I gasped when he flipped me so I was facing the Silver Sea. The full moon was a shining orb in the sky, reflecting beams over the violent waves as Azur’s hand pulled at the loose neckline of my dress. The air was frigid. Winter was approaching. And yet my husband felt like a furnace behind me, throwing off heat that melted into my skin.

I gasped when the wind abraded my bared nipples and then moaned when Azur tugged and plucked at them. His metal gauntlets chilled my flesh, making his touch feel all the more intense, making me shudder against him as he nudged open my legs.

“Get me inside you. Now, laraya,” he growled into my ear. I was whimpering by the time his fangs brushed my throat.

Mindlessly, I reached back, tugging at the material of his pants, pulling at the clasps until they came undone and his cock sprang forward. I always wore a dress when we went flying for this very reason. Especially during the moon winds when Azur told me the “blood madness,” as he called it, felt heightened. When his hunger for me was a pinching and aching thing and he simply needed relief.

His fangs descended and I moaned when he imbedded them deep in my neck. That first dizzying tug on my blood always made my eyes roll back, and my movements became frantic, pushing my dress up around my hips before guiding his thick, heavy cock to my entrance. His tongue lapped at my skin, and every teasing lick felt like it was right over my clit.

“Azur,” I breathed, sinking down on him. His hand came up to my throat. I loved when he gripped me like this. It made me want to submit, to let go in his arms because I knew that he would never let me fall. In our daily life, we always played games. Games where I challenged him, where we went toe-to-toe, sniping at one another because we liked to. Usually, we picked fights over how to handle the harvest records. Sometimes I won. Sometimes I lost.

But this…

I never minded the submission when it came to our lovemaking. I craved it. So did Azur. My wicked, wicked husband enjoyed seeing me at his complete mercy. He could make me do whatever he wished…then again, I could make him do anything too. We both knew it, and it made my submission all the more tantalizing and satisfying.

Azur fucked me hard and fast, keeping me still with a hand at my throat and the other curled around my thigh, holding it up and open as he used the leverage the banister provided. The moon winds were threading over my nipples, looping around them and tightening. I moaned and squirmed. He fed harder at my neck. Deeper. The music from the celebration carried over the breeze, and I wondered if they’d be able to hear my moans all the way in the villages.

When I came, my climax burst through me like a violent wave. I bucked and screamed. Nothing would ever come close to this, and I held on to that pleasure tight, for as long as I could. Azur’s fangs prolonged it until he, too, fell over that cliff, joining me in sublime oblivion.

He didn’t seat his knot inside me. We didn’t have time. We were expected at the celebration soon, but I knew he would later tonight when we were in our bed, alone and together with the moonlight sliding across the walls.

Though he was still inside me, still fucking his silver seed into me, I felt my anticipation rise. This was just a taste, something to take the edge off for us both. But the main course would come later.

I huffed out a pleased laugh. Azur sighed and retracted his fangs, kissing my neck and lapping at his bite marks with his flexible tongue.

I shivered as he pulled his cock out gently, the rush of his come spilling out too, coating my inner thighs.

Despite his spine-tingling and wicked words about getting me pregnant when we’d still been in the Collis, we’d both decided that it was best if I continued taking marroswood for now. The last two months had been…stressful, to say the least. Getting pregnant right now—though I wanted a child with Azur desperately—I knew, wasn’t the right time for us. Soon, it would be. Perhaps after winter we would change our minds.

For now, I was content to enjoy us. Together. To settle into life in Laras and decompress from the whirlwind of the last two—truthfully three—months.

My priority in returning to Laras was getting our affairs in order. My sisters and Fran had chosen to come to the Kaalium with us. Sorj, too, since I didn’t think he wanted to be parted from Mira, not when they were finally free to explore a relationship with one another. It had surprised Sorj to discover Killup living in Laras, I thought. But he’d found a job easily, working on the fishing boats that journeyed deep into the Silver Sea, and he seemed to enjoy it. Mira complained that he always smelled like fish whenever he returned but would always scream in excitement and jump right into his arms when she greeted him at the docks after an extended trip, kissing him until his fellow fishermen teased him and pounded on the steel docks with their stomping feet. His gray skin would darken, but he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off my sister for days afterward.

Even though House Kaalium supported my sisters and Fran, Azur insisting on giving them a generous stipend every month, all of them had wanted to get jobs. My sisters had never worked a day in their lives. Not for money, at least, but it made me proud. It was commonplace in Laras, even for the Kylorr of the noble houses, to work. Azur had hired Fran to work in the keep after she’d asked him…to work beside Ludayn as one of my keepers and assist an aging Zaale in whatever way she could.

Truthfully, it was a great excuse to be able to see Fran every day. She and Ludayn had become fast friends, and it pleased me to no end to see Fran happy after so many years.

Mira had taken work at a local tavern, which had surprised me when she’d told me her decision. But her sunny and bright disposition was well suited for the job, and she gossiped with me about all the regulars at our weekly dinners at the keep.

Piper had landed work with Neela, helping her plan extravagant parties for the nobles and the villages—which, frankly, suited my sister perfectly. Piper had helped with tonight’s celebration, after all, and even the approaching storm hadn’t dampened her mood. Earlier, she’d been barking orders at a poor, grumbling Kylorr male to get the positioning of the feast table just so and I’d had to bite back my smile.

Though Azur had offered them rooms in the keep, they hadn’t felt right about taking them and had chosen to live within the main village below instead. Piper and Mira shared a home, though Sorj often stayed with them too, especially right after a fishing trip. Fran had her own home, close to where Ludayn and her mother lived above their steam cake shop, and they would both walk to the keep together in the mornings, chatting all the while.

As for New Everton, our estate in the Collis had been left behind. We hadn’t taken anything. We’d left the furniture. We’d only packed up our personal belongings, and my grandparents had taken what they wanted from my mother’s things. We hadn’t looked back and we would never return. The deed lay in House Kaalium’s vault, and there it would remain.

The only thing I’d taken of my father’s was a necklace that he’d given my mother, long ago. He’d found a polished blue stone, worn with time, on a walk home when they’d lived in New Inverness, before I’d been born. And he’d painstakingly made a simple chain from a metal wire, crafting a bail for the pendant by hand, and it had been one of my mother’s favorite jewelry pieces to wear. Something so simple. Something he hadn’t paid a single credit for.

I didn’t know why I’d taken it. Truthfully, looking at it brought tears to my eyes, but I kept it tucked safely away regardless.