Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Did he want to kiss her some more? Fuck, yeah, he did.
Except it had been a while since he’d done anything sexual with anybody, including himself, and anyway, he didn’t think the escorts he’d paid for back in the day had prepared him for this moment, right here, right now. That had been transactional. This was… real.
And as with how it had been by the fire, Nalla was the one who came forward—and he wanted that. His urge to roll her over, mount her, and penetrate her was so strong, he didn’t trust himself not to rip off her clothes with his fangs and—
The contact of their mouths stopped his thoughts, slamming all of his consciousness into the brick wall of sensation: More of her warmth and velvety softness. The movement of her breasts against his bare chest. All kinds of sexual stimulation shooting down his spine and going right into his cock.
Which throbbed against the button fly of his leathers.
More. Now.
Cupping her nape, he urged her into him, tilting his head so they could continue the exploration. His reward was a moan that vibrated out of her and into him, and as he swallowed it, another, different kind of urge exploded in him—
She pulled back sharply.
At first, he thought she was getting off the bed—at least one of them coming to their senses—and the disappointment sucked. But then she unzipped her blue fleece, and shifted over so she was lying on her side next to him.
His heart rate exploded as she exposed her throat and held the collar down.
“Take my vein. I can feel how much you need it.”
She was right, of course. For the last decade, he’d been living off the synthetic stuff his mother had formulated in her lab. That breakthrough, which the species had needed for centuries, had made things so much easier in so many ways, but bio-identical was not the same as the real thing—especially not when the vein in question was a female like Nalla’s.
Turning to face her, he ran a fingertip over her jugular, feeling the pulse, bump… bump… bump…
His fangs dropped and he licked his lips.
“Are you sure?” he breathed.
“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise. You’ve got to need it after last night and just now.”
In the silence that followed, all her questions about who and what he was threatened to come between them, and he found himself wanting to answer them. On the surface, it wasn’t that hard: Rahvyn had resuscitated him after he died from a gunshot wound to the gut, and that was all he knew about the immortality stuff. The subject was a Pandora’s box, however. Everything that was under his surface, going all the way back to his past in that human lab and what had been done to him there, was bound to come out.
And he could not deal with that.
Good thing the single most powerful drive in a vampire was front and center in his mind.
Moving slowly, in case she changed her mind, he stroked her face. Then put his mouth to hers once more. This time, the kiss was deeper, and as he entered her with his tongue, he felt her hand slip onto his lower back. Putting his leg over hers, he gradually shifted so that he was on top of her—something that was made easier when she parted her thighs for him. As they intertwined, he got an even better sense of her body. She was strong, but softer than he was, and he relished the differences in her, so much smaller, so incredibly compelling.
When he finally broke the contact of their lips, he stared down into her yellow eyes. “You’re not afraid, are you.”
“Of what—you? No, I’m not.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
He kissed her cheek, and did the same to her jaw. Then he was nipping at her ear… before moving over to nuzzle her neck. Extending his tongue, he licked up her vein—
“Do it,” she commanded.
Closing his eyes, he was surprised as a sudden calm floated under his hunger. Deep inside of himself, he abruptly knew he could trust his self-control—but it was for a reason even more shocking than the fact that he was going to bite her.
It had everything to do with the dark spices flooding the bedroom:
He had bonded with Nalla.
And bonded males had one, and only one, prime directive: Protect their females against any threat, from any source.
Including themselves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Downtown, in the abandoned office building, the elevator bumped to a halt in the basement, and Evan almost shot out and ran around all panicked, willy-nilly-nowhere—except at the last minute, before the doors could close and the Otis could be summoned upstairs by that killer, his brain kicked in and he jumped back inside and hit the stop button to freeze it in place. The alarm started ringing, but what did he care about that.