Page 34 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

There were so many things I needed to tell the prince. I couldn’t seem to voice any of them. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and allowed him to process the first disastrous piece of the news before presenting him with another.

I wasn’t sure how he was going to handle the knowledge that his bond with the vampire king hadn’t been broken and that my mark had only inserted myself into the connection.

How was one supposed to react to learning that their abuser was back from the dead? Let alone all the other shit. I expected him to recede inside himself or maybe go on a blood bender and drown his sorrows by raiding the stash of blood bags he kept behind the bar.

Instead, he took solace in my body and the way it felt against his.

Pushing me down so that my back was flush with the couch cushions, he lowered himself on top of me, draping his marble-like physique over my soft curves. He pressed sweet, tearful kisses over my throat where he’d so savagely held me just minutes ago. It was as if each stamp of his lips was a signed apology for the brutal outburst.

“Forgive me,” he said again, but this time he mumbled it against my skin, husky and spoken on a fragmented timbre, like a sultry lover’s sonnet.

“I forgive you,” I whispered, even though I’d already told him there wasn’t anything to forgive. But hearing my words made his muscles unwind against me, and his kisses turned from tender things full of regret to something packed with a little more grit.

By the time his mouth found mine and his tongue pushed past my lips, he had my heart singing, warming my blood and filling the rest of my body with feverish heat.

He didn’t need to utter a goddamn word for me to know what he was telling me. I got the message, simply with the gravity of his weight on top of me and the pledge his mouth made. In this ethereal moment, he’d forgone the use of speech and opted for a different, more intimate way to communicate.

He bled devotion, letting me know he wasn’t about to lose me without one hell of a fight. It was such a pact-filled kiss that it stretched right down to my heart, my soul, and the beast inside me in ways words never could.

He didn’t know how Dagon had managed to succeed in resurrecting our father from true death without my blood for the ritual. He didn’t know how we were going to defeat my father—given his ability to steal magical power—or that Dagon’s necromancy in the hands of the vampire king was like God handing the keys to the pearly gates to Satan.

Right now, those details weren’t important.

The only thing that needed to be said was that we’d fight for each other. We’d fight for all of us. And today, right here and now, that’s all that mattered.

I could only begin to imagine the storm raging within Sterling. He had to be fighting a clusterfuck of emotions that even a whole continent’s worth of psychologists couldn’t begin to tackle. Not to mention all the dark memories that he thought he’d laid to rest.

He clung to me like a life preserver. Who knew what demons of the deep grappled at him below the water’s surface, hell-bent on pulling him under?

He found refuge in the strange alchemy binding us together, throwing himself into me like he’d been adrift at sea and had forgotten the bliss of a woman.

The kiss turned painful.

Fangs tore at my lips, and he groaned when my blood met his taste buds. Fingers burrowed into the divots of my hips, making me cry into his mouth. He devoured it, and every drop of me I gave, he took.

When Sterling finally broke away from the feast he’d made of my mouth, I gasped for the breath he’d stolen. He dropped his head to my heaving chest and tore the neckline of my nightgown back with the hook of his fingers.

I gasped his name when he took one of the soft mounds of my breasts into his mouth and sucked. His tongue laved around my nipple, and when it peaked in his mouth, he sucked all the harder.

“I need to feel you.” The need in his voice was so tangible, it was like electricity on his skin. He gripped the tops of my thighs, pushed them open, and slid me against his groin.

Bloody fuck.

I could feel him, every exquisite inch. His spine bowed, arching over me with slow, regal poise. The predatorial glint in his eye added a frightening edge to his otherwise stately demeanor. Not to mention the dirty barrage of words tumbling from his mouth.

“I need to bury myself inside you so I can’t feel anything but your heartbeat against my cock and your pulse in my fucking mouth as I finally mark that throat of yours and make it mine.”

Goosebumps burst across my skin like a fever, making my chest flame. The most intense wave of arousal crashed down over me, and with it, my control began to shake like a levy that failed to stretch higher than the ferocious flood threatening to drown it.

I couldn’t look away from him. Couldn’t move as I found myself staring into the flames of carnality that promised to turn me to ash—that I’d enjoy if only I allowed myself to succumb.

Then the most delicious sound rumbled from my silver prince’s chest, crackling like the coals in the hearth.

My pussy went wet in an instant, and my mouth went bone dry.

Sterling called to my monster, trying to lure her out so that he might mate with me in my true form. That was something Vincent had done, preferred even.

Not Sterling.

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