The Blood is Love by Karina Halle

Epilogue

Solon

Four months later

“What doyou want to do for Halloween?” Lenore asks me.

I lower the copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and peer at her over it. “You’re being serious?”

She grins at me, crossing her legs. She’s not wearing underwear under that baby-doll dress of hers, and she’s been showing off that fact all morning long.

“Oh, come on,” she says, brushing her long hair back over her bare shoulder, drawing attention to her smooth skin there. Fucking hell, she knows I want to bite her too. Why is she torturing me like this when we only rolled out of bed a couple of hours ago? “You’re a vampire.”

“And you’re also a vampire,” I point out.

“Right. And this is my first Halloween as both a vampire and a witch. I need to take advantage of that.”

I look back to my newspaper. “I’m sure Amethyst will go out with you if you want to go on one of your little pub crawls.”

Even though I kind of hate it when she does that. I’ll admit I’m the jealous type and the idea of lots of men—humans—staring at her, hitting on her, gets me feeling all sorts of murderous. It’s enough that the last two times they went out for a girl’s night, I tagged along. They didn’t know that of course, but I was there in the background, just in case I needed to put any classless delinquents in their place.

“We could have a Halloween party,” she says, having a sip of her coffee. “For the vampires. Or the witches. Depending which way you’re swinging that day.”

I sigh, trying to hide my smile from her. She’s adorable when she gets like this, totally obsessed and in love with her newfound identities. It makes me even more obsessed and in love with her.

“We’ll see.”

“Solon, you love throwing parties.”

“Not theme parties, my dear. That’s a very human thing.”

“And you keep saying you need to embrace your humanity. Well, there you go. Let’s do it. Get a band to play the Monster Mash. Dress up in capes. Hire a bunch of bats to fly around.”

“Hire a bunch of bats?” I repeat, staring at her again. “Have you ever seen anyone train bats?”

“You have magic, you could do it.”

“You have magic, Miss I Know How to Fly. Training bats is your problem.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Whatever happened to being less grumpy?”

I lower the paper in an exasperated manner and give her a dry look. “When did I say that?”

“When you said you had a new lease on life.”

“That wasn’t me. That was Dracula.”

That said, she’s not entirely wrong. After everything that happened in the Arctic and in the Red World, I have been trying to put a better foot forward. It’s not every day that you actually physically die and then come back as a vampire again.

And yet, that’s what my Lenore was able to do.

She brought me back.

This time, as myself through and through. Not a hint of the beast, not a hint of madness. Just me.

And completely hers.

She owns me now. She always did, but now that she saved my life by giving me part of her life, well…I’m in it for the long run. For the ages, of course, but beyond that. Beyond life, beyond death. Beyond the universe.

And she’s pretty good at reminding me of that. Has me completely wrapped around her little finger.

I just like to keep her on her toes. She doesn’t need to know how damn devoted I am to her, to every inch and fiber of her being. She already has so much of the upper hand, I wouldn’t want to lose all my control completely.

Especially now that she can fly. Every day she’s discovering more and more of her powers. Sometimes we learn together, trading magic that innately remained within me even after dying. Other times her parents help out. Her magic is far above what they can do, but they still know the basics, and I can tell it helps bring Lenore and her parents closer together. Family is a tricky situation for the both of us, finding ways to heal rifts while also holding onto the found family in this house.

As for my family, well, Skarde is dead. He died in that other world, never to return to this one. Natalia, unfortunately, is dead too. And Kaleid, well…no one knows what happened to Kaleid. No one knows what happened to the Dark Order either. Ezra has been to Europe twice in the last four months since we left Helsinki, spying for me, since that whole lot of vampires over there are as untrustworthy as anything. He hasn’t found out any information, not even any rumors. It’s like all the vampires are finally free to do what they want, what I’ve already been doing for a long time. And without Kaleid and Natalia leading the Red World, they’ve moved onto the normal one. So far, they all seem to be behaving, proving that vampires don’t need a ruler after all.

