His cock.
Hard and thick against my thigh through the thin dress. I can feel it pulsing, each throb matching his heartbeat—matching mine. The head presses against my lower belly, blunt and broad and hot enough to brand me through the fabric. Below that, the thick shaft with veins standing out in ridges I can trace even through cloth. And at the base, a subtle swelling. Not fully formed yet.
The knot.
My heat roars in response like a beast waking from hibernation. Slick floods between my thighs, soaking through the dress until the white fabric is translucent and obscene. My hips buck up without my permission, seeking pressure, seeking friction, seeking him.
No.
Fight.
Kill him.
I arch up off the stone and sink my teeth into his shoulder.
Deep. Deeper than the knife went. My lengthened canines punch through skin like it's nothing, through the layer of fat beneath, into muscle that parts around my fangs like raw meat under a butcher's blade.
Blood explodes into my mouth.
Hot. Metallic. Overwhelming. It tastes like copper and woodsmoke and something wild underneath that has no name—something that makes my heat surge higher, makes the rage and need tangle together like mating snakes until I can't separate one from the other.
I swallow it down and it burns all the way to my stomach, settles there like coals.
He makes a sound.
Not pain. Nothing close to pain. A groan torn from somewhere deep in his chest—raw and guttural and purely animal. Pleasure-pain that makes his whole body shudder against mine like he's been struck by lightning.
"Harder," he growls against my temple, his breath hot on my skin. "Bite harder."
I do.
His hips jerk forward, grinding his cock against me with enough force to drag the thin fabric tight across my skin. The friction is perfect and terrible, a promise and a threat wrapped together.
The groan becomes a growl. Low. Vibrating through his chest into mine until I feel it in my bones, in my teeth still buried in his flesh, in my core that clenches around nothing, desperate and empty and aching to be filled.
I tear my teeth free with a wet sound.
His blood runs down my chin in dark streams, drips onto my chest, pools in the hollow between my breasts.
Before he can recover, I go for his throat.
The killing blow. The one that matters.
But he's fast. Faster than he should be with a mouthful of muscle torn from his shoulder. He jerks back just enough that my teeth miss his throat, catch his chest instead.
Above his heart.
I bite until my jaw aches like it might crack. Until I feel my canines scrape against the hard curve of his sternum. Until blood fills my mouth so full I have to swallow or choke on it.
"There," he breathes, and his voice sounds like gravel being crushed. "Right there. Mark me."
I don't want to mark him. I want to kill him.
But my teeth don't stop.
His hands leave my wrists.
Finally.
