Laughter pained, Elias pressed their foreheads together. “Roksana.” His voice shook with intensity. “Compensate me with your happiness. That’s all I want. No more stakes to the stomach. No more guilt. Just your love. Please.” He kissed her hard. “I wouldn’t just get up and follow you in that casino, if I had to do it all over again. I would run. I would chase after you, get on my knees and beg to go through every second of suffering, just to reach this moment with you. Do you not think three years of torture is worth an eternity with you? Wife, I would have offered millenniums. I love you.”
“I love you…I’ve loved you so much it hurts.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I worry sometimes it will tear me apart.”
“No. I won’t let it.” His hand traveled down her back to capture her backside roughly, guiding her heat to his erection. “You will tear me apart instead.”
Her head fell back on a moan and he kissed her wild pulse, willing it to calm, but knowing it wouldn’t until she’d been fed and pleasured. Repeatedly. Elias was caught between enjoyment of her unquenchable appetites and the desire for her to settle into her new skin. But above all, he wanted to be there for every step of her journey, supporting her, loving her beyond reason. Holding her hand and standing united against whatever fight came next.
They were forever. Bonded. Indestructible.
Elias was getting ready to swim them to shore, so he could lay his wife down somewhere sturdy and see to her needs—and his own rapidly growing ones—but she surprised him by lifting her head, smiling, her eyes sparkling with lust and humor. “You are very lucky I was not a vampire first. I would have been compelling your ass all over town.”
“Oh, yeah?” His deep laughter rang out on the surface of the lagoon. “What would you have compelled me to do?”
“Oh, innocent things, like making me coffee. In an apron and nothing else.” A smile spread across her lips. “Maybe I’d have compelled you to carry me on a silk pillow through the graveyards at night, feeding me grapes, spinning tales of my brave exploits. That would have been a good start.” She shrugged a moonlit shoulder. “And then maybe some motor boating.”
“Like this?” He yanked her naked body up higher against his own, burying his mouth between her tits and blowing loudly, burrowing his face side to side until she was squealing, her laughter carefree and full of joy. That laughter quickly turned to gasps, though, Elias’s bristled jaw raking over her nipples, again and again.
Her hands started slapping at his shoulders, her neck losing power. “Now, husband. Now.”
Elias was already moving, grappling with his own desperation, cutting through the water to reach one of the coves so he’d have leverage. God knew he needed it the way she demanded a breakneck pace when she got worked up like this. But when they reached the spot where their discarded clothes lay, Elias heard his phone ringing. He started to ignore it, the need to be inside his wife flaying him alive, but the ringing wouldn’t stop.
“It could be important,” she whispered, pulling back and giving him a meaningful look.
Every call seemed to be important these days, the number of vampire slayings still on the rise and Inessa having gone to ground, no doubt plotting where her loyalties would lie if an immortal war broke out. She didn’t have the game piece—Jonas was in possession of that, thanks to Roksana’s cleverness—but with Tilda joining the fae forces together with the dark uprising, leaving the North American slayerhood open and vulnerable, Elias suspected Inessa was already scheming to take that coveted spot, while maintaining a stranglehold on her own.
Only time would tell.
Giving his wife’s tits a longing look, Elias climbed out of the water, earning him an appreciative whistle from Roksana. He dried a hand quickly on his jeans and recovered the cell phone from his pocket. Tucker’s name flashed on the screen.
Elias answered quickly. “Yeah?”
“Hey. Congrats on your nuptials, man. Hate to break up the party, but, uh…” Tucker’s voice was uncharacteristically tense. “It’s starting. How fast can you two get to Oklahoma?”
THE END