Étreindre (v) to embrace; to clutch

Bastien and I laid just like that—our legs intertwined—for a long time.

Him, absently playing with a lock of my hair, and me, staring off into the distance, out the small bedroom window that looked out onto the graveyard.

If my feelings for him had been complicated before we'd set foot at Kemp Manor, now they were a tangled mess.

I glanced over at him and caught him staring at me so intently it nearly stole my breath.

He didn't say anything or look away, and we settled back into comfortable silence. My gaze shifting back out the window.

I was satisfied. Comfortable, even, with our new closeness.

But being comfortable with him tugged at the heavy feeling of guilt lodged in my stomach.

There was a problem with these new and complicated feelings.

My family.

If they could see me now, they'd be more than disgusted with me. Which left me in an impossible situation.

I couldn't go home. But I also couldn't tell Bastien the truth of who I was. If he knew I was a Proctor, he would never trust me again. In fact, he'd probably send me away, which I didn't want.

There was nowhere for me to go.

As if he sensed my shift in emotions, Bastien settled his hand on my lower back, dragging his fingers along my bare skin in comforting lines.

My toes curled into the rough cotton sheets, and I turned my attention back to my mate. He was naked, and the hard lines and muscled ridges of his body on full view. His pale blonde hair falling into his eyes as he watched me. 

Despite his stony exterior, Bastien was the only person who'd ever made me feel loved and cherished, and although I had my misgivings about him and his kind in the beginning, things had changed.

I liked being the person he believed me to be.

Intelligent. Stubborn. Beautiful.

An orphan raised as a refugee of war and deserving of his sympathies and patience.

Which was nowhere near the truth.

And so I was back to the tangled mess of my feelings. Lost in a web that was impossible to untangle.

Bastien's cool fingers traced lower, stretching down until they reached the sensitive skin of my backside. His touch raising goosebumps over my legs.

Each caress tantalizing and new.

The temperature of his skin and the stillness of his heart were the only signs that he was different from other men.

Besides his lust for my blood.

I swallowed hard as soon as the word came to mind. Since meeting Bastien, I'd been forced to be around it more than ever before. And while I was nowhere near unaffected by it, the sharpness of my symptoms were beginning to diminish ever so slightly.

Which was...strange. To say the least.

So much had changed. For me. Around me. About me.

Which led my thoughts to linger on the ceremony Bastien brought me to witness here in the graveyard and the heat that had grown inside me.

Of the flames I'd called.

I wasn't the same weak girl that arrived at the capital.

Not just a magickless Witch of the Light, but not quite a dark witch either. If my hair color was of any indication.

But it wasn't just magick that had changed for me. I was different in other ways, too.

I'd finally discovered what it felt like to make love to a man. To be joined with him. To experience the thrill of pleasure and the satisfying ache that came with it.

Together, we'd killed many dark witches, including a coven leader, and then fucked on her bed.

But both of those things—making love to Bastien and killing the witches—came at a great cost.

I'd allowed four demonic relics to leave the graveyard instead of destroying them. Taken by the witch, Cora. Perhaps my biggest failure yet.

Something thick settled in my throat, making it difficult to swallow.

I called Bastien's name through our connection. I needed reassurance that he hadn't changed his mind about me.

He offered me no words, nor did he ask what I was thinking, but his steady presence filled the little bedroom until he was the only thing I could think of.

The blue of his eyes as pale and pure as the sky, and his hands were as grounding as the earth. His hair shone the color of sunshine.

And his lips...

My throat ran dry as my gaze settled on them. So soft and delicious, they made my breath hitch in my chest.

His lips were godly. Holy. Sacred in the way they moved over my skin and claimed me as his own. Benovlent in the way they gave pleasure.

Yes, Bastien of House Allard was a killer—a dark creature. Even in the room's dim light, he was terrifyingly beautiful, just as all predators were. But I needed this particular killer to want me under his protection. To keep me in his arms. Locked away. Where we could live out this fantasy together.

Giving myself over to him meant my lie became my truth. I was an orphan now. Truly.

Unshed tears burned a hot trail down the back of my throat the longer I thought about it.

I wanted to protect my family. All of them. Especially Sera. I wanted to do my part to bring peace to their lives so no one would ever be harmed by dark magick again.

Especially now that I'd seen how wicked it truly was.

I touched the lace choker around my neck, looking wistfully out the window. It seemed that as long as I was in Bastien's service and still trying to discover the location of demonic relics, the conditions of the spell were met.

Could I live like this forever? Safe from the choker's curse if I stayed with him?

I wasn't sure.

Bastien's deep voice broke me from my thoughts. "You're sad," he said.

It wasn't a question, and I didn't want to lie. He was right. A part of me was more than sad. I was devastated.

My gaze shifted back to his, and I found a crease settled between his brows as he contemplated me. His head cocked to one side.

"You have something to say, but you're afraid that bringing it up will make me even more sad," I said.

I could feel it. His hesitance. Like the words were waiting on his tongue, just behind his teeth. Bastien was a master of restraint in all things, I supposed, except his need to claim me.

He lifted a hand to my hair and spun a lock around his finger. Rubbing his thumb over the silver lilac strands. Yet his attention never left my face. His cool eyes focused on mine so intently. Drawing me into their depths.

Making the warm spot between my legs dampen and nipples pinch into hard peaks.

He drew in a deep breath, and his gaze dropped to the swell of my breasts. Heating my flesh with his full attention.

"Claire, my Moonflower, forgive me," he said. His cool breath fanning over my heated skin. "But I don't want to talk right now."

