gotten away with it. You embrace the shit out of my insanity. You let me chase you into the darkness, then you sit with me there. You are the heart of my heart, the soul of my soul. And I will spend every second of forever—and then some—making sure you know exactly how fiercely I love you.”
I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so perfect, so beautiful.
I brought my hand to his face because the need to touch him was unbearable. “You keep me safe. I love you in ways that I never even knew were possible. You make me strong. You say I challenge you, but you’re the one who challenges me. Those times when you think you’re hardest to love, that’s when I love you the most. There was never a moment I haven’t loved you. It was always you. It will always only be you.”
Caspian pressed his lips against my forehead, then lifted his head and turned to Chandler.
Chandler handed him a small, sharp blade.
Caspian took my hand in his and held my gaze. His eyes softened and glimmered with pride. “You ready?”
I opened my palm, steeling myself for the pain but ready for the rush. “Ready.”
He slid the blade across my skin, and a sharp slicing pain shot through my hand, followed by a trail of blood. The edges of reality blurred for a split second before coming back into focus. He handed me the blade, and I did the same to him. We held our palms together, squeezing tightly, and Caspian licked his lips. I knew he was counting down by the fire that burned in his eyes.
Chandler handed him a white scarf, which he wrapped around our hands, binding them together, bondingusfor eternity.
“Repeat these words:Et sanguis sanguinem meum,” he said, and his eyes grew even darker.
“Et sanguis sanguinem meum.”
“Blood of my blood.”
“Blood of my blood,” I repeated.
Calmness and peace washed over me. Hunger and fire burned within me. But that was how it had always been with Caspian. I knew deep in my soul that right here was where I was meant to be my whole life.
His lips curved into a slow, wicked grin, and his eyes narrowed. He slowly unraveled the scarf from our hands, counting as he went.
“Five… Four…”
I took a deep breath. The minister, Lyric, Lincoln… everyone else was long forgotten. There was only him and me and the chase I knew was only seconds away. The chase that had been brewing since he’d touched me last night in our bed. The chase he’d been waiting for since I’d put my hand in his.
“Three… Two…”
My heart beat like a drum.
He dropped the scarf on the ground and raised his eyes to mine.
“Run.”