“You’re probably right,” Julian agreed.
“Even when I was mostly human, I never really considered having a wedding. I had no illusions of finding a man who would understand what I was and what our children would be. For all I knew, I may have been enough of a vampire that I could never have children, so I never dreamed of them either. We’re bound deeper than any vows could ever make us, but I would wear your rings. Remember it goes both ways though. You’d have to wear my ring to keep all those human women away from you too.”
He grinned at her as he embraced her tighter. “I’ll proudly wear your brand.”
“Damn right you will.”
She rested her head against his chest and lifted her face to kiss his jaw. Turning her mouth into his throat, she pressed her lips against the vein running through there. His fingers stroked her cheek as her lips skimmed back and she sank her fangs into his flesh.
The powerful wash of his blood flooded her system, causing her fingers to curl into his shoulders. He held her closer as he bent his head to kiss her shoulder. She felt his fangs a second before he pierced her skin.
He growled against her flesh while he fed from her. Quinn bit deeper, needing him in a desperate, almost savage way that she’d never experienced before. Her fingers tore at him, pulling him closer as he shifted her in his lap so she straddled him.
His fingers tugged at the button of his jeans before he somehow managed to shift her and kick them off. Still only in Chris’s shirt, she felt him against her before he entered her. The shirt fell away from her as he tore it down the backside and threw it away.
Instead of setting her on fire like it normally did, his touch was like ice flowing through her veins as it doused the heat of the flames that had consumed her. She craved and welcomed the way it eased the pain of her memories. She forgot all about the searing fire, forgot all about the death and rebirth she’d experienced within its flames, as she became consumed by him.
The bond between them swirled around her as she felt what he’d experienced within those tunnels. She lived his terror while he watched her fall into those flames and then his intense relief when she emerged from them.
His anguish over not being able to help her engulfed her. Then she felt his relief over the end of The Commission. She got a brief glimpse of what he’d seen from that last woman before his overwhelming desire for her dragged her deeper into the depths of ecstasy.
Later, she lay against his side, her fingers tracing over the carved ridges of his abdomen. “You have a way of making me forget,” she murmured.
“You have a way of making me remember.”
She lifted her head and propped her chin on his chest so she could gaze into his eyes. “Remember what?”
His fingers slid over where the scar on her temple had been. “My humanity. I’d long believed it destroyed.”
“You found your humanity again before me,” she reminded him.
“I stopped killing before I found you. I was trying to do better, but until you entered my life, I never fully understood why I just didn’t give into my nature again. I care deeply for the others, but giving in would have been so much easier than struggling every day. Now, I know I was waiting for you, and you are worth every uncertain second of that wait and more.”
Tears burned her eyes again and slid free. She tried to blink them back. “You have no idea how weird it feels to cry when you don’t have eyelashes,” she said.
He grinned at her before drawing her toward him until their lips brushed while he spoke. “I’ll be happy to make you forget all about that again.”
CHAPTER 28
Three months later
“You’ve waited all these years to get married, are you sure you want to do it in Vegas?” Quinn asked as she handed Hawtie her bouquet of white roses.
“It’s Sin City, honey, and one thing I am is sinful,” Hawtie replied with a swish of her rounded hips.
“Yeah you are, Red,” Julian drawled from where he sat in the booth behind them. His arms were stretched casually over the back of the booth while he watched them.
“Hush, you,” Quinn said. “You shouldn’t even be in here.”
“It’s only bad luck for the groom to see the bride, and if you put me out there with her groom, there may not be a wedding,” he replied.
Quinn frowned at him, but Hawtie chuckled and stepped forward to peer at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall of the small dressing room. She turned back and forth, carefully examining herself. The deep red dress she wore hung to mid-thigh and was cut low in the front to emphasize her ample cleavage.