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“There are books about sleeping with soul-bonded immortal vampires?”

“More than you’d think. Mathilde owned three.”

“Dare.” His sardonic grin fades as he pushes back my hair to study my face. “Tell me if we do anything you don’t like.”

“I promise I will.”

“Dare.” He eases a hand between us, and if my heart could still beat, it would pound straight out of my chest—no, combust—as his fingers part my flesh, as he positions himself at my entrance. “And this one is important—when I tell you to bite, you bite.”

I frown at him. “What—?”

The question disintegrates, however, as he inches inside me, and the sensation quite takes my breath away. It doesn’t hurt, precisely, it just feels—full, almost too full. When I shift to ease the pressure, he slides in another inch. Another. His hips rock gently at first, but his fingers—they ease the sting, still working against me until I might lose my mind all over again. Until my heels press into the floor, and my back arches, and my body feels empty somehow. Bereft. I strain toward him, and my voice breaks around his name, part moan and part sob. “Michal—”

“Bite.”

He thrusts harder with the word, and my body recoils like a band snapping, every muscle stiffening against the stab of pain. It still reacts instinctively to Michal’s command, however, and I sink my teeth into his shoulder in the next second. I wrap my arms around his back, and I cling to him as he groans, as he stills, as he waits for his blood to sweep through me.

The instant it touches my tongue, the pain recedes—not wholly, but enough that my muscles begin to relax around him. Enough that his scent drives me mad. Enough that I—that I need him to—

I shift instinctively, tearing my mouth from his skin with a gasp.

“Do it again.”

Exhaling a harsh and satisfied breath—arms trembling with restraint—he pulls out completely before burying himself inside me once more. To the hilt this time. Pressure builds behind my eyes at the intrusion, and I claw at his back, jerking wildly and twining my legs around him. “Do it again,” I repeat, hardly able to hear through the roaring in my ears. Through the heat.

So he does.

And that stinging pain gives way to a deeper sort of ache with each slow thrust of his body until my own begins to move in response. Until my breath quickens, and my nails bite into his back. “So fucking good,” he grinds out, pumping harder now. Faster. And his words—they do something to me. Digging my heels into his back, I angle my hips to take him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust as he increases the pace. And it’s brutal now, hard and raw and primal, but I love it—I love it because his tightly leashed control is finally slipping, and it’s slipping because of me. The sight nearly undoes me.

Instead I drag my tongue up the column of his throat, just like I did all those lifetimes ago in Les Abysses.

No one would be disappointed, Célie.

And Michal snaps.

He pulls out abruptly, flipping me onto my stomach beforewrenching up my hips and plunging into me once more. Overwhelming me. Consuming me. I’ll never tire of it, of him. As he wraps a hand around my front—providing the friction I so desperately need—I feel more alive than I ever thought possible; more beautiful, more powerful.

Because of him.

He is the mirror I always needed, and at last—at last—I can see my own reflection. I can see it clearly. And when my release shatters through me—when he follows with a roar of pleasure—I hold him tightly afterward, waiting for the tremors to leave his body.

Refusing to ever let him go.

Chapter Forty

Home

Michal finds a trunk of preserved clothes through a locked door in the corner of the bathhouse. He hid the key to these rooms years and years ago—hisrooms, his first home on the isle—likely when he decided to leave them forever.

“This belonged to my mother,” he says now, pulling out an ancient yet remarkably preserved gown. Though the cut is unfamiliar, the dress itself is beautiful in its simplicity: white on white-patterned silk—diasper, I think—with soft ermine lining and a thin silver belt. “Her favorite and her best. She only wore it on special occasions.”

I trail my fingers down the delicate sleeves, swallowing the lump in my throat. It still smells slightly of sage and something citrus, perhaps lemon. “I couldn’t possibly wear this, Michal. Look at what happened to all my other gowns.” I cast a rueful glance toward the bathhouse, where I can still scent the bloody fabric of Monsieur Marc’s creation. “I’d never forgive myself if I ruined this one.”

He shrugs as if thoroughly unbothered, but he wouldn’t have kept his mother’s things all these years if they meant so little to him. “She would’ve wanted you to wear it.”

“Would she have liked me?”

“She would’ve adored you.” A rather wistful smile touches hislips as I nod, tentatively pulling the gown over my head and privately promising to kill anyone who touches it. Not a singlespeckof blood or smoke or viscera will damage the fabric. “My father and stepmother would’ve liked you too—probably better than me on most days.”