Black Sunshine: A Dark Vampire Romance

He shakes his head, turning back to face me. “No, Lenore. I didn’t lie…”

“You knew! You knew I was the daughter of Jeremias. I don’t even know what that means, but apparently it’s a big enough deal that some vampire risked his life to find out, at the behest of another vampire! You knew because you drank my blood and you didn’t tell me.”

“That’s not lying,” he says. “That’s just pushing a fact to the side for now.”

“Oh my god!” I exclaim, throwing my arms out. “Is that how you’re justifying this? What the fuck, Solon, you should have told me!”

“I was waiting for the right time,” he says gruffly, avoiding my gaze. “I needed to figure it out for myself.”

“Well, that fucking vampire you just ripped the heart out of and set on fire figured it out a lot faster than you did!”

He wiggles his jaw, growing silent.

“You’re not even going to apologize?” I go on.

His eyes flick up to mine, his gaze hard. “I’m sorry.”

I shake my head, pressing the heel of my palm against my forehead. “You asked me to trust you and I did. I did. And you just…shit all over it.”

I close my eyes, trying to calm my heart, the adrenaline in the room is palpable. We’re both worked up and on the edge and it’s not helping, but fuck, does it hurt to have him betray me like this.

“I didn’t betray you,” he says quietly.

I put my face in my hands, letting out a growl of frustration. “Please stop reading my thoughts. I deserve some privacy.”

“I can’t help it,” he says. He comes closer, his scent flowing over me. He grabs my hands, gently this time, and takes them off my face. “I can’t help myself around you, Lenore.”

I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to break my resolve.

“I know you’re upset, I know you’re hurt, and I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he says, squeezing my hands. I hate at how grounding the gesture is, hate how it causes butterflies to travel up my arms. “I should have told you.”

I swallow hard, my heart aching. “What else aren’t you telling me?” I whisper.

“There are so many things,” he says after a moment, his voice raw. “So many things that I will tell you, that I want to tell you. But for now, we can start with this one. I’ll tell you everything I know. Just…”

He lets go of one hand and puts his fingers under my chin, raising it up so I meet his eyes. His pupils are black, his eyes shadowed, and in their depths I feel something radiating off of him that I’d never felt before. An intensity.

Devotion.

“I told you that you would ruin me,” he says. “Because I would ruin myself for you. You bring me to my knees, Lenore. Right to my god damn knees.”

Oh god.

My heart feels like it’s about to detonate.

“Solon,” I say, breath catching in my throat. “I—”

He grips my chin, pulls my mouth to his, kissing me.

Soft, full of life, lips and tongue moving in sweet synchronicity.

The kiss causes birds take flight in my chest, spreading through the rest of me, until they become something hot and wild and free, and then he’s moving me backward, our hands roaming over each other, grabbing, holding, pulling, trying to get closer and closer until my back slams against the floor-to-ceiling window.

With a grunt he reaches down and grabs my ass, lifting me up and pressing me against the glass while I wrap my legs around his waist. He quickly unzips his pants and shoves my dress up to the waist, then braces himself on the window as he pushes himself inside me.

I cry out softly, already wet as sin, and expand around him, feeling the heat between us begin to build, the connection fusing us together in bands of gold.

His lowers his head, his mouth about to go to my neck, but he pauses, staring at me. “Does it hurt?” he whispers. “Your neck...”

I almost forgot about the chunk the vampire took out of me. I can’t even tell if it’s healing or not, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.

I shake my head, running my hand through his hair. “No. I’m okay.”

His mouth goes tight, eyes glimmering. “No one will ever hurt you again. I won’t let that happen. I won’t.”

“I know now what happens if they do,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says softly.

“I’m not,” I tell him. “I saw what you would do for me.”

“I will do so much more for you.” He swallows, eyes shooting sparks. “You’re mine, Lenore. You always have been. Mine and only mine. Forever mine.”

The possessiveness of a vampire is truly something, but with Solon it’s on another level. And I love it.

Then he bites my ear, thrusting back inside me, with fevered urgency this time.