Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

All told, Carmine had spent a lot of time watching Atticus drive. The way he held himself, the motions of the vehicle, the speed at which he drove — she thought she had all those things well-categorized and filed in her mind.

She'd never seen him drive like he did that night.

Carmine gripped the arm rests of her seat and laughed with exhilaration as he hurtled up the mountain roads. There was no fear, no worry that they'd careen over the edge and plummet into the frigid river below. Her trust in Atticus was bone-deep. He wouldn't let anything happen to her. Not now. Not ever.

They made it back to the estate in record time.

Anticipation was a warm, heavy weight in her stomach. Her pulse beat between her thighs. Her panties were wet. Longing unlike any she'd known gripped her as she recalled the weight of him in her palm, the scent of his skin, and his harsh gasps in her ear.

Atticus had been too focused on navigating the tight, winding roads of the mountains to touch her as they drove, but once they made it onto the estate, his palm landed on her thigh, so close to the gusset of her jeans that his pinkie brushed the seam.

Before she could so much as gasp, he'd moved to cup her instead, pressing so firmly that her hips lifted reflexively off the seat.

"I think about this pussy every fuckin' night," he growled, turning the car onto the private road that led to the cottages. "I love how wet you get when you feed from me, and I lose my mind when you come. It's the most beautiful thing in the world."

He pressed his two middle fingers into the seam, applying pressure where she needed it most. "Atty," she breathed, grasping his tattooed forearm like a lifeline.

"It's going to be even more beautiful seeing you wrapped around my cock." He glanced at her, his jaw flexing. "You ready for that?"

"Gods, yes." She didn't hesitate, didn't consider the repercussions or the fear that had always clouded her imaginings of intercourse. What had once seemed like a harsh inevitability had revealed itself to be a source of joy and anticipation.

Atticus had introduced her to sex with care. He'd wrung orgasm after orgasm out of her without once asking for anything in return. He let her lead, and his touch was rarely uncomfortable and never unwanted. Carmine couldn't imagine that penetrative sex would be any different — except, perhaps, in that it would be better.

He flashed a fanged smile full of promise. "Good."

The tires squealed as he came to an abrupt stop in front of his cottage. All of the homes on the estate looked similar, each one assembled with discarded stone from the mine, old bricks, and local timber. Inside, however, each one had been renovated to suit the owner's taste. Carmine was intimately familiar with Atticus's dark wood accents, clean lines, and white walls. His taste ran more Spartan than her own, but it suited him. It also pleased the part of her that desired order and cleanliness both in the morgue and in her living space.

She wasn't thinking of any of that, though, as Atticus yanked her door open and practically dragged her out of the car. She laughed and scrambled to keep up with him as he pulled her toward the cottage.

For all that they were in a rush, they couldn't seem to stop themselves from pausing every few steps to allow their greedy hands to wander, grab, stroke, and pull. Their kisses were hungry and increasingly desperate. Atticus's taste always drove her wild, but her desire was sharpened to a keen edge by this new hunger he revealed.

Her back hit the heavy wooden door with a thump. Atticus cupped the side of her neck with one hand, his thumb tilting her chin up, as his other fumbled with the biometric lock. Their mouths were fused, their kisses raw and wet. Her hands roamed beneath the stretchy material of his shirt, tracing all the flesh that had been barred to her for too long.

She tore her mouth away from his to pant, "I want to see you. You've never let me see you before."

"Couldn't risk it." The lock beeped. Atticus pushed the door open and walked her inside. He licked at her lips, lapping like he couldn't get enough of her taste, even as he kicked the door shut behind them. "Thought if I got naked I'd lose any sense I had left."

"I want you to lose your sense," she replied, tugging at his shirt. "I never thought I'd have someone who wanted me so much that they'd lose their head. I never thought it'd be this good."

Being a blood bride meant being possessed, used, even coveted. It wasn't the same as being desired — not just as a vessel, but as her. Carmine Safi. A woman who liked sparkly eyeshadow, arcades, murder mystery shows, and Atticus Caldwell.

He huffed a dry, incredulous laugh against her lips. "Gods, Carmine, I haven't had my head on straight since I opened that fuckin' trailer. I'm crazy about you. Love how stubborn you are, how smart. I love how you smell and how you taste and when you look at me like I'm a science experiment. I hate when we're apart and I count the minutes until I see you again."

"Me, too." She didn't bother looking behind her as he walked her backward toward his underground bedroom. He wouldn't let her bump into anything. "I thought it might dim a little when things settled down, but…"

But it hadn't. It'd only simmered in the back of her mind, getting warmer, sweeter, more complex. While she'd adjusted to life outside the crypt and actually got to know him, her desire had quietly permeated every cell of her body, changing her fundamentally.

