He moved closer and pressed his lips to mine in a long, very slow and very wet kiss. “Not if I gag you.”

I went to say something witty, but couldn’t help laughing instead.

“Mmm, don’t do that.” He leaned back a bit, closing his eyes, moving inside me again. “You know how much that giggle stirs my inner vampire.”

“And you know how much your inner vampire turns me on.” I accompanied my statement with a quick flick of my nail down his chest, making him bleed.

His chin rolled so his gaze settled on the cut. “Perhaps I will have to tie you up.”

My insides tightened. “I dare you to.”

“I—” He was too shocked to actually do it, though. He just closed his mouth, keeping a tight smile there, and ran his hand firmly down my arm, cupping my wrist and pinning it to the bed by my hip. “I swore I’d never be that way with you, Ara.”

“Why?”

“Because that kind of thing is not for you. It’s for whores.”

I huffed. “Whores?”

“It’s just how I feel.” He brought my wrist up above my head, his hand wrapping it so tight the blood filled my fingertips.

“Then why are you holding me like that?”

His fingers loosened. “Look, I love you, Ara. And no matter how much I want to, I would never do anything disrespectful to you.”

“Maybe I like that kind of disrespect.”

He laughed, and the sweet warmth of his breath brushed over my lashes, flavouring my tongue a little with orange chocolate. “Yes, I think you’ve always been a bit twisted, my love. Perhaps it’s all the torture you suffered.”

“Then what’s your excuse?” I said, and he stopped pumping. “You clearly want to do those things to me.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m just mentally deranged from years of inflicting heinous punishments on the stripped and restrained bodies of lawbreakers.”

“So, it’s okay for you to be twisted, but not me?”

“Yes, because you are my sweet, pure-souled little wife, Ara. And I won’t taint you the way I’ve been tainted.”

I shook my head, sending my incredulous smile across the room, away from him. “I’m not as pure as you think I am.”

He cupped both my cheeks and kissed my lips once. “I’m going to die soon, Ara. Let me go peacefully to my death with the notion that my involvement in your life hasn’t ruined you, please.”

I laid both hands above my head, crossing my wrists like they were bound; my body long and open to all he wanted from me. “Maybe you’ll just have to stick around until I’m all sweet and innocent again then.”

He laughed and caged both my hands in one of his. “You’re going to be sorry you did that.”

“Are you going to spank me?”

“Do you want me to?”

I nodded, smiling playfully.

“Okay, but remember, you asked for it,” he warned.

“I can take whatever you can dish out.”

He bit his lip, his fang making a deep impression in the skin, and reached down, leaving a gentle but sharp sting across the firmest part of my thigh, almost on my bottom.

I jumped a little, my leg tightening, but the rush of heat only tingled, making my skin want more. “That didn’t hurt.”

“It’s not supposed to hurt,” he said.

“What’s it supposed to do?”

“Open you up—take something from you that you wouldn’t give to anyone else.”

“What’s that?”

“Control. Permission to hurt you.” He paused, letting the words simmer through me. “The right to do whatever I want with the trust that I’ll draw the line before it gets too much. The feeling of opening up—experiencing something we normally run from—in a completely open, completely vulnerable situation.”

I thought about the emotions that little smack stirred in me, seeing myself tense and flinch as the pain flared, my soul suddenly connecting with him after the sting dissolved. “You do realise you’re tainting me right now.”

He wet his lips and ran his thumb slowly up my chin, pulling my mouth apart. “Maybe that was always inevitable.”

“As was the hurt,” I said sadly.

His hand rested over my breast, his fingers pressing firmly to feel my heart. “I know you’re suffering, Ara. But I will leave you with a child, at least. I promise.”

I nodded, placing my hand over his. “Then you better make love to me, David. I don’t want our child conceived while you’re spanking me.”

He laughed, falling on his elbows, his silky, naked body completely touching mine, and brought his hand up to sweep my sweaty hair off my brow. “Look at you.”

“What?” I said self-consciously.

“You’ve grown up so much, Ara, but you’ll always be that sweet girl I fell in love with on the football field at school.”

I looked up at his perfect dark pink lips, then at the long lashes surrounding those emerald eyes, and I could still see so much of the boy he would always be to me—the sweet, funny, carefree guy I sometimes missed. But that was fading—washing away to reveal the man inside me right now. My king. My husband. Strong. A fighter. A man willing to die, willing to do anything to see that I never went a day again in my life looking over my shoulder. And his face changed then, his body moving faster against mine, his eyes turning dark and black as he reached the point of no return, becoming the man who would one day be the father my daughter never knew.

