Rapha
I never thought I’d be a brunch person.
And yet here I am, sitting under a vine-draped pergola behind the Spellbound Bookshelf, sipping coffee laced with enough cinnamon to make Lucifer twitch, while Verity snuggles a newborn on her lap.
Little Felix, with his moon-round cheeks and very suspicious eyes. Drusilla’s been helping with the night feeds, and I’ve been carved into godfather duties like some sort of ancient vampire au pair. And somehow, I don’t hate it.
Strange, the things you come to crave when you stop feeding on blood and souls.
Screaming Woods was supposed to be temporary.
A waystation. But it’s sticky here. In the way honey clings to your fingers.
In the way family sneaks up on you when you're not looking. One day you’re a soul-sucking demon, and the next, you’re helping Gordy repaint the bookshop shutters because he says, “black absorbs too much mood.”
He’s not wrong. The gloom was starting to ferment.
Drusilla arrives late to brunch, per usual, glittering with magic and something that smells like a summer thunderstorm. Alice trails behind her, smug as a sprite on espresso.
“I’m so proud. She summoned a storm,” Alice announces, plopping down beside me and stealing the last scone. “With her feelings . It was very broody. Very Byronic.”
Drusilla kisses me like she didn’t just almost drown the western quadrant of town. Her lips are cold from spellwork, and her magic hums under her skin like champagne fizz.
“Apologies for the weather,” she murmurs. “I was feeling… poetic.”
“Your poetic phase nearly electrocuted Gordy and Alice’s cat.”
“She started it,” Dru says, with a pointed look at the tabby curled nearby. “She peed on my grimoire.”
Alice shrugs. “Hazards of witchcraft.”
We all fall into easy laughter, the kind that comes from surviving too much together.
I never thought I’d laugh again. I thought I’d spend eternity drowning in darkness. But here we are. I’m nobody’s demon now. Just Rapha. Kind-of-vampire. Reformed soul hoarder. Very much in love. Because Drusilla and I are stitched together by something older than hell and gentler than eternity.
So far, Lucifer has left us alone. Maybe even he knows that some resurrections don’t belong to him.
Drusilla’s magic is evolving faster than any of us predicted. Alice says it’s because she came back differently . Not through necromancy or deals, but through devotion. Love as a catalyst is apparently wildly unpredictable and extremely good for spellwork.
She still has fangs—adorable ones—but her powers are more elemental now. Emotion-based. Unstable in the best way. Gordy calls her a magical mood ring. I call her mine.
As for me? I’ve taken up consulting. Supernatural risk assessment. Soul trap avoidance. I charge in gold, favors, or rare teas. Screaming Woods has needs , and I happen to be very good at solving problems that involve fire, portals, and supernatural loopholes.
We have a house just past the edge of town. The manor was too big, too heavy with old shadows. So we built something smaller and brighter with a sunroom. Drusilla insisted. She says even the undead need light.
I asked her once if she missed her old life. She looked at me like I’d asked if she missed being stabbed.
“I have you,” she said simply. “What else could I possibly need?”
She might be right.
Except maybe… one more thing.
“Dru?” I murmur, as she leans against my shoulder, watching Felix drool on Gideon’s shirt. “Do you think we’ll ever…?”
Her head tilts, and her beautiful eyes find mine. “Have children?”
I nod.
She smiles, soft and wild and wicked. “I think the magic that made us came from love. And love creates.”
I stare at her, a flicker of awe blooming beneath my ribs. “So that’s a yes?”
“It’s a maybe with very good odds,” she teases. “We’ll just have to see what kind of miracle we can cook up.”
Drusilla
Rapha shuts the bedroom door behind him, his gaze burning into me. He watches me from the threshold. He’s still in his black button-down, sleeves rolled, shirt untucked, collar open just enough to expose the bite mark I left on his throat three nights ago.
Gods, I love him.
I tilt my head. “You’re staring again.”
He smiles, slow and wicked. “Can you blame me?”
“No. But you could come closer.” I stretch, deliberately arching my back, letting the gauzy slip I’m wearing ride up along my thighs. I see his jaw clench. Excellent.
His eyes rake over me like I’m the first star after an endless dusk. His lips part, and for a moment, he simply stares. Then, low and rough, “Come here.”
I cross to him slowly, hips swaying, letting the silence stretch and crackle. When I reach him, he grips my waist, spins me, and presses me against the cool wood of the door.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day.”
“Just thinking?” I tease.
“Imagining,” he murmurs, voice rough velvet against my ear. “Planning.”
My pulse stutters as his hand skims down my back and cups my ass. His palm is warm. Firm. Possessive. “And what exactly did you plan?”
