“I was,” I said, capturing his mouth. Tasting myself on his tongue had me arching against him again, wiggling my hips until I got just a tease of that hard, bare cock.
“Impatient little thing, aren’t you,” he teased, but I stilled as I met his eyes.
“Fuck me, Hawthorne,” I demanded. “Fuck me hard enough to tear this door down.”
“That mouth,” he growled, shifting his hands between us. One flick of his wrist and my lace panties tore at the seams, falling to the floor in a pile of scrap. One breath, and he plunged inside me.
I gasped, moaning around the stinging heat as he filled me. He kept one muscled arm beneath my ass, the other on my hip as he thrust in again and again.
My back slapped against the door with the force of his movements, every time we connected sent waves of heat licking across my skin. Everything inside me coiled and tightened, begged and ached for more, more, more.
Never enough.
It would never be enough.
Three weeks or an eternity. This male was everything I’d ever wanted and then some.
But there was only now.
I cupped his cheeks as he fucked me, holding his gaze, letting him see every ounce of pleasure he squeezed from me. Letting him see how much he owned me by just being him. I slanted my mouth over his, flicking my tongue against his as I clenched my thighs around his hips. I rocked into him as he thrust into me, our bond searing with heat between us.
“Hawke,” I groaned, tilting my head to the side, exposing my neck near his mouth.
“Avi,” he mimicked me, shifting to where he only supported me with that one arm beneath my ass as he brought his wrist up to my lips.
I shoved the leather sleeve back, then sank my fangs into his flesh at the same time he did mine. The double penetration sent my mind whirling, my soul spiraling, as we drank from each other. We became interconnected, him thrusting into me with wild abandon as we drank much the same. Our souls braided together in a never-ending stream of power and love and passion, and I drank him in, desperate and hungry to keep him in me forever.
He slid his tongue almost lovingly over the puncture wounds on my neck at the same time he thrust into me harder, longer, and I came completely undone.
I clenched around his cock, drawing my fangs from his wrist because I couldn’t hold back my moan as I came. I flicked my tongue over his wrist, trembling as he pounded one orgasm into another, until we were both slicked with sweat, the clothes between us damp and hot.
The door behind us creaked from the strain as Hawke pistoned his hips, unleashing himself on me in a frantic beat that sent me soaring again. I was so slick I could hear him pulling out and slamming back in as much as I felt it, and I decided I loved the sound. Loved the way our bodies collided over and over again, our souls insatiable for the other.
I gripped his hair, yanking his mouth to mine, bruising his lips with my kiss. “You’re mine,” I breathed the words over his lips. “And I’m yours. No matter what happens when we step out of this room, you have to know that I’ll never belong to anyone else like I belong to you.” I tightened my thighs around him, squeezing his hard cock and rocking into him in time with his thrusts.
“Avi,” he growled, holding me tighter against him as he came. He worked us down in slow strokes, and I couldn’t stop the tears from trailing down my cheeks.
He wiped them away, kissing every spot they’d touched, holding me there like he never wanted to let me go. “I couldn’t have ever been anyone else’s,” he whispered as he leaned his forehead against mine. “No one but yours.”
I closed my eyes, the tears falling freely as I leaned against him, his words doing their best to mend the cracks in my soul. But he was too late. We were too late. And there would never be enough time to fix all that was broken between us.
17
Hawke
I stood in the corner of Avianna’s suite, my back to the wall, alternating my gaze from the security sweeps currently going on beneath her window and Avianna as she dressed for the ceremony. It didn’t matter how hard I’d wished away the night, the evening had come.
Her gown was crimson, the ceremonial color of our species, and heavily embroidered with gold thread throughout the bust and down to her waist. It was strapless, leaving the smooth skin of her upper back bare as she stared in the full-length mirror, her eyes blank.
Servants bustled around her, all full vampire. She had yet to meet her new talem, and it seemed especially cruel at this moment that Samuel had separated Avi from the one who had been by her side for years. Avi had been almost fully dressed by the time they’d arrived, her gloves firmly in place to hide our bond.