Page 41 of Until the Heart Stops
“My soul knows yours as it knows no other,” he answered softly against my mouth. “And my heart loves yours as it has no other. I don’t need time to know that I love you and will love you until my bones turn to ash.”
I gripped his wrists tightly, pressing my brow to his. “Do not leave me.”
His hands tensed against my face before he threaded them through my hair. While I traced the veins of his forearm and slid my hand up the curve of his biceps, I realized that yes, his skin was harder than I’d felt before. Harder than any other immortal’s I’d ever known. His eyes were still bright as well, silver twining with gray and black and white, an inverse of the swirl of the powerful immortal within the ballroom.
“Though we may be apart, I will never leave you, Lilith. We are connected,bonded, and the only way for us to be separated now is within death. Perhaps not even then.”
I wanted to deny it, to argue the point. To say,No, you are leaving now as you always have.Dread crawled up my throat, choking the words before they could slip from my lips. But he could feel them in the bond, hear them in my mind, and a rose haze slipped across his eyes. Callum squeezed them shut, breathing deeply.
“I will always come back,” he murmured. “I will always come for you.”
He was right. I nodded solemnly, lifting to slide off his length, but he caught the apex of my thighs, pressing his fingers deep inside. A rumble of satisfaction vibrated through his chest as his fingers moved, the wet sound of his release within me satisfying some primal urge in him. But I didn’t know if I could take anymore, not when he wasreadying himself to leave. So I tried to fight the urge to moan as he pumped his fingers, moving back off his lap, but he only followed me, eyes fixed to where his hand disappeared beneath my skirt.
“C-Callum, stop.”
Another rumble, lower this time while I scrambled back across the soft grass. But his free hand flew up, gripping my throat and holding me in place as he pushed to his knees as well. He pressed against the soft skin above the scar he’d left on my throat and a shudder rolled through me.
“You want me to stop, darling?” he mused, curling his fingers against my front wall and strumming my clit with his thumb.
My brows furrowed. I nodded even as a soft moan escaped. My hips moved of their own accord, rocking against him.
“You might say you want me to stop, but your body says different. Look at you.” He drew out the last three words, a brow rising as he watched. “Fucking yourself on my hand like the desperate little witch you are. You are, aren’t you?”
Even as I shook my head, I picked up my pace, sweat dewing across my brow. He licked his bottom lip, nodding in approval. “Fuckingdesperatefor it. Beautifully so.”
I fought the pressure rising and clamped my jaw shut. When I tried to still my body his hand flexed on my throat while his fingers moved faster, his release making the movement so slick my eyes rolled.
“Don’t fight it, darling. I need to make a mess of you one last time before I leave—need to make sure tomorrow with each breath you take, you remember me inside of you. The stretch. The ache. My cum leaking from this precious little cunt and covering you in my scent.”
My orgasm flooded my body with heat and my head tipped back as I convulsed, tears slipping from the corners of my eyes until I was sobbing. He shushed me, gentling his touches and pressing his lips to the tracks of tears, catching them before they could fall.
“That’s it, my beloved. I have you.”
As much as I wanted to deny it, he did. The bond flared bright inside my chest, warmth filling in all the cold spaces that his imminent departure had left. He pushed his devotion through the connection, his reverence, his love, until my sobs turned to whimpers and sighs before he withdrew.
“Soon this will all be over,” he promised, kissing me. “Soon we will be together.”
Those empty promises continued as he helped me to my feet, wiping the grass from my gown and smoothing back my hair. They continued in the bond as we walked in silence back through the maze and into the dark garden. But I could not help but wonder what would happen before that time came, or whatsoonmeant to an immortal who had lived for almost a thousand years.
My magic hummed, reminding me that I had a gift too. That I was just as formidable, that in this war he planned to win, I would not merely sit on the sidelines.
If destruction was coming and Callum fell, it had better take me too.
Chapter 23
Every drop of blood in my body rebelled as I guided Lilith back into the ballroom.
When I pressed my lips to her palm, I wanted to linger further. No,goddess, I wanted to drain her to the point of death and replace that blood with my own. Never in over eight hundred years had I ever felt the urge to turn another and yet here I was, grappling with the effort not to do so in this room full of witnesses.
Lilith curtsied with her eyes trained on mine as we both straightened. Over her shoulder, Seth watched us with a protective eye. I’d drunk from him almost every night since that first in the woods and I hadn’t been wrong when I’d thought there was a bond forming between us. It was similar to the one I had with Mael and yet it was softer…kinder.
Take care of her, please, I silently begged.
Seth nodded once, supplying nothing through our connection other than the protective wave I felt every time he looked at me, but now focused on Lilith. Before I coulddo something to ruin everything we’d worked toward, I vanished from the ballroom, moving with unfathomable speed until I appeared in the gardens.
“Breathe.” Mateo’s rumble was soft in the dark, his hand on my back a comforting weight.
But I could not breathe, not with this new distance between me and Lilith. I clutched my chest, practically clawed at my heart as if I could rip it from my breast before my brother grabbed my wrists, tugging them to him. Another hand stroked the back of my head. Henry’s scent curled around me but it did nothing to burn away Lilith’s on my tongue, my skin, my fucking soul.
