I can feel the amulet willing me to take her as I lean down over her, pressing my body against hers so that my chest flattens her breasts.
I find her lips and claim them as my own, kissing her with more force each passing moment, but with the amulet singing through my mind in a sorcerer’s chant, I feel my fangs shimmering strangely, as though they don’t want to bite, as though I can lie with my woman as a man, just a man, and that’s a glorious fucking thing for a vampire who’s known no other life for a millennium.
She reaches down, more confident now than she was the first time, and tightens her palm around my manhood.
I growl softly as she strokes my precome up and down my shaft, a glittering lust in her eyes I can’t look away from.
“You look so beautiful right now,” I whisper.
“I love you,” she gasps, as I arch my back and plunge inside of her.
“Say it again,” I growl.
“I love you.”
I pump harder, feeling her pussy flutter and shiver around my throbbing cock.
“I love you,” she gasps, and the next time she says it her voice turns hollow as a sudden orgasm grips her.
I watch the surprise fill her eyes, the quickest orgasm that has struck her yet.
I have to grit my teeth as her pussy gets ultra-tight around my massive cock, quivering and pulsing in time with the amulet, the light of which is flowing through the room like water now, touching every corner of it, blinding with its light.
“Rub those tits,” I snarl, gazing down at them, hypnotized at the way they bounce each time I thrust into her.
She pushes them together and I feel the pressure building at the base of my cock, with a tingling at the tip, an unstoppable torrent of sensation as I gaze at her live-giving breasts and the way they bounce and contort under the loving caress of her hands.
And then I feel something else, something stranger, as the amulet blares somehow – impossibly – brighter.
I feel a welcome new heaviness entering my body.
I feel my fangs flattening and the need to drink her blood draining from me, seeping from my every pore and a new urgency taking hold of my hips and compelling me to pump even harder, deeper.
Take her, take her.
I feel my seed roaring inside of me as though I’ve just unleashed its chains and for the first time I’m going to let it do what it hungrily needs to do.
I pump and lean close to her, kissing her neck now instead of biting it, each thrust of my huge hot cock bringing me that bit closer to my humanity.
I feel it climbing through the long years, the man I was before the blood-need, before the hunger, before the night made its claim on me.
“Fuck,” I whisper. “Can you feel it, Tammy?”
“You’re going to make me pregnant,” she gasps.
I make a moaning, howling noise, but I shouldn’t be surprised.
Of course, she can feel it.
We were destined to be together a long time ago.
As the fire lighting up my dick gets even hotter, even more compulsive, a thought strikes me that sends me into overdrive.
Tammy isn’t the end of my story.
She’s the beginning.
I was turned into a vampire over a thousand years ago so that I could one day find her. We were born in different times and the only way for me to find my way to the woman of my dreams was for me to tolerate endless nights stacked high like an executioner’s sword plunged into the muddy earth. Because from that earth a verdant forest would grow, flourish, and that’ll be our lives going forward.
Our mortal lives.
“Come with me,” I snarl. “Come so your body knows to make room for our offspring.”
“I—I—I’m.”
I pound into her one last time as the light seeps from the room, my feed-driven skin replaced with taut human flesh, the amulet falling dark and shining no more.
My seed whelms and then surges up my shaft, firing into her as I find her lips and we moan into a crescendo, our bodies bucking and twitching like the tremors after an earthquake, slowly quieting and becoming still as I collapse over her and then roll aside, taking her in my arms.
We lie like that for a long time, both of us panting.
Panting.
I draw the air into my lungs and I feel it rushing around my body, making me feel dizzy as my heart – my fucking heart – begins to hammer in my chest like a god’s hammer, smashing over and over.
“I can feel it,” Tammy whispers, as though reading my thoughts. She sits up and lays her hand against my bare chest. “Oh my God, it worked! Didn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say, a smile touching my lips, a smile I’ve waited over a thousand years for. “I’m a mortal now.”
“And …”
“And what?” I laugh.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like I’m right where I need to be,” I whisper, pulling her close to me and savoring the feeling of our bodies, both hot, but not feed-hot.
This is the heat of a man and his woman, a woman he’s claimed.
Forever.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you,” she echoes, giggling. “I wonder if we’ll ever get tired of saying that.”
“Never,” I say, stroking my hand up and down her back, still stunned at the way my heart leaps around in my chest.
“I thought it didn’t work for a second. You seemed to … sort of go somewhere. Like you were lost in thought or something.”
“Gods, Tammy, you’re better at reading me than anyone I’ve ever met. I did get lost in thought for a second.”
I tell her about my idea that I was only turned into a vampire so we could meet.
“I never would have never found you if I hadn’t been changed. You were meant to be born a thousand years in the future. If I had stayed human we would never have had this chance. Don’t you see? It was always going to be us at this moment.”
She smiles shakily.
“What?” I urge.
“It’s just that that made me want to cry. But I don’t want to cry. I want to scream with joy. Because I can feel it, Torsten. I can feel your seed in my womb and it’s just so freaking amazing.”
