Seconds, heartbeats, he’d stripped me bare. Then himself, until nothing separated us.
He planted light kisses against every inch of my skin, taking his sweet as time and never landing quite where I needed him.
“Lachlan,” I pled, my breaths coming too fast, my heart beating too hard with the need for him.
His eyes flashed to mine from between my thighs, from where he trailed his tongue along my inner thigh. “Yes, Valor?” he asked, his eyes all cocky and playful.
Two could play that game.
“Mate,” I said, never losing his gaze. “I want my mate.”
His eyes guttered, his fangs fully descending at the title I’d never fully acknowledged until now. He plunged downward, licking me with a long, lavish stroke that burned through the center of me. I arched upward, gasping at the contact.
“Yes,” I sighed as he feasted on me, no longer taking things slow. He licked and sucked and fucked me with his tongue until I shattered around him in a million sparkles of light. The bond yanked tight between us, coiling and twisting and pulsing. “I need you,” I said before he’d barely pulled away from me. I gripped his shoulders, urging him up, positioning him right between my thighs.
“Fuck, Valor,” he groaned as I wrapped my legs around his hips and used the leverage to take him into the hilt.
“I love you,” I breathed the words, reaching up to kiss him as he moved inside me. One hard thrust, then he paused, resting his forehead against mine.
“I love you,” he said, eyes on me before he thrust again.
The bond sparked and crackled with the way he slammed home, with our admission to each other.
“Again,” I demanded, and he grinned at me before flicking his tongue over my lips.
“I love you,” he said again, pairing it with two hard thrusts that made my eyes roll back in my head.
“Mate,” I gasped, my nails digging into his back. “You’re mine,” I said and tightened my legs around him.
He groaned. “Always,” he said, slanting his mouth over mine. “Always yours.” He slammed into me again and again, driving the heat between us to a searing white-hot inferno. Every inch of me—body and soul—blazed at the feel of him against me, inside me. His smell swirled around mine, braiding our scents together until we were something new. Something strong, unbreakable.
And just as my body coiled like a hot spring, I turned my head to the side. “Drink,” I demanded, and he didn’t need to ask me twice. He heard the consent, the need in my voice for us to be bonded on every level imaginable.
He sank to the hilt just as his fangs slid into my flesh.
I exploded, shattered. Completely unraveled with each thrust of him inside me and each pull he took at my neck. My body and soul flooded with the most delicious, aching, screaming heat. I moaned his name, digging my nails into his back so hard I hoped I’d leave scars. I wanted to make my mark on him in every way, as he had done to me.
My head spun as I came again, as he hardened inside me another degree, finding his own release with a growl loud enough to shake the walls. A quick, healing lick across my neck sent shivers dancing down my spine.
He rolled us to the side, holding me to him without crushing me with his strength and power. He smoothed the hair away from my face, finding my eyes.
“No iron this time?” he joked, and I smacked his chest.
“Let’s save that for the next suicide mission you plan, okay?” I teased right back.
“Aye,” he said. “You won’t catch me off guard so easily next time.”
I arched a brow at him, trailing my fingers over his muscled chest, his hard abdomen, and lower. “Is that a challenge?” I gripped his length in my hand, which was already hardening again.
“With you?” He hissed as I fisted him, pumping from root to stem. I shifted, hooking my leg over his hip, wiggling until I’d taken him inside me again. “Always,” he growled.
“Good,” I said, breathless as I slowly rocked against him. “Because I’m yours, Lachlan, for just as long.”
He slipped an arm beneath my hip, hauling me against him.
The bond between us glimmered and purred and pulsed with a love that stole the breath from my lungs. I cupped Lachlan’s face, stilling for just a moment so he could see it shine through my eyes.
Endless.
That’s what the bond radiated.
A love that was absolutely endless.
Ransom
Alek: Meet me in the war room.
I glanced at the text message and wiped the sweat from my brow, then put back the two wakizashi swords I’d been training with, placing them in the long wall mount next to the katanas. My chest burned with exertion, but it felt good to shake the dust off the older weapons. I’d learned a long time ago that you had to fight with whatever was closest.
“You look good with those,” Benedict said, taking a break from pounding the shit out of the punching bag. Had to give it to the guy, though. He had one hell of a right hook. I’d been on the other side of it enough times to know.
“Thanks. Have to admit, I kind of miss combat before firearms.” There was no use for elegant weapons like these, now. Not when a bullet did just as much damage with a fraction of the effort.
“Only you would.” He grinned and went back to slugging the bag.
Across the gym, Olivia climbed out of the ring where she’d been sparring with Valor—Lachlan’s mate. The human was fast for a…well, human, but Olivia always took it easy on her.
Olivia was the fastest vampire I’d ever met in my life, and being the combat master for the Order meant I’d met more than a few vampires.
But in my hundreds of years, I’d never met one like her. Olivia Sorokin was one of a kind. Her lethal grace made her the most exemplary bodyguard I’d ever had a hand in training, not that I’d taught her much. By the time I’d arrived at the selection, she’d already proven herself deadly with blade, bow, and firearm…and that was back when muskets were a thing. Between her fighting skills, speed, and ability to act as a body double when needed for Princess Avianna, Olivia had been the perfect fit.
