“I am, love,” he whispered, his breath tickling her skin. “Your pussy just keeps quenching my unending thirst.”
Her legs shook. “No. Not that,” she muttered as she felt his teeth nibble at the lips of her sex.
“How about this, then, m’dear, m’darling?” He plunged his tongue deep inside her cunt, then retreated.
“Oh, fuck,” she gasped. “No, Syn. Gods, I love it, but no. My blood. Christ. Drink my blood.”
He stilled, his body, his mouth, and his breath, coming quick against the entrance to her sex. “Petra . . .”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I promise you. I swear. I know it.” She came up on her elbows, locked eyes with him. “I think this is how it’s supposed to be, Syn. With . . . a couple.”
His eyes darkened, and though he kept his gaze on her, he ran his tongue up her slit.
She cried out.
“Mates, Petra?”
Yes. Yes. “Bite me,” she commanded. “Drink from me.”
He growled, his fangs dropping.
“Do you want to feed from anyone else?” she said with almost sexual menace.
“Fuck, no, love. You know that.”
“Then do it.”
She saw the struggle in his eyes, but the hunger was there too, and thank the gods it was the stronger of the two. He pulled back from her sex but remained between her legs. His hands rested on her hot core, while his head turned and his tongue flicked out to lap at the skin of her inner thigh. Petra watched him, her breath tightly caught in her lungs. She remembered how it felt to be bitten by him, but this time was so different—this time hunger was caged in a haze of erotic compulsion.
She felt his fingers part her sex, felt the pad of his thumb move impossibly lightly down her lips.
“Please, Syn,” she begged.
He nuzzled her skin, then scraped his fangs over the spot he wanted to bite.
Best. Feeling. Ever.
Her eyes slammed shut.
Except for maybe this feeling.
She fell back on the pillows, her mouth forming a small O as Syn’s fangs pressed deeper and deeper into her flesh. And then he was drinking. Her blood. Taking it in big gulps as he followed the seam of her pussy with his thumb, all the way to the opening of her sex, clearly determined to make her come again. The most perfect shared ecstasy.
Alex watched his mate very closely as Dillon paced the floor of the library in his house in SoHo. The entire family was gathered: Romans, mutore, Impure Resistance, Celestine, and Wen. And Alex was worried that Sara’s concern about Petra and the shifters was wearing on her. She was growing so close to her time, which made Alex all the more protective.
“Are you all right, my love?” he whispered in her ear while Dillon went on about the heavy search of the Rain Forest and how there had been absolutely no sign of Cruen.
Sara turned to him, her blue eyes beautiful as always, but tired. “I’m fine.” She touched his face. “You worry too much.”
He growled lovingly at her. “It’s never too much when it comes to you and our balas.”
She leaned in and kissed him. “Wait until after it’s born. There’ll be plenty to worry about then.”
“What does that mean? Do you foresee a problem?” His gaze moved over her. “Shall I call for Leza?”
She laughed softly. “You’re losing it, honey.”
Then she kissed him again, and Alex forgot all about his fears. Hell, he forgot his name. He reveled in the feel of her warm, soft mouth, and played with her tongue. He was about to wrap his arms around her and really start the tasting, when Dillon interrupted with a curse.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Lovebirds! Trying to stop a war over here.”
Alex eased back, but he didn’t take his eyes off his mate’s mouth. How was it possible that she tasted sweeter with every day that passed?
She grinned up at him. “We’d better listen to Dillon. You can ravish me later.”
“Oh, my god,” Dillon groaned. “Getting nauseated over here.”
Laughing, Sara turned back. “Sorry, D.”
“I’m not,” Alex said, curling his lip at the veana who was working his rug down to the fibers. “Okay, D. If Cruen’s so deeply hidden in the forest that even the shifters who live there can’t find him, what can we do?”
Dillon glanced around the room. “The Order will come and find him if we don’t.”
“That’s not the answer to the question I asked,” Alex said, dropping his arm around his mate’s shoulders.
“Fine. We have two options at this point. We can let the shifters deal with it on their own, and by ‘it’ I mean the Order coming into the forest, finding Cruen, and taking out anyone who gets in their way . . .”
“And what’s the other option?” Nicholas asked.
Phane sat forward and Helo too, but it was Lycos, who’d just shown up in the doorway after basically being a ghost for the past few days, who spoke.
“She wants us to stand with them and fight,” he said. His eyes cut to Dillon. “Right, sis? Protect and serve a race that’s not our own? Well, you can count me out.”
“Already had, brother dear. Already had.” Dillon barely spared him a glance. She was looking at the Romans, Helo and Phane, even Celestine. “I won’t pretend, unlike others, that I’m not connected to the shifters. That they’re not a part of my blood. Maybe even more so than the vampire in me. And if they need my help, I’m going to give it. You’ll all have to make that decision too. But make it quick.” She inhaled deeply. “Because I fear it’s only a matter of time before Feeyan feels the pressure to carry out her rash threat, and lands at the gathering stones, her power ratcheted up to high.”
He could worship at her temple forever.
His fangs pulled from her thigh, Syn licked and kissed the two pinprick holes until they started to close; then he rose above her. He felt like a new paven, impossibly strong, deeply possessive, achingly satisfied and . . . Bollocks, dare he say it? Happy?
He gazed down at her, black hair against the white pillow, cheeks and lips stained a deep pink, and those eyes . . . they killed him, stole his unbeating heart, reached inside his mind and emptied it of all thoughts but the ones that involved the two of them, naked.
“You sure you’re all right?” he asked.
She grinned and stretched around him. “Never felt better in my life.”
“Oh, veana, you know I can’t resist a challenge. Not when it comes to you . . .” He grinned. “Coming.”
“Then don’t.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her ankles just above his ass.
He went hard instantly.
She glanced down and grinned. “Wow. My blood’s everywhere in you, it seems.”
“It’s bloody magic, love,” he growled. “Truly.”
“Then I must be a witch.”
He grinned. “A sorceress.”
“Able to cast spells on her enemies—”
“And her lovers.”
She laughed. “Of which she will have too many to count. One for each day of the week—”
Petra stopped talking when she felt Syn go rigid around her. His gaze dropped.
“Syn. What is it?”
His eyes on her belly, he eased back, then thrust inside her hot, ready pussy. Petra gasped. Clung to him. Worried about him.
As her sex stretched to accommodate him, Syn’s eyes locked on hers. “No other male will play father to my balas.”
Petra swallowed tightly. “Syn . . .”
He eased out of her, then thrust back in possessively, making her gasp.
“No other male will linger above you. Waiting . . . just waiting for the chance . . .”