Everything inside me wanted to believe him. It was a physical pain in my chest to feel how much I wanted it to be true. "Well then, let's go," I said. "Let's go and do it now."
He smiled, kissing me deeply.
I leaned into him—into the strength and power and hope radiating off the Lord of Darkwatch like a beacon. I kissed him back, trying desperately to tamp down that voice in my mind that whispered to me that he was wrong.
We were not mates. We were simply Io and Sera. Two people who loved each other so much we were about to let the world burn for it.
Thirty-One
Interlude
Prince Refaedon reached his long arms across the bed, stretching. He ran into resistance on his left side and opened his eyes to see the form of a woman, lying on her side facing away from him. Her long shape flowed down gracefully where a slim waist rose up to the gentle roundness of hips and the curve of a very nice ass.
The sheet had fallen away from her as she slept, so he could see the entire smooth expanse of one cheek.
He turned over and reached for her, wrapping his fingers around her hip. He heard her sleepy groan and watched her wiggle in response to his touch.
She woke gradually, rolling onto her back so that his fingers trailed around her body.
High, round breasts came into view. Their substantial weight made them bounce a little before settling into place on her chest. Her nipples, a deep plum color, were already peaked with the dawn chill in the air.
She was beautiful—her rich, golden skin smooth and unblemished beneath the black curls that fell around her shoulders.
She reached her arms over her head, stretching, and looked at him from beneath long, black lashes. “Your Highness,” she said, blinking a few times before she sat up and reached for him. “Did you need something?” she purred.
“Turn over,” Refaedon growled as he coaxed her hips around. He had to be quick. His father would be expecting him on deck for their arrival in this cursed land, and he didn’t want to deal with the tantrum the man would throw if he was late.
The woman, Catia, rolled over, crawling up onto her hands and knees. She arched before tilting her head to let the dark fall of her hair spread out across her back. She looked at him with half closed eyes and gave a wicked little grin.
He reached forward to push her shoulders to the bed, angling her backside higher as he positioned himself behind her.
He was already hard—he’d woken up that way. Though, it had more to do with the shadow-blasted dream he’d had than the fact that Catia was in his bed.
He buried himself inside her already wet body in one fluid motion. He sank all the way to the hilt, something he couldn’t usually manage with the considerable length of himself. But Catia was accommodating. She took all of him easily. He felt her body press tight around him as she moaned eagerly.
Refaedon slid himself out, and then grasping her hips tightly, he shoved himself back inside, and again. Each time he slid back into her he struck harder, and each time he slid out, he came back faster until he was fucking her so hard he could hear the slap of their flesh together loud in his ears.
Catia loved every moment of it. She had a bit of a perverse reaction to the degradation of being pounded into the mattress. Her cries grew more intense the harder he drove into her.
“Oh, yes! Yes yes yes!” she cried. The voice, a little over-the-top in terms of theatrics, began to needle him.
Refaedon pumped into her even harder, the muscles in his arms and chest standing out with the effort. He hoped fucking her like this would shut her up, but Catia’s cries grew louder still.
“Yes, oh gods, yes!” she moaned.
He leaned forward to put his hand over her mouth, pulling her head back and exposing her long, bare throat. “Quiet,” he hissed in her ear, and then growled as the little bitch bit his finger so hard it broke the skin.
The anger spurred him on. He felt his cock harden in response to her teeth against his skin. So he hooked the finger inside her mouth and pressed her face down into the mattress.
Refaedon’s other hand made its way to that lovely throat. He unwillingly wrapped his fingers around it, pulling her head back again. He was careful not to squeeze too hard as he drove into the warm, wet center of her.
As he neared climax, he pulled her up, pressing his chest down the length of her body as he sank his sharp fangs into the soft skin of her throat.
He tasted the sweet tang of her blood as his climax rolled through him. He growled deep and low against the soft, vulnerable flesh of her throat as he spilled himself inside her with one last mighty thrust.
His magic pulsed and thrummed with Catia's blood now coursing through him. He could feel her—her essence—as though the fundamental parts of her were running through him.
The black fire met those pieces of her, greedily twisted up in them as though bathing in her life force itself, and then consumed them.
