Page 69

“But you want them,” I said, fighting back the surge of pleasure gathering in my stomach. He coaxed his fingers against me, watching as my back arched in response to his touch.

“I do, but I want you more. If they are not a part of our future, I’ll be content with having you happy at my side. You’re young, and your thoughts may change with time and stability. But even if they don’t, that will be okay,” he said, sliding a finger inside of me. “In the meantime, I will spend every opportunity showing you how much I love you.”

He lifted me out of the water, forcing me to scramble to grip the edges of the bath as he deposited me into it.

“You would do that for me?” I asked, adjusting my legs as he used his hands at my hips to guide me down onto his length.

He slid inside me slowly, filling me as I tossed my head back in pleasure. Raising a single hand to grasp me by myhair, he tilted me forward until he caught my eyes with his piercing gaze.

“My star, I would plunge the world into eternal darkness if it meant one more moment with you like this. Nothing else matters.”

“Until chaos reigns,” I murmured, our bond warming beneath the words. The vow pulsed between us, a reminder of the way we’d bound our lives to one another.

At the time, it had seemed like Caldris would die along with me, but now… Now who knew what it meant?

All I knew was the way he moved inside me, the way he surrounded me, and his warmth sinking into me, chasing away the chill that the sight of the sacrifices had left me with.

He echoed my words, murmuring them against my mouth as he kissed me. “Until chaos reigns.”

***

I lay in his arms, my head resting on his chest in the moments following our latest round of lovemaking.

“When you said I was cold…” I trailed off, thinking of the warmth that now seemed to flow through me, to surround me in ways that were more than just the furs Caldris had covered us with as we settled down to sleep for a few precious hours.

“I meant you,” he confirmed, trailing his fingers over my arm with a gentleness that never ceased to take my breath away.

I’d seen the brutality he was capable of, the way he could tear a man from limb to limb if he so desired. He grasped a dagger off the nightstand, sliding the edge of the blade against his wrist.

Blood dripped upon the dark sheets, slipping out of him as he pressed the wound to my mouth. I parted my lips, letting his essence wash over my tongue. The flavor drew a moan from me, a desire for more. I wrapped my hand around his arm and held him steady. It had been too long since he’d fed the obsession he’d created, since he made me desire more of him.

When he drew away, the wound healed while I watched, and I ran my tongue over my teeth. Whatever had remained of that cold place within me, the place where I withdrew to when things got hard, he chased away with the closeness that came to our bond when he was inside me in all the ways possible.

“I love knowing you’re filled with me in as many ways as possible,” he said, his voice a soft whisper against my skin.

I flushed, turning to hide my faint smile in his chest as I took the dagger from his hand. I healed faster than him. I healed wounds made by iron almost immediately once the iron was removed. Who was to say he wouldn’t benefit frommyblood now?

I dragged the blade over my wrist, ignoring the bite of pain as Caldris stared down at it in shock.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not human,min anam. Do the Sidhe who bond to one another share their blood equally, or do they have a power imbalance and only pass it one way?” I asked, in genuine curiosity.

“They share it equally, but you are not Sidhe, Estrella. I do not know what you are, but the Sidhe have little magic. Without knowing, there is a risk in blood sharing,” he said, but even as he spoke the words, he eyed the blood dripping from my wound onto his chest.

“It’s your choice,” I said, pursing my lips as I considered it.

It would always be his choice. He’d lived for centuries,an eternity, where choice had been taken from him. Where he’d been forced to do things, to tolerate the touch of others, against his will. I would never take that from him.

There were doubtlessly things that I wouldn’t understand for a long time about the Fae, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t give him the option. The wound started to heal, those golden threads working to knit my flesh back together as Caldris made his choice.

He grasped my arm delicately, raising my wrist to his mouth. Heat spread through me the moment his lips touched my skin, a tingle pulsing through me. As if his essence slid into the wound, penetrating my blood. He groaned, the sound trailing into the depths of a growl as he sealed his mouth around my wrist more fully and pulled my arm tighter to his face.

“Fuck,” I said, wincing as he drank from me in deep pulls.

Something slithered through the white of his Fae mark, a golden shimmer working the way through the snow as it writhed on his skin. I stared at it in wonder for a moment, turning my attention back to him as he continued to take my blood. It was longer than I usually took from him, more time passing as he took deep swallows of me into him.

“Caldris,” I said softly, touching my free hand to his cheek.