He chuckled and nodded. "Ja."
In her giggles, she squeezed him tighter. The pleasure groaned out of him.
"That's good?" A quick study, her next strokes were tighter, harder.
He'd never last. And dammit he wanted to be inside her-her body, her heart, her life.
"Too good," he rasped, pulling out of her grasp. Henrik scooped her up by her bottom so that she straddled the front of his hips. Holding her luscious ass, he carried her to the bed and sprawled her in the center of it. What a beautiful picture she made, flush, tousled, aroused. He unzipped her jeans and tugged them off, removing her little pink panties with them.
Instinctively, her knees closed together and her arms crossed over her breasts.
"Ssh, kjære, open for me." His fingers traced random designs on her knees until they fell apart, revealing to him the perfect pink folds of her pussy. Already swollen and wet. Urgent arousal kicked him in the back and had him climbing up with her, situating his widespread knees under her thighs. He splayed his hand over her lower abdomen and circled his thumb over her clit.
The moan that tore out of her reverberated directly to his cock.
She was wet and ready, her hips pressing into his touch.
He settled on top of her, bracing himself with one hand and holding his shaft at her opening with the other. "I won't be able to resist biting you, but my control is already stronger than it was."
Her hands curled around his neck. "You promised you'd never hurt me, and you've kept your word. I trust you. Besides, I like the biting." She said that last part in a lower, throatier voice that had him pushing into her wet heat.
Go slow, be gentle, take it easy, he commanded himself. She was a virgin, not twenty-four hours ago wracked with fever, and so much smaller than him. He didn't want to tear her up. But the deeper he pushed in, the greater the struggle became.
She was so fucking tight he could barely form a coherent thought.
"I'll make it better," he managed, and then he thrust home. The maddening ache shifted from his cock to his fangs. They punched out as the instinctual urge to penetrate this way, too, had him roaring his pleasure before wrapping himself around her and piercing her throat.
Kaira's pained whine morphed into a surprised and approving moan as Henrik sucked long, thick draws of her blood down his throat. The sound of her pleasure destroyed the last of his restraint.
His hips flew, driving his cock into her slick channel over and over. She clutched and scratched and fisted at his back, her muscles writhing and alive with arousal. What he wouldn't have given to slow down, explore, savor. But he couldn't. Not when he hadn't felt the intense rush of male satisfaction in so long. Too long.
Just another thing Kaira Sorensen had done for him. The list was long, and he'd only known her for twenty-four hours. Now, he didn't know how he'd go on without her.
Heat and energy pooled low in his belly. He drank her down in slow sucks, and her blood tasted familiar and right, like coming home after a long time away.
Unquestionably, Kaira Sorensen was his match in every way that mattered. But would she be his blood match? He swore the mystical connection had been taunting and teasing him since the first moment he saw her, but maybe that was just desperately wishful thinking.
The thought that they could match alone gave him a giant shove toward his orgasm. But her first. He gentled his thrusts enough to concentrate on making sure his pelvic bone rolled over her clit. She moaned and matched his rhythm, her hips tilting and grinding. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and the sensation was so similar to a bite that Henrik unleashed a strangled groan against her throat.
He wanted her to bite him. He wanted her teeth in his flesh, her lips at his throat, for her to be absolutely ravenous for the taste of him. Another train of thought that threatened to devastate his control.
"Henrik," Kaira rasped. "I...I..."
He clutched her left hand in his right and pressed it hard into the mattress, lifting his abdomen just enough to change the angle.
A high-pitched moan ripped out of her, and her whole body went momentarily rigid. And then the orgasm slammed into her, squeezing his cock, sending her body bucking and thrashing. The incredible, erotic frenzy of it tore through him until he was coming hard. He thrust through it, going momentarily blind with the intolerable goodness of it.
He retracted his fangs and licked closed her wound. Triumph and total satiation flowed through him. Such a rare feeling. In combination with the orgasm, it was a kind of ecstatic pleasure he'd never felt before. "Damn, Kaira, it's so fucking good," he said as his thrusts slowed, the end of his release still playing out.
A scorching heat erupted from where they were joined, clawed up his spine, and raced to their joined grip. Rabid tingles spread over the entirety of his right hand.
He gritted his teeth, nearly euphoric at its meaning. Kaira screamed. "Ssh, kjære, it's all right. Almost over." He held her through it as best he could.
But instead of stopping at his wrist, the sensation prickled up his forearm and across the inside of his elbow, following the path of his radial artery almost to his shoulder.
As suddenly as it began, it ended. Together, they sagged into an exhausted pile of limbs on the wide bed.
"What was that?" Kaira said.
Henrik rolled them over to relieve her of his weight, pulling their joined hands where they could see them.
She sucked in a breath and slipped her fingers from his to examine the interlocking pattern of shield knots closer.
The design was so tightly drawn that the strength of the blood match could not be denied.
Her pulse tripped into a sprint, fluttering against his skin everywhere they touched. "What is this? What does it mean?"
"It's a mating mark, precious Kaira." He tilted her face toward his and steeled himself for what he'd decided to say if this match came true. "And it means you have some decisions to make."
Chapter 11
Mating mark?
"What do you mean?" Kaira said, studying the black knotwork on her hand and tracing the tendrils of it up her arm. It was breathtakingly beautiful, all the more so because it matched the pattern on Henrik's hand, but also terrifying. Because her very blood seemed to sing of its significance.
He grasped her hand, showing her how their marks weren't just mirrors, but that his actually continued onto her skin, and vice versa. "For a vampire, blood is the source of all life. It is magical and powerful. When two people with an especially righteous pairing of blood are joined together, the magic identifies them as a good match for mating, as a couple who would well sustain one another and bear strong offspring. I have never seen a knot this tight or this extensive. It is a good match, Kaira." He trailed a finger up her arm, the touch so light it tickled her skin.
Bracing himself on an elbow, he gazed down at her face. Kaira gasped. As if the night hadn't been filled with wonder enough, Henrik's eyes were a brilliant royal blue and the wrinkles that had aged his face were entirely gone. The dark circles under his eyes had lightened, and the hollows of his cheeks weren't as deep. She'd noticed his eyes before they'd made love, but he appeared to have lost twenty-five or thirty years since then.
Happiness filled her heart and tightened her throat, not because he was more handsome. Bonds of affection had already drawn them together, and never would she have imagined that curing his illness meant reversing the age of his appearance. Rather, her happiness flowed from the avid hope that this was proof he was in fact cured. Or could be. "Henrik," she finally managed to say. "You have to see yourself."
He touched his fingers to his face and frowned in concentration. After a moment, he rolled off the bed and retrieved his robe from the floor. He held it open to her. "Come with me?"
She nodded and eased off the bed. He wrapped the heavy fabric around her. Miles too big, she wouldn't have traded it for the world. Infused with his scent, it was almost as good as being in his arms. Almost.