Chapter Nine
MY EYELIDS fluttered open, and the first thing I saw was Varic outside on the patio, pacing back and forth as he yelled on the phone.
He was dressed differently than before: a pair of tight-fitting olive pants and a white T-shirt that clung to his muscular chest and hard, ridged abs. Neither piece of clothing left anything to the imagination, making it easy to see the long, lean, chiseled lines of him and know how beautiful he was.
When I tried to sit up, everything went dark for a moment, and I blinked several times to try to clear the patches.
“You need to eat,” Tiago said as he walked into the room with a tray of food. Hadrian followed right behind him, carrying another tray of drinks, a pitcher of ice water, orange juice, and what looked like iced tea and several bottles of Gatorade.
I tried again to make myself vertical and lost my balance. One of Hadrian’s guys who had entered unnoticed behind him reached for my arm.
“No!” came the sharp command.
As I righted myself, I looked out at Varic, who was shaking his head. He didn’t look mad, he wasn’t glaring, but what he wanted was conveyed easily enough. No touchy.
“Who, then?” Tiago called over to him as he put the tray down in front of me and Hadrian deposited his on the nightstand to my right.
“You.” Varic clipped the word. “And Hadrian. That’s all.”
Tiago nodded and waved Hadrian’s men off, and Varic smiled at me, hesitating a moment before returning first to his conversation and then his walk, the latter taking him out of my line of vision.
I pulled the sheet higher up into my lap as Tiago removed the domed lids covering the food. It smelled amazing, the steak, the mounds of mashed potatoes, and the pile of steamed vegetables. I grabbed the utensils and immediately started in on the meat. Normally I would have cared that I was naked while everyone else was not, but I was too hungry to care.
“Yes, eat every scrap,” Tiago ordered, and I returned my wandering attention to him, watching him pick up a small wicker trash can and walk to the chest of drawers, where he picked up several syringes. “You need more iron.”
“What is all that?” I asked between bites.
“This is vitamin B12, B9, and B6.” He dropped each syringe into the trash. “And this is vitamin A, and this one is the first dose of iron that you had this evening.”
“And he gave those all to me?”
“Yes, he did, all in the arse, three on one cheek, two in the other.”
I chuckled, going back to my steak. “I figured. He said he would.”
He put down the trash can and took a seat at the foot of the mattress. “And you care not?”
I chewed and swallowed another piece of filet. “They’re vitamins, and I think he was kinda worried that he depleted me, and most of all,” I said with a shrug, “I trust him.”
“Even after he shared you with others?” he asked, his face scrunching up,
I looked up at him, surprised. “What’re you talking about?”
“Well, it is one matter to have an orgy with you as the buffet, but he should not have let them take so much blood,” Tiago snapped, his tone full of judgment. He was clearly disappointed. “You should see your neck and back and sides. When I walked in here earlier tonight, I thought, for a moment, that you were dead.”
“Would’ve died happy,” I said, smiling between bites of fluffy, creamy, whipped potatoes. They were amazing.
“Is that right?”
I nodded.
“And what happened to you never coming over here, and how much you hated the courtiers and how the prince clearly had no real interest in you?”
I stopped eating, thinking about everything I’d said, how much I’d protested and how angry and humiliated I’d been. But it was hard, when you were happy, to dredge up the bad. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that, it was childish. I got my feelings hurt, and I thought something that wasn’t true. I was just confused.”
“Oh?”
I went back to hoovering down the steak, then the vegetables, and finally the potatoes again.
Hadrian poured me a tall glass of water and told me to hydrate. “If you do not drink some water, the next time the doctor comes by, he shall have no choice but to hook you up to an IV.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll hydrate.”
“Jason.”
I looked over at Tiago.
“Tell me what you were confused about?”
I picked up the bowl of peach cobbler from the tray. “I thought he wasn’t serious.”
“You thought who was not serious? The prince?”
I nodded, smiling around the food in my mouth.
“That is disgusting. Define serious.”
I took a bite, fell madly in love with a new favorite dessert, and then took the glass of milk Hadrian passed me. For a man whose job it was to protect and kill, he was on top of the beverage service.
“Jason?”
“Sorry,” I obliged, laughing, swallowing quickly before giving him my attention. “After the night when we were interrupted at Benny’s house, I thought that he was just some player. I thought he liked fucking pretty boys and that I could never mean anything to him.”
