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I set the cards on the nightstand.
Fang curled his body up and gave me that disappointed stare.
“You’re taking bed rest better than I thought you would.” Larisa closed the book and set it on the nightstand.
“Bed rest is better than being dead.”
Her eyes softened. “It is.”
“When I thought I was going to die…I felt like shit for leaving you behind. I’ll take bed rest over that any day.”
* * *
My armor was too broken to be repaired, so it was replaced with a brand-new set. Black and red, with black serpents over the red pieces and red serpents over the black. It was polished and shiny, containing no scuff marks from previous battles. New armor for a new beginning.
I looked at myself in the mirror once everything was secure, thinner than I used to be, because lying in a bed for three weeks had weakened my muscle tone. But once I was back to my previous routine, it would return.
“How are you?” Larisa spoke from behind me, her body blocked by mine.
There were aches all over my body, all in places where things had been broken, but those might never go away. “Never better.” I turned around to face her, to show her that I was the man she remembered, not the cripple who had been stuck in bed.
Her eyes lightened as she looked at me, her head tilting slightly. She stepped into me and hooked her arms around my neck to kiss me. On her tiptoes, she reached hard for my mouth.
My arms scooped into her body and lifted her, bringing her perfectly level with my mouth so she could kiss me exactly as she wanted.
She stopped treating me like a fragile piece of glass that would shatter into infinite pieces at the slightest touch. She embraced me as a healed man, a man as strong as I’d been before I was beaten to within an inch of my life. That was a great feeling.
We were supposed to depart the kingdoms and return home, but now that I had her in my arms and her mouth on mine, I steered right back to the bed and dropped her onto the sheets.
Fang immediately let himself out and shut the door with his tail.
She was in her uniform to travel, so I slid off her boots and dragged her pants over her ass until they were at her ankles. I undid my pants enough for my cock to come free, the plates of armor too much for me to push down my trousers any farther. But it was enough to pull her into me and slide inside, finally reacquainted with the woman I loved.
She gasped for me the way she always did, her hands reaching for my hips as she bent her knees toward her waist.
My hands gripped her waist, my thumbs touching in the middle of her stomach, and I thrust hard, finally enjoying one of the best reasons to be alive. I looked down at her as I took her, as I claimed her as mine again.
She rocked with me, panting and writhing, her nails digging into my flesh as she held on. “Kingsnake…”
33
LARISA
We returned to Grayson, the cloudy coastal stronghold that always had a cool breeze. Now that I was a vampire, I appreciated the climate more than I ever had before. It allowed me to enjoy the day as well as the night, while protecting my skin from the sun’s harmful rays.
Now that most of the humans were immune to the sickness, food for the vampires was no longer scarce. Even after the war, there were still enthusiasts, and even more appeared now that the Werewolf King had been defeated. Most of them were interested in Kingsnake, but he passed on them all and gave them to the others.
For the first time, life was simple…peaceful.
I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.
Kingsnake and I continued our honeymoon, the one that had been interrupted by his father’s sabotage, and it wasn’t until a week after our return that we left our bedchambers and checked on the well-being of Grayson.
Kingsnake was back to how he’d been before, just with a new addition of scars from his near-death experience. We entered his study, where he worked at the desk, and I sat in the armchair near the fire. A book was in my hands, and Fang was curled up on the rug in front of the fire, like a dog that liked to lie in the sun.
“Kingsnake?” I shut the book.
Kingsnake picked up on my tone and didn’t answer me from the desk. He joined me in the sitting area, taking a seat on the couch and reaching for the decanter of scotch there. He filled his glass without offering me anything and took a drink. “Yes, sweetheart?”