He lowered his mouth to my breast, sucking my nipple into his mouth.

My body reacted on instinct, arching into the press of those godly lips, offering myself to them. Letting them move over my skin like they were reading from a sacred text. 

Showing me with more than words that he just wanted me. Wanted to satisfy me. Deeply. Carnally. As only a mate could.

Being wanted in this way spurred on my desire, sending me into a frenzy of need.

Wrapping a hand around the small of my back, Bastien pulled me against his body, bringing us together once again.

Laying side by side, his hardness pressed against my belly as he licked his way across the valley of my breasts. Finding my other nipple and drawing it into his mouth.

My fingers sank into his forearms. His shoulders. His back. His hair. There wasn't enough of him to grab. To hold. To get as close as I wanted to be to him.

He was the only thing I had, and I wanted him to fuck him like we were the last two people on this planet and no one else mattered. 

I didn't have to be sad when he was inside me. I was just his.

As if he sensed my need, Bastien collected the back of my knee in his hand, spreading me open, giving himself full access to my most sensitive spots, and, with a whispered word in Sanguisi, he slid himself inside me.

A low moan escaped me. If his lips were godly, then this part of him was divine.

Bastien was slower this time. More deliberate. Catching my lips with his as he thrust in and out. In and out. Building a rhythm that had my low belly tightening with each pulse. The rise and fall of our chests in tandem as we moved together.

There was tenderness, yes, but it made everything much more reactive, and I felt my own pleasure building. Building. Building with each thrust. 

He rested my leg over his hip, and his hand came to cup my ass, squeezing my flesh hard in his palm. It felt so good I moaned into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound like it was all he needed to survive.

I kissed him back with everything inside me. Our teeth clacking together, lips mashing, tongues twisting.

"My wife wants to come, doesn't she?" he said against my mouth. His forehead pressed to mine. Breath ragged.

In the heat of the moment, it took a second for me to process what he'd just said. But once I did, my eyes flew open, meeting his as he kept his steady pace. I tried to pull back, but he crushed me against him. Holding me through my shock.

"Wife?" I gasped.

He kissed me hard in response, absorbing my emotions. His hands slid into my hair, holding me so tenderly.

"When a vampire takes his mate, they are married under the laws of the Blood Treaty. So yes," Bastien gritted out, kissing me again, "you are...my wife."

The word still didn't make sense.

I-I was married?

He hadn't told me having sex made me his wife.

"Now," he said, rolling me onto my back, his hands pressing mine into the bedsheets. Lacing them together. "Does my wife want to come?" he asked again. Not slowing his thrusts but keeping up the deliciously steady pace.

Yes, of course I did.

I was so wet, so drawn into the blue of his eyes and the wicked curve of his lips as he moved inside me.

Wasn't this what I wanted? For him to never leave me? For him to be my new family? To help me eradicate the darkness for the people I loved?

The answer that came surprised me, yet wasn't surprising at all.

Yes. This was exactly what I wanted.

He would never send me away.

I was the wife of a man who commanded an army and lived in a snow-covered chateau in the wild mountains that separated the Conquered Territories from the Lawless Lands. A man who'd kill for me. A man who'd do anything for me. Even marry me though it was forbidden because I was his Sanguine Partner.

He couldn't give up his campaign in the West, just as I couldn't give up my mission. Both of us committed to bigger objectives but could not deny what was right in front of us.

Staring up at him and all his haunting beauty, I whispered, "I do."

As I said the words, our bloodstones snapped together like two magnets joined by some supernatural force.

There were no rings or vows. No priestess of the moon to bind our hands and speak the sacred spells.

This was our ceremony, and I was proclaiming that I accepted his protection and love. That I wanted him, and only him. My darkness and his, twisting together forever.

With my heart fully open to him for the first time, Bastien's hands left mine to fit under my hips, angling me up so that each thrust landed against my swollen spot, giving me the friction I needed to push me over the edge.

I screamed his name, and the sound echoed around the room and inside the chambers of my heart. Begged him for the release I so desperately wanted.

"That's it, come for me," he said. Eyes blind. Lips pulled tight. Just as lost as I was.

His command opened the gates of my pleasure, and another scream tore from my throat as I came, my fingers gripping the bedsheets and my back arching off the mattress.

As soon as I was done throbbing around him, Bastien pulled himself out of me, then crawled toward me, his hard length gripped in his hand; he rubbed the tip over my lips, coaxing them open.

"I'm going to come down my wife's pretty throat. Now open up for me, darling."

Submitting to him, I took him into my mouth as far as I could, my tongue tasting the sweet flavor of my pleasure on him. Gently gripping the back of my head, it only took one more thrust inside my mouth before Bastien's guttural groan of pleasure resonated through me, and I knew he was spent.

Warm, salty liquid filled my mouth, and I did my best to swallow it all down, taking him deep inside me. Letting him fill me in every way. Running my tongue over his tip as more leaked out. 

Finally, Bastien pulled himself out of my mouth, and the look on his face was indescribable.

"My beautiful, strong wife," he said, his thumb skating over my cheek before holding my chin in his hand with so much tenderness. "Let's get you home."

Home.

The word settled deep in my chest.

He was my home now.

WIFE?

💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

Did anyone else suspect that was going to happen?

It's one of my favorite fated mates microtropes.

But I'm so so proud of the way Claire reacted. She's starting to open her heart and trust what she feels, not what she's been told to believe. It's a really beautiful moment.

And thank you to one of my readers for coming up with the Moonflower nickname. I love it 💕