by Isabel Wroth
“All of you,” he bit out from between clenched teeth, grinding his pelvis against the knot of her clit just for the pleasure of seeing her eyes roll back. He felt the uncontrollable spasm that wracked her. “You’re mine.”
It was hell to pull back, to drag his cock against the possessive, powerful grip she had on him, and heaven to dive back in.
Somehow he managed to keep the steady pace, every muted clap of flesh meeting flesh, every rippling echo of their erotic collision tore breathless little ‘oh’s’ from Kerrigan.
The pitch and volume increased to answer every change in tempo, making it unmistakably clear when he hit his mark or found a new one.
Maksim became addicted to those sounds, but he wanted more. He wanted her to know such pleasure that it tore screams from her.
He slid his hand beneath her, lifting her ass off the bed, and bent to lick a hot path up the sweat-slicked line of her throat. She strangled his cock in response.
He scraped his fangs across her hammering pulse, and she practically vibrated, moments away from what was sure to be a catastrophic orgasm.
He bit down and got the screams he wanted.
*****
“You’re bleeding.”
It was close to dawn, and Kerrigan barely had the energy to open one eye. After being pleasured within an inch of her life, mustering any sort of concern to match the horror in Maksim’s voice was impossible.
Considering the way she felt—exhausted and every cell humming with the remnants of the bone-melting pleasure he’d lavished on her—she was prepared to die happy.
She smacked her dry lips together, hoping he had the water she was sure would save her.
“Okay.”
“No, not okay. Did I hurt you?”
Nothing hurt. Not a single part of her. There was heat still in the places where he’d bitten and fed from her, and a mild soreness deep inside her, but that was to be expected.
Maksim gave her a tall glass of water and gently spread her legs, his brows drawn together in an angry scowl.
After carefully swiping the warm washcloth he’d brought to clean her up, he held it up to show her the bright streak of blood.
It was more of a smear, really, and not nearly enough to warrant the level of worry ruining the afterglow.
“I’m guessing you haven’t deflowered that many virgins in your advanced years.”
The look on his face was priceless. The moment of incomprehensible shock, followed by the vivid stamp of possessiveness. He dropped the washcloth and climbed up beside her, his palm spreading wide on her belly.
“You never said. I would have taken better care with you.”
Kerrigan stretched, feeling the aches and minor pains starting to set in as the adrenaline wore off. It was worth it. Tonight had been… perfect.
“Zero regrets, Maksim, and nothing hurts. I feel good. Better than good. Come down here and hold me until the sun comes up.”
He didn’t make her ask twice. Kerrigan burrowed under the heavy comforter, turning to snuggle against his side, their legs tangled together as sleep beckoned both of them.
She felt the emotion that accompanied the press of his lips to her forehead like a warm wave, all the way down to her toes.
“As far as you knew, I was dead. Why not take a lover?” he asked softly, his fingers playing in her hair, pulling whatever tension she felt out of her with every stroke.
She managed a sleepy hum, her cheek pillowed in the crook of his shoulder, her arm thrown over his waist.
“So many reasons, but mostly because it wouldn’t have been you. I was dedicated to being the old maid with an impressive collection of sex toys.”
Maks made an appreciative noise in response to the idea of sex toys, but he cuddled her closer, tucking the blankets up higher around her back.
“Don’t think for a moment that I am complaining, but had I been truly dead, I wouldn’t have wanted you to live alone for the rest of your days.”
“I would’ve had my coven and their kids to satisfy my loneliness, and those toys to satisfy my sexual needs. It would have been enough, but ignorance is no longer bliss. No toy could compare to what it feels like to be with you.”
A deep hum vibrated through his chest, and Kerrigan tipped her head back to see the smug look on his face as he folded his free arm up under his head.
“Out of curiosity, what have you bought for yourself?”
She couldn’t help but to laugh. “I’ll show you my collection tomorrow.”
“After you share what it is that was so different about your spirit collecting mission tonight.” All teasing and sensual smugness faded as his voice turned serious.
To be honest, Kerrigan had completely forgotten, and from one moment to the next, the glow of her spectacular night with her mate faded to a beautiful memory.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A few hours before sunset, Kerrigan woke up and had herself a quick rinse in the shower, rummaging through the snacks and supplies for something to eat. She answered some emails, gave Etienne an update, turned down a few appointments, and settled beside him to wait.
A vampire basically hibernated during the day; all the functions of his body shut down until the sunset. Even then, a vampire’s heart only beat a handful of times per hour, just enough to pump blood through his veins and get oxygen to his brain.
Still, it was a bit disconcerting to touch him and not feel his chest rising and falling or the echo of his heartbeat.
Maks was warm only because the ambient temperature of the basement was in the seventies and because she’d turned the heating pad on when she’d gotten up several hours ago to pee.
It wouldn’t be long now, and Kerrigan couldn’t wait to see Maksim’s eyes open, or to give him the kiss he needed to reassure himself he wasn’t dreaming.
She’d just finished writing down the spells and experiences she’d had at the Silver Wives’ place in her grimoire, when Maksim finally stirred.
