Every secret. Every choice. Every dark doubt. All of it disappeared beneath a cloud of rightness as I parted her lips with my tongue and devoured her.
She wrapped an arm around me, her opposite hand still in my hair. “More,” she whispered. “Give me more.”
“Aflora,” I replied, my voice harsh with my necessary restraint.
But she seemed oblivious to it, her mouth trailing along my jaw to my neck in seductive little caresses I couldn’t ignore. I palmed her cheek, then slid my hand back into her hair, intending to pull her lips back to mine, when her teeth pierced my skin.
An inferno blazed across my conscious, my heart thundering in my chest.
Aflora had just bitten me.
Tasted my blood.
And swallowed.
Her moan of approval shattered something inside me, spurring me into motion. My fingers tightened around her dark strands, holding her to my neck as she ingested more of my essence.
It was so fucking wrong yet felt too damn good to stop.
I’d never been bitten before—the action was typically reserved for mates during sex—and damn, I was glad I’d waited for Aflora. She could sink her teeth into me anytime she wanted.
“Fuck, little rose,” I groaned, my shaft aching with the desire to slip into her velvety heat.
I released her hair to work on shucking off my pants and then my boxers. There’d been a reason I wanted to wait, but hell if I could remember it now.
Her legs parted from my hips, her teeth releasing my neck as she tossed her head back on a throaty demand to take her. I lined myself up and drove inside her to the hilt, our cries of satisfaction mingling in the air.
Home, I realized. I’m finally fucking home.
And what a place it was because I’d never really had one. In all my years, I stuck to the shadows, lurking and playing the games set out before me. How fucking appropriate that the biggest task of all was the one writhing beneath me and welcoming me into her with open arms.
“You’re everything I didn’t know I needed,” I breathed, completely lost to the beauty unraveling in my arms. My heart beat for this woman and this woman alone. She was mine, and I never wanted to let her go.
“Bite me,” she begged. “Finish it.”
“Yes,” I agreed. It was time. Our vows were incomplete, and that needed to be rectified.
I pressed my mouth to her throbbing pulse and licked the cerulean magic heating her skin. Mmm, she tasted like power and sex and everything I could ever desire.
Our connection hung in the balance, a weight on both our spirits, waiting for this final thread.
And I granted it the climax of our lives by piercing her vein.
She screamed, her hips driving upward to meet mine, our pace becoming frantic as we both fought to find our release in a wave of insurmountable gratification. Time fucking stopped. Yet our hearts continued to beat, her blood pouring into my mouth as I took her with brutal thrusts that she responded to in kind.
It was animalistic.
Hot.
Ferocious.
Fucking.
No, a claiming. Her nails scraped down my back, drawing blood and causing me to hiss against her neck. I bit her again, her essence giving me the gift of life and completion and binding us on a path to insanity.
We were one.
Together.