Crimson Truth (Onyx Assassins 4)

His fingers tunneled in my hair, and I trembled at the feel of his tight grip. He thrust up, holding my head in place, and heat flooded my thighs with the dominance in the move. With the way my power roiled and crackled in the air around us, he didn’t so much as blink.

I moved my hands to his thighs, gripping the strong muscles there as he fucked my mouth, his grip tightening on my hair as he upped his pace. And Goddess, I loved it. Loved the way he filled my mouth, the way he slid in and out, the way he lost himself in me in a way I’d never seen him do before. An undoing, that’s what this was. Benedict’s normally stoic, carefully calculated demeanor was completely shredded here, with me.

Only with me, I realized.

Only with me would he shed all masks of pristine perfection.

Only with his mate would succumb to his primal instincts. And right now?

This was a claiming. And even though I never thought I’d be one to want it, I did. With every ounce of my soul.

I felt him harden another degree in my mouth, and he started to draw away, his pace slowing, but I moaned a protest, and gripped his hips, not letting him draw away. Where he stopped, I began, sucking and bobbing on him as fast as he’d been fucking my mouth before.

“Jocelyn, fuck,” he said. “Baby, I’m going to come—”

I sucked harder, my heart racing with the power I felt.

“Goddamn,” he growled as he came, spilling into my mouth with a heat that seared me all the way down to my core.

He released my hair, and I leaned back a bit, wiping my lips with my fingers and smiling up at him. His eyes were lust hazed and hungry, those fangs teasing me as he gave me a promising grin.

“My turn,” he said, and I didn’t blink before my spine was kissing the wall nearest the bed. Benedict moved that fast, and Goddess did I love the thrill of him overpowering me. There was no fear, only a deep, ancient trust I was only beginning to understand. But I didn’t need answers right now.

Just him.

Only him.

“Slow or hard?” he asked, trailing his nose along the line of my neck.

I locked my ankles around his back, digging my nails into his strong shoulders.

“Hard. Fast,” I demanded. “We’ll try slow another time.”

A shudder of approval rippled through him, and he plunged inside me. I gasped, not surprised for one second that he was already hard again. And Goddess, he filled me so much I could barely breathe around it. The heat of him, the strength of him, his scent, it all made my head spin as he thrust into me again and again, my back pressed against that cold wall as he wholly had his way with me.

And all I could do was hold on. I was completely at his mercy and I was practically high with the rush of it.

I clung to him as he hit every spot inside me, ratcheting up my pleasure, making me come so hard I was sure I’d lose my grip, but he never let me fall.

“Benedict,” I begged, arching against him as he drove home again and again. I shifted enough to throw the hair off my neck, exposing it to him. “Please.”

“Fuck, yes,” he growled, and I gasped as he sunk his fangs into the delicate skin of my neck.

Release barreled down my spine, my power exploding right alongside my orgasm, the bursts of energy shooting out the lights in the room as he sucked at my neck and thrust his cock inside me over and over again. Until I was nothing but sensation, nothing but power and release and warmth and light.

Benedict pulled back sooner than I wanted, sealing his puncture wounds with his tongue. But his pace increased tenfold, as if the taste of my blood had unleashed some inner beast, and I dug my nails into his skin hard enough to draw blood as we came together.

Our bodies slick with sweat, our breaths matched in ragged gasps, he held me there, against that wall, our gazes colliding. I didn’t have the words, and neither did he.

But we didn’t need them.

Because I could feel him sliding into my veins as easily as if I’d taken his blood again. Benedict was my mate—the power of that bond was braiding itself into my very being as he held me there.

And now there was no going back.

11

Benedict

“They’re all staring,” Jocelyn muttered beside me as we ate evening repast. She’d barely picked at her omelet, but at least her orange juice was half-gone. The woman needed her calories after yesterday’s activities. Today’s, too.

I glanced around the room, noting that Jocelyn had the attention of every vampire seated below the dais, and nodded. “That, they are.” And it wasn’t the kind of attention I appreciated.