39. Toby

One second, I'd been listening to the rude angel speak.

The next, I was on the ground.

I also appeared to be feeding. Not just on any blood, but on the most delicious blood I'd ever tasted. The sweet heat was warming me to my very bones. I drank greedily, thinking I could never get enough of this flavour.

What was more, I could feel the curse retreating, as though the blood itself was chasing it from my veins. My powers were returning, my body responding as my own healing abilities worked alongside the blood.

All of this hit me in less than a second.

The next thing I realised was how familiar this taste was. Charcoal and liquorice.

No, no, no.

My eyes flew open in horror as I forced my fangs to retreat. "No!"

Someone made a grab for me as I yanked Blaise's wrist from my mouth, but I shoved them away. An anguished scream ripped from my chest.

My Blaise, my love, my boy, lay beside me. His eyes were closed, a peaceful smile on his face.

His skin was far too pale.

His chest wasn't rising and falling.

I stopped screaming long enough to listen for his heartbeat, a sound as familiar as my own voice. I heard nothing. I pressed my ear to his chest.

Nothing.

Blaise was gone.

"How could you?" I screamed at the angels. "How could you do this?"

"It was what he wanted," Rami said helplessly. "He wanted to save you."

"You shouldn't have listened! Please, darling. Please don't do this to me. I can't lose you."

I leaned over his inert body, frantically searching for signs of life.

There were none.

Gut-wrenching sobs were choking me. Blaise's blood was running through my veins. He'd saved me, but for what? What was the point of living if he wasn't? How could I be expected to exist in a world where he didn't?

My medical training kicked in. No, I wasn't letting him go. Not yet. Not without a fight. I tore at my wrist, opening a vein and lifting it to his mouth.

"What are you doing?" one of the twins asked.

"Trying to mate with him."

"It's too late for that," Ezekial said sadly. "If you'd woken up before his heart stopped we might have had a chance."

"Which is why you're going to get his heart started again," I snarled, lifting my dripping wrist to Blaise's blue lips. "You're going to blast him with power and try to restart it."

"He's not gone yet," Rami added urgently. "I can feel his soul lingering. It's faint, but it's there."

"Do it," I said curtly, nodding at Ezekial. "Now."

I ripped open my healing wrist with my fangs again before he'd even finished speaking. I'd give every drop of my blood if it meant bringing Blaise back.

"You know that if you succeed in mating him but we don't restart his heart, you'll die too," Ez said. "But I'm guessing you don't care."

"You guess correctly," I said darkly.

The angels didn't waste any more time. They had Blaise's shirt open, his tanned skin exposed.

I forced my power out alongside my blood, urging the mating bond to take. "Now."

Ez hit him with a blast of power. Blaise's whole body spasmed before collapsing back down. "Again."

This time, Rami extended his hands over Blaise's chest as Ez unleashed another bolt. I could feel Rami's powers searching through Blaise's body, trying to encourage his blood to start flowing.

"Come on, Blaise," I urged. "Take the bond."

Something latched onto the end of my power. A tiny claw. It was enough. The bridge between us formed.

"It's working," I cried. "The mating bond, it's taking hold."

The angels began to murmur around us. I knew they were panicking. Worried that I was celebrating too early. And perhaps I was.

But at least now we'd be together. Nothing, not even death, could tear us apart.

"Again," I commanded, still feeding Blaise my blood. I kept my gaze fixed on his face as Ez's power flooded through him.

"Again."

"Again."

Rami touched my shoulder. "I'm not sure…"

"Again," I yelled, shoving at the darkness now clawing at the edges of my own vision. "We have to keep trying."

Blaise's body contorted as Ez hit him again. I grabbed onto the tiny wisp of Blaise I could feel through the bond. I clung to it, refusing to let go. "Come on, darling. Do it for me. For us."

He wavered in my grasp, like he too was fighting to get back to me. I tried again, this time infusing as much dominance into my words as I could while I did the same with the bond. "Boy, come back to me now. That's an order from your master."

Ez hit him once more. I fell back from Blaise as he slammed full force into the bond. His eyes shot open as he gasped for breath.

"Thank fuck." I scrambled on top of him, covering every inch of his face with kisses. "Thank fuck."

Rami clapped me on the shoulder as he rose, the rest of the angels quietly following him from the room to give us privacy. I'd thank them later. Right now, I had a mate to take care of.

My mate.

"Tobes?" Blaise rasped. "What happened?"

I lifted up high enough that I could cup his face. "What happened, boy, is you took a huge risk. Because of that, I'm going to spank you so hard that you'll think of me every time you sit down for a week."

The smile spread slowly across Blaise's face. "But it worked."

"It almost didn't. You were almost gone, Blaise. You almost left me behind. For a second there, I didn't think we'd get your heart restarted. I held onto you so hard through the mating bond, but I was so scared. Scared of losing you. Of never seeing you smile again. Never seeing you laugh or hearing your voice. Never seeing you kneel for me. You're everything to me, Blaise. I can't believe you risked everything for me."

Blaise looked up at me, a frown crinkling his forehead. "Why not? I love you. I've chosen you. I'll always choose you, Tobes. Even if it's at my own expense."

Through the bond, I could feel the truth of Blaise's words. He really did love me. When everyone else had left me, he'd chosen to stay. "Well at least neither of us can be self-sacrificing again now we're mated."

"We're mated?"

I put a hand on his chest as I returned his smile. "Can't you feel it?"

Blaise concentrated for a second, covering my hand with his. "I can. I can…I can feel you."

"And how does that feel?"

"Calm," he whispered. "Peaceful. Soothing."

"I can feel you too," I murmured against his lips. "Your fire. Your cheeky humour. The way you love me."

