He held her gaze, unable to resist the urge to smooth his fingers along the soft curve of her cheek. “That’s why you fed me your blood?”
“I couldn’t let you die, Trygg. Even if that meant you would live the rest of your life hating me for the gift.”
He listened without speaking, considering what it was going to mean to be bound to her forever. No other woman would be able to quench his thirst. No other woman would inflame his desire the way his blood would now call for Sia. She was a part of him irrevocably.
He stepped in close to her, craving her warmth already…always. “For most of my life, I only knew how to hate the chains that bound me. Now you’ve placed a new one on me.”
She closed her eyes, remorse filling her lovely face. “I know, Trygg. And I’m sorr—”
He silenced her with a deep, unhurried kiss. “I’m not sorry, Sia. I can’t think of any greater gift than the one you’ve given me now. Your blood. Your bond. Your love.”
A soft cry slipped past her lips. “I thought you would despise me.”
“No, Tamisia. I love you.”
He took her face between his palms and kissed her again, savoring the taste of her. Through the bond of her blood, he could feel the depth of her affection for him. Her love was a light that glowed inside her, filling his own heart with an unearthly, extraordinary warmth.
This was how it would be between them from now on, her vitality and emotion flowing inside him. Instead of holding him down, this shackle freed him.
It unleashed a staggering desire within him.
“Sia,” he murmured, drawing her against him as their kiss ignited into something neither of them could contain. “You’re mine now.”
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Only yours, Trygg.”
His fangs responded as swiftly as the rest of him. Sia licked her lips, seeming to understand what he needed. Her hungered expression told him that she needed the same thing.
He eased her down onto the soft sand with him. They peeled away the damp, tattered rags of their clothing, and then Trygg was inside her, both of them moving together in a tempo as worshipful as it was urgent. There was no cooling their desire, no slowing their shared, intense release.
“Drink from me,” he murmured, the glow of his irises bathing her milky skin in warm amber light as he rocked inside her. With his eyes on hers, he bit into his own wrist, opening twin punctures in his veins. “I need to know you’ll be mine forever, my beautiful Tamisia.”
“Oh, Trygg,” she murmured, a pleasured smile curving her lips in the instant before her tongue touched his skin. “I already am.”
He tipped his head back on a groan of pure ecstasy as she closed her mouth over his wounds and began to take her fill.
Epilogue
Crisp salt air lashed at Trygg’s face as the fishing boat cut through the dark waves. Seated alongside him on a bench at the stern of the old vessel, Sia huddled close beneath the warmth of a thick blanket, her arms wrapped around his torso.
As far as romance went, their moonlit ride back to the mainland left something to be desired. Lazaro had been on the satellite phone with Lucan for the past ten minutes, while Savage manned the helm.
“Santino’s dead,” the commander said as he ended the call to D.C.
“What?” Trygg leaned forward, torn between elation and a morbid disappointment that he hadn’t been the one to personally send the bastard on his way to hell.
Lazaro nodded. “It just happened about an hour ago. Turns out one of the boys Santino abused held a grudge. Ten years later, the kid comes back all grown up and shoots the son of a bitch dead while he was asleep.”
Savage threw a smirk over his shoulder. “Revenge really is a dish best served cold.”
“Anyway,” Lazaro said, “Santino is out of the way, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t be stepping up to take his place. Red Dragon is too profitable, and too effective as a weapon against us, to expect anyone to let it lie untapped.”
“Then we’ll keep taking the assholes out until we root out every last bit of that poison,” Sia said.
Trygg chuckled. “Careful. You’re starting to sound like one of us.”
She arched a brow at him. “Something wrong with that, warrior?”
He grinned. “No, ma’am. Not a thing.”
