Forgotten Heir: Realm Doors Book One

Chapter Eighteen

Cara felt grateful for the curl of Ric's body at it curved around her back. She appreciated the trail of his fingers over her side more than she'd ever thought possible before. She would be lost without the tender touch of his thoughts as his mind melded with hers, and didn't believe she could exist without him. She didn't believe she'd have the strength to breathe or the willpower to live on her own. From the moment he'd pulled her out of that hospital basement, she hadn't managed to live without him, but after everything they'd experienced, Cara knew she'd never get out of bed again if he wasn't getting up with her. They had become one entity and sometimes she forgot where she stopped and he began.

"Your thoughts are enchanting," he sighed into her hair. "My other half."

She'd never understood those words before; to be someone's other half. She'd never believed that love could take two whole people and reduce them so they were halves. Love couldn't possibly make people less than they had been. Yet in light of everything, she accepted that she'd only ever been a half without Ric; part of a pair but still looking for the other side of her coin.

Rolling to face Ric, Cara's fingertips traced the now familiar tattoo on his torso. When her caressing fingers lowered to the fading outlines on his abdomen, she murmured, "Where do you think I was going with these markings."

He smiled in the semi dark. "I don't know, Cara love, you weren't at your most rational when you claimed me."

When she'd claimed him, when she'd branded him and made him hers. She'd flowed into him and felt his body react. She'd made his heart race. That was the one thing she still felt guilt over; as far as their possession of each other went, she'd been calling the biggest shots. They'd both fed on each others blood. They'd both been willing to die for each other, but only she'd physically claimed him. But Cara wanted him to claim her, to possess her and flow into her.

She wanted to go for a walk.

"What do you mean you want to go for a walk? It's two am and you elves have had me up since midday," Ric grumbled as her errant thought penetrated his sleepy mind.

"Well it's so busy here, these days, with Tyrnir sending his recruits to train under Kalidir. And with Anthony and Luke being away finding vampires willing to come to our cause, and said vampires congregating here too to train under you... There isn't any privacy."

"Love," he murmured gently, "we've come to bed to sleep, what on earth do you want to do that needs more privacy than the stall walls?"

So spoke a man used to his partner's closed legs.

"Ric," she enticed quietly. "I think I'm ready."

"Ready for what, Cara?"

She frowned at him, glowering at his closed eyelids. Her fingers still pressed to his tattoo, so she slowly set them moving again, brushing over the hard muscle of his abdomen to slip into his boxers and wrap around his currently sleeping manhood.

"For you," she informed him softly.

She wanted to laugh as his body immediately shifted up a gear, his eyes snapping open as he hardened almost instantly in her hand.

"What?" he demanded throatily, not daring to hope he hadn't slipped into a dream.
He'd dreamed similar scenes before, vision he hoped she hadn't been party to, and fantasies she'd never tell him she'd witnessed.

"I want you to take me," she re-iterated, adding for emphasis, "claim me, know me, bed me. I just don't want you to do it with the stalls and barn packed with thirty elahdril and twenty vampires who could wake up at any moment. I don't want you to do it with Kalidir asleep a few feet away with only a half wall made of timber separating us from him."