She heard the restrained fury in his voice, felt it in the hard pound of his pulse, which all but filled her ears, filled her senses. But his touch was gentle, reverent. So very careful. The first brush of his lips across hers was warm and indulgent, a lazy crawl that sucked all the breath from her lungs. His tongue slipped inside, sweeping between her teeth before testing the sharp tips of her fangs. True to his word, he took the kiss slowly, not breaking contact until she was melting beneath him, awash in the pleasure of his mouth on hers.
"You taste like heaven," he drawled against her parted lips. "So pure and clean and bright. God, what you do to me."
She couldn't speak, could only fist her hands in the quilted coverlet on the bed and hold on as his kiss traveled lower. His lips and tongue were moist and hot on her breasts, teeth and fangs grazing her pebbled nipples as he moved down her body in a maddening, pleasurable path. He kissed her belly and tongued the indentation of her navel, and then his mouth was drifting over the flare of her hip bone and down onto the tender flesh of her inner thigh. She moaned as his warm breath fanned her sensitive skin. Gasped as his slick tongue traced the cleft of her body. Shuddered on an indrawn cry as he began to suckle the tight bud of her sex, kissing her with the same slow, sensual attention he'd lavished on her mouth.
"Feels so good," she whispered, her fangs sharp and cool, the long points filling her mouth. Tavia arched into his kiss, her hips moving of their own accord, every inch of her alive and on fire, his to command. She couldn't fight the pleasure he stoked within her, could only let herself go as he brought her to the sheerest height of sensation, then tumbled her over the edge. Her orgasm splintered at her core, spreading its light into her limbs like warm, sun-spangled rain. She let it carry her away, leaving all the hurt and ugliness of the past twenty-four hours long behind her as Chase's mouth continued its blissful assault on her senses.
She was still panting, her body still reverberating with pleasure, as he climbed onto her with hungry eyes. His lips were glossy with her juices, sweet with the taste of her own climax as he caught her mouth in a deep, bone-melting kiss. Their fangs tangled and clashed, the scrape of their razored tips an unexpectedly erotic sensation.
Tavia's body was molten, needful for more of him even before the thrumming heat of her release had yet to ebb. She clawed at his back and shoulders as he kissed her, feeling the swell of another climax building. Its deep ache made something animal rouse within her. She nipped at his lower lip, a bite nearly hard enough to draw blood. Her voice felt like ash in her throat, hardly recognizable to her own ears. "I want you inside me."
His answering growl was a rumble that vibrated in her bones. "Patience," he rasped, his glowing eyes flashing with dark amusement. "I haven't showed you all the other ways I can make you come."
He caught her lips in another long kiss. This time, his tongue went deep, filling her mouth as he reached down between them and inserted his fingers into the tight sheath of her sex. He probed her in rhythm with his kiss, pushing deep into her core while his hot mouth plundered her from above. Her body clenched around him, trying to hold him inside even as the friction of his movement made her thrust and mewl with pleasure.
"You're so wet," he murmured hotly. "You feel like silk. So hot and tight around my fingers. I could come just feeling you like this."
He moved his hips against the side of her thigh, the thick ridge of his erection as hard as steel but smooth as velvet. She wanted to feel him filling her, desire for him making everything female inside her coil with greedy hunger. She exhaled a wordless protest as he withdrew his touch, but then the slick pressure of his fingertips met her clitoris and her cry became a choked gasp, sensation jolting through her. He stroked and rubbed the sensitive little knot, swirling his thumb over it as his fingers delved back into her cleft. Her climax came swiftly, ripple after ripple, her sheath contracting in tiny waves. Her voice was ragged, torn from her on a shout of release that she tried to muffle in the strong curve of his neck.
With a primal-sounding snarl, he brought his hips down over hers and lowered himself until his thick shaft rested between her wet thighs. Without entering her, he began a slow melding of their bodies, his cock nestled in the cleft of her core. He moved against her, lifting his body weight, then easing it down again, teasing her with the hot, wet promise of penetration. She was already ripe with arousal; a few torturous strokes was all it took before she was catapulted into yet another shattering release.
