He appears young. Maybe eighteen, no more than twenty. But the eyes…the eyes are ageless. This creature is far older than he seems.

“Sabel,” he says with a soft exhale, wonder lighting his face.

Surprise almost brings me back from the drunken state I’m drowning in.

“How? How do you know?”

The prince runs his thumb along my jaw. His sensuous lips slide into a half smile. “You think I would not recognize the beautiful face of a Sabel child? Feel the quickening in my blood as I near you? I know what you are, Michael Sabel, because you belong to me. You were born to be mine.” His English accent is softened by a lyrical quality, something foreign I can’t pin down. He gives my chin a gentle tug, encouraging me to stand. “Come closer.”

I stumble to my feet, my body eager to obey, my mind screaming to resist. He circles my waist with a slender arm as strong as a steel girder and gathers me against him, against his fiery heat. He wraps us both in his wings, shut away from everything around us, and I sag into him, shuddering with relief. This is where I belong. I’ve docked into my home port after floating aimlessly for centuries on foreign seas.

The prince rests his forehead to mine. We’re the same height, though he seemed much taller when I knelt at his feet. He glides the back of his fingers over my cheek. “I knew you would return to me, beloved,” he says with the barest whisper.

And something about his words draws a deep breath of relief from my chest.

The battle continues as a distant, irrelevant noise. Inside the haven of his wings, I tremble with the sheer strength of the energy coursing through me from his closeness. It pulls a moan from my lips. My eyes roll upward. The burning pulse in my spine bursts along my veins, melting every muscle, like a never-ending orgasm. My granite-hard arousal presses against the prince’s thigh.

I circle his waist, fingers brushing leathery wing, and pull the vampire closer, crushing our groins together.

He responds by slipping a hand beneath my clothes, palming the skin of my lower back. The other slides into my hair, gripping it firmly. His tingling touch melts me further.

“Your master is called Alexei,” he says. Then he waits as if expecting me to confirm it.

I clamp down on the “yes, master” that surges up from my heart and grit my teeth to stop my mouth from forming the words. I’ll die before I ever let myself call him master.

The vampire’s rich scent drives me mad, an exotic perfume reminiscent of figs and chocolate. I want to taste, to kiss those luscious lips. Shit. I want to fuck the creature right here in the middle of the battle. I clamp my arm tighter around his waist to push into his crotch. When a long, hard length presses back from beneath the suit trousers, I let out a deep groan, need burning my insides.