Page 45 of Hunger in His Blood (Brides of the Kylorr #3)

CHAPTER 45

ERINA

“ D evelopment is on track,” Ekor said softly, peering down at whatever scans he’d taken on his Halo tablet. “Another six weeks, I’d guess.”

Kaldur paced a short distance. “She’s been having some pain…you’re certain it’s not anything more serious?”

“Everything is as it should be,” the healer said with the utmost patience. He’d been coming nearly every day at Kaldur’s request, who seemed to get more anxious as the time to my giving birth drew nearer.

“It’s okay,” I said, standing and catching Kaldur’s arm. “I told you—you worry too much. The pain was because…”

I trailed off, flushing when Ekor cut us a curious look as he packed up his supplies.

Kaldur rumbled out, “I know.”

I’d felt a sharp pain during sex, but I knew it was because we’d gone a little overboard lately. But it was hard to stay away. I was getting hornier as the days dragged on, and Kaldur was getting more and more concerned that he would hurt me. Which was making for an interesting dynamic, and nothing pleased me more when he finally gave into me .

“There haven’t been any complications from sex in the later stages of pregnancy,” Ekor answered, understanding what went unspoken, much to my embarrassment. “Even up to a few days before birth.”

“That won’t happen,” Kaldur grumbled.

It likely would though. He always griped about me getting too far along, that the last thing he wanted to do was hurt me, but truthfully when we were with each other, it was…consuming. Everything else didn’t matter, the world went hazy but electric, and all we wanted was to be together.

I feared I was growing addicted to his touch. Every kiss, every spine-tingling wicked word in my ear as he was deep inside me, every ragged groan and huff that I seemed to live for.

When it came to Kaldur, I was obsessed with our lovemaking, and I thought he felt the same. It had been two weeks since the lyvin pack attack, and we couldn’t stay away from one another.

“I’m simply saying if it does continue,” Ekor said, snapping his case shut tightly and making for the door, “it has not shown any adverse effects or complications once the birth comes.”

I shot Kaldur a pleased look. As if to say: See? His jaw twitched, and then he led the healer out of his study. I would likely see Ekor tomorrow regardless, even if I was anxious to get rid of him now.

From my place, I watched Kaldur as he spoke with the healer in low tones at the threshold of the door. Ekor clasped his shoulder, inclining his head, and then departed.

I eyed Kaldur when he turned back to me. I’d been ravenous for him all day, but he’d had an early morning meeting with his brothers, so this was the first time I was seeing him.

“I know that look,” he declared.

“Why don’t you close the door?” I suggested, my tone the epitome of innocence.

A low groan rose in his bobbing throat, and I tried to keep my expression neutral .

“I’ve created a little monster,” he rasped, his words punctuated by the sound of the door thudding, the lock turning.

And that sound made me squeeze my thighs together. My buttocks met the edge of his desk when he stalked toward me. His expression looked like a glare, as brooding and intense as it was, but I still caught the fervid anticipation in his silver gaze.

“Ekor seemed to think it was fine,” I told him, craning my neck back when he stopped an inch in front of me, my belly brushing his groin.

“Don’t say another male’s name when I’m about to bend you over my desk, my love,” he purred.

A sharp ache of desire spiraled downward. “Is that how you want me?”

“One way of many,” he replied, already tugging at my dress. Another one he’d bought me. I could wear a new one every day until I gave birth and still not run out. Which for me, considering I’d fit my entire wardrobe in a single travel bag once, seemed excessive, but I was learning which battles I needed to pick with Kaldur. He liked to give gifts, and I wouldn’t refuse them. He got moody if I did.

“Wait,” I said, flitting away from his hands when he was intent on getting me naked. “You promised, remember?”

“Fuck,” he whispered, briefly closing his eyes. When they opened, they were practically black with want. “ Dallia , you’ll have me on your tongue for mere moments and then I’ll need to come.”

“I want that,” I informed him, my voice going husky with the image it conjured in my mind. I’d tried to pleasure him, as he often pleasured me, but he’d always stopped me, saying he didn’t have the control he needed in that particular moment.

“Darling, the moment I feel that pink little tongue anywhere near my cock,” he rasped, “or see you looking up at me with those pretty eyes with your mouth stuffed full, I will fucking lose it .”

