He kicked open the door and carried her inside. He couldn’t wait to be alone with her. To be inside her. Pivoting just as they cleared the threshold, he pressed Carys’s back to the closed panel and took her lips and tongue in a fevered, primal kiss.
Twenty-five minutes of hand-to-hand combat in the cage always left him wired with adrenaline and the need to fuck and feed. His post-match ritual had long been to slake both thirsts in La Notte’s BDSM dens, but he hadn’t stepped foot in that part of the club for the past seven weeks.
Carys Chase was all he craved now.
She’d been the only woman in his bed all this time—on those few occasions they actually made it that far before tearing each other’s clothes off. Sex with Carys had ruined him for any other woman. She brought out the feral side of him like no other, made his veins light up so hot he could hardly stand it, especially when her strong, gorgeous body was clinging to him the way she was now.
Wild and uninhibited, the beautiful Breed female was a raw and powerful force of nature.
As for her blood . . .
Fuck. He couldn’t think about the temptation of her blood. Especially not when his cock was as stiff as granite and aching to be inside her.
He needed a shower to soap off the sweat and grime from the cage, but Carys didn’t seem to mind. Even though she deserved far better, she welcomed him however he came to her. And damn if that didn’t make him even harder.
With one arm looped around the back of his neck, she used her other to work the ties of his leather shorts. They peeled down his bare thighs and she grasped his freed shaft. Rune groaned as she caressed his length. Her mouth was still crushed against his, and with each sure stroke of her hand, she pushed her demanding little tongue deeper into his mouth.
Christ, she truly was his addiction.
He thrust his hips up to grind the ridge of his arousal against her core. The denim abraded his skin, but it was her body’s heat that dragged a hiss from him.
“Feel how hard you make me,” he muttered against her lips, his voice thick from the presence of his fangs. “You need to be naked. Right now.”
“I agree.” She smiled, baring the sharp tips of her own as he set her feet onto the floor.
Seeing Carys in her true Breed form still unnerved him at times. Desire made her bright blue eyes glow with amber sparks, as it did his dark ones. Like his, her pupils narrowed to catlike slits in her need.
With eager hands, they made quick work of her black blouse and body-hugging jeans, then Carys shimmied out of her silky bra and barely-there panties. He’d seen her undressed easily a dozen times already, but it didn’t keep him from staring in fascination at the dermaglyphs that swirled and arced over her shoulders, chest and torso.
The Breed skin markings were more delicate than those that tracked over his body. But her feathery flourishes and lacy patterns churned with deep colors, the same as his, indicating the height of her desire.
She had dermaglyphs and fangs, but she also bore the birthmark of a Breedmate. The small scarlet symbol—a teardrop falling into the cradle of a crescent moon—rode the left side of Carys’s neck. It was that part of her that allowed her to walk in the daylight, where Rune and the majority of the Breed were creatures of the night.
Rune reached out to touch the tiny mark, tracing the coarse pads of his fingers along her soft cheek, then down to the pretty tangle of glyphs that danced across her breasts.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he rasped, stroking the rosy buds of her nipples. He skimmed his big hand down her slender belly to the narrow patch of caramel-brown curls between her legs. She was wet for him, silken and hot. So damn sexy.
He wanted to slow things down, but the adrenaline spike from the cage was still riding him. As was his need for this woman.
Rune lifted her light weight in his hands and held her aloft at his waist. She wrapped her legs around his hips, seating his cock in the slick cleft of her body. Rune thrust inside, the long, hard push seating her to the hilt.
Carys moaned, rocking on him before he could even catch his breath. Fire erupted in her eyes as she held his gaze, her fangs extending even further as desire flooded her glyphs. Rune braced himself, his feet gripping the slate floor, one arm holding Carys’s weight, his other splaying against the wall at her back as he gave her everything her body demanded of him.
There was no need to hold himself in check with her. Together, their passion was explosive. Immense. As classically beautiful as she was, as delicate as she felt in his arms, Carys was every bit as powerful as any Breed male.
“Yes,” she hissed in his ear as he crashed into her. “Rune, yes . . . Fuck me harder.”
He growled, happy to obey. As he drove deeper, she cried out. Her fingernails raked his back, scoring his skin, spurring him on. Her dermaglyphs were alive and pulsing against his bare chest, her body throwing off heat in waves.
“Come on, baby,” he ground out between his clamped teeth and fangs. “This how you want it?”
“Oh, yes,” she panted. “Give me more, Rune. Don’t stop.”
He pumped into her on a thunderous roar as they both began to hurtle toward release. He couldn’t slow it down now, even if she wanted him to. He glanced between them to watch Carys’s body tense, her pretty glyphs pulsing and wild with deep indigo, wine and gold. She was close.
Fuck, so was he.
Carys’s nails dug into his shoulders as the first wave smashed into her. A scream of pleasure tore out of her, the hottest thing Rune had ever heard. As she shuddered and broke around his increasing thrusts, his own climax rose inside him.