Page 25 of Until the Heart Stops (The Oylen City #1)

S ensation returned slowly.

First it was the satisfying ache between my thighs, then a tingling in my limbs all the way down to the tips of my toes, and finally the weight of a body on top of mine.

Callum was humming, brushing his lips across my temple which tugging the ruby back and forth across the silver chain around my neck.

He was still inside of me, buried deep, and the knowledge sent a spark of heat coursing through my veins.

I clenched around him, moaning when his hips gave a thrust, his pelvic bone rubbing against me.

“Goddess, you feel so good,” I breathed, reaching up to trace the planes of his cheeks before settling my hands on his wide shoulders. “Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

He nodded, eyes dancing across my face and bright with the light of his magic shining within.

“I knew your cunt would be my salvation, Lilith. I knew your body would be my safe harbor and your soul my mate.” Another slow churn of his hips that made my eyes roll back in my head.

“This is what fate feels like, my darling. That taste on your lips is the first ember of hope.”

Hope. I barely knew the word and yet now I understood it in its entirety. But in the same breath, I realized the ember would need more time to become a flame. Soon Callum would have to leave. Caging me in his arms, he rolled us until I settled on top of him.

“Use me,” he breathed, lids fluttering as I gave an experimental roll of my hips. The fabric of my skirts pooled around us, but he slid his hand beneath, fingertips brushing against my clit. “That’s it, Lilith. Take fucking everything.”

Dazedly I nodded, riding him slowly at first, pressing his fingers where I needed them most. And then I leaned forward, bracketing my hands on either side of his head, and moaned at the change in angle.

With his free hand he reached up and tugged down the neckline of the dress to expose the curve of one breast.

Pain sparked across my skin, mingling with the pleasure until I was crying out his name desperately.

His teeth in my skin were a drug, each pull of my blood into his body an ecstasy I had no proper words for.

Pressure coiled tight as he released my sensitive flesh, lapping as blood pooled in the wound and cascaded over my nipple.

Each pass of his tongue was a shock sending me spiraling.

“More beautiful than Amayah herself,” he rasped, thrusting up into me now, lips coated in red. “More powerful than the night and the day combined. Fuck , Lilith. I’m drowning in you and I never want to come up for air.”

His mouth latched over the wound on my breast and I cried out, spasming around him as my release tipped over the edge.

I rode him wildly, only vaguely aware when he moaned my name, his release spilling into me again and again.

The scent I craved, apples and spice, was now embedded in my bones, my skin, slipping from my pores.

When our bodies stilled and silence reigned, broken only by our ragged pants, he tucked my hair behind my ear where it had loosened from my pin.

Tenderly, he ran his thumb across my jaw, down my throat to the wound still oozing blood.

He gathered it up on his fingers, slipping them into his mouth with a moan before biting down on his pads and returning them to the gash.

My skin tingled as it closed then heated as he repeated the ritual on the wound at my breast before lapping up any blood lingering behind.

But he did not apply more of his blood to the wound to erase the small crescent scar. Instead, he leaned up and pressed a kiss to both marks. “Forgive me that I cannot bear to remove them.”

I shook my head and brushed my lips across his brow. “Forgive me that I would fight if you tried.”

A soft smile pulled at the corner of his lips and my heart. I traced the curve of it with a fingertip, wondering at the way it changed his entire countenance.

“I know we do not know one another well… But I grieve you every day we are apart and fear each moment together might be our last. I think”—I swallowed, firming my resolve—“I think you would be very easy to love and heart-shatteringly difficult to forget.”

For just a moment it was easy to see the unending centuries that he had been alive as his smile slipped.

Through our bond his moment of despair almost knocked me over, but he cupped my face in his hands, fighting against the black tide by pressing his mouth to mine.

This kiss wasn’t desperate as the others were.

This was a kiss the faithful deposited onto the stone feet of the statue of Amayah within the temples.

It was a kiss one gave to a letter before it was passed into a flame.

