Vampires didn’t traditionally do marriage. They shared blood, after all. What were pretty promises spoken in front of an altar compared to a bite? But it was a very human thing to make a claim through marriage. It was roughly equivalent tothe bond avampire formed with their anchor, he supposed, if comparatively shallow.
Curious to see how she’d react, Felix nodded, his attention keenly focused on the way her pupils contracted into tight little points. A scratching sound briefly drew his gaze to where her nails had scraped the desk as her fingers curled into fists.
Measuring his words carefully, he said, “A blood bride is necessary for me to get the elders completely on my side. I didn’t want to do it, but I haven’t worked this hard and come this far to lose their support?—”
“So you were going to throw me aside the moment you found a better fit? Afterthree yearsof— of making me actually—” Her lip curled, revealing those darling little fangs again. “Who was it, Felix?”
Anger bled into something hotter. Felix’s breathing picked up as he took in her defensive stance, the bared fangs, and the color in her cheeks. Dahlia wasn’t just pissed. She was territorial in a way he recognized intimately.
His girl wasjealous.
A slow, pleased smile spread across his mouth at the same time that his cock went rock hard beneath the desk. In a husky voice, he taunted, “Why, pet? I thought you didn’t want me. Shouldn’t you be happy that someone else was gonna take me off your hands?”
He didn’t think her face could get any redder, but it did. “You donotget to waste three years of my life hounding me and making me actually care about you, only to throw me away for some bullshit political marriage, Felix!”
“Well, if you don’t want to be my blood bride, what choice do I have?”
He knew he was pushing it. Felix toyed with instincts she probably didn’t even understand, plucking at them with reckless abandon just to see what she’d do. But he couldn’t stop. Heneeded her to understand, to want him as badly as he wanted her, and he’d never cared about fighting fair before.
Leaning backward, he lied, “If you don’t want it, I could let another woman bite me.”
In hindsight, he should’ve known to stop there, but he’d always been one to go a little bit too far.
Felix barely had a second to register the fact that Dahlia had crawled over the desk before his back hit his chair. She was on him just as quickly, their momentum sending the chair swiveling as she tore the lapels of his shirt aside.
Pain exploded in the juncture between his neck and shoulder. “Fuck!” he wheezed, grabbing her waist to steady her. He planted his feet on the floor, stopping their dizzying spin, and groaned.
The bite was clumsy, too deep, and almost certainly at the wrong angle, but it didn’t matter. Triumph roared inside him as her venom released. It was warm, a little ticklish, and within a few heartbeats, he could taste it bleeding through the thin membrane of his cheeks.
It was sweet. So sinfully sweet. Like ambrosia sweeping through his veins and coating his tongue, a gift from Grim herself.
EIGHTEEN
His mind went blissfullyfuzzy as the pain numbed. Felix dropped his head back, exposing more of his neck to her.
When she began to rock her hips into his, seeking friction, he made quick work of freeing his cock and pushing aside her soaked panties. They both shuddered as he lined them up. Dahlia sank down on him in one hard movement, sucking him into the hot well of her body like it was her due.
She clamped down hard enough that he swore he could feel the throb of her heartbeat all around him. Careful not to dislodge her, he grabbed her hips and began to rock her up and down, just a little, just enough.
“That’s it, pet,” he encouraged her thickly. “That’s my girl. Ease up a little. Just— just bite with your top teeth. There you go.”
He groaned again as her fangs slid free. Dahlia’s lips sealed over the wounds to pull directly from his veins. Each suck was greedier than the last, and each one made her cunt spasm around the hot bar of his cock like she was trying to milk him dry in every way. It was the most painfully erotic thing he’d ever experienced.
Felix hadn’t been entirely certain he’d let his blood bride feed from him. His reluctance wasn’t out of some macho bullshit like some, but rather a practical thing. If he intended to be away from her as often as possible, it wasn’t feasible to have them so reliant on each other.
To conceive a child it would be necessary for her to take his venom regularly, but after the fact it was less so. He intended to feed only enough to keep her from experiencing venom withdrawal, but he wasn’t about to introduce that weakness into his own life.
But, as always, everything was different with Dahlia.
The joy of feeling her messy, painful bite was exquisite. It even eclipsed the satisfaction of his own bite. He discovered that it was one thing to claim Dahlia, but it was another to be claimedbyher.
To be possessed by her, to sustain her, to havehervenom flowing throughhisveins, and to be her first…
Thumbing her tight little clitoris, he came with a pathetic little cry, his hips jerking. She rippled around him, her back stiffening with her own orgasm, but she didn’t stop drinking. He filled her up as she took from him, drop by glorious drop.
Felix stroked her hair out of her face as she drank her fill, savoring every pull of her lips and the silk of her half-dried hair under his fingers. Her weight in his lap was perfect. The heat of her silky, dripping cunt around his softening cock was bliss. Everything from her scent to her little hungry noises made him want to keep her there for as long as she’d let him.
But vampire stomachs could only take so much. Blood brides had a larger appetite than most, since they were designed to feed on their fellow vampires — who themselves had razor thin margins for nutrition — but even they couldn’t take more than a pint at a time.
