The Billionaire Vampire Would Kill To Keep Me

Chapter 6: The Bite

His neck was right there.

Pale. Cold. The vein under his skin was dark, pulsing like it was calling me.

I had never bitten anyone in my life. I was a nurse. I healed people.

"How?" My voice was shaking. "I don't know how."

"You do," Caspian whispered. His eyes were still black, his fangs sharp. But his hands holding me in that towel were so gentle. "Your body knows. The blood inside you knows. Just... trust it."

The craving in my chest was screaming now. Midnight had passed. My hands were trembling.

"What if I hurt you?"

He actually laughed, low and broken. "Amara, nothing has been able to hurt me in 200 years."

He tilted his head more, his wet black hair falling back. He was offering himself to me completely. A 312-year-old king, kneeling for a 24-year-old human girl from Lagos who replanted his dead herbs out of spite.

I leaned in. My lips brushed his cold skin first. He shuddered.

Then I bit.

It was not graceful. I gasped against him, teeth sinking in. The taste hit me — not like blood. Like winter and fire and power and home. Like the first rain in Lagos after harmattan.

Caspian groaned, his whole body going rigid. His arms locked around me, holding me up.

"More," he gritted out. "Take more, little healer. Don't be gentle with me."

The blood was cold at first, then burning hot down my throat. The black veins that had been trying to come back on my arms vanished instantly. The humming in my chest turned into a song. I could feel him — not just his blood, but him. His loneliness. His three hundred years of empty castle and dead herbs and no one touching him with kindness.

"Caspian..." I whispered against his neck, mouth full.

"I know," he said, voice wrecked. "I feel you too. God, I feel you."

He buried his face in my braids, breathing me in. His fangs were so close to my own neck, but he didn't bite. He was shaking from holding back.

The bond snapped into place.

It wasn't just in my chest anymore. It was everywhere. Gold light exploded behind my eyes — I could see the thread tying us now, bright and unbreakable, from my heart to his dead one. And his dead heart... it beat. Once. Twice.

For me.

He pulled back just enough to look at me, his black eyes fading back to silver, full of wonder and possession.

"There. Now you are mine. Marked properly. The Order can never touch you again."

His hand cupped my face, his thumb wiping blood from my lip. His touch was still cold, but now it felt like relief, not fear.

"How do you feel?" he asked.

I should have felt scared. I had just drunk a vampire king's blood in a black marble bath, wearing only a towel.

Instead I felt powerful. Awake. Like my healing gift had tripled.

"I feel... you. In my head. Is that normal?"

He smiled, finally, fangs gone. The terrifying predator was gone, and the man who looked carved by God was back. Soaked, holding me.

"Very normal for mates. You will hear me when you need me. And I will always hear you."

Outside, the howling stopped. The bayou went silent, as if whatever hunted me had lost the scent.

He stood, lifting me easily as if I weighed nothing, towel and all.

"Sleep now," he murmured, carrying me to his bed — that huge black bed I had been too scared to touch before. "The cleansing took a lot out of you."

He laid me down and pulled the sheets over me. He didn't get in. He sat on the floor beside the bed, back against it, like a guard dog.

"You don't have to sit on the floor," I whispered, suddenly shy.

"I do," he said, eyes closed. "Because if I get in that bed with you smelling like that, tasting like me, I will not be a gentleman anymore. And you are not ready for me to not be a gentleman."

My face burned. "Caspian!"

"Sleep, Amara."

And with his cold hand holding mine over the edge of the bed, and his newly beating heart lulling me, I slept — for the first time in days, without nightmares.

When I woke up, the sun was up, and Caspian was gone.

But on the pillow beside me was a single, living white flower — grown from the dead greenhouse.

And burned into the bedsheet under my hand were two words in ancient Latin:

_MEAM AETERNUM — Mine, Forever.