"I do love you. That's why I'm not going to apologise for what I did. Especially given you did the same by mating with me without knowing if they'd be able to bring me back."

"Of course I did, I love you. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Besides, you saved me."

"We saved each other."

Before we could get carried away on the floor of the Seraphim's living room, we decided to say our goodbyes. After many thanks from us both, accepted begrudgingly by Ezekial and enthusiastically by the others, we were on our way.

Not that we'd got very far. We were still technically on the Seraphim's property. We might've made it further if we hadn't been stopping every few feet to exchange long, drugging kisses. I didn't know if it was the near-death experiences, the mating bond, or just finally being together without anything hanging over us. Whatever it was, it meant we couldn't keep our hands off one another. The usual control I prided myself on was absent as I pawed at Blaise.

"I need you," I moaned, as he kissed down my neck.

"Yes." He sucked on my Adam's apple, making me shiver. "Where?"

I thought about calling up one of the demons to get a lift back to my flat, but doing that would mean having to answer questions. Give explanations. Be around everyone else while we tried to find our footing with one another.

"How do you feel about taking a trip? Finding somewhere remote where we can spend some time alone?"

Blaise smiled against my neck. "I feel fucking fantastic about it."

Pulling out my phone, I tapped out a quick message to Mori, telling him our plan and that we'd be unreachable for a while. If they truly needed us, he was more than capable of tracking me down without technology.

Once it was sent, I held down the off button until the screen turned black. "So, where to?"

The thing about having an unlimited budget was that it made it difficult to narrow down where to go. In the end, we opted for convenience over anything else.

That was how we found ourselves in a tiny cottage in Cornwall. It was far enough away from Southampton to stop the others stumbling across us by accident, but not so far that it took us forever to get there.

Honestly, I would've camped in a cave if that was what it took to get some privacy with Blaise. After everything we'd been through, it was the only thing I wanted. Just him and me. No expectations. No questions. No drama.

Just us.

What we'd managed to find was far better than a cave. Cosy yet modern, it was everything we could've asked for in a romantic getaway. Thick rugs covered a polished wooden floor, the knick-knacks on the walls giving it a homely feel. There was even a bookcase stuffed with everything from biographies to romance. To my delight, I'd found a copy of Pushing the Limits by Riley Hart.

Whoever owned this place clearly had good taste.

A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, courtesy of Blaise. Outside, there was nothing to hear but the wind and the distant waves crashing against the shore.

All of it was perfect…yet none of it measured up to the sight before me.

My mate.

On his knees.

Hands tied behind his back.

A cage around his cock.

A vibrating plug filling his hole.

"Please," Blaise whined. Rivulets of sweat covered his chest and his muscles were bunched and tense as he tried to hold off his orgasm. "Please, Tobes."

I crouched down so I was at eye level with him as I smirked. "Beg all you want, boy. You know I love to hear it."

It hadn't occurred to me before this how handy a bond would be in these situations. I had constant feedback on every emotion Blaise was feeling. It was even better than a safe word, because I could catch how Blaise was doing before he even had a chance to voice it.

And feeling how much my control was turning him on? Let's just say that I probably should've put a cock cage on myself. It was a good thing we had nothing else to do for the foreseeable future other than spending time alone together.

I pressed a button on the remote in my hand, ramping up the vibrations a notch. The garbled moan Blaise gave was a thing of beauty. His cock was straining valiantly against the cage, unable to get hard. It wasn't doing anything to deter his arousal—if anything, it seemed to be turning him on more. The floor was glistening where his precum had dripped through the cage and pooled beneath him.

The bond between us was throbbing with lust. It was actually the bond that had led to this situation in the first place. I'd felt something niggling in it, as though there was something Blaise was thinking but he wasn't sure he could tell me.

It hadn't taken much for me to work it out of him.

"I want you…in control. I don't want to think, I just wanna feel. I want you to edge me until I'm sobbing. I want you to be the only thing that exists. I want you to remind me that we survived. That we're together. That it's all going to be okay."

I would've done anything he asked. This though?

This was a fucking privilege.

Blaise wasn't quite sobbing, but I suspected we weren't far off. I flicked through several options in my mind, trying to decide what he needed. What I could do to send him into the space he craved.

He wasn't there yet. Echoes of fear still lingered behind the lust. Like he couldn't quite let go of how close we'd come to losing each other.

It was something he was going to have to process, likely with Tyler. The best I could give him right now was distraction. By physically reminding him that we were both here, hopefully his brain would get on board faster.

Straightening, I thumbed at Blaise's full lips. His tongue immediately lapped at the digit, swirling around it hungrily.

I smirked down at him. "Do you need something in your mouth, boy? I do love your begging, but the sound of you choking on my cock is a close second."

"Please, Master," he rasped. His pupils were completely blown now as he swayed on his knees. "I need it."

Usually, I'd untie him so that he could tap on my leg instead of safe-wording, but with the bond, that wasn't really necessary. I could track exactly how he was feeling. The second I did something that evoked anything negative, I'd shut the entire scene down. We'd established beforehand that this would be the case, so I didn't need to take us out of the moment to explain it to him.

I didn't give it to him immediately. No, I fisted my cock leisurely, loving the way Blaise's eyes tracked the movement. His mouth fell open wider and his tongue rested on his lower lip. He was just waiting for me to feed it to him.

"Fuck, you're perfect," I breathed, letting go of my dick to grab his hair. Using my grip to tilt his head back, I smiled down at him indulgently. "I love you, boy."

"I love you, Master."

"Remember that, because I'm going to fuck your throat like I hate you."

Blaise's shocked gasp was cut off by my cock forcing its way past his pretty lips and straight into his throat. With my firm grip on his hair, he had nowhere to go. Nothing to do but kneel there and take what I gave him.

And take it he did.