"It didn't," he finished for her, gritty and knowing. "It only got stronger."

She dragged her blunt claws down his chest. "Yes."

Atticus hissed. Without warning, she was hoisted up into his arms. Her legs banded around his waist as he supported her weight with a forearm under her backside.

"Duck your head," he growled.

Carmine didn't need to be told twice. She pressed her kiss-swollen lips to his throat, tasting the delicious, familiar tang of his skin as he jogged down the short flight of stairs to his bedroom.

He told her that it had once been a root cellar, but she wasn't exactly certain what the purpose of one was. It had something to do with food, she was fairly sure, which explained why he'd converted it into a bedroom. Not only was it light-proof, but it was below ground — something that called to a vampire's instincts and made her feel safe.

Most vampires didn't really need to live underground anymore, as many made do with light-proofing technology, canopied beds, and other methods of achieving the confined feeling they craved, but Carmine had lived most of her life underground, so she appreciated it immensely.

Like the rest of his house, his bedroom was sparsely decorated and tidy. His bed took up the vast majority of the room. It was soft, and when he lowered her onto it, a cloud of his scent enveloped her.

Carmine wiggled beneath him, too eager to shuck her own clothes to be anything near dignified. He helped her strip with an equal amount of enthusiasm. When he pulled her jeans off, he did so with enough force to nearly yank her off the bed. They both exploded into laughter as she clawed at the duvet.

"Sorry." He shook his head and gave her a wry grin. "I should go slower. I want your first time to be?—"

"With you, right here, right now." She tossed her bra onto the floor and reached for the band of her panties, her hips lifting. "I don't care if it's fast. I don't care if it's not perfect. I only care that it's you."

Atticus planted a fist by her hip, his shoulders hunching as he closed his eyes. He breathed deeply through his nose before whispering, "Luckiest fuckin' man in the world."

Opening his eyes, he braced a knee on the bed and levered himself up. Atticus favored black clothing, which made his skin seem all the more pale. He pulled his shirt over his head, his torso stretching as he lifted his arms. She was transfixed by the sight of so much of that fair skin as it was revealed to her.

Atticus was not a man with superfluous muscle. He was dense, strong. The lines of his abdomen were sturdy, his shoulders broad, and his movements tightly controlled.

And the tattoos that decorated all that perfect, pale flesh were…

"Gorgeous," she breathed.

He was perfect. Perfectly real, solid, him. If she'd ever dared to dream of an anchor, she would have imagined someone like him.

Black ink stretched down from the neck tattoos she knew so well. They covered his chest and abdomen with all sorts of imagery. A lot of it was floral, but there were skulls, knives, and religious iconography she identified immediately. She'd once asked him if his tattoos had a meaning — something she'd always wondered and never got the chance to ask her dead friends from the slab — but he'd only shrugged.

"Nah," he'd explained. "Only a few mean anything. Most of it I got because I liked it."

He'd shown her the ones that did have meaning, though — the paintbrush for his sister, the north star for Harlan, the roses for Zia, and the baby's handprint for Serafina. But he hadn't shown her everything, and he certainly hadn't revealed the inflamed, fresh-looking tattoo on his left pec.

Carmine blinked. Sitting up abruptly, she hooked her fingers into the belt loops of his pants, pulling him closer. She gaped at her name, inked in what she recognized as his own handwriting, over his heart.

Atticus went very still as he let her look her fill. When she could finally tear her eyes away from it long enough to glance at him, he offered a lopsided smile. "Whatever happens with us, my heart's yours. I'm yours."

"You're mine," she breathed, just to feel the words on her lips again. She wanted them carved into her marrow, into her flesh and soul just as surely it had been inked into his.

Cupping her jaw with both hands, he pressed a heart-stopping kiss to her lips. "I'm yours."

"I want to be yours, too." Carmine gripped his hips with greedy fingers. "Bite me."

"Not until I'm inside you." But even as he said it, Atticus's fangs scraped her lip and moved down, leaving stinging trails over her jaw and the line of her throat.

Carmine's heart pounded. Her fingers shook, too, but they still managed to find the button and fly of his jeans. Pushing them and his briefs down his strong thighs, she immediately sought out the hot bar of his cock.

Giving it a slow stroke, she gasped, "Then I need you inside me. Now."

She wasn't entirely sure what happened, but in the next moment she was spun around, her cheek pressed into the blankets, and her backside in the air. Atticus kept one firm hand on the back of her neck while the other trailed over her flank and between her legs to spread her thighs.

"Can't look in those eyes," he rumbled, his voice gritty with want, "or this will be over before it starts."

