Page 68 of A Fate of Ice and Lies (Fated #1)

“I’d take your bet, but the only way to find out is paying him a visit.” Brenton still looked at their twin tattoos I hadn’t yet seen. “You may have an open invitation to visit him, but I’m good not seeing him for a few hundred years.”

“Fair enough.” She grinned, her attention gliding to me before she looked back at Brenton. “Now, as my brother, I need your advice,” she said, her voice serious, but I saw the way one side of her lips twitched.

He nodded.

“Eiran told me that I could still accept the bond I share with Elias, and in doing so, I’d have an important choice to make.

” She stole another glance in my direction, and I saw the elation that danced behind her eyes.

“I could choose to extend my life to match that of my mate’s or keep my regular human lifespan. ”

My heart hammered, my gut twisting as my throat went raw.

But to have Teddy for the rest of my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful for however many years fate gifted me with her but not to have to live hundreds of years without her, waiting to meet her in the afterlife?

That was a gift, a marvel beyond comprehension.

“Of course, I want to choose a life with my mate, and now my brother, but it’s a big decision, and I’d like your opinion.”

The way Brenton looked at me, seemed to weigh who I was, made me want to squirm. But I held perfectly still, barely able to breathe.

“You know he’s an enormous pain in the ass, right?” Brenton said.

Her lips twitched. “Yes.”

He scrunched up his nose. “And he’s a royal.”

“I’ve heard a rumor about that.”

I bit the inside of my cheek.

“He can’t cook,” he added.

“That could be a problem,” she said. “Especially when I’m huge and pregnant with some enormous fae baby that’ll grow to be twice my size.”

Teddy pregnant with my babe. That—that was more than I dared dream for. More than most fae dreamed of, but maybe fate would be kinder to us and would gift us a babe of our own.

“He’d rub your feet, though,” my best friend said. “He’d take care of you, be loyal to you. Pregnant or not, he’d give you anything you asked for. Don’t get me wrong, he has his faults”—he threw a grin in my direction—“but you couldn’t find a better male to spend hundreds of years with.”

She gave him a quick hug before she stepped into my embrace.

“How does hundreds of years together sound, mo elma?” she asked.

The way she called me her soul set my own soul aflame.

I cupped her cheek, and with our lips inches apart, I whispered, “Like a dream.”

My once shattered heart, mended with my greatest dream, Teddy, coming true. I had love, the forever soul-binding kind of love. And for the first time in my life, I felt whole.

Teddy was a precious spark that had been absent from my life for over a hundred years.

I hadn’t realized how I’d mourned that absence until I met her.

Now though, now she was a love that grew and interlocked our hearts forever.

She was a lifetime of being seen and understood and recognized for who we were.

A lifetime that would match my own.

My beautiful mate, who lay on her side next to me on the bed Ryenne let us use. She peered back at me through dark lashes that made her blue eyes stand out even more. I touched her smooth thigh, my fingers gliding up to move the shirt she’d borrowed higher.

Her eyes roamed over my bare chest, fixed on the muscles that sank beneath the waist of my underwear.

I bit back a moan as those beautiful eyes roved over the outline of my hardened length.

She licked her lips, slanted those eyes toward me, and I had to hold my breath to keep myself from arcing toward her from how desperate I was for her touch.

“You’re mine,” she said. Possessive and fervent.

I was on her in an instant, my mouth claiming hers while my fingers pressed into her hair, over her back. She met each of my kisses with her own fiery ones.

It wasn’t enough.

I broke our kiss only to rid her of the shirt she wore. Skin to skin, she pressed her breasts against me while my hands touched, explored, and worshipped. My touch prowled to the curve of her breasts where I teased her pebbled nipples.

She hissed, raking her own hands over my chest to my shoulders, leaving a trail of fire in her wake.

She threaded those fingers through my hair, tugging at the ends as my breaths became ragged.

I covered her nipple with my mouth, tugging and nipping with my teeth as my other hand slipped between her legs.

She arched into my touch, a whimper escaping her slightly parted lips.

“So wet,” I purred, my finger slipping into her folds as she writhed on top of my hand.

“Elias.”

My name moaned from her lips burned through me like an open flame.

I knelt in front of her, gripped her thighs, and spread them before me. Her thighs trembled as I kissed and nipped a trail toward her folds, and then I licked her from base to peak. She hissed out my name again as I feasted on her. Tongue and teeth, I savagely savored her taste.

My tongue slipped into her, where she ground against me mercilessly, and I could smell how close her release was. Was grateful for it as my own built and built. But I wasn’t ready to finish. Not yet.

I slipped two fingers into her while using my tongue and teeth to tease the bundle of nerves that had her riding me harder. Her fingers gripped my hair and dug into my scalp as she panted. She clamped around my fingers, pulsing and screaming as her climax hit her, wave after wave.

“Shit,” she breathed out in a husky laugh.

Ignoring my throbbing length, I crawled on top of her and kissed her deeply. Her hand rubbed my cock and quickly went to work to remove my underwear. Once I was bared before her, she slid a single, trembling finger over my cock. Twirled that finger around the glistening tip.

The muscles in my arms trembled with restraint. The need to hold still for her so she could explore warred with the need to be inside her. Fill her.

She fisted me, her fingers tight around the base as she pumped me once. Softly, too softly. I growled.

A feline smile spread across her perfect face.

“Does my mate want it rough?” she asked.

All I could do was swallow hard in answer.

This time, she pumped me harder, circling her thumb over the slick tip. I thrust in her hand, my mind filling with only her name.

I was close but not yet ready.