“But now?”
“Tiago,” Hadrian warned, bristling.
“Sta ’zitto!” Tiago barked, then turned back to me. “Jason?”
“He called me his mate, his consort.”
I was finishing up the phenomenal peach pie and so didn’t notice no one was talking until I replaced the plate on the tray, drank the milk, and wadded up the cloth napkin.
When I looked at Tiago, I saw he’d turned ashen.
“Oh shit, are you all right?”
He seemed to be having trouble breathing. He started to pant and pressed his hand to his heart. “I thought when we first got—I was certain once he met you, he would know what you were, and that of course when he saw how beautiful you are, that he would want you, but—” He looked quickly around the room and then up at Hadrian. “What happened!”
Hadrian didn’t say a word, but the two men locked eyes, wildflower blue and brandy, and slowly Tiago rose, mouth open, utterly gobsmacked.
“You assumed,” Hadrian finally said, indicating me with a wave of his hand. “But if you used your beast and not your eyes, you would know the truth.”
“I am not a wolf like you!” Tiago shouted before pounding on Hadrian’s chest with his fist.
Hadrian grabbed him tight, hands on his biceps, and shook him. Hard. “We are exactly the same! You insist because my family always served as guardians and yours as cup bearers that you are so much better than I, but that is a lie,” he said raggedly, yanking him forward, looming over Tiago until there were only inches separating them. “We were all made the same way, all share the same lineage. It was only the path of our families that diverged.”
Tiago gazed up at him with absolute naked want, and if Hadrian missed that, he was an idiot. It was very romantic—the gruff, strong man who needed a gentle presence in his life, and the spoiled snot who loved being protected and adored.
Hadrian asked for the room to be cleared, and his men complied at once. When the door closed behind the last one—Aziel, as it turned out—he bent closer until he and Tiago shared breath.
“You take me to your bed, allow no other there, have made certain I know that were I stupid enough to touch another, that you will geld me—and yet in public I am treated like your servant, and you rage against my ancestry that, again, is the same as yours.”
Tiago squirmed in Hadrian’s hold, but Hadrian just tightened his grip.
“I am done with this, do you understand?”
The way Tiago caught his breath was very telling.
“No, not with—” Hadrian growled in frustration. “—you. I shall never be done with you… but I am through being treated as though I am not your heart, because we both know that to be a lie.”
“I—”
“Stop!”
Tiago pouted again, and based on Hadrian’s sudden smile, he was as charmed by it as I was.
“We are all descendants of the same blood, no matter from what place in the hierarchy our lines descend, so stop this, tell the prince whom you love, and truly be his friend and shelter the man who is his chosen consort.”
Hadrian loosened his arms, and Tiago turned to me before Hadrian wrapped him up again. He looked so very young as Hadrian kissed the top of his head and held him close. When Tiago nuzzled Hadrian’s chest, I had to smile. He was a handful; I didn’t envy Hadrian in the least.
“Forgive me,” Tiago whispered, looking very contrite as he faced me. “I thought—I have never known Varic to bed a lover alone, and there was so much blood and so many bites… I… assumed.”
I understood about assumptions. I’d made them about Varic myself. And had been so very wrong. “I understand.”
“But even the little I know about you should have pointed me to the truth,” he said, swallowing hard. “You do not seem to me the kind of man who would allow himself to be shared or would share his lover with others.”
“No, I’m really not, though if you’re into that, more power to you. It’s just not me. I’m way too possessive.”
“As am I,” he confessed, flushing slightly, “as you heard.”
“I did hear,” I teased.
He nodded. “I should have thought about how upset you were over the courtiers and gleaned the truth from that.”
It was true. Just the thought of Varic putting his mouth or hands or any part of him on anyone else made me queasy.
“And Hadrian has the right of it. Now that I have been standing here, not just looking at you but breathing you in, I can smell the change in your scent.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You smell like him, like Varic.”
“He marked you,” Hadrian added, giving Tiago another squeeze, “in all ways as his, and you are the first and only.”
I liked hearing that. Yes, it was fast, and yes, we were going to have to talk about a lot of things, but the fact that he was compelled to show others I belonged to him was a great big turn-on.
“I have never known him to be possessive of anyone,” Tiago informed me, “until now.”
“He has broken the law,” Hadrian conceded, “and I worry for what that means.”
I did too.