Carmine slapped one hand on the bed in protest. Her own growl built in her throat. "Atty?—"

"Shh, I've got you. I've always got you." Featherlight and torturous, he trailed the pads of his fingers over her slick cunt, parting her, until he found what he was looking for. Her hips jerked when he circled her clitoris, lightly at first and then with increasing pressure.

She clenched, hips rolling. They'd done this part many times. Atticus had become something of an expert at how to make her orgasm, and she feared that was exactly why he wasn't employing any of his usual tricks. Instead, he brought her to the brink, only to pull back a moment before she went over the edge.

His fingers moved away just in time, a mere moment before the first sparks of her orgasm began to flicker. A whine replaced her growl.

Warmth seeped into her back as he leaned over her, covering her with his wider body. His lips skimmed her shoulder, teasing her with the tips of his fangs and the hot, wet glide of his tongue.

"My beautiful little doll," he murmured, the gentle tone giving her no warning before he thrust two fingers inside her.

Carmine's back arched, her muscles spasming around his fingers, but she couldn't move far when he pressed his greater weight down on her. A garbled, helpless sound escaped her throat when began to shuttle his fingers in and out with obscene, sticky sounds. The gentleness was gone. Now his touch was urgent, almost too much.

In between peppering kisses across her shoulder and the nape of her neck, he gravely assured her, "You can take this, doll. Fuck yourself back on my hand. Fuck. Yes, just like that. Such a perfect, perfect little doll."

The matron had always warned that sex would most likely be unpleasant at best, but Atticus had gone to great pains to show her that wasn't the case. With him, even the overwhelming, borderline painful parts of sex were pleasurable. She often stayed up well past dawn, her thoughts consumed by the sting between her legs, the bruising of her nipples that had been loved almost too much, and the soreness of her muscles after he bent her into some improbable shape.

So when he slid another finger in, stretching her past the point of fullness as he whispered praise in her ear, and kept up that relentless pace, Carmine didn't balk or panic. She submitted to the sensations, the sparks of pleasure and the burn of the intrusion, and clung to the smoky sound of his voice guiding her to the precipice.

She rocked her hips back, desperately meeting his pistoning fingers. Familiar wet sounds filled the air. Carmine lurched toward her orgasm, pushed a little further each time he dragged his fingertips over the sensitive spot inside her. It was a brutal thing that awaited her, an orgasm unlike any he'd given her before — a shattering force that shortened her breath and threatened to remake her, cell by cell.

A scream erupted from her throat when he yanked his hand back. Her hips moved uselessly, undulating beneath him in a fruitless attempt to regain their fullness. Instinct howled at his cruelty, at his lack of claim.

The animal part of her wanted to tear at him for abandoning her right when she needed him most, when she was nearly claimed and bred. Higher thought had already shut down. There was no reasoning, no logic, no quiet voice reminding her that instinct wasn't reality and there would be no real breeding this time.

There was only the wildfire of her need and the feral urge that compelled her to scream and hiss and claw at him until he claimed her in all ways.

Atticus sat up, leaving her sweat-slicked flesh cold. Before she could demand his return, she was flipped onto her back again.

Carmine stared up at him through watery eyes, her chest heaving, and dug her fingers into the sheets. "Please," she begged, spreading her thighs as wide as they could go. "Please, Atty. Please."

His cheeks were flushed, the look in his eyes wild. The shock of ginger hair on his head was mussed, and when she glanced down, she found his cock lined up with her cunt, ruddy, veined, and quite a bit larger than his fingers.

The blunt tip pressed in. "Keep your eyes on me," he grated. "I want to see them when I make you come on my cock."

It was hard to do as he commanded when the sting of his entry made her eyes water even more than they already were, but Carmine did her best. Even if he hadn't ordered her to, she would have. The sight of him slowly pushing into her body, the striking lines of his face, the way his eyes blazed with the same wildness she felt…

She wouldn't have missed that for anything.

His rough palms landed on her inner thighs, pushing them as far as they could go before he gripped them hard. "Deep breath, doll."

Carmine sucked in a lungful of air heavy with their scents, but it exploded out of her not a moment later when he sheathed himself in one forceful thrust.

Her back arched off the bed. "Atty!"

Letting go of her trembling thighs, Atticus braced his palms by her ears and bent over her. Their noses brushed as their harsh breaths mingled. "You okay, doll?" he gasped, cupping the crown of her head.

Carmine fought to catch her breath, to think around the burn and stretch of what felt like an invasion. Her body didn't feel like her own anymore. It was a different thing, all of her nerves misfiring, sending conflicting information to her brain.