“I want that,” I repeated again, my eyelids going half-lidded. I didn’t know how many times I thought about sex with Kaldur a day, but it was obsessive. And truthfully I didn’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones or…simply because it was Kaldur.

I was willing to bet on the latter, however, more so than the former, though that certainly played a role.

I was already reaching for the laces of his trews, and he looked skyward, saying something that sounded like a rough, hushed prayer. Dramatic male, I thought, eagerness making my hands shake.

When I got them undone, I began to sink to the ground in front of him, though he helped me down, ever worried. The rug bit into my knees, but I didn’t mind.

My mouth watered as I wrapped my fist around his familiar thickness, giving a slow pump up the shaft. He grunted, and I watched as pre-come pooled at his tip. The bulbous head was a dark gray, swollen and throbbing already with his need. Truthfully I’d never seen what his cock looked like soft , so I had nothing to compare it to.

“Erina,” came his ragged whisper from above me. My gaze went from his cock to his face as I lowered my head. His expression looked struck, those eyes rapt on me when my lips brushed the tip. It was sexy , the way he looked at me, and I could very easily grow addicted just to those hooded eyes alone.

His cock gave a throb that made him growl, a low rumbling that vibrated through his entire body as I slowly wrapped my lips around his head.

I dragged my tongue over the underside of him, his hips giving an unsteady jerk, a hiss of pleasure escaping him. I pulled back. My voice sounded throaty when I asked, “Like this?”

“Raazos, yes ,” he rasped. “That’s so good, my love. Again. Please. ”

His praise turned me on even more. When I took his cock between my lips again, I repeated what he’d liked, earning me another roughened groan .

“Look at me,” he ordered. When my eyes flicked up, he hardened even further in my mouth, which I hadn’t thought would possible. I moved down his shaft, testing how much I could take, and I tasted the earthiness of his pre-come bloom across my tongue.

He sucked in a sharp breath, his hand flashing down to squeeze around the very base of his shaft, above his swelling knot.

“Mmm,” I hummed.

“Suck me, kyrana ,” he ordered. Immediately my cheeks hollowed over the tip of his cock, and Kaldur bucked, a gruff cry on his lips. With gritted teeth, he growled, “More.”

I sucked harder, moving up and down, and the sound that left him made my thighs squeeze.

“Fuck,” he breathed, shaking his head, an edge of panic in his expression. “Gods, I get so wild for you. I told you—I’m not going to last like this.”

I released him with a pop. “A little longer?”

His eyes slid shut, breathing steadily through his nostrils in deep huffs, and I grinned a little before taking him back inside. As if he would suffer through it, for me.

One of my hands was on the shaft of his exposed cock, but the other was trailing to my inner thighs, desperately needing some relief. I hadn’t expected this to turn me on so much. But I felt like I was on the verge of coming just because of his pleasure, as if ours were connected.

I felt his body begin to tremble. I knew I wouldn’t have much longer, and so I sucked on his cock harder, moving my fist up the rest of his exposed shaft. Up and down, but then when my palm met the swelling of his knot, I squeezed.

A ragged cry tore from him. I was up before I knew what was happening, a low warning of a rumble my only indication that I’d teased him beyond his control. I was flipped over, my breasts pressed down into his desk, allowing my growing belly room below. My dress was shoved up with rough, impatient hands as my legs widened for him. He took my hips, roughly pulling me back, and then?—

Kaldur slid deep, swift and hard.

My gasp was followed by a satisfied moan, unable to keep the smile from curling over my features. One of his palms was squeezing one cheek of my backside in appreciation as he continued to thrust hard.

“My little mate,” he purred, though a hardened edge clipped through his tone. “Trying to test your boundaries? Trying to make your male lose control?” He laughed, which was punctuated by a particular deep thrust that made my breath squeeze from my lungs. “Oh, kyrana , you can do whatever you want to me. Then again, I can do whatever I want to you, yes?”

“Yes,” I moaned.

“Tell me you’re mine,” he growled.

I stared across his neat desk, which we were steadily making a mess of. Out the window overlooking Vyaan, it was a chilled but beautiful day. The first snowfall might come today, and I wanted to watch it out on the balcony with Kaldur, warm in his arms.

“I’m yours,” I whispered, my heart squeezing with the words.