She set the black leather book aside and leaned in to press her lips against his before he fully woke, happy in ways she’d forgotten were possible.
It almost hurt a little bit to be this happy again, the way it hurt when blood rushed back to nearly frozen fingertips, but the grip of Maksim’s arms closing tightly around her made Kerrigan forget the pain.
He rolled like an alligator to get her beneath him, one minute dead to the world, the next wide awake and clearly hungry for more than just a kiss. All it took for her hormones to rage and her womb to clench was the prick of his fangs against her lips.
He was gentle, covering her, moving inside her as though one wrong move could break her. As though she was breakable and precious to him.
Staring into his darkening gaze, Kerrigan could feel herself getting close, and he must have felt it too because he smiled wide enough to show her those sharp incisors.
Just that, and she was right there: toes curled around the edge.
She tipped her head back for him; the warmth of his breath on her throat and the lick of his tongue sent her soaring. Kerrigan thought she heard him laugh seconds before he struck.
Maksim seemed to time the pulls of his mouth with the gripping pulse of her orgasm, and it only made it better. So much better. Crazy better.
If this was a glimpse of her future, she was going to wake up a very happy woman.
When she could move again, Maks gathered her up and took her to the bathroom.
The shower was on; steam billowed out when he opened the glass door, enveloping them in a warm mist. With his hands in her hair, lathering in her shampoo, Maksim gave a deep, satisfied sigh.
“This is the sort of intimacy I imagined between us.”
“Me too.” She wasn’t in a hurry to get out, languishing in the act of bathing with her lover that seemed somehow every bit as important as sex.
It struck her how different things were now. How open and free Maksim was with his affection, where before he’d been the soul of propriety, never tak
ing advantage of her or selfishly pressing his own needs on her.
She realized how easy it would have been to let him consume her, how easy it would have been for her to completely lose her identity, and how hard he’d tried even before that night in Vermont to let her grow and be her own person.
In the same way Ivy never had to ask how much Uriah loved her, Kerrigan would never doubt she was loved.
There were things they didn’t know about one another. Things from Maksim’s past he’d never discussed with her, and things from Kerrigan’s past he needed to know.
He might not have said those all-important three words to tell her, but how could she doubt it after everything they’d been through?
“This is my soap,” he said, the delight and surprise in his voice breaking through her thoughts. “My soap from Venice.”
She remembered the night she’d gotten brave and told Maksim she loved the way his cologne smelled.
She remembered the flash of his fangs when he smiled and told her he didn’t wear any. That the smell came from the soap he’d been buying for decades from the same merchant in Venice.
He’d promised to take her there someday, but Kerrigan wound up going alone.
Maksim held the oval cake up to his nose to savor the smell before working it into a washcloth, happiness in his expression as the masculine scent of cognac, amber, and a hint of vanilla filled the shower.
“I went to Italy looking for a rare book, took a detour to Venice, and wound up at the place you said made your soap. I didn’t speak more than a handful of Italian, and the ancient old man behind the counter kept shouting ‘pronto’ at me—”
Maksim chuckled heartily. “Giuseppe. He took over the business in 1955 when he was twenty, after his father retired. Giuseppe would have handed the reins to one of his sons by now. Eduardo, perhaps.”
He spoke of the old man who’d scared the crap out of her with warmth and affection.
“Giuseppe was the only one I saw, and I think if I hadn’t said your name, he’d have kicked me out of the shop. That grouchy old man looked delighted, and little wonder, considering he shoved a wooden crate with twenty bars of soap across the counter at me. He must have had it sitting around or something, waiting for you to pick up.”
Maksim set the soapy washcloth to her skin and rubbed gentle circles across her chest with a rueful smile.
“I paid in advance many years ago for two thousand bars of soap and routinely picked up several bars a year. I bet by this time, there’s another crate waiting for me taking up space in the shop, making Giuseppe cranky.”
“I was glad to have so many bars. I stashed them everywhere,” Kerrigan admitted shyly. “It made me feel good to smell you on my pillows, or to step into the breeze and get a hint of that smell, like you’d hugged me and the scent rubbed off on my clothes.”
He washed her hips and thighs, up and down in long strokes, his voice echoing in the stall that was just barely big enough for the two of them.
“I was a fool before, Kerrigan. I reacted without thinking, rushing headlong into danger without considering the consequences, and it cost me—us—twelve years of loneliness and misery. I promise you, I will not let anything or anyone separate us again.”
“It wasn’t your fault—”
“Yes, love, it was,” he insisted firmly, ducking his head to catch her gaze. Water dripped from his eyelashes; his hair was slicked back from his face, leaving not a trace of softness to his expression.
“Your mother was crying when she called, begging me to help get you back from the Silver Wives. She said they’d taken you. That you were hurt, and she didn’t know what the Wives were going to do to you. She said all the right things to send me running headlong toward a fight I was woefully unprepared for.
“I’ve been a warrior for close to seven hundred years, and I owned a security company, Kerrigan. One with a special branch dedicated to rescue and recovery, and it never once occurred to me to call them for help.