I was still mulling it over when Varic rushed into the room and over to the bed, taking a seat beside me and putting his hand on my head.
“What’re you doing?”
“My temperature seems to have acclimated to yours for the moment, so I’m checking to see if you’re running a fever, but you’re not.”
“Explain that again?”
“Has it truly?” Hadrian asked, awed, as he and Tiago came closer.
Varic put his right hand on the back of my neck and offered his left to Hadrian, who took it firmly in his and made a choked sound before he smiled.
“You are warm! How are you warm?”
“Jason’s blood.”
Tiago was next, taking Varic’s hand in both of his. “But how is—the blood of a human cannot change ours. It is not… this is unprecedented.”
“I know.”
“Then how? Does this have anything to do with him being a matan?”
“I’d like to know this part too,” I chimed in, smiling at him.
“Well, everyone,” he began playfully, smiling at me, “a matan is two things. First he, or she, is a human vampyr, and second, that person is a conduit of power for those of the royal line.”
Hadrian instantly grinned, and Tiago eyed me fearfully.
“A human vampyr,” Hadrian repeated, disbelieving. “There is no such thing.”
“There is. They’re called matans, and here one sits.”
“Such stories,” Tiago hissed. “Tell us the truth.”
“I am,” Varic said irritably, glaring. “Jason is a human vampyr.”
Tiago fell silent, and when Hadrian put a hand on his back, he didn’t snarl at him as I’d seen him do just a bit ago.
Not that I was focusing all my energy on Tiago, because I was too involved in having a nervous breakdown.
A vampyr.
Me.
Just thinking it made no sense! There was no way. How could that even be possible? How did a regular person walk through their life not knowing something like that?
“How can I be a vampyr?” I said to Varic, which was impressive because I had to take several breaths so I didn’t yell at him to talk faster, to explain my whole life in an instant.
He turned on the bed to face me and took my hands in his. “A matan is the offspring of a vampyr and a human.”
“Yeah, but so is a made vampyr.”
“There’s a specific difference,” he insisted. “A made vampyr is a vampyr as in they drink blood for nourishment, have the double canines, the extended lifespan, and all the other traits of my kind.”
“Like the speed and the strength.”
“Yes.”
“And a matan is what?”
“Human,” he said flatly. “A matan is a human.”
“Meaning….”
“Meaning they eat and drink, have all the human frailties, can catch all the diseases that we cannot, and have a miniscule lifespan.”
“Go on.”
“Well, I’ve never met a matan until you, but there are records of vampyrs who bred with humans, and the recessive gene, not the dominant one, was what appeared in the offspring.”
“So instead of a made vampyr coming from a human and a vampyr, instead a human was born.”
“A matan. Yes.”
“Why doesn’t that happen more of the time?”
“It’s a random, unpredictable mutation, but because the vampyr gene is so much stronger in a union of a vampyr and human, most of the time, you’ll get a vampyr.”
“But not every single time,” I said, studying him, memorizing every detail of his face.
“No.” He leaned in to kiss me. It was just a quick press of his mouth to mine, but I felt a pulse of arousal tumble through me and leave me flushed. Not that I was going to jump him, but the connection was there, powerful and living, between us. I did need to focus on his words, though, and not on the tornado of new feelings whipping around inside of me.
And speaking of his words….
“I have an off-topic question.”
“Please.”
“Tiago and Hadrian, both of them speak more properly than you. Like, there aren’t any contractions, no don’t or I’m. It’s all I am and the prince is whatever, but never the prince’s.”
“And you want to know why I don’t speak the same?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling because he could follow my drifting mind. That was nice. Already he could, and really, it warmed me all over. “And why doesn’t Aziel sound the same as Hadrian?”
“For many, it depends on their age. Aziel, for instance, is a mere two hundred years old.”
To be alive that long was just a drop in the bucket for Varic. Crazy.
“As I am the prince of my kind,” he continued his explanation, “I therefore need to be able to communicate in many different languages, and I must also express myself using far more modern speech patterns. If I sound odd, I’ll be perceived as such.”
It was all very logical. “How many languages do you speak?”
“Only sixty at the moment.”
The number was staggering. “What was the hardest?”
“Mandarin,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ve become quite fluent in it over the past three hundred years.”
He was so casual about the passage of time. It had to be nothing to him. His life was endless, as far as he knew. I hoped mine would be a bit longer than usual just so I would have more of it to spend with him.
