He wasn't about to take that chance.
With a sharp mental command, he shattered the small bulb behind the night light's plastic cover. Gabrielle startled at the sudden pop, but then she sighed as blissful darkness surrounded them. Her body was making lovely, slippery noises in the tub.
"Turn on another light, if you want."
"I'll find you without it," he promised, speech a tricky thing now that lust had a firm hold on him.
"Then come," bid his siren from the warm pool of her bath.
He stepped into the water, sinking down to face her in the dark. He wanted nothing more than to haul her close - drag her into the cradle of his thighs and sheath himself to the hilt in one long stroke. But he would let her set their pace for now.
Last night he had come there hungry and taking; tonight he would give.
Even if the restraint killed him.
Gabrielle glided toward him through the thinning clouds of foam. Her feet went around his hips and linked loosely over his ass. She bent forward at the waist, her fingers finding his thighs beneath the surface of the bath. She squeezed the taut muscles, kneaded them, then firmly rode their length in slow, delicious torment.
"You should know, I'm not usually like this."
His groan of interest sounded strained in his ears. "You mean, hot enough to reduce any male to cinder at your feet?"
She exhaled a soft laugh. "Is that what I do to you?"
He brought her teasing hands up to the jutting thickness of his cock. "What do you think?"
"I think you're amazing." She didn't withdraw her touch after his hands left hers. She traced his shaft and balls, then lazily brought her fingers up around the bulbous head that more than breached the surface of the bathwater. "You're not like anyone I've ever known. And what I meant was, I'm not usually so... well, aggressive. I don't date a lot."
"You don't take a lot of men to your bed?"
Even in the dark, he sensed her sudden blush. "No. It's been a very long time."
In that moment, he didn't want her to take any other male - human or vampire - into her bed.
He didn't want her fucking anyone else ever again.
And God help him, he would hunt down and disembowel the Minion bastard who might have harmed her today.
The thought hit him with a savage rush of possessiveness as her fingers squeezed his sex, wringing a drop of slick wetness from the tip. When she bent down over him and drew his cock into her mouth, suckling him deeply, he arched up as tight as a bowstring.
Forget tearing out the Minion's entrails, he would settle for nothing less than flat-out, bloody murder.
Lucan lowered his hands onto Gabrielle's shoulders as she worked him into a mindless frenzy. Her fingers, her lips, her tongue, her breath rasping against his bare abdomen as she took him deeper and deeper into her hot mouth - all of it driving him to the brink of extraordinary madness. He couldn't get enough. When she drew off of him, he swore roundly at the loss of her sweet suction.
"I need you inside me," she told him, panting.
"Yes," he snarled. "God, yes."
"But..."
Her hesitation confused him. Angered that part of him that was more savage Rogue than considerate lover.
"What's wrong?" It came out more of a demand than he meant.
"Shouldn't we...? Last night, things got out of hand before I could mention it... but shouldn't we, you know, use something this time?" Her discomfort sliced through his passion-drenched mind like a blade. He grew still, and she pulled away from him as if to get out of the tub. "I have some condoms in the other room..."
His hand clamped down around her wrist before she could move to rise.
"I can't make you pregnant." Why did that sound so harsh to him now? It was plain truth. Only bonded pairs - Breedmate women and the vampire males who exchanged blood from each other's veins - could successfully produce offspring. "As for anything else, you don't have to worry about protecting yourself. I'm healthy, and nothing we do together will hurt either one of us."