She didn’t have to think about it. Zia leaned back until she was flat on her bed, her legs dangling off of the edge. With the strategic use of a pillow, she managed to prop up her phone so he could see her when she turned on her side.
“Better?” she asked, drinking in the sight of her vampire lounging in his pillows.
“Better would have you here in my bed with me,” he answered. “But this will do for now.”
Zia tucked her hands under her cheek and bit her lip. That didn’t stop her grin from spreading, though.
Harlan’s expression softened, though a hungry light flared hotter in his gaze. “Tell me you can still feel me, pet. I can’t rest without knowing you’ll think of me today.”
Reflexively, she lifted her right leg, drawing it up so her foot was planted on the mattress. Her wound gave a particularly sharp ache at the movement. Shyly, she answered, “I feel you. The bite’s a little sore and… kind of hot. Like I’ve got a fever right there.”
She watched the muscles of his throat move as he swallowed. A different kind of ache, hot and needy, began to pulse between her thighs when his tongue snaked out to trace his lips and the tips of his fangs.
“Show me, pet.”
Goodness gracious gods in the sky.Zia felt a self-conscious fluttering in her stomach as she shifted onto her back to wiggle out of her yoga pants. She forcefully pushed it aside. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already seen the most intimate parts of her. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, at least this time she had panties on.
It did feel strangely intimate, though, when she turned back onto her side and lifted her leg again. She nudged her phone a little bit, changing the angle to give him a better view of her thigh.
His sharply in-drawn breath came through the speakers of her phone like a bolt gun shot.
“Now that’s a fucking sight,” he murmured. “Look at how lovely your thigh looks with my bite, my bruises.”
Zia bit back a whimper.
Harlan’s gaze was locked on his bite, utterly focused and unblinking, even as his hand slid down and out of sight. Her breathing sped up. Gods, was he really— Yes. Yes, he was. She could see the way the scarred planes of his chest and shoulders flexed and relaxed with each slow stroke of his hand.
“Tell me where you want my bite next, pet,” he demanded.
She wasn’t quite brave enough to touch herself in front of him yet, but the power she feltwatchinghim was… gods, there was nothing quite like it. Once more, Zia felt like she held the reins to a being of unimaginable strength — silly little Zia, who held this deadly man’s desire in the palm of her hands.
The need to see how far she could push him asserted itself. It wasn’t her nature to be bold, but forthis…
Zia drifted her hand up her thigh to gently stroke the bloom of bruises around the puncture wounds. The slice of his fangs didn’t cause them, she knew, but rather the suction of his tongue as he drew from her burst those tiny blood vessels just under the skin. It was something like a very large hickey.
“I’m not sure,” she answered him, fingers stroking back and forth over the heated flesh. “I liked this one so much, I almost can’t imagine it anywhere else.” She paused, attention fixed on the way his shoulders moved, how his expression tightened with each rough stroke. In the silence, she could hear the soft sounds of flesh on flesh. Her mind whirred with the possibility of what he looked like. She was somehow more tantalized bynotseeing his cock than she would be if it was smack in the middle of the screen.
Moving her gaze back to his face, she murmured, “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe I just want to see your biteeverywhere.”
“Fuck.”Harlan bared his fangs in a ferocious display. A shot of adrenaline coursed through her veins, giving her arousal a tang of something thrilling,dangerous.
“I’m going to mark up every inch of you,” he promised, breathing hard. “I’m going to fucking fill you with every drop of venom I have, pet. You’re fuckingmine.”
Because Zia was feeling dangerous and powerful and in control, she bit her lip and pressed the edge of her thumbnail into one of the puncture wounds. It hurt far, far more than it did when he punctured her skin, but the pain was worth it when she saw Harlan’s lips part and his eyes widen.
A single drop of blood made a hair-thin trail down the slope of her thigh, drawn down toward her cunt by gravity and the contours of her flesh. When it hit the edge of her white cotton panties, a vivid red stain bloomed.
In an instant, Harlan went from astonished to feral. His strokes became too fast for her to follow as he lifted his lip in a snarl that would have sent most beings running. His eyes, normally hard to read, were wide and white around the edges. They were wild with hunger.
Zia gasped. Her hand dropped to her cunt as her need became an unbearable ache. The wound pulsed hard, almost as fast as Harlan’s furious pumping fist, as she roughly touched herself through the soaked, bloody material of her panties.
Her orgasm came on fast and hard, mingling with the pain of her wound and the hot exhilaration that came with power. Distantly, she thought she heard Harlan panting her name again and again, his voice so guttural it was almost impossible to understand, until he grunted sharply.
When she cracked her eyes open, she found him sprawled against his pillows, his head thrown back and his chest and throat gleaming with a thin sheen of sweat she wanted to lick and lick andlick.
“Harlan,” she whispered, husky and out of breath. Gods, she wanted him more now than when they started. It was like she couldn’t get enough of him, and every little taste only made the craving worse. Was that the venom talking, or was it just… them?
He kept his eyes closed when he said, “Those panties belong to me, pet.”