“So,” I began, getting back on track with our earlier conversation, “you think that somewhere in my very human ancestral line, that there was a matan, a human vampyr, and that gene got passed down to me.”
“I do, yes. It’s the only thing that accounts for your power.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
“That’s what I was asking my parents about, and they—”
“Was that to whom you were speaking earlier?” Tiago asked, sounding interested.
“Yes.”
“You had both of them on the phone?” Tiago questioned, his tone lowering, sounding both surprised and worried.
“Yes,” Varic snapped.
“And they spoke to one another?” Hadrian asked tentatively. “Or just to you?”
“They haven’t spoken to each other in twenty-three years,” Varic retorted. “Did you expect that would change merely because I had a question?”
“No,” Tiago conceded with a tip of his head. “But I do think them even talking to you at the same time is a crack in the ice.”
“I agree,” Hadrian chimed in. “There was a time your mother would have hung up the moment she heard the voice of the king on the line.”
Varic grunted, and I couldn’t tell if he agreed.
“What happened with them?” I asked.
He sighed deeply, let go of my hands, and rolled off the bed. “My father has a few courtesans, and—”
Tiago scoffed, and Hadrian started coughing.
Varic let out a long, annoyed sigh. “My father has many courtesans—as is his right,” he emphasized, glaring at Tiago and Hadrian for a moment before turning back to me, “and my mother has her courtiers, the difference being that my mother doesn’t sleep with hers. They’re her retinue, her friends.”
“So your mother’s mad because he cheated on her?”
“No,” Varic, Tiago, and Hadrian said at the same time.
“Then I don’t get it.”
“My mother’s not mad. She’s hurt because my father continues to father offspring with his courtesans.”
“Your father is thousands of years old. How many children are we talking about?”
No one spoke, and I realized, as each one of them stood there, brows furrowed, heads tipped, Varic with his arms crossed, that they were counting.
“Are you kidding?” I awed.
Varic glanced over at Tiago. “Are there thirty now?”
“No,” Tiago assured him, but he didn’t sound all that convincing.
“Lady Geneva gave birth in July, and Lady Elaine in September,” Hadrian said dryly. “The count is thirty-three, my prince.”
Varic returned his attention to me. “Thirty-three.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “Your father has thirty-three children? His harem can populate a small town somewhere!”
Varic nodded. “It’s true.”
“I get why your mother would be pissed, though. She probably feels like she lost him.”
“Perhaps.”
“Is she worried that one of your father’s other children could take your place in the line of succession?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m my father’s only living child with his queen. No one can challenge me.”
“Only living?” I repeated, because I’d heard his sadness.
“Yes.”
“Did you have a brother or a sister?”
“A brother. Cassius,” Varic answered softly. “He died in the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said softly, gesturing for him to come to me.
He met my gaze for a moment before climbing back onto the bed and tackling me down into the pillows. He pinned me under him, a heavy thigh between my legs and his face against the side of my neck.
“You have a soft heart to be the consort of a draugr,” he said gruffly, kissing under my ear.
I wrapped my arms around him as I heard the door close. “Hadrian and Tiago bailed on us. I think the hugging makes them nervous.”
“I think they know I just want to lie here with you,” he said, nuzzling his face deeper into the crook of my neck.
I turned my head away from him, offering my throat, my blood, knowing this was what I was supposed to do, feeling it inside without question.
No one would believe me. They’d think I was crazy in lust, in thrall to this man, all hopped up on endorphins and drowning in what was new and urgent, but that wasn’t how I felt. Everything was suddenly complete because of him, because of Varic, as if I’d been missing something all my life that was now in place and whole and living. It was strange and amazing at the same time, like a filter had been removed from my sight and I could see everything as it truly was.
“What are you doing?” he asked, the raspy purr sending a throb of arousal rolling through my frame, causing me to break out in goose bumps.
“I want to comfort you.”
“You’re holding me,” he murmured, his breath warm on my skin. “I’m comforted.”
“Please.”
“You need to let the food and water and vitamins do their work. I can’t have you weak, and I hardly ever drink blood anymore. Today was the first time in over a century that—”
I couldn’t contain my choked gasp and turned my head to look at him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, worried, trying to lift off me so he could check me over, but I took his face in my hands, stilling his motion.
“You don’t—you didn’t drink from the courtiers?”