I held back my cries, the lusted breath of ecstasy, the tears and the rage, and just wrapped him up tight in my arms, feeling him release his life force into my body, spreading hope and light throughout. I didn’t want to orgasm. I didn’t want to feel the pleasure of the moment; I just wanted to remember what it felt like to hold him this way—to love him with all my heart—no other distractions in the world. So I drove my fingers into his hair, his shoulder pressing my jaw with the closeness, his body so heavy I couldn't breathe, and just held him tighter—the muscles in my arms flexed and rigid to keep him close. I’d never let him pull away. He was everything to me, just as I was everything to him, and we held each other as this truth rained through our tired, sweaty bodies, relaxing us down through the scales of exhaustion, breath by breath.

He rested his weight on top of me, his elbows propping him up, and stroked my hair behind my ear a few times, taking in all of me—taking in my smile, my eyes, my scent, my skin, the wetness, the heat, the breathlessness. We laid that way, David going soft inside me, connected and unwilling to part, wordless but speaking volumes in silence, until we both turned our heads and watched the glimmer of red sunlight kiss the horizon on the far side of the world.

***

I felt the presence of the hunter behind me, his eagle eye anticipating my every move. But he couldn’t read my mind, thank goodness, which meant he could only guess what I was about to do.

Ever since that cursed day I fell off the lighthouse, Mike had slowly and surely managed to get his own way again and have guards all over the manor. It was downright annoying. Especially since the business I had to attend was not for Falcon’s ears, nor was it for the four men standing guard between the windows on every corridor and on every door of the manor. They were sworn to absolute secrecy about any and all private business that occurred, but I still didn’t trust them.

My red summer dress, so fitting for such a devilish mission, reflected the morning light back against the white walls to my right, making them pink, and my shadow danced beside me, flickering and dipping, lengthening over Arthur’s door then wrapping the corner to the stairwell before I reached it. I glanced back inconspicuously to check Falcon’s shadow, then turned the corner and headed down the stairs, taking a very quick right on the second floor, my fast feet putting sudden and great distance between my guard and I.

“Ara?” he called quietly, careful not to disturb any manor guests. But he’d never find me. I closed Jason’s door so slowly that the only sound it made as it clipped gently into place had no more volume than the back being snapped fast on an earring.

“Ara?” he tried again, his voice drifting toward the wrong end of the manor. He knew he’d been given the slip, and I’d been caught giving him the slip enough that knew I had very little time before he picked up my scent and followed me here. Except, by the time he figured it out, I’d be long gone, leaving him with nothing but the burning question on his mind as he’d scratch his head, muttering, Where the hell did she go?

Before executing my ‘Houdini’ escape, though, I took a moment to look around the small space. Unlike the other rooms in the manor, this was undersized by the plaster wall hiding the secret room beside it but, despite the lack of space, still overflowed with Jason’s personality. It was set out much the same as Arthur’s room: a redwood canopy bed to the left, swathed in rich auburn blankets and pillows; a fireplace between two windows, except Jase only had one window, and a long oak table across from the foot of the bed. But, unlike Arthur’s room, Jase’s was painted blue between the white panels on the walls, and instead of plants and books about plants, his shelves were stuffed to overflowing with novels and comic books. His baseball cap sat on the tall drawers between the window and his bed, a pile of books stacked on the floor beside it, almost as high as the ledge, clearly used as some kind of footstool while he sat there in the nook, reading, and a small cluster of clothes littered the blanket box. It was exactly as I’d imagine it should be.

I walked over to the oak table and spread the collection of papers aside to see what he’d been doing. Several cartoon sketches of dragons, and girls with big eyes and long, blue hair, stared back up at me. I knew he was talented, but most people I’d met that could draw were good at either real-life or cartoon. Not both. Jase was clearly just too talented.

I picked up a picture and ran my fingers over the lines of a dog’s face and the speech bubble above its head, moving my touch then to the cursive signature on the bottom right corner. I’d never really paid much attention to his handwriting, but it did say a lot about him—each long, smooth stroke of the pen tip over the page that led to the tall then rounded lines of the J and the O, shorter, more decisive strokes on the A and the N, and the S almost non-existent. He never really owned his name. I knew that. It was a name given to him by his father because it was against the law not to name a child. David told me their father had flipped through the paper until he found the front page news about a cad named Jason Fruge, a rat of a man that rained devastation on their town, selling high-interest loans to the already poor and destitute then taking their homes when they couldn’t pay. And Jason saw this name as a role he’d one day live up to: a sign, a signature, that illustrated everything impure and childish and dishonest about this offcut of a boy. But all I saw was a strong warrior with a heart so big and so kind it allowed the innocence of boyhood to shine through, despite everything he’d done or suffered. I would never believe he was the ‘leftovers’ of centuries of evil being drained from one bloodline, not for as long as I’d live.