Chapter 198

Nolan shook his head and mumbled “no” between soft little kisses. “I don’t want to do that to you too much, Yena. Not if I don’t need it.”

I hummed out a reproving, “Hmmm…” and used a single finger to gently guide Nolan’s face up to mine. “You don’t have to hold back with me, you know.”

Suddenly, while he held my gaze, I felt Nolan’s big dick starting to swell, tapping against my thigh.

“Bite me. Drink my blood. Please.”

My voice took on a silky quality.

“I want you to. I think you do need it.” I moved my mouth to his strong neck, planted a soft kiss there and then dragged my lips up to his ear. “And you know that it feels good for me too, right?”

I teased his ear with my tongue, and Nolan groaned.

I angled my hips up toward his, and soon he was easing himself inside me while I breathed deeply and mumbled lot of little begs for him to keep going.

He moved one hand to the back of my head and fisted a sloppy bunch of my hair.

My eyes flew open—I didn’t realized they’d fallen closed. His were looking dark and hungry.

“How good?” he asked. My Alpha’s voice had gone deep and serious. “How good does it feel when I bite you? When I drink your blood?”

I smiled, thinking about the answer to this question. “It feels so good when you do it, that I never want you to stop.”

A wicked smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

And then, finally, with a fast and decisive movement, Nolan reared his head back, opened his mouth wide and dove into my neck. I felt his sharp teeth pierce the skin and sink deep into my soft flesh, his mouth vibrating with a growl as he did, and I screamed.

A white-hot flash of pain struck first, but it quickly gave way to a crushing wave of deep pleasure.

Nolan started to draw on the wound at the same time that his hips went into full force. He started thrusting into me hard, pounding in a fast pattern. His lips and tongue moved on my neck in their own rhythm, sucking and licking and lapping up every last drop of my blood like it was precious to him.

I started coming as soon as he started drinking from me. My blood was on fire, going hot then cold and back again and again, and my body tightened around Nolan’s, every part of it shuddering.

His activity on my neck slowed down, and I felt him stop pulling on my blood. His tongue started to press into the places where his teeth had pierced me, cleaning them now, each one in turn.

Then he brought his face back to mine and kissed me roughly. I was still riding out a wave I thought might be about to subside, but the kiss only plunged me back down into the tumult. Another absolutely wrecking surge of ecstasy flooded through me at the feeling of his tongue in my mouth, the way it stroked and teased my own.

The cherry-copper taste of my own blood filled my senses and I felt the odd, unreal tingle of my body taking it back in and healing itself.

Nolan was still kissing me when I felt him start to come inside me.

I wrenched my mouth away from his, and with as much breath and sense as I could muster, I moved my lips to his ear and whispered, “I love you.”

He groaned deeply with animal need, clutched at me desperately, and kept fucking me hard till he was almost empty. His eyes were bright now, glowing green and wild with energy. His lips were stained crimson.

“I love you too,” he whispered. “…my Queen.”

I woke in the dim of early morning to the feeling of Nolan trying very hard to extricate himself slowly from my limbs without rousing me.

“I’m sorry,” he answered, when I asked him what time it was. “It’s early. Too early. Go back to sleep.”

“’s okay.” I yawned, stretching lazily. “Why are you up though? I thought you didn’t have to work till noon.”

“I don’t.” Nolan returned to the bed and pounced back up into it quickly, just to plant a little peck on my forehead. Then his warm body was gone again, the mattress bouncing in the aftermath of his sudden departure, and he was on his feet and walking away. Pacing around the room doing who knows what. “You gave me energy,” he said. “I can’t sleep.”

“That’s nice,” I grumbled, not really sure what I was saying. I was halfway back asleep already.

A few hours later I woke, much more refreshed, in a sunny, empty room.

A note from Nolan directed me to text him when I was up. He was working, but could break to come have breakfast with me when I was ready.

I took a bath, texting Lucy while I soaked – she was coming over soon to help with my dress. Then I got dressed, told Nolan my eta for breakfast readiness, and met him up at the agreed time.

He looked beautiful. Refreshed. I almost wanted to say, “I told you so,” thinking of how he wanted to insist, last night, that he didn’t “need” my blood. We finished eating and lingered in our dining room sipping coffee and talking and kissing, till Lucy texted to tell me she was here and parking.

Then Nolan went back to work, after walking me to meet her at the front of the palace. He was giving a few more interviews today (thankfully, on his own), finally wrapping up his post-war media tour.

“Can I ask you something?” Lucy’s eyes were downcast, hyper focused on her work. She was cutting fabric into a pattern for me, moving super slow with big, confident strokes of the scissors like I’d taught her.

“Of course. What’s up?”

I paused my own project – stitching the lining of the dress – to give my cramping hands a break. We’d been working for over an hour already, in the zone and concentrating while we got the day’s work started.

Lucy finished her final cut and put the scissors aside. She started collecting discard fabric scraps while she answered.

“Okay, so I have been looking at apartments…”

“Ooh! Yay, that’s so exciting!”

“Right?” She gave me a big-eyed look. “I can’t wait to get out of my parents’ house, you have no idea.”

“I have some idea.”

She bobbed her head, agreeing. “Actually, that brings me to my question. I was thinking that Evan probably might be interested, soon, in getting out of Tina’s house, too.”

For whatever reason, I became a very slow thinker, as far as this conversation was concerned; I could not for the life of me figure out where Lucy was going with this.

“And since I’ve never lived on my own,” she continued, “I was thinking I could probably really use a roommate, rather than having to handle everything alone. You lived with Evan growing up. What do you think – should I ask him about it? Is he messy, clean, or what? Would he be a good roommate?”

“Oh. Huh.”

My mind did a hop, skip and jump to catch up: Evan definitely hadn’t asked Lucy out yet, that was clear if she was casually considering asking him to be her roommate. And either Lucy was fully oblivious to him liking her, or if she had an inkling, she wasn’t thinking seriously about it.

“Evan’s a good roommate,” I answered. “I think his bedroom is usually kinda messy, but other than that, he’s pretty neat. Tina has him trained to wash and dry and put away the dishes after dinner; you could probably make him keep that up. And he doesn’t do shit to his hair, so spends hardly any time in the bathroom, if you’d have to share one.”

My friend smirked, enjoying my methodical my review of my brother.

“He cannot cook, though.” I took my gown over to an empty dressmaking dummy and started hanging it. Lucy came over to help me do this carefully. “And he eats all the time. Peter and I have passed many hours, over the years, wondering how he’ll ever survive out in the wild, without Tina there to feed him.”

Lucy positively guffawed. “Yena, thank you,” she said, suppressing her laughter. “That was great. I’ve got the full inside scoop now.”

I did feel bad when she said that. Because there was, of course, another detail I knew about Evan’s suitability for being her platonic roommate that I wasn’t revealing.

But—that wasn’t my secret to tell. And I didn’t need to be in the middle of that.

I just had to trust that Evan would make a responsible choice about the whole thing, if Lucy did ask him to move in with her.