Page 41 of The Arrival
“You do that naturally, so it won’t be too hard.”
Their bedroom is cast in morning sunlight, delicate and soft. The cherry blossom trees beyond the glass are nearly bare of flowers, with only a few stubborn blooms fluttering on the branches.
Still holding Haruka’s hand, Nino turns to him. “We’re doing alright with this, aren’t we? I mean… I’m not bad at this father thing after all?”
Letting go of his hand, Haruka lifts his arms and wraps them around Nino’s shoulders. He pulls their bodies tightly together, making Nino embrace his waist as their foreheads touch.
Haruka whispers, “You are phenomenal. Even if I searched for centuries, I could never find a vampire so attentive and so tender as a father. The love you give to me and our daughter ispriceless. Indispensable, like the sun nourishing the center of our universe.”
He tilts his head to place a swift kiss against Nino’s mouth, but Nino surprises him, parting his lips and colliding into him with an urgent yearning. He grips Haruka’s waist tighter, as if to meld the lengths of their bodies into a single entity.
Knowing his mate and this need, he opens his mouth wider to deepen the kiss. The slow, concentrated movement awakens and stirs his aura within him. The cinnamon-oak essence of Nino’s mouth and scent takes his breath away.
They meant to sleep first, but they do not. In the end, they work themselves into a passionate, exhausted frenzy until both their auras are released and coloring the light of the quiet room.
And then, at the point of absolute physical depletion, they sleep. Deeply, and for nine hours straight.
-The End-
ALSO BY KARLA NIKOLE
Lore and Lust: A Queer Vampire Romance
Lore and Lust Series Book Two: The Vanishing
Lore and Lust Series Book Three: The Awakening
Love, Magic and Misfortune
Coming soon…
A Spectral Galaxy Book One: The Nohvian Dignitary
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A SPECTRAL GALAXY PREVIEW
BOOK ONE: THE NOHVIAN DIGNITARY
EPISODE 1
A COSMIC ENTANGLEMENT
“I think the left composite chamber is on fire.”
Multicolored lights are blinking and flashing on the navigation panel before me. My fingers dance and move—turning dials, flicking switches and pressing buttons. I can’t identify the exact problem, but I pray to the God of Jaden that it’s something more innocuous than part of the racer’s vital energy chamber being on fire. “Don’t say that. Why would you say something like that?”
“Because we’re leaving a weird trail of orange energy waste behind us.”
My hands freeze. “Orange?” Turning, I look out the large plate of glass beside me. The infinite black of space stretches all around us—darkness and light. A lustrous, dusty haze of blue and silver in the near distance tells me that a cluster of agmalites are establishing a nest. The gaseous rings of Benei cast a soft pink-yellow glow behind us as we travel away from the planet, having completed our mission. Craning my neck a little further, I see that we are indeed leaving a thick, curling trail of vomit-orange energy fragments in our wake.
That should not be there.
Bam.The racer jars and rattles hard from another hit, jerking my body against the safety straps across my chest. Now, the dashboard is screaming at me because of all the alarms going off—loud buzzers and bells indicative of internal structural failure. Things going boom. The cabin lights flicker, abruptly switching from the usual soft, ambient white to an ominous red, which is accompanied by Laidra declaring what I already know.
“Warning, engine failure imminent. Critical internal damage to the left composite. Currently operating at twenty-two percent and falling.”
“Why are they chasing us like this?” Officer Pax whines, their hands moving over the dashboard like a master pianist’s. “What did you say to the queen when you made the drop?”
