It was the middle of the night and the tourists had gone home, leaving the dark coves empty, the star-scattered sky seeming to light up just for them. There was no sound except for her sigh and the slide of two bodies through the lustrous water.
They’d spent their first week as a married vampire couple plotting places all over the world that were best explored at night. Between bouts of feverish lovemaking, they’d spread out a map between them on various hotel room beds, circling destinations and musing aloud about sample itineraries. There might be a war culminating back home, but they were anxious to plan for eternity together—and they weren’t wasting a single second.
Elias traced the shell of Roksana’s ear with his tongue and her back arched, bringing the peaks of her bare tits out of the water, moisture sluicing down the pretty mounds and turning his mouth dry. Between his legs, he turned to stone, his hands itching to mold her breasts in his hands, but he didn’t act, enjoying her relaxation. After the last few weeks—hell, the last three years—she deserved it. Not to mention, she was having a difficult time adjusting to her new abilities. Her new hunger. The emotions that came from being and having a mate.
Remembering the incident from that afternoon triggered an adamant throb low in his belly.
“You are thinking of my explosion earlier. Aren’t you, husband?”
His lips jumped. “Hard not to think about it, wife.”
She sniffed. “I am not ready to laugh about this,” she murmured, but there was humor in her tone.
Earlier that night, they’d gone walking through the small fishing village of Grindavík when someone had accidentally bumped into Elias. A totally innocent accident.
Roksana had reacted like someone was trying to shoot a wooden arrow through his heart, her fangs firing out of her gums, her body launching in the offender’s direction, an anguished sound splitting the peace of the night. He’d managed to drag her behind the stall of an open-air market, commanding her to feed. She’d sucked on his neck with such desperation, he’d ended up covering her mouth with one hand and unzipping with the other, fucking her silly against a concrete pillar until she hit a peak and the fight went out of her.
They trained constantly to acclimate Roksana to her new speed and strength. Many a hotel room between Iceland and Moscow had sustained damage. But she was coming along slowly but surely, her skills shifting to accommodate the major changes. With the potential for battle on the horizon, she wanted to be ready. And she would be.
They would be.
It was the emotional aspect of matehood that seemed to wind her at every turn. It killed him to watch her struggle with the amplified instincts to feed, protect, possess, because he could relate to it on every level. He’d lived with his obsession with Roksana for three years before being able to act on it and each day was a mixture of heaven and hell. Seeing her: heaven. Not touching her: hell.
There was no doubt in his mind that he’d fallen in love with her that night in the casino. They were fated from the beginning. Every cell in his body had known her before she even opened her mouth to speak. Their love was an incredible magic, but it had become even more than that. Loyalty, perseverance, trust, friendship.
He could only imagine what it was like for Roksana to plow through this heightened state of love and connection with her immortality thrown into the mix. He had a three-year head start on Roksana and still spent his every waking moment overwhelmed, nearly drowning in his feelings for her.
His wife turned in the water to face Elias and his heart started clamoring viciously in his chest, simply from the way the moonlight bathed her blonde hair, turning her into a seductive angel. His seductive angel. She looked at him with serious eyes, her arms lifting to wrap around his neck. “Tomorrow I will control myself better.”
Elias nodded. “You will.”
“Probably.”
Chuckling, he kissed her mouth softly. “Probably.”
“I understand now why you followed me every night in the shadows. When I would go hunting.” Her voice hitched on the final word. “It must have been excruciating to watch me fight all those times and not intervene.”
Elias said nothing, the residual fear of those evenings clamping around his windpipe.
A line formed between her light brows. “You didn’t merely give a year of your life in that prison for me, you gave the whole thing. Your humanity gone, just like that. And the life you were left with…you would have ended it to keep me from suffering. You have sacrificed so much for me, husband, and I burn—I burn to do the same for you.” Her thighs slipped around his hips, her fingertips tracing his jawline, trapping him in a maze of need. “That is where my…very sexy, very attractive aggression is coming from.”