I edged her down, kissed her softly, and interlaced my fingers with hers as I let myself cool down a little.

Her other hand wrapped around my cock again, this time guiding it toward her entrance.

“When you come,” she said, breathless, “I want you to bite me. ”

My balls tightened, and I fought back the urge to explode on top of her stomach and chest.

“Do you know what that means?” I managed to ask.

Although she’d already said she wanted to accept our bond, I wanted to make sure she really understood.

She leaned up and licked the length of one of my elongated canines. I trembled.

“It means I am yours, and you are mine—our souls bound together for all eternity.” The smile she gifted me made my heart stutter. “I want your teeth on me, my mate.”

She rubbed herself against the tip of my cock. My lips crashed against hers. With our tongues tangled, I slipped inside her slowly so she could get accustomed to my width.

She gasped, her heart beating frantically as she started to move beneath me. My own heart thundered in response.

I kept the pace slow, unhurried for this to end, but for my body to show her how much I loved her. Moved my hips so that I nearly slid out of her before I thrust back in. Teddy clawed at my back, my ass, pushing me into her harder. I obliged, driving myself deeply into her.

She screamed my name, and I captured it with a kiss, drowning out her shout so the others in the house couldn’t hear her. She twined her arm around my neck as her core tightened around me.

I moved her hair to the side, my canines lengthened.

My body shuddered as my teeth broke the tender surface of her skin.

I waited a few beats to see if she’d pull away, if she still wanted this bond.

Instead, she gripped the back of my head and pulled me closer with whispered pleas of my name.

It filled me in a way I hadn’t imagined, and I could no longer fight the way my magic sought out hers.

A thread of peach magic spread from her to me, meeting and intertwining with my own magic.

I met her magic with my own silver thread and braided our essence together.

Binding us, as she’d said, for all of eternity.

Time stilled, and all I saw, all I felt was Teddy. The first time I’d seen her in my mind’s eye, never believing I’d ever get to be with her. The first time she’d said my name. The way I sometimes caught her looking at me. It was all there. Every detail I could never forget.

All the while, my life, all 127 years flashed before me. Every moment condensed to this one beat of eternity, where Teddy and I were one. It was everything. Emotion swelled inside me, and I cried out her name as my magic stretched and grew in ways I hadn’t known possible.

She bucked again, squeezing my cock as we both rode our joint orgasm. Rode and rode until I lay on top of her, my cock still twitching and spilling.

Without warning, she dug her nails into my chest, making a deep enough cut to draw blood. She leaned up, her tongue tentatively swiping over the blood that dripped right above my heart. She shuddered at the first taste before her tongue lapped at the blood more greedily.

Her moan brought out my own, my cock growing harder. I wanted her again. Needed her surrounding me while I rode her deeper.

Guardians, this female. My mate.

When she lay back down, I leaned onto her.

Her fingers ran over the back of my neck, through my hair, and when she kissed me, it was slow and thorough, and I could taste my blood still on her tongue.

I pressed my forehead to hers, only dropping my head to her chest when she trailed her fingers down my back.

“That was. . . ”

More. So much more than I could’ve expected.

I nipped her chin and huffed out a laugh. “Yeah.”

I trailed kiss after kiss over her chin to her throat, where I licked the twin bite marks until they healed and disappeared. She arched, offering her throat to me again.

Someone knocked on the other side of the wall closest to the bed. Eyes wide, we both stared at the wall, Teddy covering her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“I think I need a cigarette after that”—Ryenne shouted—“’cuz holy wow, Elias!”

Teddy burst into a fit of giggles while I pressed my face into the crook of her neck and chuckled softly.

“Sounds like you got some work to do, Nate,” George shouted from somewhere in Donnie and Ryenne’s house.

“Assholes,” Donnie muttered, low enough only fae ears could hear him. Pretty sure Brenton shared his sentiment.

Teddy’s cheeks reddened. “I hope Grandma Richter remembered to take off her hearing aids.”

I trailed my lips from her neck to her shoulder and arm, where Eiran’s tattoo replaced the slash he’d made when they’d sparred.

It was an intricate beauty of a cloaked figure beneath a quarter moon and two clusters of stars.

It was meant as a sign of his friendship and her open invitation to the astral realm.

I pressed another soft kiss to her heated flesh while she stroked the back of my head.

“Is it okay—what I did?” She chewed her bottom lip. “I drew your blood.” Her throat moved at her swallow. “I drank from . . . you. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” I ran a few more kisses along her skin. “I like that you did that. That is what happens when fae matings are complete. I didn’t tell you because you didn’t seem to like the idea of drinking blood. I didn’t want you to feel forced into anything.”

“I don’t know how to explain it but something inside me swelled with this need to drink your blood.”

My chest tightened. “How did it feel?”

She let out a light-hearted sigh. “Like I could stay in that moment forever. Everything about us became more vibrant. It was like . . . everything about my life could be summed up in that singular moment, but it wasn’t enough because I’d lived my whole life without you.

I hadn’t even realized you were that missing part until that moment. ”

Her words echoed my own feelings. I drew her closer, joy flooding me with the knowledge that she’d felt it too.

“It feels like life didn’t start until that moment when our magic bound our souls.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

I held her for a few beats more before I pulled away.

“Stay,” I told her.

With that, I went into the adjoining bathroom, and after washing myself off, I grabbed a washcloth that I soaked with warm water. After wringing it out, I went back to Teddy and cleaned my seed that had spilled along her inner thighs. She rubbed against the rag and moaned when I cleaned her.

When I took her the next time, I put up an invisible shield so no one could hear us.