His hand found my throat. Not squeezing, just holding. Possessive. “Mine.”
“Yes.” The word tore out of me. “Yours. Please, I am?—”
He shifted angles, hit something deep that made me convulse. Once, twice, three times, and I was gone. The orgasm did not build, it detonated. I clenched around him so hard italmost hurt, my vision going white, my body bowing off the table.
He followed me over with a roar that was pure Vinduthi. I felt him pulse inside me, felt his whole body shudder, felt his fangs press against my shoulder hard enough to dimple skin. He was shaking with the effort of not biting, of not claiming permanently.
We collapsed together, panting, sweat slick and trembling. But he was not done. Not nearly done.
He pulled out, turned me over, and took me again from behind. This time was different. Slower but deeper. His chest pressed to my back, one hand in my hair, the other between my legs, playing my clit while he moved inside me. He fucked me like he was trying to reach my soul. The table groaned beneath us, protesting the violence of our need. Like he wanted to leave marks inside where no one would see but I would always feel.
“Five years,” I gasped against the table. “Five years of nothing and now… now?—”
“Now you are mine.” He punctuated each word with a thrust. “Now you feel everything. Now you are alive.”
The second orgasm rolled through me like thunder, slower but devastating. He worked me through it, then pulled out, lifted me, carried me to the couch. I was boneless, weightless, made of sensation and need.
But when he sat and pulled me onto his lap, when I sank down onto him and felt those ridges from a new angle, I found energy I did not know I had.
I rode him hard, controlling the pace, taking what I needed. His hands on my breasts, his mouth on my throat, his fangs always present but never breaking skin. The constant threat of the bite that would not come made everything sharper, more intense.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
I opened my eyes to see his face, savage, all predator, all alien, all mine.
“I see you,” he said, thrusting up as I came down. “The real you. Not the dealer. Not the ghost. You.”
Something broke in my chest. Tears streaked down my face as I came again, as he came with me, as we held each other through the aftershocks.
We went once more against the window, the lights of the station spread below while he took me from behind. His fangs grazed my neck the entire time, that sweet threat of permanence withheld. By the time we finally collapsed, truly exhausted, the room was destroyed. Table cracked, lamps broken, cards scattered like casualties of war.
I lay across his chest on the couch, listening to his dual heartbeats slow. Everything hurt in the best way. I was marked, bites that did not break skin, bruises in the shape of his hands, beard burn between my thighs. Tomorrow I would feel every second of this.
Good.
“Come with me,” he said into my hair.
The words I had been dreading. Wanting. Fearing.
“I have a debt?—”
“I will pay it.”
“You do not even know?—”
“Does not matter.” His arms tightened. “Come with me.”
“Why?”
“Because you are the first thing that has mattered more than my mission. Because watching you wake up from years of numbness makes me want to worship at your feet. Because if you stay here, you will die by degrees, and I cannot watch that happen.”
The truth of it sat between us, heavy and undeniable.
“I need to know what you are really here for,” I said. “The whole truth.”
VARRICK
Her skin still carried the flush of sex, marked with my mouth, my hands, my desperate need to claim her in every way but the one that mattered most.
