He took her with both hands, a quick and violent jerk
that slammed her body to his. His mouth was ravenous.
“A fine choice,” she managed when she could speak again.
Then his lips were assaulting hers again, stealing both breath and will.
“Do you know what you’ve let loose here?” he demanded. Before she could speak, he turned, gripped her hands to drag her up onto his back.
“Cian, what—”
“You’d better hold on,” he ordered, interrupting her baffled laugh.
He leaped up. Her arms tightened around his neck as she gasped. He’d simply soared up, more than ten feet in the air from a stand, and was scaling the walls.
“What are you doing?” She risked a look down, felt her stomach shudder at the drop. “You could have warned me you’d lost your bloody mind.”
“I lost it when you walked into my room last night.” Now he swung through the window, flicked the drapes shut behind him and plunged them into the dark. “This is the price you pay for it.”
“If you’d wanted to come back inside, there are doors—”
She let out a quick cry of alarm when he swooped her up. It felt as though she was flying through the air, blind in the dark. Her next cry was of stunned excitement as she found herself under him on the bed, and his hands tugged aside clothes to take flesh.
“Wait. Wait. I can’t think. I can’t see.”
“Too late for both.” His mouth silenced her, and his hands drove her to a hard, violent crest.
Her body strained beneath his, and he knew she was reaching, reaching for the burning tip of that crest. Her breath sobbed against his lips as she reached it, and her body went limp.
He gripped her wrists in his hand, pulling her arms over her head. She was one long line of surrender now, and he sheathed himself in her.
She would have cried out again, but she had no voice. No sight, and with her hands captured, no hold. She could do nothing but feel as he plunged himself into her, battering her body with dark, desperate pleasure until she was writhing, then rising, then recklessly matching him beat for violent beat.
This time the hot tip of the crest shattered her.
She lay, scorched skin over melted bones, unable to move even when he left her to light the fire and candles.
“Choice isn’t always an issue,” he said, and she thought she heard liquid being poured into a cup. “Nor is it a weapon.”
She felt the cup bump against her hand, and managed to open her heavy eyes. She made some sound, took the cup, but wasn’t at all sure she could swallow any water.
Then she saw the raw red burn on his hand. She pushed up quickly, nearly sloshing water over the rim. “You’ve burned yourself. Let me see. I—” And she did see, that the mark was the shape of a cross.
“I would have taken it off.” Hurriedly, she pushed the cross and chain under her bodice.
“Small price to pay.” He lifted her wrist, noted the faint bruising. “I have less control with you than I’d like.”
“I like that you have less. Give me your hand. I have a little skill with healing.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Then give me your hand. It’s good practice for me.” She held hers out expectantly. After a moment he sat beside her, laid his hand in hers.
“I like that you have less,” she said again, drawing his eyes to hers. “I like knowing I can be wanted that much, that there’s something in me that pulls something in you enough that something strains, nearly snaps.”
“Dangerous enough when you’re dealing with a human. When a vampire’s control snaps, things die.”
“You’d never hurt me. You love me.”