"Christ, you are lovely like this, Tavia." He watched her come, his gaze searing and rapt, the amber glow of his eyes bathing her face and skin in delicious heat. His own desire flared in dark hues over the beautiful pattern of his dermaglyphs, a churning storm of color that painted his strong arms and torso in tempestuous burgundy, gold, and indigo. He shuddered with his next slow thrust, which set the head of his penis against the mouth of her womb. "Ah, fuck. I can't wait any longer. I have to be in you."
He pushed inside on a low growl, seating himself to the hilt.
With a hard grimace, he rocked into her, riding her hard. She couldn't stop the rising tide of sensation that washed over her with every deep thrust of his body. No more than she could stop the primal urge that made her rise up to take the hard bulk of his shoulder between her teeth. Release poured through her as she bit down on him, scoring his skin with her fangs.
He grunted through his teeth. His frenzied tempo became more fierce, more animal, with every stroke. She could feel him struggle against his own nature. She felt the ravenous thirst that lived inside him and the anguish it caused him to purposely deny it. He suffered in that denial, a brutal, soul-shredding ache.
In the hard, heavy drum of his pulse, she could sense the primal urge that compelled him to bite her in that moment - to drink from her and mark her as his own.
But he didn't do that.
Instead, he turned his head away from her, roaring with a mix of anger and relief as he plunged deep and came. His heat spilled into her, his big body shuddering, sheened in clean sweat. Tavia stroked his muscled back as he slowed above her. She studied his face, trying to understand what it was about him that made him seem so open and trustworthy yet so coolly remote. So haunted and detached. So shadowed and alone.
She felt somehow sad for him. Concerned for him. Right. Ridiculous. As if he seemed in need of her sympathy or worry.
But that didn't stop her from wanting to figure him out, even a little. When nothing in her life made sense anymore, being with Chase somehow did. It wasn't just the sex, incredible as that was. It was the fact that he was the first person to ever be honest with her, even if she hadn't been prepared to hear it. For better or worse, he was her only safe mooring in a world blown so fast and far off course from what she'd known before. What she'd told him at the clinic earlier tonight had been the truth: He was the only friend she had now. And it troubled her to know that he endured a private pain.
They made slow love again on the bed, indulging in each other's bodies for what seemed like hours. After they had lain there for a long while, Chase's body draped across her, their legs still joined in a pleasant tangle, Tavia asked the question that echoed in her mind with every hard thump of his heartbeat.
"Why don't you allow yourself to feed?" An uncomfortable tension crept through him in reply, palpable in the flicker of his pulse and the subtle stillness of his body against hers. "I don't mean just me," she said. "You don't let yourself drink from anyone. How long has it been?"
He shrugged. "A few days, I guess."
The way his voice sounded, so gravelly and raw, he might have said he'd been starving himself for a year. "How long can you go without?"
"Normally one of my generation can go a week on a single feeding. Sometimes longer."
"But that's not normal for you, is it?" She hardly had to ask; his pulse was still pounding through him in a hollow beat, an ache that she felt reverberating in her own veins. "I can sense your hunger, Chase. I'm not sure how, but I can feel it inside me like it's my own."
He rolled away from her and swore, low and angry, under his breath. "It's the bond." His expression was grave, mouth flattened in a hard line. He raked a rough hand over the top of his head and cursed again, darker this time. "You drank my blood, Tavia. It's bonded you to me. If you were human, it wouldn't matter. But you're not. You're not only Breed either. The part of you that's Breedmate is linked to me through my blood, which lives inside you now."
Astonished, she smoothed a hand over her chest, where the dull ache of his hunger now burned with the bitter tang of his regret.
He nodded, a grim acknowledgment. "That's right. If I feel something strongly enough, whether it's pain or pleasure or grief or joy, you'll feel it too. The blood bond will draw you to me. You'll feel it like an echo in your veins."
She held his troubled stare. "For how long?"