“I know, my love,” he murmured, his front coming down on top of me so I could feel the length of him, though he was mindful of the pressure because of the baby. His lips pressed a sweet kiss to my temple, completely at odds with the hard, claiming strokes between my thighs. “ Always. So. Fucking. Good. ”

“Going to come,” I breathed, feeling the familiar tightening in my abdomen.

The prick of Kaldur’s fangs came, the familiar dizzying pull of his feeding as his venom flowed into me. I cried out, the orgasm ripping through me immediately. I heard his bellow, muffled against my skin, his hips jerking, his rhythm going choppy.

When it was over, I let out a tired, delighted laugh. He caught his breath quickly, his recovery much more swift than mine, pressing a kiss to his bite on my neck.

“Mine,” he said quietly. The word drifted over my skin before it settled comfortably.

Tears welled in my gaze, but they weren’t unhappy tears.

“Yours,” I whispered.

The first snowfall did come that night, and I was, in fact, bundled in Kaldur’s arms out on the balcony. Pure white, fluffy flakes were falling beyond the covered balcony, and Kaldur was watching me quietly as I sketched the scene. Or tried to. I would never quite capture its quiet serenity or the way I felt in that singular moment: protected, warm, and encouraged.

Kaldur had been absent since our afternoon in his study, his attention having been pulled away toward the South Road. Specifically about the lyvins. He’d hired a team to draw the pack away, deeper into the forest, into another habitable location not near a populated village.

The South Road was currently being built toward his brother’s territory of Salaire. Thaine. The brother he’d told me he was closest to, the brother he’d taken his scar for, the brother he said I would be meeting quite soon.

“I like watching you draw,” came his sweet, soft words. “Even the scratching of your pencil is soothing to me. Your movements are so certain. I don’t know how you do it. I could never be still as a child, and yet I could sit here forever watching you.”

I bit back my smile, turning a little to regard him. Our faces were close. I was sitting sideways across his lap, his arm bracing around my back as support, and he’d brought out two blankets. One to drape over my shoulders but allowed my hands to be free, and the other was carefully tucked around my lap. I was warm enough with the blankets, but coupled with Kaldur’s heat and it felt like a summer day. The baby was moving again, Kaldur’s hand resting on the swell.

I looked back to my drawing, trying to see it from his perspective. I thought it was simple, if a little messy. I shaded in the moon a bit more, adding charcoal to the left side, rubbing at it with the pad of my fingertip to blend a harsh line.

“Another week and the moon winds will be here,” I commented.

Almost a month I’d been back in Vyaan. How fast it had gone by. This time last month I’d still been in Laras…and yet everything had changed.

Well, not everything. Luc was still being a little stubborn about accepting Kaldur’s assistance. But Kaldur assured me that whoever he had in correspondence with my brother would make him see reason.

Give him time, Kaldur had told me, just a few days ago, when I’d wanted to write a letter to Luc myself. If he’s anything like how I imagine, he needs time.

Luc didn’t trust it. I knew that. A stranger appearing out of nowhere and offering to give him his dream back? Everything he’d lost? At no cost, with no strings? Of course he would be wary.

If he didn’t accept after the moon winds, Kaldur told me he’d personally travel to Laras. Or have Azur speak with him if Ekor didn’t think it was a good idea for him to be gone.

I’d agreed in the end, knowing that Kaldur was right. I was learning that he had a very diplomatic and almost patient way of dealing with most issues, especially when it came to matters concerning Vyaan or the Kaalium. I understood now why he made such a good leader, why nearly all the nobles I’d ever come across seemed to respect his position there. He worked incredibly hard—sometimes too hard and at his own expense, like with the lyvin attack.

“I would like to have a gathering here on the moon winds,” Kaldur told me, capturing my attention again. “What do you think?”

He was asking me?

“Then you should,” I replied.

“You could invite Syndras,” he suggested. “I believe that Thaine will come. He wants to meet you. All my siblings do.”

That made another jolt of nerves go through me, even though I would be both equally excited and trepidatious of meeting them.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, no doubt sensing the way my body went a little tight. When I hesitated, he pressed with, “Tell me. I want to know, even if you think I won’t like it. I want us to be honest. In all things. Are you worried he won’t like you?”

“Yes,” I said.

Kaldur actually laughed, but it wasn’t unkind. “ Dallia , I don’t know a single soul who doesn’t like you.”

