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Whatever effect I thought that soft declaration might have, it wasn’t the absolute devastation I see break across Cas’s face. Before I can fully process it, he pushes me gently off of him, rolling onto his side and moving like he’s going to climb out of bed and leave me here alone again.

“Stop,” I call after him, and he halts just at the edge of the mattress.

He sits with his shoulders slumped, feet resting on the floor, head bowed. I push myself up and crawl toward him, stopping just short of touching him.

“I’m sorry,” I croak, throat tight. “I didn’t mean to… I was only trying to…”

His shoulders rise, then fall, and when he glances back at me, all those shadows still haunt his handsome face.

“There’s no need to apologize. I overreacted, and I’m sorry, sweet Ophelia.”

Sweet Ophelia.

He’s called me that ever since that night seven years ago at the Raven, but never quite like this. Never quite so reverent, so broken.

I press myself to his back, one arm draped across his chest and the other curled around his jaw so I can turn his head enough for me to lean forward and catch his lips with mine.

The kiss starts soft and searching, tentative, barely more than a brush of our lips together.

It doesn’t stay that way.

With a growl-edged groan, Cas shifts and reaches for me, tugging me forward until I’m sprawled across his lap. He fists ahand in my hair and deepens the kiss, claiming every inch of my mouth in rough, tender possession.

And when he pulls back—face half lit in the faint streetlight shining in through the windows, and half caught in the room’s deep shadows—he looks at me with something in his eyes I can’t quite read. Something like awe, or disbelief, or desperation, or some combination of all three.

“You’re extraordinary, Ophelia. I hope you know that.”

I’m not, not really, not any more so than any other person, certainly not more than him, but I don’t say that. I just kiss him again, pouring as much want and need and acceptance into the kiss as I can.

Before long, Cas has me sprawled out on the bed, sinking into the plush duvet, and he pauses a moment just to look at me. All of me. Cast in those same streetlights and shadows, I’m laid entirely bare for him.

Cas prowls up the length of me, taking his slow, decadent time and savoring every inch. With his pale blond hair falling messily over his forehead, red eyes burning in the low light, and lip curled back in a satisfied smirk to display a gleaming white fang, he’s otherworldly handsome.

And I’m a complete fucking goner.

It’s overwhelming, the strength and the power of him. All the long, elegant lines of his body, the hard, beautiful angles of his face. The force of him, the magick of him, entirely focused on me.

He settles into the cradle of my body, giving me more of his weight before hooking one of his muscled thighs under mine and pressing up. It spreads me wide beneath him, stretches me so deliciously that a strangled gasp catches in my throat.

The sharp points of his fangs ghost over my collarbone, my neck, my jaw, before he takes my mouth in a deep, inexorable kiss.

It kicks up a renewed wave of heat and hunger. Spreading through my veins like slow fire, making my throat ache and my pussy throb.

I tangle a hand in his hair and tug until he leaves my mouth, then direct him lower to the bared expanse of my throat, arched back and open for him. It’s shameless, demanding, but I’m so far beyond caring right now.

“I’ve taken enough from you for tonight,” Cas murmurs, even as he skims his fangs along my hot, over-sensitized skin, finding his mark.

Unable to suppress my moan, I arch further into him, grip his hair tighter in a wordless command.

“Ophelia.” His voice is rough, thick, strained with whatever scrap of restraint he’s using to hold himself back.

“I’m sure a little more isn’t going to kill me.” I try for a joke, but my voice is too raspy, too breathless, and he groans.

“I don’t want it to influence you. I shouldn’t have done it before, either. All those times we’ve mixed a bite with your pleasure. I ought not to have—”

“Cas.” I take his face between my hands. “If you’ll remember, I asked for it. Both times. And I’m asking for it now.”

The hunger in his eyes sends a pang of pure need through me, a clawing desperation to have him in me again.