His brow furrowed as he held my gaze. “Of course not!” He sounded appalled. “I only drink from the dene, the nobility. A courtier’s blood could never sustain me. Even a pureblood courtier’s could not.”
I was thrilled with this turn of events. He didn’t drink from them; he only drank from me. I was special; I was his. I was above any courtier, any other vampyr on the planet because Varic Maedoc only took my blood. I was his mate, his consort, so I alone fed him. He could not have made me feel any more special if he tried.
“And now, of course, I will drink from no one but you, as you are my consort, my mate.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he asked, and I heard the anger infuse his voice, the bristling reminding me this was a prince I was in bed with. He wasn’t used to having anyone question him. I bet having me around would be a bit of an adjustment for him, and I was really looking forward to breaking him into the wonderful world of humanity. “Don’t you want me to feed from you?”
Before he got himself all in a twist thinking I didn’t plan on him drinking from me for the rest of my life, I put my hand on his cheek to soothe him. “Of course I do,” I rushed out and saw him visibly calm, his shoulders relaxing, his body settling back over mine. “I just want to know how my blood will be able to nourish you.”
“Oh, well, I claimed you,” he explained, clearing his throat, having gone from righteous indignation back to calm in seconds. “I made you my own.”
“How?”
“When I bit you and didn’t drink, basically wounding you, your body automatically responded by changing so you could heal yourself, which, in turn, will sustain me when I drink.”
“And that just happens?”
“There’s more technical terms, I’m certain, like when a foreign agent attacks your blood, antibodies are created in response to fight what is perceived as an infection. That’s what this is. It’s not magic. It’s simple biology.”
“And this happens every time?”
“When a royal takes a mate, claims them, yes.”
“Is that what happened when your father mated with your mother?”
He made a face. “Could we not speak of my parents mating?”
Even vampyrs apparently got grossed out thinking about their folks in bed. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, of course. He changed her blood to make her his own.”
“And could that have happened if I was human?”
“You are human.”
“I mean all human.”
“No. I would have never attempted such a joining.”
“But you did it because you knew I was a matan.”
“I did it because I was driven to, and that pull, that need, would not have been present were you merely human.”
I chuckled. “Merely human.”
“Don’t tease the prince of the vampyrs,” he scolded.
“Oh yes, sir,” I baited, smiling wide.
“It’s fortunate I find you so beguiling.”
I smiled and had to wonder if I was glowing. Just looking at him, talking to him, hearing his voice made me ridiculously, stupidly happy. I was falling so hard, so fast, and I was a smart guy. I knew great sex, the best sex, didn’t equal love, but damn if it didn’t feel like that. “You know, the claiming is amazing, if you think about it. That’s all chemical, and it’s like you left a fingerprint in my blood just for you.”
“That’s it exactly.”
“So what if someone else were to drink from me?”
He shifted his weight, moving sideways enough so he could slip his hand under the sheet separating us, down over my flat belly and lower until he took hold of my cock that had been lazily thickening with his closeness. “You’re my consort. My. Consort. My own. No vampyr in the world would ever presume to even touch you without my express permission. It would be—” He shivered like he was imagining his reaction if someone tried. “—forbidden,” he finished with deadly intent.
It was a rush. I couldn’t explain it, because it wasn’t jealousy. It was more finite, more life and death. And he didn’t say if I thought to feed another, because already he knew better. I couldn’t even see beyond him; he was what the sun rose and set on. But if someone else decided they might want to taste the particular vintage I was—the draugr wasn’t having it, and I could have crowed with how desired that made me feel. He was crazy possessive, but not in a way that scared me or gave me pause. He was perfect for me.
“It was a question,” I whispered, lifting to kiss along the underside of his jaw. “I was just wondering if I could poison other vampyrs with my blood now or something.”
“No.” He quieted, stroking my length. He slid his thumb over the end. “In fact, the opposite is true. Your blood is changed now from what it was just hours ago. It’s thicker, richer, sweeter—reformed to sustain a royal.”
“Oh.” I teased him, pushing up into his fist, lifting my hips the little I could from the mattress with my thighs trapped under his granite weight. “So is it like crack now? Will all the other vampyrs wanna drink of me?”
He laughed, and I felt the low, sensual chuckle as much as I heard it. It reverberated through me, eliciting a decadent moan in response.
“Don’t tease or I’ll have you chained to my bed,” he growled, and even though he was being playful, I heard the trace of threat in his voice.
