Taken by the Vampire King

kiss long enough to let the cotton pass. The robe was like sand paper against his suddenly alive skin, so he shrugged it off, one arm at a time, until it fell free of his body.

The bare skin of his chest pressed against the bare skin of hers. Except for the satin of her bra. He made quick work of solving that problem and it joined their other discarded clothing at their feet.

She gasped, her hands splaying over his pecs. “This is gorgeous,” she whispered admiring the gold-and- black-inked heraldic lion wearing a crown and carrying a silver axe, the royal symbol of his lineage that dated back to the time of his medieval father, Eric Magnusson. Her gaze dragged over his face and she smiled. “Oh, Henrik.” Wonder reshaped her expression as she cupped his jaw in her hands. “I think it’s working.”

He wasn’t sure what she saw, so he just nodded, too choked up at the raw happiness rolling off her to chance his voice. And he knew it was true. Energy and power and vitality vibrated through him.

For the first time in years, he wasn’t hungry. Not for blood.

“Kaira, I don’t know if I can be slow about this, not this time,” he said, hope that there would be a next time burning bright within him.

Her cheeks went pink.

He pulled one of her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “What is it, kj?re? ”

Gaze skittering away from his, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

His stomach dropped and he took a step back. “If you’ve changed your mind—”

“No.” She shook her head. “It’s not that.” She closed the distance between them, her forefinger tracing the lion’s paws. “I’m, uh, I’ve never done this before.” She lifted one shoulder in a small shrug.

Her words hit home. Victorious heat flooded through his veins. “‘This’ meaning...?” When she didn’t answer, he tilted her chin up with his fingers.

“Sex.” Pulling away from his gentle hold, she nipped at his fingers, then dropped her gaze to the length of his rigid cock standing out straight between them. The sounds of her shallow breaths and racing heart were like a siren call, beckoning him to her. But he’d give her the time she needed to get used to the sight of him. “Can I touch—”

“Ja, always.” He guided her hand to curl around his hard-on. God, but her touch was the sweetest torture. For a few slow strokes, they worked his cock together, his big hand covering her smaller one. “Kaira,” he rasped.

“It feels nice.”

He chuckled and nodded. “Ja.”

In her giggles, she squeezed him tighter. The pleasure groaned out of him.

“That’s good?” A quick study, her next strokes were tighter, harder.

He’d never last. And dammit he wanted to be inside her—her body, her heart, her life.

“Too good,” he rasped, pulling out of her grasp. Henrik scooped her up by her bottom so that she straddled the front of his hips. Holding her luscious ass, he carried her to the bed and sprawled her in the center of it. What a beautiful picture she made, flush, tousled, aroused. He unzipped her jeans and tugged them off, removing her little pink panties with them.

Instinctively, her knees closed together and her arms crossed over her breasts.

“Ssh, kj?re, open for me.” His fingers traced random designs on her knees until they fell apart, revealing to him the perfect pink folds of her pussy. Already swollen and wet. Urgent arousal kicked him in the back and had him climbing up with her, situating his widespread knees under her thighs. He splayed his hand over her lower abdomen and circled his thumb over her clit.

The moan that tore out of her reverberated directly to his cock.

She was wet and ready, her hips pressing into his touch.

He settled on top of her, bracing himself with one hand and holding his shaft at her opening with the other. “I won’t be able to resist biting you, but my control is already stronger than it was.”

Her hands curled around his neck. “You promised you’d never hurt me, and you’ve kept your word. I trust you. Besides, I like the biting.” She said that last part in a lower, throatier voice that had him pushing into her wet heat.

Go slow, be gentle, take it easy, he commanded himself. She was a virgin, not twenty-four hours ago wracked with fever, and so much smaller than him. He didn’t want to tear her up. But the deeper he pushed in, the greater the struggle became.

She was so fucking tight he could barely form a coherent thought.

“I’ll make it better,” he managed, and then he thrust home. The maddening ache shifted from his cock to his fangs. They punched out as the instinctual urge to penetrate this way, too, had him roaring his pleasure before wrapping himself around her and piercing her throat.

Kaira’s pained whine morphed into a surprised and approving moan as Henrik sucked long, thick draws of her blood down his throat. The sound of her pleasure destroyed the last of his restraint.

His hips flew, driving his cock into her slick channel over and over. She clutched and scratched and fisted at his back, her muscles writhing and alive with arousal. What he wouldn’t have given to slow down, explore, savor. But he couldn’t. Not when he hadn’t felt the intense rush of male satisfaction in so long. Too long.

Just another thing Kaira Sorensen had done for him. The list was long, and he’d only known her for twenty- four hours. Now, he didn’t know how he’d go on without her.

Heat and energy pooled low in his belly. He drank her down in slow sucks, and her blood tasted familiar and right, like coming home after a long time away.

Unquestionably, Kaira Sorensen was his match in every way that mattered. But would she be his blood match? He swore the mystical connection had been taunting and teasing him since the first moment he saw her, but maybe that was just desperately wishful thinking.

The thought that they could match alone gave him a giant shove toward his orgasm. But her first. He gentled his thrusts enough to concentrate on making sure his pelvic bone rolled over her clit. She moaned and matched his rhythm, her hips tilting and grinding. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and the sensation was so similar to a bite that Henrik unleashed a strangled groan against her throat.

He wanted her to bite him. He wanted her teeth in his flesh, her lips at his throat, for her to be absolutely ravenous for the taste of him. Another train of thought that threatened to devastate his control.

“Henrik,” Kaira rasped. “I...I...”

He clutched her left hand in his right and pressed it hard into the mattress, lifting his abdomen just enough to change the angle.

A high-pitched moan ripped out of her, and her whole body went momentarily rigid. And then the orgasm slammed into her, squeezing his cock, sending her body bucking and thrashing. The incredible, erotic frenzy of it tore through him until he was coming hard. He thrust through it, going momentarily blind with the intolerable goodness of it.

He retracted his fangs and licked closed her wound. Triumph and total satiation flowed through him. Such a rare feeling. In combination with the orgasm, it was a kind of ecstatic pleasure he’d never felt before. “Damn, Kaira, it’s so fucking good,” he said as his thrusts slowed, the end of his release still playing out.

A scorching heat erupted from where they were joined, clawed up his spine, and raced to their joined grip. Rabid tingles spread over the entirety of his right hand.

He gritted his teeth, nearly euphoric at its meaning. Kaira screamed. “Ssh, kj?re, it’s all right. Almost over.” He held her through it as best he could.

But instead of stopping at his wrist, the sensation prickled up his forearm and across the inside of his elbow, following the path of his radial artery almost to his shoulder.

As suddenly as it began, it ended. Together, they sagged into an exhausted pile of limbs on the wide bed.

“What was that?” Kaira said.

Henrik rolled them over to relieve her of his weight, pulling their joined hands where they could see them.

She sucked in a breath and slipped her fingers from his to examine the interlocking pattern of shield knots closer.