Chapter Twenty-Two
Mina didn’t know she could feel like this. She lay with her head on Mikhail’s bare chest, his fingers languorously tracing lines from her hip to the small of her back then repeating the trail. His lovemaking was intoxicating, but the man himself? Riveting. Mesmerizing. Like she’d fallen under the sweetest of spells. And this time, she didn’t want to wake up.
But more than that, this man, this emotion burning through her with meteoric fury, felt like being shot into fate’s precarious hands. She was focused only on what the stars deemed important. And at this moment, that was her dark prince. Not the war. Not her coming confrontation with the lords in the House of Arkadia. Nothing at all but this precious gift weaving her into a sensual web.
The rough pads of his fingertips as they swirled over her skin, the soft rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the strong thud of his heartbeat beneath her ear—this was where her destiny lay. She was sure of it.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, voice rumbling deep.
“You.”
His fingers stilled, then began roving again. “Good things, I hope.”
She lifted up onto one arm, her loose hair falling down to his chest. “The best.” She smiled.
He reached up and cupped her cheek, fingers combing into her hair. “Then what worries you?”
He seemed to always know. She couldn’t tell him she feared now that she’d found her purpose, found him, that he would disappear. And she’d fall back into that slumber where everything was cold and quiet. No life at all. She didn’t want to rule without him at her side.
“You can tell me,” he urged. But she wasn’t quite ready to voice those fears.
She turned to thoughts of Lord Petrov again, gliding her fingers along his pectoral and sternum, her fingers lazily dipping and rising in the hard grooves.
“You know, Lord Petrov told me of a white witch visiting my birth celebration. I remember when I was a little girl, my nurse used to say that a white witch visited me as a babe and made me the fairy girl that I was. Then she was taken away from me, and I forgot. Or I thought it was only a tale to make me laugh. It didn’t seem important then, and I’ve heard no one speak of it since.” She paused her exploration with her fingers, meeting his gaze. “Have you heard of that before?”
“Yes. I know those who dare to speak of that witch. But not many do. It’s as if Queen Morgrid cast a spell to make everyone forget.”
“How do you know about it then?”
He smirked. “I made a point to discover all I could about you when the queen set her sights on using you as a pawn in her plans.”
“You did?” She was surprised he’d investigated into her past before they’d met. “Why did you do that?”
“If the queen had made a point for her son to marry you when war was raging across the land, I knew there was another reason other than a merry wedding. Nefarious reasons.”
“I see. And what did you discover?”
“I found that a white witch visited you on your birth and proclaimed you would be Queen of Arkadia and would rule them all. That’s how I know you were meant to be queen.”
Mina frowned and shook her head. “That’s not exactly what she said. Not according to Lord Petrov, who actually wrote the words down.”
Smiling, something he was doing more than usual as of late, he asked, “Would you care to enlighten me?”
Smiling at his teasing request, she thought a moment, remembering the words exactly as they were scrawled into his book. “You will drink fire into your soul and awaken the beast of vengeance, righteousness, courage, and hope. You will awaken the white queen with emerald eyes and smite the evil one with one bite.” She paused, hesitant about the last. “You will be the savior of them all.”
“What frightens you?” he asked.
She shrugged one shoulder, her hair slipping over her breast with the movement. “All of it, really.”
In a blink, she was beneath him. He held himself up on his forearms and wedged a heavy thigh between her legs.
“Being queen frightens you?”
“No. Not exactly. What does all of that mean?” She let her hands wander to his shoulders. “Drinking fire? Beast of vengeance? Smiting with one bite?”
He laughed, brushing a kiss on her pinched brow. “It’s a metaphor. The southern army will help us win against the Glass Tower.”
“But I won’t be that kind of queen. I’m not that kind of person.”
“What’s that? The kind who fights for what is good and right in this world?” When she opened her mouth to speak, he slanted his mouth over hers, silencing her protests with his probing tongue. His invasion caught her off-guard, melting her worries away. She clenched her nails into his muscular shoulders on a soft moan. When he broke the kiss, his eyes blazed starbright. “You will be the queen we need.”
