Page 79 of Seph

In silence, they stripped off their fancy outfits, bodies returning to the bed, curling into one long tangle of love and limbs.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered. “You know that?”

She stared at him for a moment. “No.”

Her answer startled him so much that he let out a laugh, bursting sound right against her lips as he moved to kiss her. “No?”

“No, I never... No one’s told me that but you.”

“And you don’t believe me because I’m a monster?”

“I don’t believe you because I know how I feel inside. Like a failure.”

“You’re not a failure! You tracked me down. You could’ve killed me a million times over by now. You just haven’t. Because you love me.” Simeon pushed the envelope.Tonight might be the last night I can push anything.

“Simeon...”

“You know,” he cupped her cheek and brushed his fingers through her hair, “nothing bad happens when you love someone, Em. Even if you love the worst person in the world, or the best. What happens to them isn’t something you can control, but loving them? That’s always the high road. The hero’s road. Loving something bad means you have good enough for two.”

Emily kissed him, slowly slipping her body on top of his, slowly notching his hardness into her wet depths with a slide that felt unhurried yet urgent. Her muscles instantly clasped him and began to surge, her recently unexplored opening straining around the sudden discomfort of being so full. “You’re not bad.”

He looked up at her, startled. “No?”No caveats? No “but you used to be”?“My girl,” he whispered, hands reaching up to stroke across her breasts.

She didn’t hesitate. “Your girl. My Simeon. My vampire.”

His fangs slid down hard, and her head tipped back as she chased a sudden pleasurable wave. He could feel her walls spasming faster and harder, her essence coming thick and fast.

My beautiful girl, so used to the hardness of life. She doesn’t even realize how it’s become tangled in her head. Calling me her vampire turns her on so much that her sweet little quim could choke my cock right off of my body.

“All yours,” he rasped, fangs forced in before she looked down. “One good one. One for you to keep, Huntress.”

“Yes! Yes, fuck, yes.” Emily pounded her hips against his. “I will keep you, Simeon. I’m not going to let them take you!”

A spiral of pleasure and pain, her orgasm including her nails digging into his skin with desperate clawing motions. “I want to keep you. Forever!” she rasped, half-sobbing.

Then fully sobbing.

Simeon gathered her up in his arms, slowly moving inside of her, riding out his own climax as he kissed away her tears. “Forever? That’s a long time, love.”

“I don’t care.”

“All right, then. Forever.”

If I live through this... I’m gonna marry that girl.

As Simeon rocked Emily against his chest, half-listening to her talk about life, death, love, and fear, all the big things he truly should have been paying attention to with his entire being—he was lost in his own thoughts about the same thing.

Love. Life. Death. Fear. All tangled and torn, then sewn together in my first life, the cause of my second.

Pine Ridge and Emily have been like my third—life as unliving, yet more in love with life than I ever knew was possible.

It could all end tomorrow.

He made soothing noises for both their benefits as his mind raced ahead and rewound.

He had been a virgin until his first and only night with Lilith, who wanted to break in her new plaything. Vampires didn’t marry. Their “culture” was sex, sin, and jealousy between the sires and their favorite creations.

Marriage? Emily might love you. She wouldn’t marry you without a soul. Would she?

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