“Like you’d have to chain me.” I sighed, letting him hear my submission and be comforted. He was used to giving orders, used to telling, but I was different, and he’d realize that quickly. I was on board with what he wanted, ready, willing, and able. He didn’t have to make demands; I’d already happily be wherever he wanted me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him down to me.
“You’re not—I took too much before, and now that your blood is just mine, made for me, if you offer and then change your—”
“I won’t,” I murmured, lifting for a kiss as he melted over me.
I opened for him, and he swept his tongue inside possessively, all his languor evaporating in a conflagration of touch as he mauled my mouth, sucking on my lips, nibbling before he broke the kiss and touched his teeth to the side of my neck. The bite and the first long draw made me gasp.
It felt so much better the second time. He wasn’t just drinking from me, he was savoring, relishing, and I felt the tremble in his muscular frame. The pull was different, hotter, slower, an undulating current he made dance in my veins racing through my entire body.
I held him tighter, wanting him to take more, but he licked over the bite instead. I opened my mouth to protest, but he reclaimed my mouth, letting me taste my own blood on his tongue.
“Jason,” he gasped, sounding desperate, almost pleading as he broke the kiss so he could sit back on his haunches and reach under the pillow for the lube he’d stashed there.
“Let me help you,” I urged, my voice at a dangerous timbre. I needed him almost savagely but moved deliberately so I didn’t tear at his clothes.
He stilled, closing his eyes, breathing through his nose as I unhooked and unzipped him. Then I let my hands fall away, back beside the pillow, as his eyes, now all that gorgeous glittering onyx, popped open.
“They’re beautiful when they’re green,” I told him as he roughly pulled out his long, thick, uncut cock and slathered it with lube from head to base. “But there’s something really hot about the black.”
“It scares many,” he said, his voice gravelly, almost ominous, sending a thrill of anticipation sizzling over my skin.
“It makes me think about sex,” I confessed hoarsely as he ripped away the sheet, and I lifted my knees, letting my feet drag across the mattress to rest on his muscular thighs.
“You make me think about sex,” he said in return and settled a hand under my knee. He lifted my left leg, kissed my inner thigh, and then rested it on his shoulder as he curled forward, pressing the wide head of his cock against my tender opening.
“Varic,” I rasped, trying to get him to move, to just fucking take me, squirming under him to get closer.
He wouldn’t be rushed and sank slowly into my body. The sheer size of him caused a stretch and burn that ached and sent prickles of heat to my cock in rapid, unrelenting succession.
“Varic, please,” I implored, my breathing rough, starting and stopping. I slipped my hands under the headboard to hold on. “I won’t break. You won’t hurt me.”
But he wasn’t listening, instead staying careful, concentrating, sweat beading on his forehead as he rode my body tenderly, drawing out each slow press inside and long retreat.
“Look at me.”
He wouldn’t.
“Varic!”
Black pools flicked to my face, and I reached up and cupped his cheek. He leaned into my palm, turned his head, and kissed it before again pressing his flesh back into mine.
“I like this side of you, this tender, loving man.” I moaned as he filled me again, deep, buried to the hilt. My legs stayed over his shoulders as he rolled his hips, rocking inside of me. “But right this second, I think you’re scared of hurting me, so you need to show me your beast.”
He swallowed hard, never stopping, and I moved my hand from his cheek and slipped my thumb into his mouth and pressed it to his canine, scraped it over the razor-sharp end and quickly drew blood.
Instantly he was sucking, and I pulled my hand back and let it fall to my chest as I bared my throat for my lover.
He attacked, and I yelled in triumph, craving all that he was with nothing held back. If I couldn’t feed his hunger, quench his thirst, sate him in every way he could possibly want or need, I would have to leave him. This was a vampyr prince in my arms, and to be his true consort, I had to be everything to him. His fangs locked in my throat. He thrust inside me, snapping his hips fast, ramming deep and hard as he took long pulls from my vein in an endless loop of ravening hunger. He was so powerful. It was the rutting that I craved, the pounding now delivered as he unleashed himself, combined with his trust that if I told him I wanted something, it was the truth. That was enough to make my body tighten around him.
“Varic,” I moaned hoarsely, and he slid his fangs free, laved the wound, and then turned my head so we were eye to eye.
