What Lurks Between the Fates (Of Flesh & Bone, #3)(77)

“I meant you,” he confirmed, trailing his fingers over my arm with a gentleness that never ceased to take my breath away.

I’d seen the brutality he was capable of, the way he could tear a man from limb to limb if he so desired. He grasped a dagger off the nightstand, sliding the edge of the blade against his wrist.

Blood dripped upon the dark sheets, slipping out of him as he pressed the wound to my mouth. I parted my lips, letting his essence wash over my tongue. The flavor drew a moan from me, a desire for more. I wrapped my hand around his arm and held him steady. It had been too long since he’d fed the obsession he’d created, since he made me desire more of him.

When he drew away, the wound healed while I watched, and I ran my tongue over my teeth. Whatever had remained of that cold place within me, the place where I withdrew to when things got hard, he chased away with the closeness that came to our bond when he was inside me in all the ways possible.

“I love knowing you’re filled with me in as many ways as possible,” he said, his voice a soft whisper against my skin.

I flushed, turning to hide my faint smile in his chest as I took the dagger from his hand. I healed faster than him. I healed wounds made by iron almost immediately once the iron was removed. Who was to say he wouldn’t benefit from my blood now?

I dragged the blade over my wrist, ignoring the bite of pain as Caldris stared down at it in shock.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not human, min anam. Do the Sidhe who bond to one another share their blood equally, or do they have a power imbalance and only pass it one way?” I asked, in genuine curiosity.

“They share it equally, but you are not Sidhe, Estrella. I do not know what you are, but the Sidhe have little magic. Without knowing, there is a risk in blood sharing,” he said, but even as he spoke the words, he eyed the blood dripping from my wound onto his chest.

“It’s your choice,” I said, pursing my lips as I considered it.

It would always be his choice. He’d lived for centuries, an eternity, where choice had been taken from him. Where he’d been forced to do things, to tolerate the touch of others, against his will. I would never take that from him.

There were doubtlessly things that I wouldn’t understand for a long time about the Fae, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t give him the option. The wound started to heal, those golden threads working to knit my flesh back together as Caldris made his choice.

He grasped my arm delicately, raising my wrist to his mouth. Heat spread through me the moment his lips touched my skin, a tingle pulsing through me. As if his essence slid into the wound, penetrating my blood. He groaned, the sound trailing into the depths of a growl as he sealed his mouth around my wrist more fully and pulled my arm tighter to his face.

“Fuck,” I said, wincing as he drank from me in deep pulls.

Something slithered through the white of his Fae mark, a golden shimmer working the way through the snow as it writhed on his skin. I stared at it in wonder for a moment, turning my attention back to him as he continued to take my blood. It was longer than I usually took from him, more time passing as he took deep swallows of me into him.

“Caldris,” I said softly, touching my free hand to his cheek.

His eyes flew open, glowing with golden light as he stared up at me. I flinched back, trying to take my wrist with me. He held fast, refusing to release me as he rolled me beneath him in a sudden, unnaturally fast movement. His hips slid between my legs, his cock nestling against me as he rocked his hips with a groan.

I stilled, watching him to see how I should move forward. While he was rougher, his body unhinged as if the thought of losing my bleeding wound was too much for him to bear, the man that lingered behind those foreign golden eyes was my mate. He was still Caldris, waiting for me to give him permission to take what he needed.

I may not have understood where the urgency came from or what my blood had done to him, but I still felt his love and desire for me pulsing down the bond between us.

That was what drove me to spread my legs wider, reaching between our bodies with my free hand and guiding him until his head notched against my entrance. It was the permission he needed when he couldn’t seem to grasp the ability to communicate with words.

Driving inside of me, he filled the part of me he’d already claimed twice that evening. He held my wrist to his mouth, his other hand planted against the mattress beside my head as I wrapped my legs around his hips and took him deep.

“That’s enough,” I murmured, drawing my wrist away from his mouth.

He let it go this time, our bodies remaining united as he stared at my wrist and the blood that trickled from the wound. It healed over as he watched, his attention turning back to my face when the source of my blood no longer tormented him.

His golden gaze upon me was eerie, somehow so different from the mate I knew, and somehow more him than ever before. He dropped both hands to my hips, pinning me to the bed as he pulled free from my pussy and stared down at the space between my legs.

He pressed his hand against me, feeling how wet I was for him and sliding his fingers into me before he pulled them free. He flipped me to my stomach quickly, my body thumping against the mattress. His movements remained fast, frenzied, as he drove back inside of me.

A hand buried in the hair at the back of my head, wrapping it around his fist so that he could use it to pull me back so that my body arched for him.