Then, of course, there’s Dracula. He’s galivanting on the beaches of Mexico or Italy or some place that sounds like hell to me. I talk to him occasionally and he’s dropped a few hints that he’d like to come visit, move to San Francisco, but he hasn’t bitten the bullet yet. I think he thinks that Wolf wants to kill him still, but he’s so blindly obsessed with Amethyst that Wolf wouldn’t pay Dracula much attention.

Unless Dracula starts going for Amethyst.

Well, that’s not my problem.

“What’s not your problem?” Lenore asks, putting her coffee down and getting to her feet. She walks over to me and I toss the newspaper to the side. We’re in Dark Eyes, drinking coffee from the espresso machine, enjoying the cool temperatures during a hot San Francisco autumn, and the peace and quiet before the rest of the vamps wake up and things get busy.

“You’re listening to my thoughts?” I ask her, teasing. “Thought we had an agreement.”

“I just caught the last sentence,” she says, biting her lip seductively. “Thought maybe I could give you a problem.”

“Oh really?” I say, gazing up at her. She stands between my legs and reaches for my zipper. My cock is already hard as rock, having been all morning since she keeps showing me flashes of her cunt.

Plus, I can smell how aroused she’s been, even though I haven’t shown it. I just like to make her wait, if possible. I’m cruel like that. She once said I was the Prince of Darkness; King of Edging, and I like to lean into that as much as possible.

But as I run my hands up her inner thighs, playing with her clit, sliding my fingers inside her, I decide I don’t have much patience this morning. I get her off, fucking her hard with my fingers while she stands there, head back, moans filling the nightclub, as well as the slick, X-rated sounds of her wetness.

When she’s come twice already and I’m hair-trigger sensitive, my cock aching painfully for release, I bring it out of my fly, making a tight fist around the base, which elicits a deep groan from inside me. I’m not going to last long either. She quickly climbs on my lap, straddling me, then lowers her hips until I sink into her.

“Fuck,” I breathe out, my arms trembling as I grab her waist, trying to control her movement, the strain making my face contort.

But she’s already come. She has that look of pure lustful determination, wicked to the bone, and I know there’s no point in trying to control things.

It feels good to let go sometimes.

So she starts to ride my cock, pushing down deeper and deeper, squeezing me so tight that it’s hard to breathe. With each sharp thrust of her hips she rocks back and forth and I’m pulling down the neckline of her dress, biting and sucking at her soft breasts, my fingers slipping down over her slick clit again.

Heaven. Lenore feels like heaven, a place that I might have gone to when I died. It’s hard to say, when I died I went to a dark place but it wasn’t a bad place. It was peaceful.

It just wasn’t whole because she wasn’t in it.

And now that I’m deep inside her, I know that’s where heaven really is. Wherever she is.

And she’s with me. For now. For the ages.

Making me whole.

Making this long life one worth living.

“Fuck,” I swear again as my orgasm sneaks through me and then I’m coming, grunting loudly as she rides me into oblivion, her own cries matching mine.

Eventually she collapses against me, kisses my neck, my ear, my jaw, small presses of her lips that make my skin dance.

I run my fingers through her wild hair, holding her in place while I gaze at her, feeling nothing but lucky and in love and alive.

Then, as my heart begins to bloom, making me feel dizzy with my feelings for her, feelings that are so large and powerful that I’m still having a hard time getting used to them, a hard time accepting them, she flashes me another wicked grin.

“So…” she says. “Yes to a Halloween party?”

I roll my eyes, but still I say, “Anything for you, moonshine. Anything for you.”

THE END

Hope you enjoyedthe continuation of Lenore and Solon’s story. If you leave a review, I would really appreciate it!

ALSO I’m also doinga spinoff with Wolf and Amethyst called NIGHTWOLF coming October 31 2021 (PREORDER here now). YAY!

AND we haveDracula’s book in King of Darkness, also up for preorder.

In the meantimeyou can reach out to me and keep up with what I’m working on by:

Following me on Instagram

-> joining my Facebook Group (we’re a fun bunch and would love to have you)

-> Otherwise, feel free to signup for my mailing list (it comes once a month) and Bookbub alerts!