Page 31 of Until the Heart Stops (The Oylen City #1)

I woke in darkness.

My breath whistled through my teeth and I jerked, hand flying up only to meet stone.

Oh, goddess , I was back in that coffin, back in the ritual room with Mael on the other side of the lid.

Magic whispered across my skin but it was distant, out of reach.

I tried to grasp for it all the same, only for it to slip through my fingers.

“Shhh, love.”

A hand curled around my shoulders, tugging me close. My head wasn’t resting on a funerary pillow, it was a chest with scents of apples and spice curling around me. Lips brushed my brow and fingers tucked my hair away from my face.

“The sun has not yet fully set,” Callum continued. “We cannot risk it for at least a few months.”

The sun hadn’t set…

Memories poured over me like water past the coffin in the ritual room. The dagger in my belly, the pain, the blood, Mael’s surprise as I stabbed him in the heart. And after. The changing, more blood. An immortal who was so much more than merely a vampire, made by Amayah herself.

Callum must have sensed my panic because he tensed as well. “You… Goddess , Lilith. You were dying. I-I had no choice.”

I frowned, pressing my cheek against his chest. All the normal aches and pains were gone, along with the bone-aching weariness I usually felt upon waking. In fact, I felt better rested than I had since I was a child.

“Are you angry?”

Shaking my head, I traced the line of his bare torso. “No…I am not.”

When I hesitated, he shifted me up so my head fit into the crook of his neck. “But?”

Again, I reached for my magic. The small pool it had once been now felt like a single drop—or like I was viewing a body of water from a great distance.

“Your magic will return with time and practice,” he answered, plucking the thought from my mind. “I will be here to help should you want it.”

I pressed a kiss to the juncture of his shoulder and throat, wondering at the texture beneath my lips. Before it had felt hard like stone, cool to the touch. But now it felt like silk and I couldn’t help but brush my mouth over it again and again.

“Drink,” he murmured, cradling the back of my head and guiding me up to his throat.

We shifted so we lay on our sides within the coffin, the debilitating darkness all but forgotten—especially when I could see him so clearly in my mind through our bond. For a brief moment, the once human part of me recoiled at the idea of biting Callum before my new vampiric instincts took hold.

The moment his blood hit my tongue I moaned, pressing tighter against him.

His answering rumble of pleasure skated across my chest, spiraling down to the apex of my thighs.

His blood was thick, sweet, and it quenched a thirst I had not known I suffered from.

He stroked my hair as I drank, his other hand sliding down my arm, caressing my cheek, touching me with soft reassurances.

I shifted my knees wider and a chuckle ghosted across my ear. When he did nothing but stroke my side, I reached between us, sliding a hand across his stiff length. He wore his trousers from the night before, but I dipped my hand beneath, curling my fingers around him.

“Fuck.”

I drank deeper, running my hand up and down his cock slowly until he was fucking into my fist. The image of me blazed through his mind, stretched around him, panting and needy.

So I pushed the complementary image back to him: Callum over me, his weight against my body, the ache of him hitting those spots no one else could reach.

When he sent another image, it was as if he was inside of me. My sex pulsed and a ripple of pleasure snaked up my spine. I writhed against him, caught within the image of him pressing deep. His groan was all but gravel as he grabbed my leg, tugging it over his hip and making that vision a reality.

His blood only added to the heady sensation as he stretched me with shallow thrusts. Our confinement in the coffin did not allow us much room, but it didn’t matter. Especially not when he leaned forward to sink his teeth into my shoulder.

I could feel my blood coursing into him before returning to me. We were connected as we had been last night when I’d been made. I whimpered, grinding down as he thrust up, chasing the dizzying spiral until he pulled back, lapping at the wound and sending sparks dancing through my core.

“Let go, my darling,” he growled. “I need you coming around my cock.”

At his words I fell apart. He pressed a hand overhead, pushing open the top of the coffin to reveal the chamber I only vaguely remembered him carrying me into last night.

But he did not pull out, only rolled me beneath him.

I pulled my teeth from his throat as he pushed my knee to my chest and threw my ankle over his shoulder to open me wider.

He sat back to watch his cock disappear into me again and again.

Callum pushed the sight to me through our bond.

I moaned, the noise growing louder as his thumb circled my clit until I was squeezing around him again.

His mouth hung open, fangs glinting and blood running down his perfect chest from the wound I’d opened with my teeth.

He pressed a kiss to my ankle before he tilted his hips, thick cockhead rubbing against my front wall. My lids fluttered shut.

“Touch yourself,” he all but pleaded.

My hand snaked between us and I circled my clit with a moan.

He watched with fire in his eyes before dipping his head.

A stream of blood slipped through his lips onto my clit, making my fingers slide effortlessly.

My orgasm crashed into me. I cried out his name, reaching for him.

His answering moan only added to the sensation, especially when he cut his wrist with his teeth and splattered the blood across my lips.

My tongue danced out to taste it, zinging tendrils of pleasure prolonging my release as, finally, my name fell from his lips like a prayer and his hips stuttered before picking up a wild rhythm. One hand cupped the back of my head as he fucked up into me, protecting me from the stone.

I ran my hands over his chest, licked the blood from his wrist, and soothed him in soft words as our bodies stilled. “I’m yours, Callum.”

He pressed a kiss between my breasts, lowering my leg.

“And I am yours.”

By the time we emerged from Callum’s room, fully dressed—thanks to Henry or Mateo, I supposed, for the elegant sapphire gown waiting for me—night had fallen and the sitting room was filled with the immortals I knew best and trusted most.

Henry was the first to stand when we entered, followed immediately by Mateo and Eamon.

“Immortality suits you, sister,” Henry said, though his usual delight was softened with grief. He swept me up into a hug that would have crushed my human body.

Mateo hummed his agreement, but it was Eamon who enfolded me in his embrace like the father I’d lost before I’d ever been born. “The day has finally come,” he murmured.

I frowned, drawing back to see his face. “What day?”

“Your great-grandmère saw the change when your mother was born. One day she would bear a child who would become a nighttime immortal.”

A knot lodged itself in my throat. “She knew?”

He nodded, touching a knuckle beneath my chin. “She did, and she hoped whatever happened to cause the transformation would be through an act of love.”

I blushed, peeking at Callum out of the corner of my eye. Though I didn’t answer Eamon, he didn’t seem to require one, just brushed a kiss between my brows before stepping back to clap my mate on the shoulder. “Are you ready?”

Callum took a deep breath to steady himself.

As we’d dressed, he’d told me of what we would have to do— we because I refused to stay behind.

Mateo had called a meeting of the Covenant as Mael’s firstborn fledgling.

It was Eamon, however, who would give them the choice to either abandon their monstrous ways or be destroyed.

I’d flinched at the harsh sentiment, but Callum had said this was the way it was done.

Forever was a long time to plan revenge, and no one knew better than Eamon and Seth.