It was the kiss a lover gave their beloved before the torch was placed upon their pyre.

“My soul knows yours as it knows no other,” he answered softly against my mouth. “And my heart loves yours as it has no other. I don’t need time to know that I love you and will love you until my bones turn to ash.”

I gripped his wrists tightly, pressing my brow to his. “Do not leave me.”

His hands tensed against my face before he threaded them through my hair.

While I traced the veins of his forearm and slid my hand up the curve of his biceps, I realized that yes, his skin was harder than I’d felt before.

Harder than any other immortal’s I’d ever known.

His eyes were still bright as well, silver twining with gray and black and white, an inverse of the swirl of the powerful immortal within the ballroom.

“Though we may be apart, I will never leave you, Lilith. We are connected, bonded , and the only way for us to be separated now is within death. Perhaps not even then.”

I wanted to deny it, to argue the point.

To say, No, you are leaving now as you always have.

Dread crawled up my throat, choking the words before they could slip from my lips.

But he could feel them in the bond, hear them in my mind, and a rose haze slipped across his eyes.

Callum squeezed them shut, breathing deeply.

“I will always come back,” he murmured. “I will always come for you.”

He was right. I nodded solemnly, lifting to slide off his length, but he caught the apex of my thighs, pressing his fingers deep inside.

A rumble of satisfaction vibrated through his chest as his fingers moved, the wet sound of his release within me satisfying some primal urge in him.

But I didn’t know if I could take anymore, not when he was readying himself to leave.

So I tried to fight the urge to moan as he pumped his fingers, moving back off his lap, but he only followed me, eyes fixed to where his hand disappeared beneath my skirt.

“C-Callum, stop.”

Another rumble, lower this time while I scrambled back across the soft grass. But his free hand flew up, gripping my throat and holding me in place as he pushed to his knees as well. He pressed against the soft skin above the scar he’d left on my throat and a shudder rolled through me.

“You want me to stop, darling?” he mused, curling his fingers against my front wall and strumming my clit with his thumb.

My brows furrowed. I nodded even as a soft moan escaped. My hips moved of their own accord, rocking against him.

“You might say you want me to stop, but your body says different. Look at you.” He drew out the last three words, a brow rising as he watched. “Fucking yourself on my hand like the desperate little witch you are. You are, aren’t you?”

Even as I shook my head, I picked up my pace, sweat dewing across my brow. He licked his bottom lip, nodding in approval. “Fucking desperate for it. Beautifully so.”

I fought the pressure rising and clamped my jaw shut. When I tried to still my body his hand flexed on my throat while his fingers moved faster, his release making the movement so slick my eyes rolled.

“Don’t fight it, darling. I need to make a mess of you one last time before I leave—need to make sure tomorrow with each breath you take, you remember me inside of you. The stretch. The ache. My cum leaking from this precious little cunt and covering you in my scent. ”

My orgasm flooded my body with heat and my head tipped back as I convulsed, tears slipping from the corners of my eyes until I was sobbing. He shushed me, gentling his touches and pressing his lips to the tracks of tears, catching them before they could fall.

“That’s it, my beloved. I have you.”

As much as I wanted to deny it, he did. The bond flared bright inside my chest, warmth filling in all the cold spaces that his imminent departure had left. He pushed his devotion through the connection, his reverence, his love, until my sobs turned to whimpers and sighs before he withdrew.

“Soon this will all be over,” he promised, kissing me. “Soon we will be together.”

Those empty promises continued as he helped me to my feet, wiping the grass from my gown and smoothing back my hair.

They continued in the bond as we walked in silence back through the maze and into the dark garden.

But I could not help but wonder what would happen before that time came, or what soon meant to an immortal who had lived for almost a thousand years.

My magic hummed, reminding me that I had a gift too. That I was just as formidable, that in this war he planned to win, I would not merely sit on the sidelines.

If destruction was coming and Callum fell, it had better take me too.