“You feel so good, pretty girl. Your cunt was made for me.” Another punishing stroke and her body shakes, walls fluttering around me. “Again. Tighten like that again.”

“Please.” Her wail makes me grin, reminds me of all the times I fucked her while people walked the halls outside of my office back in Italy, the castle’s staff trying to make the least noise possible so as to not embarrass her. “I’m so close. I need—”

“Me.” I slam in three times in rapid succession and pause, ignoring her desperate yell. “Tell me you need me.”

“You’re all I’ll ever need. Just you.”

Those words hit me in the chest, my dead heart coming to life and beating for her. For the treasure I’ve been given, have killed for, and I would do it again if we always end here. In each other's arms. Breathing in the other’s exhale because it is what gives us life.

“I will never love another. You are the beginning of life and where it ends.” Then, I’m fucking her like she asked, giving us both the relief we need. My pace is near animalistic, every thrust harder than the last, and her cries are lullabies for me.

Moreover, I’m the man lucky enough to spend the rest of his life worshipping her. Listening to those cries again and again.

Slipping a hand to her front, I cup her neck with my fingers, touching her mark. The simple contact makes her tremble, her body shaking beneath me, and when her walls clamp down on me as she comes, I can’t stop myself from letting go.

Her come and mine mix, the heady scent permeating the air while I continue to stroke in and out, loving how she still meets each thrust. How she tightens and claws at the bed, losing herself to the pleasure only I can give.

But just as soon as one need is satiated, another arises, and I’m prepared for it.

I cannot wait to watch her feed.

40

Gabriella

T

here’s a burning sensation in my throat, this uncomfortable flame that seems to grow hotter and hotter with each passing second. I’ve gone from remembering my life to loving Theo and to now this need—hunger—I’ve never encountered before.

That I don’t know how to address or respond to.

My hand claws at the front of my neck, rubbing at the area, but it’s Theodore’s eyes I’m fighting to focus on. There’s a bit of amusement in them, yet so much understanding. So much love.

“The thirst is always the worst in the first month,” he says calmly, lying down beside me in all his naked glory, his release and mine still drying on his cock. “You need to feed, pretty girl. Once you do, it’ll abate. Not disappear, but it’ll be manageable.”

“Is it always this way?” I ask, taking in the subtle changes from over the last century. He looks tired. Like someone that carried the weight of world on his shoulders and is just now taking a breather. My poor love.

“It is.” For a few seconds he doesn’t say anything, as if he were waiting for something, and then I know why. There are two things in this house that are calling my attention; one is down the hall, while the other is downstairs and frightened, her mumblings getting on my nerves. “Are you ready to hunt?”

“You brought me food already.”

“That’s just the appetizer. Her mother is the main course.” My eyes turn to slits and I sit up, throwing my legs over the bed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“You’ll take that as the cue to clean up and meet me downstairs. I need to stop at my studio first.”

“Why first.”

“Because I’m not spending another second without your ring on my finger.”

“Good girl.”

“Always,” I say, and then lean over the bed to peck his lips before pulling back. “I imagine you have clothes here?”

“A suitcase full.”

“Of course, you do.” A giggle escapes me, and my eyes roll. “How often did you stand guard outside this house?”

“Never.”

“Never?” That’s shocking. “So out of character with the man I know.”

“It shouldn’t surprise you that I never left, pretty girl. My post was that wall next to the window each night.”

I leave him in the room after getting dressed and head straight for my studio. It’s calling to me, his scent meshing with that of metal, and they pull me toward a semi-open cabinet. The same cabinet that I once used to store the woman I thought to be my mother’s, a piece of crap locket that holds no true value.

Not anymore.

My real parents died so long ago, leaving my sister and I behind to face the hunting of my kind and the needs of our people. Because those with magic and powers are coveted like prizes and sought to control.

Isabella not as much as me.

Our younger brother isn’t as strong, but he holds himself with the same morals as our father.

I miss them.

Shaking myself out of those emotions, I vow to look for them after. Much after.

“Elise and her kin all need to die first.”

Striding to the furniture, I smile to myself when I find the half-opened drawer with a small leather pouch inside. It’s familiar to me. The same one I used to carry the earrings my real mother gave to me a few months before her death.

I pick it up with a shaky hand and open it before pouring the content into my hand.

My ring is inside. The same one from when we said I do with the large ruby stone in the middle of a gold band surrounded by black diamonds.

The heart that no longer beats inside my chest gives a hard thump, almost restarting again as I slip it on my ring finger where it’ll never leave again. I also catch the light of the charm he placed there, and the date engraved holding a special meaning; the day we wed. He was always trying to make me remember. He truly never gave up. Tears brim my eyes but don’t fall, my chest expands on a shuddering breath that I don’t release as so many emotions hit me at once.

I died.

I suffered.

But he brought me back. He’s always been there. Here.

And I’ve never felt more loved in my life as I do now.