Chapter Twenty-Five

Until in this place

Of dying and dead:

From creature to ghost

The way is so strange –

I die, I live,

In the anguish of both.

From Creature to Ghost – Pauline Hanson

My body came alive with the burning flame of his touch. Heated lips on flesh warmed by long awaited passion. Need ignited the fires of deep-seated yearnings and stifled hopes held too long. Words were not enough. I had to show him how he made me feel.

I reached for him. The weight of his body above me brought tears to my eyes. The sight of his pale, beautiful flesh, sculpted and glowing in the candlelight, was far more lovely than my dreams could imagine. Everywhere I touched sparked a memory and burned a new one to savor for time eternal upon the wounds of my weary soul.

How had he burrowed so deeply inside my heart? And so quickly too? Had I needed to be loved so badly?

“Do not waste this moment with questions that need not, at least for now, be answered,” he whispered against the nape of my neck. Teeth grazed where lips and the wet heat of his tongue trailed currents of fire down my flesh, building an inferno in the erratic beat at the base of my jugular.

“Know that I want you,” he told me. “That I need you.”

“And I you,” I responded, unable to hold back the tears that my voice held.

He kissed them away with his lips, and my heart trembled. Every touch of his mouth upon my body built the blaze higher. Teeth and lips grazed the taut peaks of nipples and I rose to his touch. Begged him to take me further into warmth of his embrace.

He suckled and the fire spread from my breasts to my belly. I reveled in the soft, but inhumanly strong feel of him. The sight of him over me and the scent of him around me filled all of my senses, my entire world. This was my Vampire lover. He had become my dark knight and my gallant Death Stalker. A mere man who once walked in the Light, but gave it all away for the lives and the love of others. His duty and honor were things measured in blood and time. It was that precious time with him that I never wanted to worry about losing again.

When the warmth of his lips met the flat expanse of my belly, I gasped. Chills broke out all over my body. Strong hands held the curve of hips while his lips and mouth lingered to dance their seduction down the flat expanse of hidden valley towards the indenture of my womanhood before he moved on from thigh to thigh. With subtle ease and gentle persuasions he spread me wide, then lay like a king at feast before me. Tenderly he kissed his way up from the base of my knee to the quivering juncture between.

My heart danced with desire long spun out of control while my body wept for him. I yearned to feel the thick heat of him inside me even as he kissed and savored the heat his delicate ministrations brought forth. But I wanted him to burn for me like I burned for him.

“I never wish to lose you,” he softly told me, trailing more hot, wet kisses up between my nether lips, as he whirled his tongue at the tip of my bud before moving on to the pulsing vein at the indenture of my thigh.

I knew what he was asking without him saying the words. Saw the question in his hungry, heated gaze. Yet it was a question filled with the promise of love. The promise of a lifetime of love. This would be our next mark. Our next willing exchange of blood with each other.

Did I wish to do it? And if I did, what would it mean?

“Nor I you,” I told him, unable to hesitate. I knew in my heart of hearts I never wanted to worry about losing him again. The rest didn’t matter.

He kissed me at the base of my thigh. Hot and long, until I could feel his incisors scraping against my artery. We both knew he was holding back. The tension rode his body like thunder seeking a storm. He moved, settled his large frame between my legs; the length of his manhood rested against me. It pulsed with its own need, and nothing else mattered to me but the weight of him and our unquenchable thirst for each other.

When he leaned into me, the softness of his lips against mine, he thrust forward, filled me completely. My gasp was stolen by the sweet surrender of our kiss. The tango of emotions welled inside of me as he rocked against me. I rose to meet each driving thrust. Clutched him to me. Raked my nails across his back, feeling the blood beneath fill the crescents of my nails; my she-wolf sparking to the smell of fresh blood.

He kissed me deeper, thrust harder and faster into me; the blood quickening his own desires. Then he pulled me tighter to him, sat back on his knees with me before him as I rode the storm of need with mad abandon. Relished the dark fire that burned in his eyes.

The feel of his lips on my neck and the spike of waves that rolled through my body let me know that we were both close to the edge. There would be no turning back.

“What I take from you, I freely surrender in love and trust. For now and for always,” he growled against my neck. The strength of his hands as he clutched me to him, guiding our bodies, only intensified my passion. Drove me mad with the intense demand for more. I had to feel his teeth on me, breaking my flesh; knowing my blood filled him... Now.

The world spun in blinding rays of liquid gold as my orgasm rushed through me and Kieran’s teeth pierced the flesh at the base of my neck. Lights danced an array of cosmic flashes beaming through my mind, one spectral beam bouncing behind my lids in a rapid display of magic and artistry.

Kieran’s lust-filled growl brought the light show to a subtle close. That, and the rush of his seed pumping inside of me. I knew it was a seed that would never sprout—the dead can’t give life. But the knowledge that I could bring him so much pleasure was enough for me.

I watched the way his skin filled with the heat of my blood, turned a soft shade of cream that most would never notice, and smiled with delight.

“Take from me that which you have freely given,” he told me. Then, he took his fingernail and opened a line at his own neck. I watched, momentarily awed, while his blood beaded and jeweled like rubies against the cream of his flesh with an all-consuming desire and dark need all my own, one I didn’t bother to question or consider the consequences of. “In love and in trust,” I whispered. “For now and for always.” Then I leaned forward and drank the immortal nectar from the flesh of my dark love.

With the rich, dark heat of his blood against my lips, just to be safe, I prayed to the Prophets, if we open our eyes and there is nothing but Darkness, forgive us so that we may wake and once again walk in the Light eternal.

* * * * * *

When I slept, I dreamt of angels. Beautiful, sparkling angels dressed in the armor of warriors with long flowing capes. All of them sought my death.

Strange that Children of the Light would want to kill me when I was supposed to be their Chosen. Then again, lately it seems that if a day goes by that someone isn’t seeking my blood or my death, then it’s been bloody fucking marvelous. So why did I suddenly feel like this was going to be a long, cold winter?

As the saying goes, ‘In for a penny...In for a pound.