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Ophelia’s life pulses in time with mine. An age-old rhythm that’s as close as I’ve ever been to experiencing true divinity.

She lifts her lips from the cut on my chest, swipes her tongue out to chase a spare drop of crimson, and I pull her roughly to me. Kissing my blood—her blood—off her lips, I moan into her mouth.

The sound breaks something in my sweet Ophelia, and she’s not sweet at all as she tugs at my hair, climbs more firmly atop me, and guides my cock to her soaked core.

She sinks onto me with one fast, hard roll of her hips, and we both groan.

Ophelia is ravenous as she rides me, and I’m hardly any better as I meet her eager hips and thrust deep within her. We’re a mess of graceless, wanting bodies and need, tangled limbs and seeking lips. I find her clit with one hand and bury the other in her hair, tipping her head back to expose her throat so I can sink into her there, too.

Her blood blooms across my tongue, and it’s even better than before. Rich and sparkling, pulsing with the thread of herbeautiful, wondrous life, the thread of our bond, the thread of the golden future stretching our before us.

I draw deep, savoring the impossibility of it all, and Ophelia shatters.

The walls of her cunt spasm around me, and she cries out her pleasure. Holding her tight, I flip our position, driving her back onto the mattress. I give her no mercy as I lose myself in her, as her body shudders through each wave of her climax and pushes me closer to my own.

When I’m nearly there, Ophelia rears up and fastens her lips over the still-bleeding wound on my chest. She takes a long draw of my blood, and I’m obliterated.

Broken down into all the bare, vulnerable, elemental parts of me. Remade into something that belongs completely and utterly to the woman in my arms.

It takes a few long minutes for the world to resemble anything like reality. Panting, still shaking slightly, I finally regain command over my limbs and collapse to the bed beside her.

We’ve made a bit of a mess of the place, but it hardly matters.

Not with a sight so lovely as Ophelia strewn across the rumpled sheets, cheeks flushed and body still trembling with the last resonance of her pleasure.

With a quick draw on my fangs to call some healing venom forth, I suck a thumb into my mouth to coat it before swiping it across the wound on my chest. I almost lament the feel of it knitting itself back together, but I know it will leave a pretty scar. I hope my bloodbound won’t hesitate to worship it with as much reverence as I give my mark at her throat.

There’s blood smeared across the soft skin of her chest from where our bodies pressed together, and I take care of that, too.

Excusing myself for a moment, I head into the bathroom to wet a cloth and bring it back to bed with me, swiping it gently over her skin to clear away the crimson. To my endless satisfaction, she doesn’t give me any grief or insist she could do it herself. She merely peers up at me with half-hooded eyes and a languorous smile, reveling in the attention.

Oh, but it might be dangerous to have a bloodbound.

Even this small act of tending to her feels different, with the coil of our bond pulsing brightly between us. Something primal and satisfying settles itself more firmly into my bones, lodging itself there with a sense of permanence I see reflected back to me in the pleased smile playing about Ophelia’s lips.

She wears that smile like she knows just what I’m feeling, just how tightly that bond sits around my heart.

And there’s no one else I’d entrust to tend that bond, to treasure it.

As soon as I’m done tending to her, Ophelia opens her arms and pulls me back down into her warmth. We settle into the blankets and pillows, something altogether different from when we entered this room.

Alchemized, transformed, no longer two beings walking through this world alone.

It feels like peace, our bond. Like certainty. Like eternity.

“I love you,” I tell her, realizing I forgot to say it earlier.

“I know.” Ophelia smiles, and the sight of it is brighter than all the lights shining in the city, more beautiful than anything I’ve seen in all my centuries. “And good. Because you’re stuck with me now.”

I lean closer so I can get a taste of that smile, and speak my satisfied reply against the soft curve of her lips.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

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