SERENITY

I jumped to my feet. “No. That’s impossible! I’m young! I’ve only been alive three hundred years or so!”

Cassius stared.

Mason gripped my hand.

“No.” I shook my head. “My father was an immortal. He found my human mother…” Her voice trailed as Cassius’ eyes grew sad.

He approached, his wings spread. They quivered and then started to drip with tears. “Are you ready for your truth?”

Fear slammed into my chest. I rubbed it away with my hand. “No.”

Cassius grabbed my hand. “You were created for evil.”

Mason growled low in his throat.

“But what was meant for evil… turned out for good.” He released her hand and walked toward the fire. “You’ll see your truth in the flames, Serenity. When you’re ready.”

He disappeared.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Mason wrapped a blanket around me then pulled me up onto the couch. “Movie or flames?”

“Movie,” I said immediately.

He turned on The Lion King, not my first choice.

And I could have sworn he thought he was an actual lion. When he saw antelope, he’d move his head like he was getting ready to strike. I didn’t miss the few times his claws came out, and he pawed the air like he was ready for attack.

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing and lost it when he started to purr; the gravely sound felt like home. I pressed my head to his chest and giggled more when the vibrations tickled my ear. “Still wolf.”

“Still wolf,” he said softly. “I’ll always be a wolf even if I do have Gadreel’s memories and apparently, his knowledge of creation.”

“Do you think you have his power?”

“I’m afraid to see,” he said simply. “But I feel something buzzing beneath my skin, though it could be because my arm fell asleep around a half hour ago from you lying on it.”

I jerked away.

He smiled and then tugged me closer.

I gripped his dark hair with my hands and pulled his mouth down to mine. I kissed his lips, tasting the chocolate still there from all two dozen cookies he’d devoured in one sitting. With a moan, he flipped me onto my back and spread his hand wide across my chest, nuzzling my neck with his nose before sucking my bottom lip, his fangs grazing my skin with such tenderness I wanted to cry.

He’d driven me crazy with his aggression, and now he was driving me wild with his slow burning passion. The way he tilted my head at the perfect angle so he could suck my lips and press kisses to my eyelids like they needed attention just as much as my mouth.

There wasn’t one inch of space that he didn’t claim. Every kiss was given with tenderness, with care, with this deep-rooted love that I’d never felt before. I thought I’d known love with my parents.

Then why did I finally feel whole with him?

With this man who’d taken a stranger into his arms and healed her without question?

I choked back tears as he nipped at my neck, a slight sting, and then I felt him suck. I groaned as he moaned against my vein, as if it was his favorite place to be. As if I was the home he’d never had until now.

His hands gripped my jeans once more, tugging them away until they fell to the floor, and as more clothes joined them in a pile, my body burned for his, so hot for his touch that I couldn’t catch my breath.

“You’re so beautiful.” He cupped my face. “It was my very first thought when I saw you.”

“You mean underneath all the scratches and dirt?” I joked.

He didn’t smile. “Scratches and dirt can’t hide true beauty, Serenity.”

My heart squeezed as he dragged his mouth down my collarbone and pressed a kiss to my chest as he cupped my breasts and bit again.

I’d never felt such an erotic bite in my entire life. The soft flesh pierced with his fangs. His head moved across my breast. The vision was perfect. He was perfect.

He looked up. “I want to watch you this time.”

“Watch me?” I frowned.

“I want to take you.” His shirt ripped as he tried to pull it over his head.

I laughed at his irritated expression then stopped laughing altogether when his hips rocked against me, his length pressing close enough that I could feel its heat pulsing, waiting for me. “This way, where I can see your eyes.”

“Is that not normal?”

“Not for wolves.”

“Well, good thing it is for vampires.” I laughed as I tugged his mouth down and kissed him with all the desperation I felt in my soul whenever he looked at me like I was the only one who existed in the universe.

He pulled back and pierced my lip with a fang. “Good thing I’m both.”

“Yeah, good thing.” I winked as he descended again, this time pressing into my core so deliberately slow that my body shook with the feel of it.

Long, even movements he watched, his gaze intense on my response, on my form, as he moved his hand between our bodies. I let out a gasp as he pushed me farther toward the edge, using my expressions to change his speed, his angle, driving me crazy with the way he was able to read my eyes and my body’s response to his.

I ran a hand down his chest. My gums ached to taste him.

He moved his hand across my lips, knocking my fangs on his skin. I sucked in his sweet and smoky blood, my eyes locking on him while he moved inside me, while he claimed me as his again and again.

His teeth clenched. And then he was glowing again, his eyes so light blue, and then an icy white like the rest of the Watchers I’d seen that day.

For one brief second, I saw heaven in his arms.

I felt the way his soul longed for it.

And then the strangest thing happened. When he looked down at me, his feelings intensified as if his soul recognized that maybe heaven wasn’t in the sky.

But in his arms.

“You…” He held my shaking body. “…you’re my heaven. A gift from The Creator.”

I nodded through my tears. “Yours. I want to be yours. Forever.”

He sealed my vow with a kiss.

And I forgot all about Cassius’ words as I fell asleep in his arms, my body facing the fire, the warmth hot on my face as his arms wrapped me up from behind.

I forgot about the flames.

I forgot about it all.