Before Daybreak (Love Bitten)

It was late morning, and we were exhausted, so I stripped us both, and we climbed into bed. I yawned and tugged her into my side, my eyes already drooping.

“Damn, I’m tired,” I grunted.

Callie leaned up and placed her hand on my chest, making me crack one eye open to see her.

“Working in the lab is a first step to getting the other thing I want,” she said with a smirk as she drew the pads of her fingers around my torso. My cock stirred, very interested in what her hand was doing.

“What’s that, my love?” I asked with another yawn.

She didn’t answer at first, and when I cracked the other eye, I realized she’d been waiting for my full attention. “Babies.”

In a flash, she was on her back with my body covering hers, my big, fat cock already hard and weeping at the thought of coming in Callie and knocking her up.

She laughed and quipped, “I thought you were tired.”

“Not that tired, baby,” I answered before thrusting into her tight, slick pussy.

“You’re suddenly full of energy,'' she teased as her back arched, and she wrapped her legs around me.

“You’re about to be full of my come,” I growled as I moved inside her.

I kissed her before sinking my fangs into the mark I’d left when I claimed her. As I drank her delicious blood, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.

Forever just kept getting sweeter.

Epilogue

Callidora

I had a whole new appreciation for holidays after I had my first child. My parents had always gone big with the festivities when I was growing up, and Braeden and I hadn’t been slouches in the celebration department during our first year together. But we took it to a whole new level when Maxine was born five years ago, a little less than a year after I started working at the council lab. Seeing everything through the innocent eyes of my baby made all the difference. It also made it difficult to say no when she and her little brother asked for something holiday-related.

“I cannot believe you let them dress up as vampires this year.” Braeden shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Me?” I waved my hand toward our four-year-old son’s face. “I’m not the one who got them retractable fangs and painted blood dripping from the corner of their mouths. That was all you, babe.”

Marshall grinned up at me and licked the tip of one of the pointed teeth. “I wuv my fangs.”

Don’t worry, sweetie. Your real ones will come in when you’re older.

His smile widened at the reminder I telepathed to him that he wouldn’t need the costume fangs when his adult daywalker teeth came in.

Maxine didn’t look away from her candy stash as she asked, “Is Daddy whining ’bout our costumes again?”

A muscle jumped in Braeden’s jaw, and I had to bite back a giggle. In all fairness, he had complained more than a few times since we’d left our house to go trick-or-treating. Knowing how much the kids loved a popular cartoon movie about vampires that had been released last month, he’d been such a good sport about their choice of costumes. Then he got razzed about it by fellow daywalkers at the first few homes we’d visited and had been grumbling ever since.

Jerking his chin toward the next house, he growled, “Go hit up that house for more candy instead of giving your poor old dad a hard time.”

Maxine’s bright blue eyes—the signature Bancroft shade—widened as she took two steps back. “But that place is s’posed to be haunted.”

“Nuh-uh.” Marshall shook his head and pressed his lips together in a flat line, his brows drawing together as he cast a suspicious glance at the house in question.

Braeden clasped Marshall’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Your mom and I would never let anything bad happen to the two of you.”

Marshall’s little chest puffed out as he slipped his hand in Braeden’s and asked, “Walk wif me?”

“Of course, buddy.”

“I’ll go with her,” Ren offered with a big grin as he came striding toward us from the darkness between the two houses nearest to us. He must’ve teleported there to avoid popping up in the middle of nowhere with too many humans present.

“Uncle Ren,” Maxine screamed as she threw herself into his arms.

Ren gasped in shock and turned accusing eyes in my direction. “Is that a fucking vampire costume?”

“Yup.” Maxine grinned up at her uncle while several nearby parents glared at him for the bad language. “Marshall’s a vampire, too.”

Ren shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“I’m being i-iro—” Maxine heaved a sigh of frustration and asked, “What was it again, Mommy?”

“Ironic, sweetie.”

She nodded as she tugged on Ren’s wrist to lead him up to the house she’d been afraid to stop at only minutes earlier. But with her brother almost to the door, now she was in a rush to get up there too. “Uh-huh. That.”