“Velle,” I said. “Lydrasa. To name a couple.”

“They don’t count,” he grumbled, the mere mention of them souring his mood. He sighed. “You have nothing to worry about. Besides, this is Thaine. He’s the most sane perhaps out of any of us, next to Kythel. What is it, really?”

I put down my pencil in the seam of my notebook. I bit my lip, judging how to express what I felt. Finally I settled on, “Sometimes I still feel like an imposter in your life.”

Kaldur scowled.

“Someone who doesn’t quite belong, though circumstance—and a child, on Raazos’s blood—brought us back into each other’s lives. We’re so different, you and me. We couldn’t be more different.”

“And that’s a good thing,” he said. “You think I want someone like me? I would go mad. As for you, I think you need someone to fill your life with inspirations for your stories. And I’ll take that responsibility very seriously.”

“I’m being serious,” I said .

“So am I,” he said simply, turning my cheek so I looked him in the eye. “You belong in my life like you’re my family. All right? I don’t want to hear this because it’s simply not true.”

My heart fluttered. “You don’t think your brothers or Kalia will take issue with the fact that I used to be a keeper in your House? Or that I have no legacy, no ancestry of my own?”

“Of course not,” he rasped. “But I realize you can’t know this for yourself until you meet them. I was the bastard who gave you these fears anyway. And my brothers’ mates? Gemma was the daughter of a disgraced war hero who turned out to be a murderer and gambled away his entire fortune. Millie was found abandoned on a transport colony and then later worked at a dyaan as a server. That’s where Kythel met her.”

“She was?” I asked. Millie had been abandoned too? And she’d worked at a blood-giver establishment? I hadn’t known that. I’d known Gemma had come from a noble House from the New Earth colonies but not that her father had nearly lost them everything.

Kaldur blew out a sharp breath. “I’m not saying Kythel rejoiced in the fact that Millie wasn’t connected to a noble family. He had planned to marry the daughter of the family who owned the Three Guardians in Erzos. He thought it was his duty, the fucking martyr, to marry for a purpose , for the betterment of his people. As for Azur, well, I’ve told you my feelings on what he did before.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” I couldn’t help but point out.

His shoulders shook with the dryness in my tone. “My point is that none of that mattered. It’s simple. They love their mates, even though that love didn’t come easily. Mistakes were made. Very terrible mistakes. But in the end, they chose each other, regardless of circumstance or class or old wounds. Because they knew that they couldn’t live without each other, nor did they want to. ”

My throat went tight again. Kaldur was looking at me with that familiar look I’d become accustomed to: one of softness, of ease. And whenever he looked at me like that…all I wanted was to throw caution to the wind and fall into him.

The silence that lapsed between us made me hold my breath. His lips parted, and he pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. Then when a snowflake fell on my cheek, a brief burn of icy cold, he trailed his lips to where it’d fallen, warming me again.

When he pulled back to look in my eyes, my heartbeat spiked.

“Just like I can’t live without you,” he said quietly. “I love you, Erina.”

My tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of my mouth as I stared at him. Below his wide, firm palm, I felt our daughter move again.

“I know that you know that,” he continued, tilting his chin down slightly so that our foreheads touched. “I also know that you’re not there with me yet, and so I don’t want you to say anything right now. But I just wanted to tell you…I’m not going anywhere. You’re all I want.”

I breathed out, my gaze going to his lips as they formed these beautiful little words that I wanted so desperately to claim as mine.

“I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you again. I think we both know I can be a stubborn, hardheaded bastard, and I intend to live a long life with you. In terms of time, the odds are against me there. But I can promise that I will always choose you. I won’t ever turn my back on you. Never again. Because I see you now, Erina Denoren. And I never want to look away.”

I couldn’t help the tears when they started. They came on softly but then began to stream as I absorbed his words. He told me not to say anything, and so I didn’t. I only pressed my face into his chest as I cried.

The last barrier between us was only my refusal to give him my heart again. That last small decision. One that would be so easy and effortless because he’d made it easy to love him. Again.

These last two weeks, I’d been happy . Except for this one small thing that I couldn’t allow myself to give.

“The moon winds are always a time for rebirth. A fresh start,” he murmured into my ear, wrapping his arms around me.

Maybe it will be ours, I thought.