I yanked my eyes off the spandex that perfectly fit her phenomenal ass and typed out a reply to Alek.
Ransom: On my way
I hit send and ducked down to the refrigerator as Olivia came my way, her brow puckering as she responded to a text herself.
“Catch,” I called out, already tossing the extra bottle of water I’d grabbed.
“Thanks,” she answered, snatching it out of the air like a major league ballplayer.
The woman had instincts.
She flashed me a smile, and I had to remember how to unscrew the lid on my bottle. Her moves weren’t the only thing lethal about her. Olivia had a smile that would have launched a thousand ships if we were back in the era of Sparta and Troy. Hell, it probably would have launched them now if she’d ever shown interest in marrying or seeking a mate.
“No problem.” I grinned, then fumbled with my bottle. “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey,” I mumbled under my breath.
“What?” she asked, tossing her long, thick braid back over her shoulder. The mass was the color of fresh espresso, which went right along with her scent—warm, rich chocolate and hazelnuts.
Twenty minutes around her, and I was always jonesing for a jar of Nutella.
“Nothing.” I twisted the top open and drained the whole bottle as we both headed for the door.
Two female trainees, both in their twenties, paused in the hallway just outside the door as we approached. Clarissa and…fuck, what was the brunette’s name…Sally? Sarah?
“Clarissa. Sophia.” Olivia nodded her head in greeting.
Sophia. That was it.
“Ladies,” I said, offering a smile as we passed by.
“Ransom.” Clarissa sighed my name as she fell back against the wall, her scent flooding the underground hallway with—
“Damn, doesn’t that ever get old?” Olivia asked as we both took a left at
the fork in the tunnels, passing by one of the younger male trainees. In my defense, I didn’t know his name either. I wasn’t sexist. I just didn’t have time to get to know people. Not at the current state of our world.
“Leaving the gym at the same time as you? Never.” I grinned, keeping a healthy twelve inches between us so the females didn’t get any ideas. Olivia had come too far in her career to have the younger generation gossiping about shit she didn’t even do.
Which was exactly why I kept my distance from her.
Was she hot as hell? Yes. Funny? You bet. Would I have given my left nut to spend a single day with her in my bed? Absolutely. But there was a line even I wouldn’t cross, and that line was Avianna—the king’s little sister. She’d raise holy hell if I screwed with her best friend and bodyguard.
Besides, the thing about being an immortal vampire was that your hookups were immortal, too, and the only thing more awkward about an evening after a one-day stand was having to work with that female every day. Since I knew better than to seek out anything more permanent in the relationship department—I risked my life too often for that bullshit—that left Olivia and I at friends. Only friends.
“No, I mean the scent of lust trailing after you whenever you pass a female,” Olivia joked as we headed into the tunnels that belonged solely to the Residence—the home of the royal family and the Order of Onyx Assassins.
“Not every female,” I noted, lifting my eyebrows at her.
“Shut up.” She rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, though, Clarissa is getting to be…” I tilted my head, thinking of a word. “Insistent. She keeps sending me invitations to her bed.”
“Please.” Olivia scoffed. “Just because a female looks at you with a little heat and her scent goes all needy doesn’t mean it’s an invitation to her bed. Men.”
“Okay, well, would about four dozen emails asking me to fuck her in every way imaginable be enough to constitute an invitation?”
Olivia’s eyes flew wide, and her jaw dropped for a second. “She. Did. Not.”
“Oh, she did.”
Olivia laughed, and the sound filled the tunnel and played tricks with my heartbeat. You always want what you can’t have, don’t you?
We both took the left that led to the war room, then glanced at each other.
“You get summoned?” she asked, waving her cell phone.
“Yeah. You, too?”
She nodded.
I put my hand up to the biometric scanner and the door opened in a series of clicks as the various bolts slid to the unlocked position. This door was a work of art, just like everything else I’d designed to keep the royal family safe in our little war room.
“Ladies first,” I motioned through the door.
“Well damn.” Olivia grinned. “I don’t see any ladies here, do you?”
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered and strode through the door, but there was a smile on my face. Hell, if I looked in the mirror, I bet my dimples were even out. She was always able to wring a genuine smile from me.
“Good, you made it,” Alek said from the head of the table. Lachlan, his second, sat at his left, a grim look on his face.
“Do you suddenly feel like you’ve been summoned to the principal’s office?” I asked Olivia. My smile fell when I saw hers had.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Alek said, his smile tense. “Why don’t you two have a seat?”
We took the chairs closest to them.
“I think you both know the dire situation facing our world.” Alek leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the thick onyx table.
“Global warming?” I guessed.
Lachlan lifted a brow.
“The Sons have amassed an army right under our noses,” Alek went on, ignoring me completely. “When they attacked the school, knowing we were already mounting a rescue for Daphne…” He shook his head. “We’re getting to where we might just be outnumbered. And while I know our skills make us far more lethal, they don’t matter if it’s a hundred to one.”
