“Sorry, it tickles.”
I find myself grinning at her soft voice and press another kiss, making her giggle.
I flip us so she’s on top, giving her control. Her eyes flash dark for a moment, then she blinks, and it’s her again, jaw setbut lips uncertain. She takes her time. When she finally kisses me, it feels almost holy. I want every other man to know he’ll never match this.
I lift her again, her thighs tightening around me, and enter her in one smooth motion. Cassia’s lips part on a cry. Her pussy squeezes me tighter as I realize what I’ve done.
“You’re a . . .”
“I was,” she breathes, eyes on mine, a tint of pink burns her cheeks.
I want to yell at her for not telling me for allowing me to do this to her. At the same time, I can’t because knowing what I now know means just what it’s supposed to mean. She’s mine. The feel of her surrounding me feels like damn heaven. Not that I believe there is a heaven. Maybe having her right here where she is, is exactly what heaven is supposed to be.
Cassia falls back, hissing and biting my shoulder.
Fuck, that feels good. So damn good.
My fangs ache to sink into her shoulder.
Together we move as one, hard and fast, as if the world will end if we stop. Her nails rake down my spine until blood beads under her touch. She wants to mark me, and I let her.
She comes hard with my arms wrapped around her, her body folding then collapsing in a wave of release. She gasps my name, and it almost destroys me.
Unable to stop myself, it’s like something else takes control. I sink my teeth into her shoulder, marking her. Claiming, sealing a bond that can never be broken. I feel it snap into place in the way the fates would make it so. I feel her heart beat as if it were my own. My release shoots from me, and I know what will happen. I’m not blind to what the fates have in store.
Finally, when we’re both coming down, I roll, holding Cassia to me, feeling her, touching her, needing her right where she’s at.Thankfully, though breathing heavily, she buries her face against me, silent and spent.
“You should’ve told me,” I say softly, staring at the ceiling.
She shifts slightly, her fingers curling into my chest. “That I was a virgin?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
She exhales slowly. “Why?”
“Because I would have been far more gentle in taking something so precious,” I say. The fact that she gave herself to me as she did meant something to me. Meant she trusted me with something so priceless.
Now, she is mine.
Mine.
I sealed the fates’ wishes when I sank my teeth into her.
In truth, I wanted to do it. I wanted her as mine, and damn it, I’ll never regret it.
Cassia is more than what anyone would ever see her to be. I tasted it in her blood. I tasted it as I drank. We have things to talk about, and we will. Most of all, she needs to know just how much things have changed between us.
Chapter
Eleven
Cassia
Orpheus is already awake.
I don’t need to open my eyes to know that. I can feel it in the air, the tension pulled tight like a stretched tether rope. I can feel it inside me. Like he’s now a part of me.
In a way, he is. I realized after he bit me what he’d done. What had happened between us. I should’ve been angry about it, but I wasn’t. Things have changed between us, and I’m scared to voice it out loud for fear of him denying it.
