He was aware of Echo’s arms around his waist, her palms caressing his back in soothing strokes. Realizing he had all his weight on her, he gently pulled out and rolled onto his back.
They both lay there, catching their breaths, taking in the magnitude of their sexual chemistry and the line they’d just crossed.
20
Echo had never been morecertain that control was her gift as a supernatural. If anyone should have tipped her over the edge, it was this fae male. His scent, his blood … it made her incisors tingle with the urge to lengthen even though she’d slaked her hunger. She’d never tasted anything like his blood. The rumors were true that fae blood made human blood seem like cheap wine compared to a bottle of Cristal.
It wasn’t just Elijah’s taste … it was what it felt like to drink him. As though they were connected deeper than any male and female had ever been. Then when he’d asked her to drink from him while he thrust inside her … Echo had been lost to the pleasure.
No one had ever excited her more.
While she’d given up her control to Elijah, she hadn’t lost it. She hadn’t taken too much from him like she feared she might.
It had been … bliss.
The bite and sex with Elijah were bliss.
In her short but painful life, Echo finally believed there was a place for that word. That it wasn’t a word for a feeling that didn’t actually exist.
“One of us should speak,” Elijah’s voice rumbled into the room.
She turned her head to look at him sprawled out on the bed, his expression relaxed and sated. The wound on his neck had already healed over, though a few drops of blood lingered on his golden skin.
Echo didn’t know what to say.
She was still … stunned.
It felt as though a thread existed between them now. A golden thread attached to each of their sternums, and when she shifted, it seemed to pull. Then, as reality returned, she felt a flood of foreign emotion.
Satisfaction, but a rising desire. Confusion. A slight panic. Overruling all, though, was need.
When she met Elijah’s gaze, she knew she was sensing his emotions again.
Fuck.
She should tell him what she suspected. But … it terrified her.
His nostrils flared as if he’d scented or sensed her fear. “Echo?—”
“We should sleep. It’ll be sunrise soon. We should sleep.” Rolling off the bed, Echo strode into the bathroom to clean the blood from her mouth and brush her teeth. Still naked, she sauntered out and across the room to her backpack to find something to wear to bed. That hunger she’d felt from Elijah intensified.
“I’m not done with you, woman,” he warned huskily.
She glanced over her shoulder before pulling on a long T-shirt to sleep in. “For now you are.”
He sat up, as uncaring of his nudity as she was. She attempted to ignore his male beauty as she walked back to the bed, for fear she’d initiate sex again. “Does this mean you want this to be a onetime thing?”
Echo almost growled possessively at the thought. She bit back the animalistic urge.
Before she could reply, Elijah confessed, “Idon’t want it to be. I want to fuck you until you’re hoarse from screaming with pleasure. I want to bury my head between your thighs and devour you for an entire night.”
The very thought of his head between her legs, his beard scratching her inner thighs as he licked at her, made her breath catch. She almost stumbled into the bed.
“I know you feel it too.”
“I do.” There was no point in lying. “But I … it’s a lot. We have enough to deal with. Let’s just sleep on this.”
He scowled but nodded and got up to pull on some boxers.
