Page 75 of Bound in Blood

She mewls and whimpers and writhes, but Alexandros lays his body over hers, and between us, we pin her in place. He gathers her hair in one fist and bites into the other side of her neck. Together, we feed on her and fuck her, and I have never felt closer to him than I do at this moment. Ophelia’s orgasm tears through her, but we don’t give her any reprieve, and soon she’s hurtling toward another one.

Alexandros slides his hands between our perspiration-slicked bodies and slowly circles her clit. Her pleasure becomes so intense it borders on pain, but we keep her on the precipice of ecstasy, and I feel everything. Her desire and her euphoria. His. Mine. Xavier’s and Malachi’s. All of it builds to a crescendo, rising higher and higher until it feels like the air is sucked from the room and the ground shakes beneath us. And when it seems like we’re too high, too far gone to come back, we fall over the edge and free-fall into blissful oblivion.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

ALEXANDROS

Ophelia hands me a wet cloth and flashes me her sweet smile. “Can you wipe down the table, and I’ll load the dishwasher?”

I draw a breath through my nose and let it out with a growl. “There are many other things I would rather be doing with and to you right now, little one.” Renewing our bond last night has only increased my desire for her and her blood.

She rolls her eyes and giggles. “We agreed to do clean-up duty while the guys went to the store. You cannot possibly need any more sex today after last night and this morning. I won’t be able to walk by tonight.”

I slide my arms around her waist. “I think you are forgetting that your powers of healing ensure you have no such problems with walking, or any other more pleasant activities, no matter how many times you indulge in them, Ophelia.”

She tips her head back, a laugh bubbling from her lips before it cuts off abruptly and her eyes widen in horror. Her fingernails dig into the muscles of my forearm.

I sense no danger nearby, but she is clearly feeling something. “Ophelia? What is it?”

“He’s here,” she whispers.

“Who is here?”

“Hello, Father.” The voice answers my question and cuts through me with surgical precision. An ice-cold shadow passes over my soul, and a dozen different emotions run through my body all at once as the moment seems to stretch out into eternity. I push every single one down where they cannot escape and cloud my judgment.

Spinning around, I push Ophelia behind me and face him. The dam breaks. Everything hits me at once. Rage, betrayal, and despair. Loss, guilt, regret. Relief. They barrel into me with the force of a steam train and steal the breath from my lungs. His face… No trace of the sunken black holes infested with maggots where his eyes should be, no mouth full of black rotting teeth—the image I always conjure in my mind’s eye when I think of him. He is just as he was when he left home as a young man. Almost a mirror image of me.

He cocks an eyebrow. “Surprised to see me?” His voice drips with disdain.

From somewhere deep within, I find the strength to swallow down every feeling he provokes in me, the bad and the good. “Lucian. What do you want?”

“We meet once again, Ophelia.” He glances behind me, where Ophelia peers over my shoulder, and I let out a vicious snarl in warning.

Of all the emotions raging against the walls I have built around them, anger is the one that seeps out and simmers directly beneath my skin now. “If you so much as think about touching her?—”

He rolls his eyes. “If I had any intention of causing harm to Ophelia, then I would have done it when we came face-to-face within the mountain cave.” He tilts his head to the side, his hazel eyes narrowed as he scrutinizes us both. He looks so much likehis mother and sisters, and all of our faces seem to peer back at me at once, making it impossible for me to look at him. “Or any of the many other times I’ve met her during the past nineteen years.”

Ophelia’s breath catches in her throat.

Both jealousy and confusion slam into me. I keep her pinned behind me and demand, “What other times?”

He glances toward the chair Xavier used when we joined Ophelia for lunch only a short time ago. “May I?”

I growl. “After everything you have done? Everything!” I roar, unable to contain the voracity of my fury for a second longer. “And you ask to sit at my fucking table?”

He wrinkles his nose. “The Brackenwolf family table, if I’m not mistaken. So may I?”

We should hear him out. He might have answers.Ophelia’s sweet voice seeps into my thoughts and soothes a little of the rage inside me.

“If your little elementai is telling you to listen to what I have to say, I think you should probably heed her. You might despise me, Father…” He says the word like it is an insult. And perhaps from his lips, it is. But there was a time when he was my greatest joy in life. My firstborn son. He sucks on his teeth, his eyes boring into mine. “But the feeling is mutual. Besides, I think we both have a few things we need to get off our chests, do we not?”

Get off our chests? That is the understatement of the millennium. I have plenty I need to say to him. So many questions to ask. They race around my head at lightning speed. But I would much rather have this conversation without putting Ophelia in danger by having her spend any further time in his presence.

My curious elementai breaks the ice for us. “When have we met before? Other than the cave, I mean. I don’t remember you.”She takes a cautious step out from behind me, but I keep my arm around her.

Lucian takes the seat he was not offered and runs a hand over his stubbled jaw. “It is far too long and complicated of a story to explain right now.”

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