“I’m not a beast,” she whispered.
“I’m not so sure.” He spread open her legs with his thigh and settled lower, pushing inside her with a slow roll of his pelvis. He held her gaze, his own mere inches above her. “I can see a queenly beast in there staring back at me.”
She planted her feet on the bed and rocked up to meet each sinuous slide of him inside her.
He grinned, fangs sharp and ready. “A she-vampire of the highest realm,” he grated. His gaze drifted down their bodies. He glided his hand down her outer thigh, crooking his fingers under her knee. “With a throne I long to mount every moment of every day.” Another languid roll of his pelvis. “I could worship at this throne forever.”
“Stop torturing me, Mikhail—” she clutched a hand in his hair—“give me what you promised.”
His brow pursed together in a frown as he paused in his too-slow tempo. “What promise was that?”
“I believe you said four or five times. I’ve had but two.” She pulled his mouth down to hers, feeling as if there was indeed a beast inside her, yearning to claw her way out. “More, Mikhail.” She nipped his lips. “Love me hard.”
He bent her long leg high, pressed a kiss to the inner side of her knee and hooked it over his shoulder. “Whatever you command, my queen.”
Then she experienced the power of the man, the vampire, covering her body with his own, consuming her from the inside out, pressing home his masculine strength with such intensity she heard a whispering from the inmost part of herself.
This. This was what was missing all her life. This feeling of being vibrantly alive. Of finding she loved the strength within herself that she’d kept hidden so long, too afraid to let her vampiric qualities rise to the surface. Mikhail awakened her most primal instincts in such beautiful, delicious ways. While the idea of being a less-than-genteel creature had once frightened her, Mikhail adored every part of her, including the animal within that had awoken on the night he gave her a blood kiss in the tower. The night the fates first joined them, divining this fierce, electric kind of love.
And now, as he drove deep and hard inside her body, just as she’d asked him to, she could only repeat a mantra of “yes” against his lips, their gazes locked. Like their bodies, they were held fast and hard to each other, reaching for that moment of ecstasy together, and something else. Something more.
When she opened her mouth in a soundless scream, her orgasm crashing through her like a violent tidal wave, he melded his mouth to hers, groaning as he spilled inside of her. She dug her nails into his back, relishing the heaviness of him buried deep as he found his release, growling his satisfaction.
Even as he kissed her down from the pinnacle of orgasm, the burning need remained. An unquenchable fire.
She broke the kiss, panting. “Will it ever go away?”
His mouth quirked up on one side. Not exactly a smile. More an expression of acceptance. “No. I don’t think it will.” He brushed away a strand of her hair sticking to the dampness of her neck. “Not for me.”
She cupped his sharp, angular jaw gently, sweeping her thumb to the corner of his mouth. “What will happen to us? After the war, will we—I mean, you are the great-grandson of Rodin Varis. You are a prince yourself, the highest rank I could marry.”
She couldn’t keep the hope from her eyes, wishing he’d make that sacrifice for her. She couldn’t bear the thought of ruling alone, for she’d never take another man but him at her side.
Angling his head just enough, he pressed a kiss to the pad of her thumb. “Hush now, Mina mine. Let’s not worry about tomorrow.” He hovered close, sweeping his lips across hers, gliding his tongue across the seam as he rolled his spine, stroking inside her. “You just relax and let me keep my promise.”
She laughed, her breath catching on a gasp when he pounded once, deep and hard. “Yes, Captain.”
He pressed a desperate kiss to her lips, sweeping his tongue in swiftly before lifting away. His expression transformed to one of storm and midnight, a dark gravity hovering over him as he expressed himself with his unearthly eyes and magnificent body. She couldn’t hear the words, but she felt the emotion with her empathic senses and with her own heart. The most deep and reverent emotion of all pouring from the man thrusting deep inside her.
She closed her eyes and whispered her mantra of “yes,” accepting his wordless vow that there would be a future beyond the veil of blood and death that loomed ahead.