She wasn't sure she liked having his cock inside her. It was too much. Too full. He'd impaled her, pinned her there beneath his bulk, and while her instincts crowed with victory, her mind hadn't yet caught up to why that was a good thing. Understanding the mechanics of the body had always grounded her, but in this instance she thought perhaps every textbook, every observation she'd made on the slab, was wrong.

This can't be right. He ‘s not supposed to fit in there.

Desperate to make some sense of things, Carmine wrapped her arms around him. Feeling the sweaty topography of his muscles, she whimpered, "I need you."

"You have me." He sipped at her lips with small, reverent kisses. "You have all of me, Carmine. I'll make this better. Just relax. Breathe for me."

Her lashes were heavy with tears, but she nodded. "Okay."

Still sheathed to the hilt, he gently turned her head to one side, presenting her throat to his questing mouth.

Her breath caught. All thoughts of burning muscles and size incompatibility were shunted aside.

Yes, she thought, toes curling. Finally.

She craved his bite, his claim. It was exactly what she needed to find her pleasure again.

Atticus whispered something against her skin, the softest I love you, before his fangs slid through. There was the smallest flash of pain, barely anything compared to the burn between her legs, and then… euphoria.

Warmth spread from that perfect bite. It bled into her veins like the sweetest syrup. Every beat of her heart spread it a little further, until she could taste it in the thin lining of her cheeks and feel it all the way down in her toes.

Her muscles loosened. The discomfort faded. Her world went hazy and bright while her mind went blissfully quiet. There was nothing but slow-burning pleasure and contentment in her when his fangs slid free and he began to suck, taking small, greedy gulps of her blood.

One of his hands framed the side of her face. She turned her head a bit more, seeking out his thumb. Carmine pressed a kiss to the pad. In response, he slipped it past her lips and pressed down on her tongue, silently commanding her to suck. His low, pleased rumble vibrated through her chest when she hollowed her cheeks around it.

Atticus's hips began to move. He didn't thrust, but swiveled his hips, reigniting nerves. She clutched at his back and lifted her hips, intoxicated by the burgeoning pleasure and the venom coursing through her veins.

He's mine, she thought, tasting the salt of his skin with deep, dark pleasure. I'm his.

The crypt taught her that she would only ever belong to someone, never that someone could belong to her, too. It was the height of decadence to know that a man such as Atticus Caldwell was hers and hers alone.

She didn't mean to bite his thumb. It was pure instinct to sink the tip of a fang into his flesh, drawing just enough blood to make her moan.

His rhythm stuttered. The suction on her throat ended and was replaced by the flat of his tongue. "Perfect," he breathed, thrusting harder, a little deeper. Pleasure sparked whenever he hit that spot inside her as he slid out and once again when he thrust home. "So fuckin' perfect."

One hand grabbed her thigh and pressed it upward, into his chest, as he bent to lower his lips to her breasts. She lapped at the tiny wound she'd made on his thumb even as he pricked the sensitive skin of her nipple with his fangs. Pleasure, sharper than any she'd felt before, snapped down her spine.

She was nearly mindless with it as he bit, sucked, and thrust inside her, his speed increasing until her own hips could no longer keep up. Their bodies met with obscene sounds, wet ones and slapping ones and beautiful, breathy groans neither could contain. Atticus slid his thumb free from her lips just as he began to pound into her, each thrust so brutal it threatened to hike her up the bed.

Holding her there with one arm bracketed above her head, he stooped to give her a raw, bloody kiss. His other hand snuck between them. She shouted something — his name, a declaration, a curse, who knew — when he rolled her clitoris between his thumb and forefinger.

Her orgasm, built up and pushed down so many times, whited out her vision. Carmine's muscles seized. The taste of their blood mingling on her tongue sent her higher, and his frantic thrusts, graceless and desperate, were followed by a warm gush somewhere deep inside.

Vampiric instincts were like static in the background of her mind, a constant low-level hum of perfect contentment now that they had what they wanted: a mate, the chance to breed, and blood so sweet, it was all she'd crave for the rest of her life.

Pressing her forehead to his, Carmine whispered, "I couldn't have dreamed of this."

Their bodies were still joined, their skin slippery with sweat, but neither cared when Atticus gathered her close and squeezed her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

"Neither could I," he replied, hoarse with feeling. "When I opened that trailer, I never… It never occurred to me that I'd find my everything inside."

Carmine smiled, slow and achingly tender. "I'm still not sorry I ran."

His huff of laughter puffed against her cheeks. "No?"

"No, because you caught me."

"I'll always catch you," he promised.

She stroked her fingers through his sweaty hair and, just because she wanted to hear him say it, she asked, "Why is that?"

Atticus pressed a reverent kiss to the fresh bite on her throat. "Because you're mine."