His expression grew serious. “Please be certain about this,” he said. “Because this isn’t like marriage between humans. It’s until death.”
“You’re saying I’m stuck with you?”
He looked so earnest. “Not exactly. You could leave me, but I would likely enter a dormant state.”
“Dormant state?” I asked.
“I would sleep until I finally died.”
I flinched. I wouldn’t want him to die, even if things didn’t work out between us.
“But there are never any guarantees, Daniel. With any relationship.”
“We’re mates, Carina,” he explained. “To hurt you, whether physically or emotionally, would cause me pain. In the literal sense. I would always love and cherish you because there is no other you. No other woman to be mine.”
My doubts and fears melted away. “You love me?” I asked.
He stared at me in shock before he moved, flipping us so that I lay beneath him.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“So you can’t run away when I say yes,” he answered, leaning down to nuzzle the side of my neck.
I experienced a full-body shiver at the touch of his lips and his words.
“You’re not just my mate,” he said. “I love everything about you.”
“Everything?” I asked, skeptical.
“Maybe not everything. More like ninety percent.”
I laughed and smacked his shoulder. “You don’t think it’s too soon?”
“I knew the moment you bit me that I loved you. No other woman, human or otherwise, would have been brave enough to do that to me.”
He lifted his head so that he could down at me. “I understand if you don’t love me yet.”
“But I do,” I admitted, my chest suddenly tight. “It’s just so soon. I’m scared that everything will change.”
“Do you love me enough to wear my mark?” he asked, his hips grinding against mine.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He stared down at me, his eyes glittering with supernatural light and some other emotion.
Then, he was kissing me, his mouth both tender and voracious. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him closer to me. He reached between us, lining his cock up with my pussy, and he was inside me.
I arched beneath him at the sensation of being filled. He usually took things slowly, but he was so deep inside me, and my muscles clenched around him. I hovered on the edge of pain as he slid out of me and back in one smooth, easy glide. My thighs tightened around his hips, and I moaned.
It was glorious but almost too much.
His mouth devoured mine as he moved faster and harder, thrusting into me at just the right angle.
I was panting when he released my mouth and my neck arched as he touched me deeper than he ever had before.
I was already poised on the precipice when he sank his fangs into my throat. I cried out as he drank and the climax crashed over me, rolling me into the depths of bliss. There was something different about his bite this time. It felt amazing but it also burned. The heat spread throughout my body before it gathered behind my sternum. Right where the ache had been centered when I was talking to Bernie before.
My body twitched and writhed beneath his as the orgasm went on and on.