“There are protocols layered upon protocols to retrieve kidnapped loved ones, and I abandoned them all because, at that moment, I’d never felt such searing panic, and all I could think about was getting to you before it was too late.
“I’ve seen lovers and spouses panic before. I’ve counseled them to be calm, to listen to the advice of my people. To not run off without any sort of plan or backup.
"If I’d stopped and asked more questions of your mother—such as how she’d gotten my private number and how she even knew about me considering you hadn’t shared our relationship with your parents—that day would have ended very differently.
“I should have gotten one of the company teams involved, should have gotten more information, and then stormed the gates with an army. It was my mistake, and it won’t happen again.”
Kerrigan reached up with both hands and laced her fingers behind his neck, the water starting to cool as it rained down around them.
They’d need to get out in a minute, but not before they finished hashing this out.
“We were manipulated, Maks. Both of us. My mother has a special talent for inciting guilt and panic, and there’s a very real chance she wove a spell into your ear to amplify the worry you were feeling. Otherwise, I know in my heart you’d have brought that army and moved heaven and earth to get to me.”
He nodded, bending to rest his forehead against hers.
“I’d have destroyed both if it meant saving you.”
“I know. Let’s get out and dry off because we still have to talk about last night.”
“Yes. Yes, we do.”
*****
“I made a mistake a few years ago, and last night it reared up to bite me in the ass.” Dressed in a velvety soft tunic and comfy lounge pants with fluffy socks on her feet, Kerrigan sat wedged in the corner of the couch, twisting the drawstring of her pants around and around in her fingers.
Maksim sat across from her on the coffee table, intently focused on her, his elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped loosely between.
“Because I didn’t have anything of yours to focus on during my hunt for your spirit, I used the necklace you gave me and a bit of blood magic. I also used the larger of the two diamonds to store the pieces of what I thought was your spirit. I didn’t realize until the moment I summoned that complete soul into the space I created in my mind, that it wasn’t you.”
Maksim waited, feeling tension slowly rising as she continued to nervously rush through her explanation of what all had gone on during her work last night.
“I warred between feeling devastated and furious, but I forced myself to think of it as progress because if I’d managed to piece together that cranky bastard who made you, finding you should be a piece of cake. It was a milestone. Something no one else before me had done. You know?”
Kerrigan looked to him for understanding, but Maksim was struggling to keep his turbulent emotions from showing on his face.
To have achieved all the things Kerrigan had was something to be incredibly proud of, and he was proud of her. Immensely proud, yet to learn his maker was not suffering the burning hell of being scattered to the four winds, tattered and torn, to know he’d had contact with Kerrigan ignited rage inside him, unlike anything Maksim had felt in a very long time.
On a roll, she didn’t give him time to express how furious he was, which in hindsight, was probably a good thing.
“He and I battled it out last time for eight hours—verbally—and a big part of what made that night a mistake was my own desperation. I went into it emotional and unprepared, expecting to see you. That prick wouldn’t give me a single freaking inch, but I won. I won, dammit. And that made me stupid because I thought I severed our connection then and there.”
“Did you not?” Maksim managed to ask quietly.
Her cheeks turned pink with embarrassment, and she struggled to look him in the eye.
“Seems I didn’t. Is there any truth to that whole ‘what’s my blood is your blood is your mak
er’s blood?’”
“I don’t understand the question.”
Kerrigan’s tongue came out to swipe at her lips, her teeth briefly gripping at the plump lower curve, seeming to find the courage to look up at him.
“When you took my blood, and I took yours, cementing our bond, would that have given any power to Austmathr if he’d been alive?”
Maksim froze, never having considered anything of the sort could be possible as Austmathr was well and truly dead.
Kerrigan was a witch, a powerful witch, with the ability to summon the dead.
Not only that, she’d proven how indomitable her will was, and that alone was stronger than the limitations of her power as a witch. Most Brides were rarely ever anything more than human.
The idea that his maker would have any claim to Kerrigan made his blood run cold.
“The larger the clan, the more power the sire has to keep control of all his progeny. If Austmathr were alive, yes, our bond would add strength to what he already had.”
“And if the clan sire is killed, what happens to the clan?”
Maksim shook his head, remembering the chaos that came after Bronagh’s betrayal.
“Depending on the size of the clan, factions are formed where the strong turn against one another, the lesser members or the newly made usually are slaughtered first. In short, it’s chaos until one of the clan comes out on top, but that bond of power from having sired all of us is lost.”
“So, essentially, the king dies with a shit ton of heirs to the throne, with no named successor?”
Maksim tipped his head from side to side, not keen on sharing the true cruelty of his race with her.
“The eldest of the king’s progeny is typically the strongest and often attempts to assume control. In our case, it was my brother Bronagh who cut off our sire’s head and took his place.
“Those who Bronagh deemed weak or loyal to the old regime, he killed. Our clan diminished from thirty-six to twelve within a matter of days. I was considered the weakest among the twelve Bronagh graciously allowed to live, which proved to be his fatal mistake when I took control from him forty years ago. Vampire society is…”