The coil of hunger within her contracted even more, burning into a need so primal it shook her. The scent of his skin, its silky, smooth heat against her lips, against her tongue, made her dizzy with desire. His tempo roughened as he rode her, harder and deeper, grunting with each urgent grind of his pelvis. Alex sighed his name. She moaned, lost to the swelling rush of another orgasm. She cried out as it washed over her, a quenching flood of pleasure and release that should have doused the smoldering thirst that lived in her now, but only made it explode into a gnawing demand.
She wanted to taste him.
Not in any way that she had already, but in a way that shocked her. In a way that should have terrified her, but only made her blood race hotter, faster, alive with a dark power she could hardly tame. Beneath her open mouth, she felt the quickened thud of his heartbeat knocking in the vein at his throat. She pressed her tongue against it, then her teeth. Closed them experimentally over the corded tendons and the heated pulse that seemed to beat in the same desperate rhythm within her, as well. Kade snarled a dark curse but only pumped his hips with more fury. Alex reveled in the feel of him losing control. She ran her tongue and teeth over the tender skin, then clamped down harder ...
Kade arced sharply above her, threw his head back, and roared.
Chapter Twenty-one
He couldn't hold back another second longer.
His release shot out of him in a scalding rush as Alex's blunt little teeth grazed his throat in a teasing, testing bite that almost--not quite--broke the surface of his skin. She couldn't know how badly he wanted it. How staggering the need he had for her to draw his blood into her mouth, to drink from him. How intensely he wanted to claim Alex for his own and bind her to him forever.
"Fuck," he gasped as her satiny walls milked his pumping cock and her mouth wreaked holy havoc on his senses. "Alex ... ah, Christ!"
He came harder than ever before, lost to his desire for her. Lost to the deafening drum of his pulse that demanded she was already his, blood-bonded or not.
His woman.
The only female he would ever want again.
His forever mate.
Kade raised up onto his knees to look at her, his sex still buried inside her heat, still hard for her and hungry for more. His neck burned from the playful nip of her mouth. He could still taste the sweetness of her blood on his tongue from when he'd so stupidly let his fangs graze her lip as he'd kissed her. That small taste had damned him, and maybe her, as well.
Desire and bloodthirst swamped him, sharpening his vision and making his fangs throb with the urge to penetrate her tender flesh. He clutched her hips and rocked against her, watching as she arched beneath him, following him toward the peak of another shattering release.
She cried his name, her spine bowing upward, blood flushing her pale skin with a pink glow. Kade watched her in tortured admiration, never having seen anything as beautiful as Alex in the throes of erotic bliss.
He wanted to give her more, the kind of pleasure and release--the passion, and, yes, the love--that only a blood-bonded male could give his mate.
God, how he wanted.
"Alexandra," he rasped, the only thing he could manage when hunger and desire for her swamped him, stripping him of all thought except the want of this female. He wanted to warn her that he was dangerous like this, but all that left his mouth was a sound somewhere between a curse and a moan. She should have pushed him away, but instead she did the exact opposite. Her hands came up to reach for him, bringing him back down atop her. Breath rushing through her lips in short gasps, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him, a deep, wet, welcoming joining of their mouths. Kade tried to fight the need--the hunger--but Alex was quickly undoing every bit of his control. Dimly he realized that he hadn't fed since leaving Boston a few days ago, and as much as he wanted to blame his thirst on basic survival, he knew to his marrow that it was the taste of Alex he wanted. Only her.
He was unhinged now, treading the edge of a very deep crevasse and about to drag her down into it along with him. He knew this. He knew damned well that he should make sure Alex knew it, too. But then she deepened their kiss, sucking his lower lip between her teeth with a hunger he would not mistake, even at his most sober moment. And he was anything but sober now, when his body was smoldering, his blood racing through his veins like liquid fire.
Kade broke away from her mouth on a growl. He traced his lips and tongue along the delicate line of her jaw, then down to the tender spot beneath her ear, knowing it would doom him but too far gone to stop now. The feel of her pulse ticking against his mouth dug spurs into the soft belly of his need, turning raw ache into fierce agony.
"Ah, God ... Alex," he whispered harshly, then took the tender flesh of her throat between his teeth and fangs and slowly pressed down into her vein.
She drew in a sharp gasp as he penetrated her skin, a sudden flinch stiffening her body and halting her breathing. Kade paused as though slapped, horrified at what he'd just done and fearing he would not have the strength to pull away now, even if she hated him.
But then Alex's hands relaxed on his shoulders, began to stroke him. She exhaled a tremulous, pleasured sigh and he responded with a rough, grateful moan as he drew the first sweet taste of her into his mouth.
And, oh, she was sweet.
Alex's blood swept over his tongue like silk, the unique honey-and-almond scent of her mingling with the musky heat of her arousal. Kade drank her in, stunned by the roar of heat and pleasure that flowed into him with each draw he took from her vein. Her blood quenched him, empowered him. Inflamed him all over again, more intensely than before.>"I don't want you to be afraid of me, Alex." His deep voice rasped, sounding oddly thick to her, and then she realized why. She saw the gleam of sharp white teeth behind his lip as he spoke. His fangs. Not quite hidden, despite his obvious effort to conceal them from her view. When he looked at her now, there was a desperation in his amber eyes. Desperation and longing like she'd never seen before. "I don't want you to hate me, but this is who I am, Alex. This is who I truly am."
Despite the tiny shiver of wariness that kicked her heart into a more frantic beat, Alex leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. She held his tormented gaze, then let her eyes travel downward, to his parted lips and the bright points of his fangs, which seemed to have grown even larger now, sharper.
"I'm not feeling anything close to hate," she whispered, tilting her head up and wetting her suddenly dry lips. "If you'd just kiss me again, you'd know that."
Sparks flashed like lightning in his eyes in the moment before he descended on her. Alex felt the leashed power in him, and she sensed the control he exerted to keep that power in check as he took her mouth in a hot, hungered, claiming kiss.
Alex gave herself over to him, reveling in the warm, wet brush of his lips on her mouth, her chin, her throat. She slipped her hands under the black cotton of his long-sleeved T-shirt, running her palms up the firm, satin-smooth muscle of his back. She could feel the vague outlines of his tattoos under her fingertips, a complicated pattern of swirls and arcs that she traced with her nails but really wanted to follow with her tongue.
"Let me see your body. I want to see all of you," she murmured, tugging at his shirt. She pulled it over his head and could only stare in wonder once she'd unveiled him. "My God," she gasped. "Those are not tattoos, are they?"