Page 11 of Heir of Blood and Moonlight

Between one heartbeat and the next, the mounting pleasure snapped within me, and in a moment of absolute bliss, a second orgasm engulfed the world. My vision faded to white, and the relentless waves of pleasure became my entire existence. I gasped as my inner muscles spasmed and clenched around Bastian. He pumped into me two, three, four more times, each thrust more forceful than the last.

“Ohfuck,” he growled, losing his rhythm completely while he reached his release. He buried himself in me as deep as he could go and remained locked in that position for dozens of thundering heartbeats.

As the intensity of his orgasm eased, he let go of my hips and leaned over me on the desk, holding himself up with trembling arms. I relaxed my legs, and Bastian rested his forehead on myshoulder as we both drifted back down from the incredible high. He turned his head, kissing my collarbone, then my neck.

“Thank you,” he murmured, his voice filled with awe.

My breath hitched, and I squeezed my eyes shut. Wes used to say that, to thank me—after. Like I was doing him a favor, when all I was doing was showing him how much he meant to me. I couldn’t help but feel like I had just betrayed him. This was the first time in eighteen years. The first time since . . . since . . .

Thoughts of the past chilled me to the bone, and I shivered, goosebumps crawling over my skin.

“It’s okay, Soph.”

My next breath lodged in my throat, and my entire body stiffened. Bastian hadn’t spoken those words. The voice had belonged to a dead man. A voice I hadn’t heard in nearly two decades. Wes’s voice.

“You did what you had to do to keep our boy safe,” Wes said. “I was with you the whole time, Soph. The whole time. I’ll always be with you, but it’s time to let me go.Live, firefly. You have tolet yourselflive.”

I grasped the pendant hanging from a chain around my neck, Wes’s pendant, and wrapped my fingers around it, even as I refused to open my eyes. Refused to look toward the corner of the room. Refused to see if Wes was standing there, another ghostly silver specter like the hallucination of my sister had been the night before.

My breathing, which had slowed as Bastian and I rested after the intense coupling, picked up with a vengeance. Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t get any oxygen, like I was trying to catch my breath on the moon.

What if Amayahadn’tbeen a sleep paralysis hallucination? What if she hadreallybeen there? I knew next to nothing about the gifts of a living vampire. Only the females of my kind had powers during our first lives, as the male children of a livingvampire were born human. For all I knew, seeing ghosts was one such gift, if such an ability could even be called a gift.

Bastian shifted above me, positioning his elbows by my shoulders and brushing the flyaway strands of hair that had escaped from my ponytail away from my face. The backs of his fingers gently caressed my cheeks and along my jaw. “Sophie?” he said, his voice as gentle as his touch. “Are you okay? Did I—” He hesitated. “Did I hurt you?”

My chin trembled, and I turned my face away from his inquisitive gaze, not to mention his tender touch. I hadn’t cried more than a few silent tears in years, but here I was in my office, half-naked, sexually sated, and about to have a full-on emotional breakdown.

Softly gripping my chin, Bastian turned my face back toward him. “Sophie? Please, say something.”

I shook my head as tears spilled from the corners of my eyes and streamed across my temples. “It has just been a really long time since—” My breath hitched, and my words caught in my throat. “I haven’t been with anyone since . . .” I trailed off with a tremulous breath.

Bastian lifted his hips off mine enough that his waning erection slipped free of my body. He moved one of his arms lower so he could ease his hand between our bodies. His thumb traced along the narrow ridge of the six-inch scar running horizontally across my lower abdomen.

“Since this?” he asked softly.

My eyelids flew open, and I was shocked to see the sympathy lighting Bastian’s features. I nodded, not yet trusting my voice.

Bastian withdrew his hand and settled himself back between my legs. His fingertips trailed up the side of my body under my shirt, and he curved his hand possessively around the side of my ribcage. The touch was more comforting than sexual, like he wasreassuring me he was still here, that he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head, but then I blew out a breath. I could practically hear Wes telling me to finally let someone in, but this was different from a moment ago. This was a memory of his voice, whereas I would have sworn I hadactually heardhim earlier.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, risking a glance at the corner of the office where I had heard Wes.

Nobody was there. Of course not, because it hadn’t been real. It couldn’t have been.

I looked at Bastian and offered him a shaky smile. “Maybe,” I said. I glanced down at our half-clothed bodies, pressed together in the most intimate of ways, and heat suffused my neck and cheeks. “But, um, maybe not like this?”

A faint, rueful grin curved Bastian’s lips. He leaned in and kissed me sweetly, lingering to trace the curves and lines of my face with his gaze, then pushed up and stood. He picked up the box of tissues we had knocked onto the floor and pulled a few out to wipe the insides of my thighs. He used a few more tissues to clean himself before pulling up his underwear and jeans.

I pushed up onto my elbows as he crouched to retrieve my discarded underwear and gazed up at me. I could only imagine the picture I cast, sprawled on the desk, naked from the waist down and utterly disheveled. Based on the way Bastian’s eyes darkened with renewed desire, he liked what he saw. He shifted so he was close enough to guide the small garment over both of my feet and stood, dragging my underwear up my legs. I lifted my butt off the edge of the desk so he could pull them all the way up over my hips.

Bastian planted his hands on the desk on either side of my legs and leaned in, kissing me deeply before shifting his lips to myear and whispering, “You should probably put your pants on.” His faint stubble tickled my cheek. “The longer you lay here, like this . . .” One of his hands slid under my shirt, his fingers forming to the curve of my waist, and a low satisfied growl rumbled in his chest, reigniting my desire.

Cheeks heating, I cleared my throat and sat up the rest of the way. Bastian stood, but he didn’t back away. The hand on my waist drifted lower, kneading my hip, and he gazed down at me with such intensity that it made my breath hitch. It wasn’t just desire or lust. It was something more. Something with substance beyond the physical.

I raised a hand to press against the side of his face and traced his lips with the pad of my thumb. I stared into those golden starbursts in his irises, watching his pupils slowly expand to swallow the lighter area.

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