A pained sigh left Vin. He rested his brow against my shoulder. I shivered when his hot breath poured down my front. “I’ll tell her soon. I’ll tell her everything. She has many questions, which is understandable and I’ll answer them. I have all of tomorrow to explain it before the wedding.”
“Wait.” I pulled back in his arms, feeling my eyes stretch wide. “Are we getting married tomorrow night?”
The shadows stretched across the side of his face with his smile. “If we’re going to get back home before this war breaks, and have time to track down your mother beforehand, we need to hurry.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I kissed him. “You better not be shitting me.”
“I’m not shitting you, Princess.”
Joy washed over me in powerful waves. We were going to go home sooner than I’d allowed myself to hope for. “Touch me,” I purred. “But not enough to impregnate me.”
He let out a dark laugh, his mouth trailing down my torso as his talon-tipped hands palmed my breasts. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow. I may have to hold my seed back but I’m still going to fuck you. And I think I’ll start with these.” His fingers flexed around my tits again, this time so hard a yelp bled from my throat.
Bringing his mouth down over mine, he consumed the sound. He devoured me in that kiss, the connection lasting until my body went limp in his arms. When he broke away, my lips were red and swollen. He laughed at the sight of them, a lustful red hue joining the splash of green and black in his irises.
“Have sweet dreams, Princess,” he purred as he laid me down to rest in the bed. “Take your time in the dreamscape with your other mates. Because tomorrow, when you wake up, you’ll be allmine.”
Chapter twenty-two
Magic at Sunrise
Iwasn’tsurehowI was going to enter Corry and Sterling’s dreams at the same time, but Ster said it was something I should be able to pull off. If anyone could instruct me on how to manipulate the dreamscape, it was him. So, I chose his subconscious to enter first.
I would never ever tire of the unmistakable fragrance of the Knight Manor’s library or the oceany scent of its keeper interlacing the firm notes of ancient leather and decaying paper.
“Sterling?” I rounded a bookcase and stopped when I found his seat beside the fire empty. This wasn’t a memory. This was a dream. I could feel his presence.
So where was he?
“Sterling?”
I wandered down the seemingly endless rows of books. It was weird how the library appeared much larger in Sterling’s mind. Maybe here it was filled with every single book he’d ever read. That was a thought.
I stopped to pay a little more attention to the books filling the shelves, taking more time to read their titles. There were a surprising amount of novels, not just textbooks and religious tomes. He was a particular fan of Jane Austen. There was a fair share of classic romances and horror novels. He had at least a half dozen different editions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Then there was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which had a shelf all to itself.
I picked up what looked like the oldest copy and thumbed through it, reading a few lines of the book. It was one of the few classics I could stand to read when a stack of romance books had always been within arm’s reach back in my bedroom in Quincy.
As I read, the sun crept over the ocean, the early morning light spilling through the open drapes of the library windows, and painting the book in my hands with a warm light.
I smiled when I realized that since our first time together in the dreamscape, Sterling had kept the curtains drawn back, allowing the daylight to pour in. It made me happy knowing that because of me, he could enjoy the sunrise, even if it was just in his dreams.
Just then, a shadow fell over the book in my hand. I glanced up from its yellowed pages to find the library’s keeper standing just a few feet from me, his features masked by the glaring light of the sun behind him.
Sterling’s frame was more slight than Vincent’s monster form, and yet it was just as terrifying finding myself engulfed in this male’s shadow.
If not more.
“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”
I blinked at him, a beat or two of silence passing before the words clicked. He was reciting a line from Dracula.
I smiled, and suddenly I felt so warm, but I knew it had little to do with the rising sun bathing the library in its golden glow.
“You know, the more I think of it, the character of Jonathan Harker reminds me of you, kinda.”
My heart beat a little harder when the prince stepped closer to me, his fingers stroking over the page of the book. “Because he, too, was destroyed by a terrible vampire?”
My smile slipped. “No, that’s not why. Because Jonathan Harker was a hopeless romantic, at least for his Mina.”