My stomach did gymnastics.
“We need to increase our ranks,” Lachlan continued. “But we need warriors. Not trainees.”
What they said was true. We’d faced increased attacks from the Sons of Honor, who were hell-bent on destroying anyone supernatural. They were organized. They were deadly. They were going after civilians, and their number one target was Avianna and had been since her return.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. “Do we need to expand recruitment—”
“You already know what I’m thinking, and you’ve already voiced your concern.” Alek’s features tightened.
Now my stomach wasn’t flipping, it was falling straight to the floor. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I am.”
“Fuck.” I leaned back in my chair and rubbed the nape of my neck.
“Would someone care to speak in terms I understand?” Olivia asked.
“They want to wake the Hunters,” I told her.
She gasped. “You can’t be serious.”
Both Lachlan and Alek stared at her with stern, unfazed gazes.
“You are serious,” she muttered. “Okay, then.”
“They’ve been in stasis for centuries,” I argued. “Saint was already documented as being half-mad when they locked themselves away, and you think we should awaken them? Six of the deadliest vampires this world has ever seen?”
“You’re the deadliest vampire the world has ever seen,” Alek noted. “Take my mental powers out of the equation, and you know there isn’t a living creature you can’t kill.”
“Flattery gets you nowhere right now, my king.” My mind was already racing, going through the six hunters and any weakness that had been documented before they’d put themselves in stasis.
“You know you can take them out if you need to,” Lachlan argued. “I’ve seen you spar with four of them. Hell, five if you count that bar fight in—”
“I don’t count that bar fight.” I shook my head. “And yes, I can probably take one of them down, but if all six come at me? If even one of them has been driven into madness from bloodlust?”
“You’ll have to figure it out,” Alek said bluntly.
“Awesome.” I let my head fall back against the back of the chair. “And why would you drag Olivia into this?”
Alek’s gaze shifted to my right.
“Because I know where they sleep,” she said quietly.
My head snapped her direction. “You what?” No one knew where the six had entombed themselves for this exact reason. They’d made it pretty clear that they didn’t want to be awakened for fun.
“I assume you still know how to go home?” Alek asked her.
“Sure do. Turn left at Russia. If you hit the North Pole, you’ve gone too far,” she quipped, dropping her head to her hands. “You have to send someone else.”
“They’re your parents,” Lachlan argued, “Lady Sorokin.”
“And they have no clue what I actually do!” She jerked her face up, and her eyes were wider than I’d ever seen. “Have you met my mother?”
Alek cleared his throat. “She’s a very…intense woman.”
Olivia snorted. “Sure. That’s a word for it. Didn’t you ever wonder why a woman so determined to see her daughters married and mated would let her youngest enter the service of the crown as a bodyguard? She thinks it’s unseemly for a woman to arm herself, let alone—” She dropped her head into her hands again. “Ugh! Send. Someone. Else.”
“That explains the email,” Alek grumbled.
“What email?” I asked.
“The Duchess Sorokin responded to my request saying she’d only discuss it in person with her daughter since I liked to hide my sister’s ladies in waiting away and sever their communications with the outside world.”
“Omigod,” Olivia mumbled into her hands.
I laughed out loud. “The fact that she thinks your si
ster even has ladies in waiting is amazing.”
Olivia looked over at me slowly, narrowing her eyes.
“Oh, come on, how bad can it be?” I shrugged. “We’ll go show our faces for the thirty seconds we’ll be allowed to live before awakening the most bloodthirsty vampires the world has ever seen!”
“That’s. Not. It.” Red crept up her neck until she was full-on blushing.
“Well, whatever you haven’t said has to be good,” I teased, hoping to earn a smile.
“About forty years ago, my mother demanded I leave service,” she said quietly, her eyes focused on the table. “She said she was sending her guard to Avianna’s school and that I’d be returning with them.”
“But you obviously didn’t,” Lachlan noted.
“Right. Um.” She flinched, slamming her eyes shut. “I kind of sort of told her I couldn’t possibly leave service because my mate was also in service, and it was unethical to separate us while he was devoting his life to the crown.”
You could have heard a motherfucking pin drop.
Something ugly shot through my veins, twisting up my insides. “You’re mated?” It was more of a growl than I was willing to admit.
She flinched.
“All this time? All these years, we’ve been friends and you’ve never once told me that you’re fucking mated?” My temper rose swift and harsh. “Who the fuck is he? Why isn’t he here at the estate?” I blanched. “Wait, is he at the estate?”
“No!” she shouted at me. “He doesn’t exist! I’m not mated!”
Relief slammed into me so hard that I sagged in my chair.
“But you told your mother you were,” Alek said, putting it together. “So she’d leave you alone about your feminine duties so you could serve as Avianna’s bodyguard.”
What the fuck had I flown off the handle for? Olivia wasn’t mine. She didn’t even see me that way. Her scent had never once leaned that direction in my presence.
So why the hell had I been enraged at the thought of her being mated to someone else?
“Exactly. And I know I dishonor you by lying to my mother—” Olivia responded.
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