“That’s it,” I murmured, voice gentler than my hips. “Come for me.”
He cried out, head dropping as he spilled hard across his stomach. I leaned down and licked him clean without breaking rhythm, watching his face twist as he felt it.
The look he gave me burned itself into my brain.
“Lick it up,” he said hoarsely. “Taste me when you come.”
I drove into him harder, the command snapping something loose. My hands clawed at his chest, the bed, anything I could grab as I came inside him with a broken shout.
My body shook. His clenched tight around me.
Then he said it.
“Bite me.”
My eyes flew open.
The word echoed louder than my pulse, louder than the rules, louder than Seth, louder than anything except the truth sitting heavy in my chest.
I wanted him. All of him.
And I didn’t care what it cost.
“Do it,” Timothy said, his hand guiding my head to his neck. My fangs elongated being this near to him. So tempting, so delicious. Mere millimeters separated me from everything I wanted. Timothy. His blood, his body. A bond he couldn’t run from anymore. Maybe I should’ve felt shitty about trapping himinto a bond but all I felt was bone deep anticipation and pleasure as I sank my teeth into his neck.
Warm, heavenly blood sizzling with power spilled into my mouth, and all my cool left me. I grabbed him to bring him closer with a pathetic moan as I drank him up. His blood was perfect, as delicious, as layered as the man himself. I sucked and lapped at him, giving myself over to him.
Take me, and I’ll take you.
Except, nothing happened. Other than I was drinking the most heavenly blood to exist. I pulled away to look up at Timothy and noticed the tension in his eyes and mouth. Something was wrong.
Then a force smacked me bodily away from Timothy and I was back on the opposite side of the room. Pain detonated in my mouth, starting at my fangs and spreading outward in vicious pulses, pressure building until my vision whited out and I staggered. I cried out in pain as I doubled over. His blood churned in my stomach like some kind of acidic poison.
“Aaron?” Timothy asked, approaching me before I threw out a hand. Then I ran into the bathroom and expelled all of Timothy from my body.
13
TIMOTHY
Aaron clutched the edge of the toilet. A sheen of sweat covered his face as he sat against the tub, eyes closed, exhausted.
I remained standing, eyes fixed on him, every instinct screaming to intervene while discipline locked me in place.
“We didn’t bond,” I said, confirming the obvious. My words were far away from my own ears.
“What did I do wrong?” he asked, clenching his eyes tight as if bracing himself.
I swallowed hard. The puncture wounds on my neck throbbed with pain and need that radiated throughout my entire body, but it couldn’t erase the terrible realization.
“Nothing.” It came out a harsh whisper. “It’s not…it’s not you.”
His turquoise depths opened to reveal a much darker, deeper ocean. “Then it’s…”
I turned away and reached for a book left out on a table and put it on the shelf. To ground myself. To keep from going to him. To stop myself from touching him, from screaming, from demanding he bite me again.
“Timothy, don’t leave me.”
His words slammed into me, and I turned as he stood on shaky knees.
