“I need you inside me,” I said, my hands on his shoulders, ready to give him the leverage he needed to cure my desperation. “Give me your come and you can have my blood.”

He chuckled breathlessly. “Oh, Sparrow. I will fill you to bursting.”

Our position against the wall did not give me the opportunity to watch as he guided himself inside me, but I felt him, exhaling as he slid deeper and began to thrust. I couldn’t catch my breath as each wave of pleasure rose higher than the last. I was drowning in this and I never wanted to resurface.

“Isolde,” Adrian said, and I opened my eyes. He stared back, gaze fierce and lustful. “Look at me.”

He cupped the back of my neck, his other hand pressed flat to the wall, and he moved deeper, ground against me harder. I lost control of my expression, my mouth caught between moans, grinding my teeth, and biting my lip. When the first keening cry bubbled from my lips, Adrian descended, his sharp teeth cutting into my skin.

I clung to him, nails digging into his flesh. He still moved inside me, but slower, timing the pull of his lips with the thrust of his hips. He drew back once to kiss my mouth before returning to the wound he’d made, and with the taste of my blood on my lips, I followed each wave of pain and pleasure until it dragged me into darkness.

***

I woke with the memory of how Adrian had filled me and fucked me and bit me, and I had ascended into something ethereal and divine—something that had taken me from sorrow to bliss. I wanted to go back, to reclaim that power, but I was once more in this mournful body and confused.

How had I gotten to bed?

There was movement to my right, and I shifted to find Adrian standing near the window, bathed in the bloodred light of Revekka’s dawn. He wore armor that glinted gold and silver as he turned to look at me. He had pulled his hair back, and the angles of his face showed sharply, contoured by shadow.

He was fierce, frighteningly beautiful, and already bathed in red.

“Do you expect to be injured?” I asked as I sat up, pushing the blankets from my body, already feeling better without their weight. I had never seen Adrian wear armor, not when he came to claim my kingdom and not when we made our return to Revekka.

It startled me, and I had to work to swallow the panic that rose into my throat, knowing I could not protest his departure. This was necessary to the survival of our kingdom—to what Adrian had built and what we would continue to build together.

Adrian offered a small smile, as if he thought my concern was cute rather than valid.

“It’s merely a precaution,” he said. “I am no longer hunting mortals.”