He gathered me into his arms and thrust to his feet. I wrapped my legs around his waist, arms holding tight to his neck as he spun us around. I giggled, our kiss breaking then resuming in several parts, chests battering together as we gathered our tangled breath.
“You can’t know how happy you’ve made me,” he said as he rained down a barrage of kisses over my jaw and throat. “You’re my miracle, Ruby.Salus mea.”
“Your salvation,” I said, remembering the Latin words he’d drawn in blood over my thigh the last night we spent together.
“That’s right.”
Our lips crashed together again, the connection turning frantic and heated. He carried me to one of the library tables, and supporting me with one arm, he knocked the stacks of books and dusty parchment to the floor with the sweep of his other.
Setting me down, so my back was flat on the table, he draped his lanky body over mine and roved his palm over my belly. “Christ alive. Eros wasn’t exaggerating. He said he could scent how fertile you were through the dreamscape. It was a wonder he controlled himself.”
I cracked a smile. “Oh. He didn’t.”
Sterling’s expression morphed into something darkly sensual. “I should have surmised as much.” His hand wandered further south over my body, curving over the interior of my thigh. My breath hitched as I watched his eyes go from a pearly opalescent to a lustful pale red. “You’re on the cusp of another heat cycle.”
The equal doses of concern and desire shadowing Sterling’s expression were an intense combination. “Hopefully, it won’t trigger until I’m back.”
Because the last thing I needed was to go into heat in the middle of the freaking jungle.
“And if it triggers early?”
“I’ll do what I always do when I’m in a pinch.”
Sterling’s lips thinned. “Ripping off the heads of aroused male enemies is fine, and well, until it’s your own mate, you have to fend off.”
My chest tightened. “You’re worried that Feral won’t control himself during the ceremony.”
“I wonder if he even means to try.”
“He promised me he wouldn’t come inside me. He won’t betray me again.”
Sterling pushed his nose into the apex of my thighs and inhaled, making my pussy ache as he took in my scent. A low purr-like growl erupted from his throat as he peered at me through the hair spilling over his brow. “When it comes to you, it’s a wonder we can control ourselves at all. I consider myself a man of restraint. I’ve had to be, to endure the life I’ve been dealt. But mark me, Ruby. Keeping myself from spreading you open and filling you full of every damn drop of seed I have to give the moment you walk through the door will be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.”
I met his purr with one of my own. “Maybe I want you to lose control.”
“Don’t say that,” he warned. “Or I’ll have you pregnant sooner than Feral ever promised to make you.”
“Fuck,” I gasped at the filth rolling off the vampire’s silver tongue. “Sterling!”
“You will soon,” he said, his mouth curving into a sly smile.
I sucked in a breath as he slowly parted my legs, his eyes swirling with that enticing red as he drank in the sight of my bare pussy. “God’s teeth, Ruby. You smell like heaven.”
Sucking in a gasp, a cascade of shivers tumbled down my spine. There were few sights better than my silver prince crouched over me like a starving animal. He looked gorgeous, and I wanted him inside me.
I spread my legs wider and pulled up the hem of my dress to expose myself fully to him.
“That’s a good girl,” he praised.
Bloody Christ. This man. He wasn’t a mage in the technical sense, but those hypnotic eyes could still cast spells. Dangerous, alluring spells that could make almost any woman desperate for his baby in their belly.
And here he was, with devotion only to me. His lips brushed my upper thigh, his mouth so close to my entrance that the subtle heat of his breath caressed my bareness.
“Such a pretty little cunt.” His attention snapped back to me. “I can’t wait to fuck it.”
A shot of pure lust spiked my blood. The ways I wanted to wear this man. And the way he was looking at me now? Like he never craved anything in his long lifetime more than he craved my body? It wasn’t an image I’d shake from my brain anytime soon.
My hands flew to grip the edges of the table, and my spine arched off its surface when he pressed a slow, wet kiss against my apex. His tongue stroked my flesh, teasing my folds, running over my clit, then slid up to rest over the place between my pubic hair and navel.
