“No!” I screamed.
Dante caught Chami’s wrist, the bloody dagger point an inch from his chest. His eyes locked on Chami, and I felt the roil of power spark the air. Saw those glacier blue eyes turn silver and take on that eerie glow.
“Cease,” Dante commanded, and Chami stopped fighting. “Give me your knife.”
Chami relinquished it to Dante, and Dante drew it back. To behead him!
“Don’t!” I threw myself between them, unable to do anything else but use myself as a shield, with my hands bound as they were behind me. Dante’s mesmerizing silver eyes glowed down at me, bloodlust filling them. “Don’t hurt him. Please,” I begged.
“He put you at risk. You almost fell.”
“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”
“He almost harmed the baby!”
The almost mindless rage burning behind those words washed over me and set my body trembling, with the knife poised just over my neck where Dante had stopped its swift descent.
“Please, Dante,” I whispered. “He didn’t know.”
But you did, the voice inside of me said. You would have harmed your child knowingly and deliberately.
For a moment, I wondered if he would kill us both.
Dante lowered the dagger, and I collapsed back against Chami with shuddering relief.
“Thank you,” I breathed.
I didn’t fight him when he drew me away from Chami.
Dante focused his will, those glowing eyes, back on the chameleon. “You will not move or speak for thirty minutes.” When he released him from his gaze, Chami fell to the ground and lay there unmoving.
I turned back to look at Chami lying there helpless as Dante led me back to the car.
“He’s in the sun,” I said.
“Only for thirty minutes. Not the four hours I could have commanded instead.”
His clipped words had me swallowing back my protest. Indeed, with but a few different words, the outcome could have been deadly instead of just a short discomfort.
I’d forgotten about battle lust, I realized, when he opened the car door and gently sat me back inside. All gentleness fled as he turned those pale, gleaming eyes on me. The color was blue once more. I gasped beneath their cold, burning light. Gasped again as he lunged forward and captured my mouth in a harsh, punishing kiss.
A whimper of fear escaped from my lips as the weight of his body pressed me back, and his warrior’s presence, fierce and battle sharp, sparked against my own energy, making me aware of the ferocity he had kept chained. All that aggression, tightly leashed, he channeled now into me, in that kiss. In the coarse movements of his hands as he shoved up my shirt. On my bra, which he tore away with one rough pull, exposing my breasts.
I wrenched my face away from him. “Dante, stop!” I cried, struggling to push him off me as he lowered my seat down. “We’re by the side of the road. Anyone can drive by and see us.”
“Don’t fight me!” His lips ran feverishly over my face in wild, nipping caresses, violence barely contained. Dangerous touches that both thrilled and scared the hell out of me. He was like a dangerous, roaring wildfire, threatening to consume all that it touched.
“You held my hand, stopped a kill. You left me no other way to channel my aggression. Yield to me.” His breath struck my face in heated gusts as he undid his pants. Then my pants and underwear were down by my ankles, my body nude and painfully exposed, my body, heart, and mind in terrible upheaval. Jesus Christ, we were by the fucking roadside.
His voice was gritty urgency, his eyes burning need. “Please,” he whispered roughly, and swooped down, capturing my mouth, stealing my breath. Stealing the will to fight him.
I yielded in the face of his need, and stopped fighting him.
My body’s soft acceptance of him eased some of that overwhelming urgency. And in that momentary lull, his need sparked my own.
Pulling my lips from him, I said, “No blood,” in a hard, uncompromising tone.
“No blood,” he promised and nipped my lower lip, three parts caress, one part punishment. Dominating male.
“Hurry,” I murmured, so terribly conscious of our exposure. Of my nudity.
“First you tell me to stop. Now you tell me to hurry up and take you.” Amusement mixed with the heated urgency of his movements, like fire and ice—how he made me feel.
He pressed between my legs, and I felt the bold rub of him naked and hard against my thigh. The utter outrageousness of our situation—by the open road! — the utter dangerousness of our situation—a powerful warrior still flying high from battle, and me, bound and helpless beneath him, with him poised over me, ready to take me…God help me, but it set a part of me on fire. Spiked my own desire.
His hand slid up my legs, cupped me. And with but that one touch, not even a caress, my core heated, grew moist and damp, wetting his palm.
“Oh God.” He groaned, and with no other preparation, he thrust into me with gentle, insistent force. He pushed in, groaned as he sank into my honeyed wetness. Tunneled in deeper with a swiveling gyration of his hips that had me gasping and bending my knees to arch up against him.
He withdrew, pumped back into me with restrained ferocity, his eyes wild, burning with lust. Another withdrawal, another gentle push back in as he watched me with those uncanny pale eyes, making me feel like a helpless butterfly he had captured and pinned. It was a devastating feeling, mixed in with the wet, thrilling pleasure he evoked with each stroke. Too much, those eyes, piercing down into me as if they could see into the very deepest part of my soul. And perhaps he could. As if knowing his gaze was more than I could bear, he dipped his head, and I felt his lips warm against my breast. Felt his mouth take in a tight, pouty nipple, bite down on it.
I cried out, bowed up into him, and he pressed me back down into the seat with a deep stroke into my body as he sucked on my nipple, tugging on it with less than gentle force. He sank into me again with another insistent thrust, another fierce tug—those two simultaneous movements—and pulled light from me, spilling it out onto my skin, running it down over my body, the moon’s captured glow within us. When the radiance spread to where his flesh joined inside mine, when my light touched him there, it set him ablaze. He lit up above me like a Christmas tree, beautiful to behold—his taut muscles, the driving urgency of his body, his male aggression tightly chained and channeled into me. A warrior, stark and powerful, bold and beautiful. Yet vulnerable in his need for my softness, for my light.
“Yes,” I sighed as he rose and fell above me, my body taking him in with soft, willing submission. He shifted, braced himself up on one arm, freeing the other hand to run down my body, palm my bottom. His finger whispered over my anal rim in the lightest caress.
“Come for me,” he said, his face harsh, tightly clenched above me. Another sweet deliberate press of his finger there, teasing my back hole while his thickness filled and drove tightly into my other entrance…that one added touch and I overflowed. My release spilled out, and I came for him as he had asked me to, helpless to do otherwise. I imploded beneath his stroking caresses, his inner one and deliberate outer one, and I shattered in a brilliant, shaking, shuddering climax.
He drank down my light, then gave into his own release. One more deep stroke, pushing through my spasming tightness, and I felt him grow still, jerk harshly inside as his wet ejaculation spewed into me.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how restrained his passion had been. Only in his climax did he truly let himself go. Throwing back his head, Dante roared his release to the heavens with a primitive cry. So primal, so beautifully savage he was with his neck corded, with the agony and bliss of release carved harshly on his face. One fixed moment where every muscle, every tendon in his body seized tight…then came the sweet thrill of release. The jetting bliss of satisfaction as he relaxed down over me. I felt his weight blanket me for a brief, lovely moment—too short—then he was pulling his body from mine, lifting himself off. His eyes were heavy-lidded, slumberous, as he crouched down beside me, opened the glove compartment, and took out a packet of wipes.