They shown pale blue, a tracery over her chest and throat like a fall of delicate lace about her neck. His fangs ached to see the life blood flow in her veins, to see the translucent skin unmarred and pink from the heat of the nearby shower and her own response to his nearness.
"Why were you screaming?” he asked with an attempt at feigning a calm he didn't feel, yet his voice was still thick and rough with arousal despite his effort.
She swallowed, her throat working to put moisture into her mouth. He clenched his jaw, tightening his hands into fists as her muscles moved sensually slow. “A spider tried to get me,” she said huskily, watching with a wary eye caught between him and a route of escape.
He smiled despite himself. He hadn't met a woman yet who didn't hate spiders. “You're nearly immortal now. It wouldn't have hurt you."
She tightened her grip on the curtain, shifting on her feet. “Phobias are an irrational fear. I can't help myself."
"Hmm.” He couldn't either, and he was weary of playing by the rules of society, the rules of the council ... and her rules. Perhaps that's why he'd broken one of the oldest dictates of the New Orleans underworld—to allow a human to be turned vampiric. It was a death sentence to defy the council, one that he'd welcomed with relish before. But now....
He watched her without speaking a long moment. Tension built in the air around them. Expectancy made her breath rush between her lips. She breathed hard, as if she couldn't get enough air. He felt suddenly as breathless as she, his heart pounding in time to her own.
Such moments were rare for him, this sense of urgency to sate his appetite mingling with the near hidden fear of rejection. The uncertainty sharpened his yearning, awakened a new hunger, stronger than any other before it, more ravenous.
Scarcely aware of himself, he lifted his hands and ripped the curtain away. Her gasp spurred the rapacious, overwhelming need to take and conquer, devour her cries and consume her passion. She wrapped her arms around her breasts and pubic mound, trying to hide. His belly clenched with the impact of her defenselessness. He smiled in anticipation, eager to see her and kiss her until her shyness dissolved under his tongue. Already her cunt wept for his possession. Its subtle scent perfumed the air, driving his need to unbearable heights.
"You draw attention to yourself, chere,” he said, slowly locking his hands around her wrists, forcing her to free her body for his greedy gaze.
"I don't do it on purpose,” she gasped, jerking at the tether of his hands, fighting, but not fighting hard enough. “I don't want you looking at me. I don't want anyone to look at me."
"Don't you?"
She tried to pull free, to turn away, but he wouldn't allow it. No, not this time. He'd seen her before, when he'd cleansed her body and laid her to recuperate in the bedroom, but her limp form was nothing as it was now, vibrantly alive, aching for fulfillment and freedom.
When she couldn't escape, she closed her eyes, as if that would hide her somehow, as if it could disguise her embarrassment.
She hated herself, her body—that he knew, but the driving need to change was something he'd never understood about women. His cock swelled at the sight of her pale flesh. She was all rounded curves and no hard edges. She would be soft to touch, soft and welcoming to the pounding of his body into hers. He ached to sink inside her, drum into her pussy until the world dissolved around them.
Her breasts were smaller than he'd supposed, and if she'd been a smaller size, she would probably be nearly flat-chested. As it was, they were a modest handful, tipped with virginal nipples no larger than the tip of her pinkie finger. He could tell just from looking at her and her response, that she'd never allowed a man to look at her naked. Had she allowed a man to suckle her breast?
He thought not. It pleased him to think he would be the first to taste her, to see her.
"Stop looking at me,” she gritted out, twisting in his hold, ashamed of herself.
Her shame made him ache, long to erase whatever held her repressed to her own natural beauty. He was angry that she'd loosed his hold over himself, that she denied him and herself. He was ravenous, and he saw no need to deny the hunger what it willed.
"You're right. I've looked for long enough,” he ground out, wrapping his arms around her and trapping her hands behind her back, forcing her to arch against him.
Her breasts flattened against his chest, her soft stomach melded to the muscles of his flat belly. He groaned as his cock met her naked mound, only his leather pants between him and the sweet heat between her thighs. He held her there a moment, soaking in the feel of her pressed so intimately against him.
Her heart fluttered against his chest. Each rapid breath made her tighten to him, increased the furious tempo of his own desire.
Biting back another groan, he bent his head and closed his lips over hers. She gasped against his lips, indignant, surprised, angry. He tasted her sweet breath before plunging his tongue inside her mouth, sweeping past her short fangs to tangle with her tongue.
She was hot and wet, vulnerable against him. Her hands twisted at her back, fighting him. Aggression surged in his veins at her defenselessness. Toying with her tongue, he nibbled her lips, urging her to taste him back.
Her tongue was limp in her mouth, resistant to his teasing, leaving him disappointed.
He released her hands, cupping her buttocks as he crushed her back against the wall, bringing her up hard against the ridge of his cock.
She moaned into his mouth, gripping his forearms as if she would thrust him away. He plunged his tongue in and out of her mouth, mimicking the grind of his hips as he rocked against her mound.
She whimpered, deep in her throat, sucking on his tongue at last, sending his will careening out of control. He kissed her harder, coaxed her tongue into his mouth so that he could suckle her as he massaged her buttocks. The weight felt good in his hands. He spread them, unbalancing her until she was opening for him, spreading her thighs around his hips as he pushed her up the wall and took her weight into his hands.
His groin nestled in the apex of her thighs. He knew her cleft wrapped around him, bared to his cock, wet and burning for the hammer of his body. He tore his mouth from hers, dragging it over her jaw line.
Her small gasps urged him on, fired his blood in a way he hadn't felt in years. His body had felt dead before, lifeless to emotion. Now he was alive and starving for the taste of her, of this woman that hated him and what he was.
He opened his mouth on her neck, dragging his teeth over her throat. She shuddered, her pulse quickening beneath his lips as if she knew what he wanted ... and feared and welcomed it.
He had yet to taste her blood, but he craved it, craved the ecstasy that could only be wrought by the intimacy of blood bonding.
The thought brought him up short, quenching the fire in his loins like a dash of ice water.
"Oh ... god,” he groaned against her neck, his breath fanning off her skin against his own lips. His fangs lengthened, anticipating the pleasure of piercing her flesh, to become one with her. His salivary glands spasmed again, making him hiss in pain.
He laved her neck, tasting the salt of her skin, the fear and desire trembling beneath the surface, pulsing in her lifeblood. It called him like a drug, promising a high unlike any other, an addiction he wished to embrace again.
To want it was the ultimate weakness.
He thrust against her cleft, her liquid heat near burning him through his pants. He groaned and closed his eyes, driving against her, trying to draw the anguishing, needful thirst to his throbbing cock.