I sit up, smiling widely now, unable to stop.
I feel so vital, so alive.
“Do you think Chipper will mind if we stay to watch the sunrise?”
“With the number of treats and play the dog sitter gives him?” Tammy giggles. “Yeah right.”
So we lie down together and hold each other close.
After a while, I feel Tammy begin to breathe sleepily next to me, and I match her breathing with mine, in and out, savoring the simple pleasure of it.
But I’m too full of adrenalin to sleep.
I just lie there, holding the love of my life close, feeling all the tiny nuances in my human body.
I don’t regret it.
Not even for a second.
Because I know we’re right.
She’s pregnant.
After what feels like only a couple of hours, I stand up and walk to the window. Drawing aside the curtain, I can’t help but flinch a little, centuries of instinct stabbing into me.
But as I watch the sun crest the horizon, lighting up the sea a startling yellow, glistening brightly and warmly, I can’t help but let out a sound of utter astonishment.
I turn to find Tammy beside me, and I lift my arm and cradle her close, and together we watch the everyday miracle of the blazing autumn sun.
EPILOGUE
TWO WEEKS LATER
Tammy
Chipper doesn’t know what to make of it when I emerge from the ensuite and start leaping around the bedroom, a giddiness filling my chest that has to work hard to outdo the general serenity that has gripped me these past two weeks. He tilts his head at me, tongue out, happy because I’m happy as he leaps onto the bed with me and starts lapping at my face.
Torsten is at work, something which stunned his company at fi
rst. In all the years he’s owned it, he’s never gone to work in the day. But now he’s starting his mortal life and he wants to leave behind an empire for our family.
These last two weeks have been heaven.
I want to scream every time I think about that morning at the cabin on the island, the stunned look on Torsten’s face as he waded into the water and collapsed onto his back, floating atop the waves.
“Isn’t it cold?” I called.
“Who cares?” he laughed. “I can feel it.”
“You’re a madman.”
“Well, yes. I am crazy about you.”
“Oh, so mortality has made you cheesy now, has it?”
He stood up in the water and grinned mischievously at me.
“You better believe it,” he chuckled.
Now I feel butterflies swirling around my belly when I think about it, that moment, the first brick in the road of our lives. I cradle Chipper close to me and together we roll around in the silken sheets, and then I can’t help it.
I leap up and start singing, letting my voice flow through the apartment.
I sing loud and high and with pride ringing in my voice.
“We’re pregnant, we’re pregnant, we’re preeeggnaaaaant—”
And then I bump straight into my fiancé’s chest, Torsten looking even more dashing in the light of the unusually bright autumn day.
“Oh,” I whisper, gawping at him for a moment.
“We’re …”
I feel tears spring to my eyes when the devoted happiness floods into his face, his blue eyes gleaming, smiling broadly with his human teeth.
Excitement flares in him but his skin doesn’t pulsate red. And yet he still burns, burns with the passion of our love, our future.
“Yes,” I whisper. “I just did three tests, so I’m pretty freaking confident. I wanted to do something special to tell you. But it turns out you’re still pretty quiet even when you’re not a vampire anymore.”
“I knew it,” he says, wrapping his arms around me – arms that are still powerful and thick and protective even if they’re human, no, because they’re human – and smashing our bodies together in a beautiful moment of intimacy. “It was that first time, the night I changed. I can’t wait to see what an incredible mother you’ll make, Tammy. I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together. I love you.”
“I love you,” I whisper, laying my head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat, that wonderful hammering that lets me know how human and happy he is.
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Torsten
I sit in the couch area of the recording studio, bobbing Freya up and down on my knee and never once, not even for a goddamn second, getting tired of the way she coos and smiles sleepily. If I stop bobbing her up and down for even a moment, her eyes flitter open and she looks at me as if to ask if I’ve lost my mind.
I grin and cradle her to my chest, rocking her side to side, which she likes just as much as the bobbing.
It’s like she’s got a little piece of me in her, the part that savored the rocking of the ships as we sailed from far-flung land to far-flung land.
Chipper sits in the lap of the studio technician, Joanne, a woman who my wife has been spending more and more time with of late. Joanne is in her fifties and always wears flowing, summery dresses, despite the encroaching cold weather.
She’s a good, decent woman, and I’m glad that my wife has found a friend as well as a work partner.
But my eyes only graze across her before settling like flaming infernos on Tammy.
She stands in the booth, her hand clutching the microphone as her cheeks flame red. Her angelic voice fills the booth as she sings a song she wrote herself, a song about life and death and a thousand years in the cold dark north before emerging onto a sun-glorious beach and basking with her lover. She sways as she sings, her natural musicality shining through in her performance.
Having Freya has added even more curves to her body, something I thought impossible before. As I sit here, I’m glad that Joanne and Freya and Chipper are here, otherwise I might ruin the performance by smashing through the sound-proofed glass and claiming my queen where she stands.
After completing the song, she exits the booth and comes around to the seating section.
“God, that was awful,” she says.
“It was not,” Joanne snaps. “And you know it wasn’t.”
