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So simple, when he says it like that.

“And I’m more than happy to wait,” Cas continues.

“Wait for what?”

“For you to allow me to bond with you, sweet Ophelia.”

My throat tightens with unshed tears. “That isn’t… I’d never expect you to…”

“To live the rest of my centuries without you?” he asks with a tender, teasing edge to his words. “You’d be so cruel to damn me to that fate?”

The first of those tears escapes the corner of my eye, and Cas wipes it away with the pad of his thumb.

“Only if it’s something you want, my love. I don’t blame you if it’s not.”

“Of course it is.”

My lips are on his before I’ve registered I’m moving.

Sweet, so sweet, this kiss.

Slow and reverent, the two of us stepping forward into uncharted waters together. Now. Always.

36

Casimir

I was wrong.

When I thought there could be nothing so satisfying as my sweet Ophelia letting me care for her, I was wrong.

Because if that was satisfying, this is something else entirely. Impossibly, achingly wonderful, to have her in my arms. To taste the certainty in her kiss, to hold her with the knowledge she will stay.

The disquiet of centuries settles into a new, trembling sense of wholeness, of being home for the first time in all my long years of existence. It disappears to nothing, replaced by the steady warmth of the woman in my arms and the sparkling future spread before us.

I deepen the kiss, devouring Ophelia’s moan and giving her one of my own. My fangs ache with the need to bite her, to feed from her, to bond her.

But there will be plenty of time for that.

Someday, hopefully not too far in the future, I’ll claim Ophelia as my bloodbound. We’ll have a lifetime together, and there’s nothing in the world so worth waiting for as that.

When we take a moment to come up for air, I cradle Ophelia’s face between my palms and run my thumbs over thetwo stray tears rolling down her cheeks. She lets out a small, breathless laugh and reaches up to cover my hand with hers, shaking her head.

“Sorry,” she says.

“For what?”

“For being such a mess. It’s been a long morning.”

“For you and me both.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

I nod, and make no protest when Ophelia takes my hand and pulls me toward the bed in the rear of her van. We could go inside, I suppose, and have a little more space, but I’m more than content to spend some time here with her in the place she’s called home for the past few years.

I meant what I said.

If she’d be happier sticking to her life on the road, I’d be more than willing to come with her. Lovesick fool it might make me, but as I’m slowly coming to understand, there is very little I wouldn’t do to see her happy.