Her gaze streaks over my face, and she shudders, leaning into my hands, her eyes hooding. Her arousal returns, the sweet scent drifting to my nose, and I inhale it fervently, stealing whatever I can of hers.
“I want you, little human.”
Shifting my hand, I lift her face and lick her cheek from chin to temple. Setting my mouth above her ear, I snag her hair in my teeth, sucking wisps of it into my mouth.
“I want you too. So, so badly.” She grabs my wrists. “Please don’t leave me.”
Her pleading stirs an impulse to roar and preen, to clutch her close and pet her body into submission, to open her up and covet her in every way possible.
“I’ve been dreaming of you long before last night…” Her voice is lower than a whisper. “I want you so much it hurts. I can barely think of anything else. It makes me angry. It terrifies me. This longing… I could scream and thrash and cry. Do you feel it too?”
As her question lingers, she wiggles out of my hands, leaning back to meet my eyes.
“Yes,” I rasp. “I feel everything like you.”
“It’s our bond, isn’t it?” she asks. “Where do your wants end and mine begin?”
“I don’t know.”
Summer sits taller, shifting onto her knees. Her gaze sweeps over my face, and when she sighs, resistance leaves her.
She presses her lips to mine. “I don’t know either.”
Chapter17
The Taste of Desire
Summer
I brushmy lips over his. I’m chilled, his mouth cold.
He clasps my face as I rub my mouth back and forth across his. He warms under my touch, teasing my lip with his teeth as I test the tip of his fangs with my tongue. Everything inside me dances and whirls.
I’ve never felt so alive. My life has never been more at risk.
Knowing he wants me as much as I want him, that our bond muddles my mind and he’s offered me the truth of this predicament… I don’t know whether I should be furious or relieved.
All I want is to kiss him and pretend that this thing between us is normal.
Clutching his wrists, my nails bite into hard flesh. “If we’re going to die, I don’t want any regrets.”
He leans away. “You are not going to die.”
“I will someday. All humans do.”
His face wrenches as he climbs over me, constraining my back against the cement floor. “Do not speak of such things. Not when you are so, so ripe…” Like a veil, his hair falls to either side, imitating the spread of his wings. “Do not drive me crazy with more worry, my sweet Summer. There are always ways to continue living, and I am not above using the darkness to accomplish it. Despite my beginnings, darkness is part of me, and I’m nothing more than a monster to a human like you.” He shows his sharp fangs, licking them with his meaty tongue as fiery light emblazons the cracks down his chest.
I eye his fangs with intrigue. “I won’t bring it up again.”
He gives an appeased growl, and his cock jolts from his groin, jutting into my stomach, making me twitch. It’s heavy—big—resting like a heated plank down my middle. The golden light graces the mushroom tip pointed up at me. It illuminates the bulk of him, casting shadows upon his ridges. My fingers strain, recalling his cock’s firmness.
“Stop trying to frighten me,” I say. “It won’t work.”
I’d rather bewiththe monster looming over me than fighting him. The scarier he is, the fewer people will bother me. There’s a deep comfort in having him by my side, a primitive comfort I can’t deny. My hands clamp at my sides as he raises his hips and lifts his cock off of me.
I moan at its loss, wanting it inside me.
“Is that so?” he rasps deeply, eliciting a shiver through me. “Tell me what to do then, sweet girl.”
