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Whatever restraint he had left disappears as his mouth crashes against mine, and I wrap myself around him, meeting every desperate movement with one of my own as he starts to thrust. There’s nothing practiced about this. Nothing careful or calculated. It’s messy and hungry and somehow sweeter because I know that, despite all his confidence, this is our first time.

His first time with anyone. My first time with him.

And I’m suddenly super glad that we’re facing each other because I get to see everything.

The surprise when pleasure catches him off guard. The concentration that furrows his brow as he figures out what I like. The flash of satisfaction when he gets it right.

And, because he’s still Vincent, the smugness that follows approximately half a second later.

I love it. Shit, I love him. Even now, when everything feels heightened and important and terrifyingly permanent, Vincent is still the impossible man who spent most of Halloween annoying me into falling for him.

Only I don’t think he had to work quite as hard as either of us believed.

I drag my nails lightly over his shoulders, then down his back, holding him close when his rhythm begins to falter. His face buries against the curve of my neck, and the low sound he makes sends another shiver through me.

“Kate.” My name is rough this time. Almost a warning.

I know what he means. It’s okay. I’m close, too.

My fingers find the claw marks on his arm again.

I don’t know why I keep going back to them. Maybe because I know what they mean now. He put them there when he thought the rest of his existence had already been decided for him.

A cat forever.

Alone forever.

Waiting forever.

No. Not anymore.

I squeeze his arm and turn my head until my lips brush his ear. “I choose you, Vincent. I want this. I want you.”

He shudders a moment before his mouth finds mine again.

Everything that follows happens too fast and somehow not fast enough. The pleasure that has been building between us grows until I’m just about to climax, and I cling to him as it finally breaks over me. Vincent follows with a broken sound against my lips, his whole body going taut in my arms before he collapses closer, holding me as tightly as I’m holding him.

For several long seconds, neither one of us moves.

Neither one of us speaks.

There’s only our ragged breathing, the pounding of my heart, and Vincent’s forehead resting against mine while we come back down together.

And I know, from this moment on, that he is also mine.

Much later, after he fucks me boneless again ‘to make sure the first time took’ and I—in my endorphin-induced delirium—agree that he can be Mr. Kate Bellamy after we get married… because, sometime after I came for a third time, I guess I also said I would marry him… I lie curled against Vincent’s chest, listening to his heartbeat while his fingers drift lazily through my hair. He’s humming under his breath, and I’m smiling up at the ceiling.

“Hey, Pumpkin? You awake?”

Barely. “Hmm?”

“Just so you know… you’re never getting rid of me now.”

“I kind of figured that. You know. Now that we have a mate bond.”

He brushes my naked shoulder with the side of his thumb. “Tell me you felt it, too. When it tied us together forever.”

I did. I don’t think I would’ve noticed if I wasn’t looking for it, but when I climaxed and Vincent shot his load inside of me right after… there was this kind of, I don’t know, click that happened low in my gut. It’s like that strange tether between us, the one I spent all of Halloween trying to ignore… instead of breaking in two, it became solid.