Dylan stared up into his scorching amber eyes. "Now you hate me too, right?"
"No," he snarled, fangs gleaming in the dim light of the candles.
He pulled one arm out from under her and touched her face. His fingers were shaking, but so very gentle. He smoothed her hair off her brow, then let his hand travel slowly down her cheek, her chin, and along the line of her sternum. Dylan sucked in a sigh as he caressed her breasts. He unbuttoned her shirt in mere moments, then snapped the front closure of her bra.
"You're so soft," he murmured as his palm covered her bare flesh.
He moved down and kissed her nipple, sucking the pearled tip of her breast into the heat of his mouth. Dylan arched up with the sudden arrow of pleasure that shot through her, her desire spiraling tight as a spring.
Rio came back up to kiss her mouth as he worked the button and zipper of her jeans loose and slipped his hand inside her panties. The coppery tang of her blood on his tongue shouldn't have made her so hot, but knowing he'd fed from her - that he'd taken strength and comfort from her body in such a primal, intimate way - was the strongest aphrodisiac she'd ever known.
And what he was doing to her with his fingers now almost had her coming in his hand.
She cried out, on the verge of losing it. "Rio, please..."
He stripped out of his shirt and pants, then pulled her jeans off. Her panties went slower, as Rio kissed every inch of skin between her thigh and ankle as he eased the scrap of satin down from her legs and cast it aside.
He sat back on his folded knees, gloriously naked. "Come to me, Dylan."
She wanted to explore the muscled beauty of his body, but her need for him was more immediate. He took her hands and brought her up onto his lap. His sex thrust up between them, a thick spear of hard flesh. Its broad head glistened with moisture, so temptingly ripe Dylan couldn't resist bending over it and sucking him deep into her mouth.
"Cristo," he hissed, his cock leaping against her tongue.
He tunneled his fingers into her hair as she teased him with a few slow slides up and down the rigid length of him. When she lifted her head, Rio's eyes burned into her. His fangs seemed immense now, his face drawn taut. He caressed her as she climbed up onto him and straddled his thighs.
He kissed her breasts, her shoulder, her throat, her mouth.
"What have you done to me," he rasped, throwing his head back as she took hold of his sex and guided it into the slick cleft of her body. "Ah, fuck...Dylan."
She seated herself onto him and slowly sank down to the hilt.
Oh, it felt good.
Rio filled her with a heat she'd never known before. At first, Dylan could only hold herself there, unmoving, reveling in the pure heaven of their joined bodies. Rio wrapped his arms around her as she began a slow, shuddering rhythm. He met her stroke for stroke, his erection kicking, surging deeper with each downward thrust of her hips.
It didn't take long for Dylan's climax to build. She'd been more than halfway there before they started, every nerve ending alive with sensation and looking for release. She rode him harder, clutching his shoulders as the first wave of her orgasm flooded over her. She cried out with the pleasure of it, quaking inside, splintering into a million shimmering pieces.
Rio's possessive growl as she came made her smile. He hooked his arms under hers and leaned down, guiding her back onto the floor, their bodies still intimately joined. He drove into her, a hard push of his cock. His tempo was urgent, fierce, full of barely restrained power.
Dylan held on as he rocked against her, reveling in the feel of his muscles bunching and flexing under her palms. Overhead, the candles threw erotic shadows on the ceiling, the flames flaring brighter as Rio buried himself deep inside her and shouted with the force of his release.
As Dylan stroked his strong back, she felt like weeping for the depth of pleasure she'd just experienced with him...and for the voice in her head that warned she would be a fool to fall in love with him.
A fact she had to admit, had already come to pass.
Chapter Twenty-six
If he'd been worried about making more mistakes, particularly where Dylan was concerned, Rio had to admit he'd just crossed one gaping point of no return.
Taking her vein like he had was bad enough; Breed males with even the smallest scrap of honor would never feed from a Breedmate simply for their own gain. That quenching taste of Dylan's blood had pulled him through what would have been hours of anguish, and a blackout that would have left him vulnerable to discovery by humans, other vampires...shit. Vulnerable on more levels than he cared to examine.
But whether he'd needed it or not, it had been wrong to take Dylan's blood. Even though she'd given it to him freely, she hardly understood what she was doing - binding herself to him, and for what? Charity. Maybe even pity.
It burned him to think he'd been too weak to turn her away. He'd wanted what she was offering - all of it. And it was a little too late to call his actions back. What he'd done here was irrevocable. He knew it, and maybe instinctively she did too, since she'd become so quiet as she rested in his arms.
Rio was linked to her now, by a bond that could not be undone. With her blood swimming through his body, into his cells, Dylan was a part of him. Until death took one of them, Rio would sense her presence, her emotional state - the very essence of her - no matter how distant their separate futures might take them.
As he stroked the impossibly soft curve of her bare shoulder as she lay in his arms, he had to wonder if the blood bond was somewhat incidental to the profound attraction he was feeling for this woman. He'd felt a connection building with her from the very beginning, ever since she wandered into that cave and he heard her voice in the dark.>It didn't take long to find a couple of candles and a box of matches in the cabinets. Dylan lit the pair of white tapers then ducked back outside to grab the cinder block as a makeshift holder. She stuffed the candles into the cylindrical holes of the cement brick, then went to check on Rio.