“All right,” I said softly. Still confused, though Ludayn’s small comments here and there were beginning to piece together in my mind. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

“That there is no other female in this entire universe who is better suited for me than you.”

I stilled, hearing the ragged truth in his words.

“Is that…is that why you married me?” I asked, lips parting. “Because you somehow found out that—”

“No,” he said. “I did not know when I married you. I denied it at the ceremony when you signed in blood, though I could smell it even then. I began to suspect it on the flight back to Krynn.”

My mind flooded back to those lonely, empty days.

“I’d drunk myself into a stupor in my room,” I said. I leveled him a long look and dryly added, “And you pulled my hair and tried to scare me.”

It was difficult to reconcile that Azur with this one. Because I now knew I had nothing to fear from him—even though I’d watched him decapitate a dragon with his gauntlets alone earlier.

His lips rose in a wry smile. “And you smelled fucking divine,” he rasped. “I could smell your blood, just beneath your skin. I’d never smelled anything better. In my entire life. You don’t know how little control I had in that room.”

His voice was ragged.

“And then when I fed from you? That very first time?” he asked, running his hands down my arms. I felt his cock pulse against me.

I gasped.

He growled, rough and raw.

“It was like coming to life.”

Chapter 35

Azur

“It was?” Gemma breathed, staring at me, wide eyed.

I stroked my hand through her hair.

“Did you know that the Kylorr didn’t always feed on blood?” I murmured. “We evolved into what we are now. After thousands of years of endless battles and blood-soaked wars. Our ancestors used to celebrate their victories by drinking the blood of their enemies, of the ones they slayed on the fields of their conquests. It was an honor. A right, however brutal and savage it might have seemed. Over time, our bodies learned to use that life force. To metabolize it. Adapt to it. Making us stronger. Faster. Larger. Making us dependent on it, though the wars became far and few in between.”

“I didn’t know that,” Gemma said quietly.

“We were always berserkers,” I told her. “But the blood became a pathway to unleashing our strength. The berserkers of old were said to have found partners. Blood mates. Whose blood strengthened them unlike anything they’d ever felt before. They attached themselves to their mates and never strayed. Entire battles were won at the hands of a single mated Kylorr.”

Her lips parted. Understanding was entering her gaze.

“Ludayn said… She said earlier that you were in a rage because of me,” she told me.

“Yes. I took down a kyriv alone because I was fueled on your blood. The blood of my mate. Of my kyrana,” I said, inclining my head. “Normally, that feat would take a dozen Kylorr or more. Never before has the strength come so easy. Never before has the act of feeding been so consuming. Never before have I felt so aware of life, of sound, of scent, of touch. So to say that you feel insignificant…”

Gemma bit her lip, lowering her gaze briefly.

“It is the furthest thing from the truth,” I finished, willing her to understand. I hadn’t expected to explain this to her. Not tonight.

Yet I hadn’t been able to withstand the dejected look on her face.

“Well, when you put it like that, I feel silly,” she murmured, giving me a half smile. One thing I appreciated about my wife was that she could move forward with a shrug of her shoulders. Her smile died. “I suppose I was speaking more about…about sex. Compared to your, um, extensive experience, I can’t exactly measure up.”

Realization bloomed. Affection made me rub at my chest, right next to where her fingertips were tracing.

“Gemma,” I grunted.

“Yes?” she breathed, trying to hide her pink cheeks.

“How many times did you make me come?”

The pink only deepened. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” I growled. “Tell me, is my come still leaking out from your cunt?”

She gasped when I reached below the water to pet her sensitive slit.

“Likely,” I decided, taking my hand away when I saw her eyelids flutter. “Given how many times I filled you up with it.”

“But—”

“Sex with a kyrana…” I trailed off, shaking my head. “Nothing else will ever compare. Ever. Do you understand me?”

Gemma was staring at me, her eyes flickering back and forth between mine. It wasn’t often that she showed vulnerability. I didn’t want her feeling like the sex, for me, had been lacking.

It was the opposite.

It was more than I’d ever expected.

She’d drained me dry. Toward the end, I hadn’t known if I’d had any come left to give her.

“So you liked it?” she asked.

I would’ve laughed in her face had that hesitant question not nearly cracked my chest wide open.

“No,” I said. Before her face fell, however, I growled, “I loved it. I crave it. I need it. Do you know how difficult it is not to wrap your legs around me and sink deep inside you? Right now? To fuck you into oblivion and sink my fangs into your pretty neck and lose ourselves together? Raazos’s blood, I might be addicted to it, wife.”

She was breathing hard, her eyelids going heavy, her fingernails curling into my thick flesh.

“Oh,” she whispered.

“And that pleasure when I feed? You know the one and I know it too. That is only for us. Only for us. Not many will ever experience that. To experience it during sex too? Gods, wife, it is the closest to the Alara realm we will get in this one.”

I nearly hissed in relief when she gave me a confident little grin, one that made me want to bend her over the bathing pool wall like I’d warned her before.

Her voice was husky when she asked, “So what you’re saying is that I’m the best lover you’ve ever had? Over your entire lifetime?”

I barked out a laugh, and her responding chuckle made a lightness spread in my chest, warm and consuming.

“Yes,” I said. Teasing, I said, “You’re the best wife I’ve ever had too.”

After hearing her outraged gasp, I silenced it with a kiss.

It was easy to forget, I realized. When we were like this, it was easy to forget the circumstances that had brought us together. It was easy to forget who her father was. It was easy to forget my vow at the altar of our family shrine, made in blood and bound in vengeance, and the promise I’d made my mother.

I had married Gemma Hara hellbent on destroying her family.

Only I couldn’t anymore.

She was mine. Claimed and protected.

She wasn’t a Hara anymore.

She was of House Kaalium now.

“Enough of this,” I rasped, lifting her from the water, desire riding me high. She gasped when I settled her outside the bath, and I kneeled on the ledge where she’d been sitting. “I’ll be gentle, wife. But I need a taste of you. I need it now.”

Briefly catching sight of her pebbled nipples and her surprised expression, I pushed her thighs wide.

Then, without hesitation, I buried my face between them.

Her shocked moan echoed in the bathing room. Splashing sounded when my wings gave an unconscious pump behind me. The taste of her cunt made my eyes roll back. I sucked and licked and laved until she was squirming underneath me, moaning out my name, her head thrashing and her thighs trembling around my face.

“Just as good as your blood, kyrana,” I growled, ravenous for her, my eyes dilated and completely focused on her. “Your cunt was made for me.”

When Gemma orgasmed, she came with a bright cry, her abdomen clenching, her hips bucking into me. I would never get tired of it, I realized. I would never get tired of watching her fall apart in my arms.