“To worship you,” he growls. “Properly. Thoroughly. On every surface of this house, if necessary. I’ve been patient all day,” he murmurs against my neck, voice low and dangerous. “But now I need to feel you come apart.”
And then he’s kissing me like the world is ending. Like he’s starving. Like he needs to crawl inside my skin just to breathe. He tears the slip over my head, and the fabric falls like petals to the floor.
“You feel like lightning,” he rasps, kissing a trail down my throat. “Like summer storms and moonlight and hunger.”
His hands roam, reverent and greedy at once, and I melt into him, my fingers tangling in his hair. “Touch me, Rapha. I want to feel everything.”
He pauses, looks up. “Everything?”
My breath catches. “Everything.”
“Gods,” he whispers. “You’re unreal.”
“I’m yours,” I whisper back. “Isn’t that what you always say?”
He growls, eyes glowing faintly red, a glimmer of the demon he used to be. Not dangerous. Not to me. Just… unleashed. Just mine.
“Yes,” he says, his voice a promise and a prayer. “Mine.”
“Then take me,” I breathe, already aching.
His mouth crashes into mine again, hot and demanding, while his hands slide over my hips, my ass, my breasts, possessive and practiced, like he’s memorized every inch of me.
He has.
His fangs graze my bottom lip as he growls, “You remember what we talked about earlier?”
“Mmm,” I hum, grinding against the thigh he’s wedged between mine. “About children?”
He kisses down my neck, trailing heat and hunger. “You said love creates. So let’s make something. Right now. Fill you up, keep you full of me until the magic decides it’s time.”
I moan, head thudding back against the door, thighs already slick with need. “You think my womb’s a spell circle now?”
“I think it’s mine,” he snarls, dipping to suck one aching nipple into his mouth.
I whimper, wrapping my legs around him as he carries me to the bed. He tosses me onto the mattress, and I sprawl there, flushed and panting, while he strips out of his clothes, letting me watch.
His cock is thick and already hard, flushed dark and dripping at the tip.
“I want to taste you first,” he says, kneeling between my thighs and pulling them wide. “Need you to come on my tongue before I fuck a baby into you.”
“Rapha,” I gasp, but the rest of the sentence vanishes into a scream as his mouth descends.
He licks me like he’s starving, like my pussy is the only thing that will ever satisfy him. His tongue circles my clit, teasing, torturing, until he slides two fingers inside me and curls them just right.
“Oh, Gods, yes!”
“That’s it,” he murmurs, lips brushing my slick folds. “Come for me, Dru. Let me taste you while you think about me coming inside you, raw and deep.”
That does it. My vision whites out as my orgasm crashes over me, wild and sharp and endless. My magic bursts outward in a shimmering pulse, ruffling the curtains and lighting the candles.
He groans against me, like my pleasure alone feeds him. When I finally blink back into my body, he’s crawling over me, bracing himself on one arm as he guides his cock to my entrance.
“You ready?”
I reach for him, wrap my legs high around his hips. “I’ve been ready since you poured cinnamon in your coffee this morning and gave me that look.”
He pushes in with one smooth thrust, and we both cry out.
Gods, he’s thick. He stretches me so full that I forget how to breathe.
He holds still inside me, shaking. “You feel… Fuck. Dru.”
“Move,” I whisper.
He pulls back and thrusts into me—slow at first, but deep, grinding, hitting the spot that makes my toes curl. Each stroke is a promise. A spell. A mark.
My nails rake down his back, and I arch into him, lost to the rhythm. “Harder.”
He growls, shifting his angle and pounding into me until the bed shakes.
“I’m going to fill you up,” he pants against my mouth. “So deep, you’ll still be dripping when you walk tomorrow. And when you get pregnant, when your belly swells with our magic, you’ll know this was the night it happened.”
“Yes,” I cry, clawing at him, my body close to the edge again. “Do it, Rapha.”
He grabs my hips and thrusts faster, harder, until we’re both snarling and moaning and cursing. The pressure explodes, and I come with a sob, clenching around him so tightly that he roars and follows me over, spilling hot and deep inside me, pulsing with every wave.
His hand finds mine. Our fingers tangle.
“I love you,” he murmurs into my mouth
We collapse together, his weight anchoring me, grounding me.
I feel full. Claimed. Worshipped.
Alive.
After a few heartbeats, he murmurs against my temple, “You good?”
I nod, breathless. “You?”
He kisses my forehead. “Perfect. But… maybe we should try again in a bit. Just to be thorough.”
I laugh, wrapping my arms around him. “For science.”
“For magic,” he agrees.
I press my lips to his throat. “We’ll make something beautiful, won’t we?”
He strokes my hair. “We already have.”
We’ve been through hell and back for our happy ever after. The love between us is deeper than death.
And we’re just getting started.
Thank you for reading!