“Okay.” She stuck out her hand. “Then take mine.”
A hint of a smile. “No. But I know another way that can help make it better.”
Frustrated, Ely growled and summoned her dagger from her backpack. She sliced her wrist. Pain shimmered, and blood pooled on her skin.
His eyes flashed red. “What did you do?”
She held up her seeping wrist. “Helping you. Now drink up.”
A pissed-off rumble emitted from his throat. He grasped her hand and quickly licked her bloody lesion. “I don’t want your scent drawing every fucking demon to this place!”
He slipped his thumb over the cut, keeping the wound closed, and dragged off his shirt with his other hand, holding it to her wrist.
“And I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t want you to die!” Scowling, she pulled her arm away and licked her wound, sealing it, wishing she could get through to him just how much he mattered to her.
“I don’t need your blood, Ely,” he said quietly. “My blood loss will fix itself, eventually. Yes, after my change, everything was a mess when feeding, and blood was a part of it. Now, I know. It’s just the dark, destructive emotions the symbiont needs…” His gaze drifted over her face to stop at her lips. He palmed her cheek and kissed her, moving his mouth over hers in a slow caress. “Thisis what I want from you.”
“I missed you when you left,” she whispered against his mouth, sliding both hands up his bare chest, the other still gripping her dagger. “So much.”
“Ah, Ely, mine. I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”
“Good, ‘cause I’m like glue…no, a magnet.”
He laughed, the husky sound melting her heart. “A magnet, you most definitely are.”
His mouth returned to hers, and he deepened the kiss, his tongue finding and sucking hers in a carnal mating of unadulterated need. Ely tightened her hold on him, kissing him back with all the longing within her. His hands squeezed her bottom—
“Nate, wait, wait. Aba,” she gasped, grabbing his hands off her ass. “He’s inside.”
“By the dark gods, Ely, you’ll make me lose my mind,” he grumbled. “No, he isn’t. He’s gone, probably to town. C’mon.”
He grasped her hand and headed indoors, down the corridor to the enormous room at the back with its high ceilings and exposed support beams. A huge bed with a black headboard abutted the stone wall on the opposite side. Several arched windows revealed the gloomy view, the pink moon highlighting the few bleached trees and miles and miles of barren land with sporadically strewn lava rocks.
The room smelled like him of anise, sandalwood, and a hint of leather, along with the faint, pervasive odor of sulfur. And that ever-present heat and need chafed at her. Ely rubbed her sweaty palms down her jeans.
Heck, inside the house was unbearably warm, too.
“There’s no place here I can take you to that’s safe,” he said, stopping at the foot of the bed. “I long to show the entire Dark Realm who my female is, but I don’t want the news that I have a Guardian here to spread. It would be dangerous.”
“After all, I killed many of this world’s plagues.”
“There is that.” He took her dagger and tossed it on the bookshelf. “But once Derrodus learns you’re in Ys, he’d strut over and demand I hand you to him because he thinks he carries sway here, andthatwould make me lose my mind. You are mine, Ely.” He brushed the back of his knuckles gently over her cheek. “Mymate.”
“What?” she gulped, staring at him in shock.
His brow arched. “Did you think this is just casual?”
Her heart tripped at the words she longed to hear. “For me, it wasn’t,” she whispered.
“Good. Because it’s not…” He kissed her jaw, his hands sliding her denim jacket from around her waist, and it fell. Her sleeveless top and her bra followed straight after. Nate ran his callused palms over her arms, and she groaned. His touch felt so good against her feverish skin.
“Too much?” he asked.
“No, gods,no! Don’t stop!”
A smile played on that too-tempting mouth as he cupped her breasts and squeezed, flicking both nipples with his thumbs. Her breath quickened, her jittery body tensing. His head lowered and his warm tongue laved one hard nub. He suckled, a pull that shot straight to her core, and she grabbed his hair and whimpered.
As he played her nipple like a finely tunedclavile, he unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans, slid his fingers into her panties, and stroked her aching flesh. And she shuddered, sensations crowding her.
