"Yes," he answered, rough and wild and carnal. He made a sound of dark hunger in the back of his throat. "Mine," he said.
Then he pierced her.
Mira's gasp was pure elation as his fangs went deep, and his hips thrust hard and long between her open thighs.
He would be dying soon - in a few hours or days or weeks, he couldn't be sure - but Kellan had never felt more alive.
Pride swelled in him at the pleasured sound of Mira's cry as his fangs penetrated her delicate flesh and pierced the artery that pulsed so robust and lovely against his tongue. Possession rocked into him like a massive wave as her body clung to him, her sleek, wet channel enveloping him, milking his cock as the first tremors of her orgasm began to ripple through her.
Her mounting climax echoed in his own consciousness, in all of his senses. Such was the power of the blood bond that now joined him to her. He should hate himself for taking this step with her, knowing there was no future in it. But she felt too good, tasted like sweetest heaven. And he'd wanted this intimate, unbreakable connection to her for too long.
He was greedy for all she could give him now, primal in his claiming of her body and her blood. She belonged to him. Her whispered pledge spurred him on now, made his thrusts urgent, his bite locked onto her with animalistic fervor, drinking her in.
She was his.
In this moment, she was his forever.
So easy to think it. So tempting to believe that he could stretch this moment into an eternity with her, keep Mira at his side as his mate for as long as they both drew breath.
And it was nearly impossible to resist the need that rose in him now, a need that urged him to complete the blood bond, to seal their connection by opening his own vein and feeding Mira a taste of him in return.
He wanted it with a ferocity that staggered him.
She wanted it too. He felt her craving for him, raw and thirsting. He heard it in her breathless moan, as she clutched at him and arched beneath him, her head craned to the side on the pillow, granting him total access to her carotid.
She wanted more of him. More than he was willing to give. He couldn't let her drink now, not when her link to him would only increase her pain tenfold when they were parted by death.
"Please," she gasped. "Oh, God . . . Kellan . . ."
God help him, he nearly gave in to her plea when she came in that next instant, her fingernails scoring his shoulders, his name a throaty roar as her release crested and broke. He wanted to bleed for her.
More than anything in that moment, he wanted to bind her to him and give her the same depth of pleasure she was giving him now. But he reined in the impulse with narrowly held control and dubious honor. Pressing his mouth to her open vein, he sealed the punctures with his tongue and braced himself for the rolling tide of her climax. Every nuance of her emotions branded themselves on his senses. She came with the same unbridled intensity that she did most everything else in her life, her climax astonishing him with its force as the waves of her body's release flowed through his veins as if his own.
He couldn't slow the tempest building within him now too. With Mira's orgasm still crashing over him, Kellan came too, shouting with the ferocity of it as his seed blasted out of him, scalding and ferocious.>She watched in anguished expectation as her vision-self pressed for leniency and got only stoic faces in reply. In the vision, she began to weep, her face dropping into her palms, shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.
The pain of that image skewered Mira's heart in real time, made her lips tremble in echoed reaction. She wanted to look away now, before she saw any more. But then all heads in the gallery turned to look behind them as the accused entered the chamber to hear the sentencing.
Kellan.
Oh, God. It was just as he'd said.
He strode forward, broad shoulders squared, head lifted, but she could see resignation in his handsome face as he looked at her. Mira could nearly feel his stoic acceptance as she watched the scene unfold in her reflected gaze.
Her vision-self whirled back around to face the ones who held Kellan's fate in their hands. She pleaded with them. Tried to draw some of the blame to her instead. To no avail. They announced their edict just as Kellan had told her they would. For the capital crimes Kellan stood accused of . . . death.
As the vision continued, Mira knew her anguish could not possibly be worse.
But she was wrong.
Because then the terrible vision Kellan had prepared her for began to fade into a misty darkness. Another image began to take shape in her reflected gaze. Something dreadful. Something far, far worse than the prospect of Kellan's execution.
His lifeless body, pale and unmoving, laid out before her.
No . . .
No! Her mind screamed in anguish. Or maybe she'd actually screamed her horror out loud. All she knew was the incredulity, the bone-deep grief, that overcame her as her vision-self collapsed atop his dead body and began to wail.
It couldn't be true.