Bite Marks (The Lycans 5)

“People will be looking for me. I called 911 when they broke in. They would have come to the house, investigated.”

His smile this time was knowing, almost condescending. “You have one friend. Sasha. She’ll wonder where you are, and maybe your professors at the university might take note at first…” He was silent for a long second. “Or maybe I took care of that, had calls made so you not going to classes is smoothed over. Maybe I also handled that 911 call.”

I kept shaking my head, sweat beading along my brow.

“You underestimate the lengths I’ll go to for you, the things I’d do to make sure you’re safe.” He shrugged as if he was talking about the damn weather. “The lengths I’ll go to, to keep you with me, because there are men out there who would hurt you simply because of who you are, Kayla, because you’re mine.” I felt a shiver at the expression on his face. “And they’ll hurt you. They’ll hurt you because it would destroy me. Do you understand, baby? Do you really understand?”

I couldn’t answer, had no words to respond.

“I only care about one thing, and that’s keeping you close to me. I only care about you—”

“—because I’m your mate.”

“Look at you,” he purred, and his words were laced with so much pleasure. “Now you’re getting it, kitty.” He reached out for the bottle of bourbon and poured himself another glass. “Ask more. I know there’s a shitload of questions in that gorgeous head of yours.”

His compliment shouldn’t have pleased me as much as it did. I should have let it piss me off to the point I lashed out. But instead I did what he said.

“You keep calling me your mate. What does that mean exactly? Like we’re married?”

I both hated and loved the way he just stared at me after I asked him something, his expression hard and unyielding, like we were on his time and he’d answer me when he was good and ready to.

“In my world, a mate is everything. You mean everything to me.”

“We don’t even know each other,” I whispered.

“Doesn't matter that we only met days ago. I don’t have to know your name or anything about you. I know you’re my mate, and that’s enough to tie us together irrevocably. You were born to be mine, and I was born to be yours. Destiny, fate, the fucking stars aligning, whatever human terms you want to call it, we’re meant to be together.”

The rational part of me wanted to deny it, the whole fated mates concept obviously foreign and something you only read in books, maybe see in a fantasy movie, but I couldn’t deny there was a very real connection between us, one that I’d felt the moment I saw Adryan. And that only grew when he touched me. What he said seemed like such a logical explanation… the only one that made sense.

He was the first man I could stand to touch me, the first man who brought arousal out in me. And since our first meeting, I’d started to crave him more and more. And then he’d given me my first orgasm up against a tree, the wilderness surrounding us, the moon high in the sky.

So yeah, being his mate in this crazy supernatural world made perfect sense—and in the same breath made absolutely no sense. But I was starting to realize that my world wasn’t all that I thought it was.

There were things hidden, secrets buried so deep I didn’t think they’d ever see the light of day. But maybe that’s why it seemed so “easy” to accept all this? Because I felt like I wasn’t meant to be part of my world, but part of Adryan’s world. I mean, I should’ve been freaking out more, denying any paranormal existence.

Yet here I was, sitting beside a vampire, eating his food, the remembrance of his mouth on my pussy, his fangs in my body, replaying over and over in my mind and lighting me up all over again.

“Fated mates.” I slowly looked up at him then, wondering how I would even phrase any of this, explain my darker desires, how he’d known exactly how to get me off, how to touch me.

“Coveted Female. That’s what you are to my kind. That’s how I knew what you liked up against that tree,” he growled in clear arousal. “That’s how I knew what to give to you, not because I can read minds, not because I have any kind of premonition, but because we are linked in a way that no other two beings are.”

I felt so… raw, bared, opened, my mind and heart splayed to the elements.

“I’m the sadist. You’re my masochist. Yin and yang. A perfect combination.” He leaned in close again, and faster than I could anticipate, he had my chin between his finger and thumb, tipping my head up slightly so we could lock gazes. “I can still taste you on my lips, on my tongue, baby.”