The pulse in her wrist is a lovely rhythm beneath my fingers, one I use to time each long pull from her vein. But I sense the pulse in her tender thigh. The one near her delicate ear. The one at the inside of her slender ankle.
All of them. Calling to me. Red rivers of delight.
She shivers as I groan against her throat, my cock growing brutally erect between her spread thighs. I roll my hips against her, the god and the beast in me wanting to sink deep and never come out.
She thrashes, arching her spine, curving her hips as she tries to reach me. When she frees a hand from my grasp and slips it between us to loose my cock, I cannot stop her. I don’t want to. I want her touch, and when I get it, it’s so perfectly greedy it only stirs my need, so much that I leak in her hand.
She strokes me, that little stream of fluid enough to make me imagine the wet of her mouth, the tight clench of her pussy. The silky slide of her heat awaits, so, so close, and I drag my cock through her desire, longing to lose all control, to bend her over and claim her until she screams my name.
I don’t know where that desire comes from in the moment. Me or the wolf. Or both of us. All I know right now is that something inside me is changing as my body absorbs her blood.
And then I have my answer, because the wolf begins to quiet, the beast tamed once more, and I ease back on my draws from Nephele’s vein, listening as her heavy and shuddering gasps slow, until it feels safe to remove my fangs.
But I still want.
I’ve seen her fantasies now, and I want to fulfill each one.
Lessening my grip on her wrist, I lick at her throat, at the puncture wounds, and feel them heal beneath my tongue. My side is healing too, and she must detect it, because she begins unraveling the linen from my torso, tossing each strip to the floor until there is nothing but smooth skin revealed.
I don’t know if we healed because of me, or if we healed because of her. Right now, I can’t care. I’m only glad that I won the battle with the wolf. It didn’t feel so impossible once her blood spilled down my throat.
Braced above her, I meet her gaze, and it isn’t as bright. Beneath her eyes lie bruised crescent moons that weren’t there before.
I took too much.
“Nephele, forgive me.” I touch her face with such suffocating sorrow inside me, a feeling I haven’t experienced before. A feeling I now realize I only know because Nephele has given me the humanity Un Drallag talked about when he spoke to his friend Rhonin.
Power lies in the greatness of humanity. Because of Nephele, I now know how tofeel.
Even though she looks so tired, and though I know I crossed a line, she brushes the backs of her fingers along my cheekbone and says, “I knew you’d win.”
Something in my chest tightens painfully. “Thanks to you. My little trickster.”
She takes my face in her hands and kisses me. I lose myself to her, her mouth welcoming and warm, the flavor of her blood mingling between us, a heady drug only heightening our need.
Until I catch my tongue on something sharp.
I draw back, and Nephele stares up at me with worried eyes.
Then she curls her lips back over her new fangs.
My stomach sinks. “I will fix this. I will find a way. I will—”
She presses her finger to my lips. “There’s nothing to fix. I don’t know that this is something we can change. It’s been coming since the day we left the grove. And I don’t know if I want it to change. We need to live with this for a while. Figure out what’s happening and how to best deal with it.” She pauses, and a note of uncertainty fills her voice. “I just needyou.”
Hard as I am between her legs and drenched as the air is with the aroma of her longing, I know she doesn’t mean sex. Not yet.
I push off her, strip away my clothes, and move to sit with my back against the headboard. I grab her and drag her onto my lap, understanding what she wants—what she needs—without having to listen to her mind.
And so I push my hair back and bare my throat.
In truth, she could take blood from me anywhere, but the intimacy of this closeness makes it such a powerful experience. I want her to feel that.
She looks at me with wariness in her eyes, her chest rising and falling faster. “This is… different.”
I caress her face, her neck, her breast, her arm. “It’s okay. Don’t be afraid. Just do it. In the next heartbeat, you won’t regret it. I promise.”
Hesitance shines across the ice blue of her eyes, but she lowers her head, if slowly, as the pounding rhythm of her pulse roars in my ears once again.
