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A sound leaves him—softer than I’ve ever heard. A rough exhale, like a prayer answered too late for rescue but right on time for salvation.

Malachi shifts us gently, urging me down onto my back, cradled in the dip of the sheets. His hands are adoring, unhurried. They’ve touched me before—possessive, desperate, playful—but never like this. Now, they move like he’s building something with every glide of his palms. Like he’s shaping the moment, framing it, setting it into the place it will live in his memory forever.

When his mouth finds my collarbone, I forget how to breathe. When his fingers trace the slope of my waist, I forget my name.

Clothing slips away in slow handfuls. My shirt first, then his hands find the waist of my pants, easing them down like he’s uncovering something precious he never wants to rush. I use my heels to push at the waistband of his sweatpants. He pulls back, getting off the bed only long enough to rid himself of them. The comforter beneath me crumples as he eases over me, his thighs bracketing mine, his weight an anchor I welcome. I arch under him as he kisses a line down the dip of my throat, always pausing a moment longer over the spot above my heart.

The place he’ll mark me.

He doesn’t go to it yet. He lingers, tasting the ache between us. Stretching the tension until I think I’ll shatter from it. But I don’t beg because he needs this as much as I do. The only thing keeping me quiet is the press of his lips, the drag of his tongue, the warmth of his breath as he kisses lower, lower?—

When I finally sigh his name, it sounds like a vow.

Only after I’m boneless from pleasure, he retraces his path. I gasp when he pushes into me. The stretch of him is perfect. Too much. Not enough. I cry out and he swallows it and moans in return.

We move in tandem, not rushed. There’s no need to hurry this.

This is where I want to live.

This moment. This body. This man. This vampire.

“I love you,” he says, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.

“I love you too.” My hands curl around his shoulders. “Mark me.”

His fangs lengthen against my throat.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I repeat, breathless. “I was never more sure of anything in my life.”

He nods and lowers his head to the hollow of my chest, positioning himself so the sharp edge of his fangs aligns with the spot just above my heart.

I brace for pain. But it doesn’t hurt.

Not the way I thought it might. There’s pressure and heat, dull at first but so fierce with intent I gasp. It’s a pull, a pulse, a collision of flame and gravity and belonging. I feel the sharp surge of magic as it stitches through my blood, curling through marrow and breath and memory.

Malachi groans against my skin, the sound desperate, revelatory.

He pulls back, kisses me once—sweet and shaking—then drags the edge of his thumbnail across his chest, just above his heart. The skin splits easily. Blood wells in a smooth, dark rivulet.

“Drink,” he says, voice near broken. “Mark me as your mate.”

I lift myself up on shaky arms and press my lips to the marks on his chest. His blood is hot on my tongue and the moment I taste it, something deep inside me demands I drink more. He moans as I suck the cut, his cock twitching inside of me.

Behind my ribs, the world turns sideways. And then right again.

I feel him—we feel each other—and nothing, nothing has ever been more profound.

When I pull back, I’m part of him now. And he’s a part of me. An invisible thread, pulsing bright and sure where none existed before. We watch each other for an eternity, my blood smeared across his lips, the taste of his in my mouth. Then he crashes down on me, this new connection driving us to a frenzy. We don’t stop kissing, not even when his powerful thrusts catapult me into another orgasm or when he follows with his own.

Later, wrapped in his arms, after he’s brought me a warm wet cloth to clean us both and helped me back into my pajamas, I let myself smile. We lay beneath the covers now, the scent of rain drifting in through the newly opened window, the room glowing in low lamplight from the street.

“Well,” I say, looking up at him through lashes still damp with exhaustion, “I guess this means you’re really going to have to get used to having a preteen in your life.”

He snorts, amused and wrecked, pulling me tighter.

“Can’t wait,” he breathes into my hair. “She already called me a jerk the other night for finishing the hot chocolate mix. What’s one more insult?”