“You’re going to be tempted at some point to think that my interest in you lies in what you are, and not who you are,” he said, panting, his voice catching. “There may be others who attempt to instill in you fear due to my many conquests over the centuries, as though the past could ever matter more than the present, more than now.”
If he only knew how much I agreed with that.
“And finally,” he whispered, his eyelids fluttering for a moment as he slid his hand over my shoulder as leverage, bracing so he could jerk inside of me, slower now but just as deep, my dick trapped between us, rubbing against his abs. “Wait,” he said, moving inside me, adjusting for the angle he wanted. He grabbed a pillow and shoved it under my ass so that when he pushed in again, it was a long, smooth stroke that pegged my gland and made me cry out his name.
“Oh yes,” he crowed, slipping his hand over my forehead, pushing my hair back before he kissed me again, sucking on my tongue, and ground into me.
I came apart under him, his possession, his domination, all that I craved, almost too much to bear.
I slid my legs, anchored on his shoulders, down his arms to drape my knees over his elbows. He held me open and made me his.
I came hard, spurting over his chest, lost, broken into a million flying pieces. He’d woken me to the joys of pleasure and pain, longing and release, and being lost and then found. In that moment he was all there was.
Wrapping his arms under and around me, he broke the kiss to bury his face in the juncture of my neck and shoulder and howled against my skin as he came.
I was branded as his, inside and out.
His touch ignited an electrical tempest between us. It stole everything from me: my breath, my thoughts. And I was afraid I would lose my heart completely. Stupid because it was already his. When I was able to draw air back into my starved lungs, I let my head tilt, resting against his, thankful he’d held me close and given me shelter in the passionate storm we’d made together.
After long minutes he lifted his head, kissed me wet and sloppy, laughed softly into my hair, and lifted off me slowly and with infinite care. We were covered in cum and sweat, sticky in places and slick in others. The air was thick with moisture and sex. He surprised me when he nuzzled the side of my neck before collapsing on top of me again, content, it seemed, to lie right there.
“I must smell rank.” I grinned, lifting my hand and burying it in his sweaty hair, combing my fingers through the long strands before tightening my hold for a moment.
“You smell good, you taste good, you feel good.” He sighed and moved off me enough so he could rock me gently to my side and spoon around me. “I have no complaints.”
This was the life right here, having Varic plastered to my back, not caring for a second about anything but skin on skin.
“I was trying to tell you something, but your body distracted me.”
“And what was that?” I drawled lazily.
“There will be those at court, and perhaps even here, who will tell you that, were you not a matan, I would not have claimed you as my consort, and their words might make you doubt me, or, worse, yourself and your feelings.”
I remained quiet. I’d be a fool if I said that fear could never haunt me. Was it who I was, or what I was that gave me value?
“I need you to remember something very important if you ever hear any of that.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t know what you looked like.”
It took me a moment. “What are you talking about?”
“When Tiago first told me about you, he said you were handsome—but nothing else, no description. He was far more interested in what you could possibly be.”
“He did have a rough time back in Washington.”
He grunted.
“I’m still lost.”
“Friday night I asked for you to be brought to the Diallo house so I could talk to you and perhaps figure out what you were, and help you if I could.”
“You have a good heart.”
“At times, yes, at others, no, but I’ll accept the compliment,” he said, pressing his face to my nape, inhaling deeply.
“I can’t possibly smell that good.”
“You have no idea.”
I had to concentrate on his words. The sound of him, rough and husky, sounding like sex and heat, made me shiver. “Finish what you were saying.”
“Well, as I said, I asked for you to be brought to the house, and I was waiting for either Niko or Benny to escort you in, maybe even Hadrian or Tiago. But no one came, and I got tired of waiting and was going to return to the party to search for you, but I was distracted by the beautiful grounds of Benny’s home.”
“It is,” he agreed. “I can barely wait to show you my many homes.”
I smiled as he kissed my shoulder, his arms tightening around me, snuggling close.
“But yes, you came in, and I had no clue who you were.”
“No, you didn’t,” I agreed, remembering.
“And yet after only moments of speaking and realizing, mistakenly, that you were not a vampyr, I still wanted to drink from you and have you in my bed.”
“Which proves what?” I asked.
“That I had no idea you were you, Jason Thorpe, and could not guess you to be a matan. That call came the next day.” He yawned softly. “So always remember I wanted you first, before all else, as a man.”
I locked the words away for safekeeping.