“It was amazing, wife,” I tell her fiercely. “It was the voice of an angel. But a dangerous angel. A badass angel. An angel capable of taming a devil, you could say.”
We share a secret smile and I feel a deafening army of Valkyries soaring through my mind and heart and soul.
In my first mortal life, all I longed for was for them to carry me off to the heavenly halls where I thought I’d be happiest, most content. But now I’m here, with my wife, looking like a picture of perfection even in her baggy T-shirt and jeans, the fabrics doing nothing to conceal the voluptuousness of her body.
“What did you think, boy?” she asks, scooping Chipper up and coming to sit next to us.
Chipper leans over and softly, tenderly licks Freya on the head. Our daughter smiles in her sleep and together we all lie back on the couch, Joanne leaving the room quietly, shutting us off in silence for a few minutes.
“I’m so nervous,” Tammy murmurs into the quiet. “My first album. What if it’s terrible?”
“You’ve worked hard,” I growl. “All those gigs you did, even while pregnant. And I know it’s not terrible. I’ve heard a lot of music, Tammy, countless artists, over the years. And you’re something else. You, my beautiful, perfect wife, are one of a kind.”
“Gorgeous?” she giggles, gesturing at herself with the hand Chipper isn’t currently rubbing against. “Have you seen me lately? I didn’t know you were supposed to glow after the pregnancy, too.”
“Yes,” I say passionately. “I have seen you, and you look like a woman who’d be naked and doing unmentionable things right now if we were alone.”
“Really?” she whispers, stroking her hand over Freya’s head and then finding my fingers.
“Really,” I say firmly, giving her hand a squeeze, still stunned at the love and warmth that can flow between two mortals, that flows between us ceaselessly, beautifully, and will do so for the rest of our earthly lives.
“Because I love you,” I growl, leaning across and kissing her at the edge of her mouth.
Any closer and I’d lose control.
“And you.”
I kiss Freya and she makes an endearing cooing noise.
“Yes, yes, and you, Chipper.”
I bring my face close to the little man and he climbs onto my head, lapping at my cheeks, as Tammy and I laugh quietly so as not to wake our daughter.
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
TEN YEARS LATER
Tammy
I sing softly as I chop the tomatoes for the omelet, the morning sun shafting through the window and lighting up the sleek kitchen like the inside of a diamond. Birds chirp from the nearby forest and the shadows of the trees in our garden are already growing shorter, showing that the weatherman might’ve gotten it right for once. Today looks to be glorious.
“Hey,” Freya says, walking into the kitchen and shooting me a mischievous grin that’s half her father and half completely her own. “We’re on holiday, Mom. That means no work.”
“Making you a delicious breakfast is work now, is it? Then I’ll stop.”
She giggles as she hops onto the bar stool. She has the light blonde Nordic hair that Torsten had before it silvered, and her face is full of his same impishness. Since becoming a mortal, Torsten has become far more playful, taking joy in life he tells me he never had as a vampire.
“And I owe it all to you,” he whispered last night, as we lay in bed, both breathless after our lovemaking. It’s gotten even more passionate over the years, stolen in precious moments between our careers and fami
ly life. “I owe everything to you, Tammy.”
“Mom?” Freya says, in that way that lets me know I’ve been off in the clouds.
“Yeah?”
“I said, are you excited, about the awards show?”
“Hey.” I pick up a spatula and aim it at her playfully. “I thought we said no work talk, huh?”
“It’s awesome though,” she smiles. “You’re going to win another award.”
“Your father has won awards, too,” I point out.
“Yeah, but for business,” she says.
I smile, shaking my head indulgently. Despite their many similarities, Freya gets bored by business talk, even when it turns to the innumerable accolades Torsten has won for his charity work and fair business practices since emerging from the shadows and properly taking the helm of Fenrir Industries.
Harry – Harald, named after Torsten’s father – and Sebastian, named after mine, are set to be the little dominating businessmen, once they get past the wrestling and playing stage, that is.
They’re both seven years old now, so any day now …
As if sensing that I’m thinking about them, they come charging through the house, chasing each other with big foam swords. Harry wheels on his twin brother and ducks low, aiming for his legs. Seb leaps back and grins widely, his mop of unruly brown hair bobbing around his freckled face.
“Yeah, right,” he laughs. “Like you think I’m that slow.”
A moment later, Torsten appears, looking rugged and handsome with his silver beard clinging to his jaw, his hair swept sleepily and lazily and freaking handsomely to the side.
He’s cradling Charlotte to his chest, rocking her softly as he walks into the kitchen and leans across to lay a gentle kiss on my cheek. Old Chipper walks loyally at his side, protecting the youngest child as he always does.
I turn and find his lips instead, and we both smile as Freya makes gagging noises. Gray-haired Chipper yips softly.
“Dad, do you have to?”
“Mommy, when’s breakfast?” Harry calls merrily as Seb leaps on his back, trying to wrestle him to the floor.
Her Vampire: An Instalove Possessive Vampire Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 207) Page 8