“All right, then,” he agreed after a moment. “I’ll let him know.”
When Eddie’s footsteps faded into silence, Nova released a pent-up breath. “I can’t do this. You should leave, Mathias.”
He moved in closer. “I don’t want to leave.”
“You heard Eddie. He and Oz are worried about me. They’re going to wonder what I’m doing up here.” She dropped her gaze to avoid Mathias’s smoldering eyes. “We need to stop this now. You need to leave, and I should go--”
“You don’t want to go.” He guided her face back to him, refusing to let her hide. His irises blazed bright with amber light, pupils so thin they were almost swallowed by the heat of his desire. The tips of his fangs gleamed behind the sensual line of his lip as he spoke. “You don’t want to stop what’s happening between us. You can’t deny it, Nova. No more than I can.”
She stared up at him, miserable with need. She saw that same need written in the intensity of his gaze, in the iron firmness of his square jaw as he parted his lips and descended on her once more.
He claimed her mouth this time, and she sank into it willingly, wantonly.
His kiss was both tender and hungry now, coaxing and demanding. Her tongue found his and he moaned, a low, tormented sound.
He tasted so good. Hot and powerful, primal. Yet his arms were protective, careful as they wrapped around her and held her close.
Nova leaned into his strength, into the warmth he offered within the circle of his arms.
She should be afraid. All of her old defenses fired like warning shots, cautioning her that this passion was a dangerous thing. He was a dangerous man--the worst kind, a Breed male, like the one who had violated her so brutally long ago.
But her instincts soothed under Mathias’s touch. Her fears had no place here, when he was kissing her, caressing her, stoking a need in her that she had never known.
He had asked her to give him her trust. Where Nova clung to it so tightly when it came to her past and the life she left behind, now, sheltered in Mathias’s arms, under the gentling power of his intoxicating kiss, she knew only surrender.
She had no fight in her as he dragged her deeper into his embrace, pressing his body to hers. His arousal was obvious, thick and hard at her abdomen. He groaned as he moved against her, tension rippling through him like a current.
“Do you want this, Nova?” he murmured against her mouth. His voice was gravel, a rough, hot growl that should have sent panic into her veins, but instead kindled a higher flame in her core. “Tell me. I need to know if you’re feeling this too.”
She had a thousand reasons to deny it, to deny him.
A thousand reasons to push him away and hope she never saw him again.
But when she parted her lips, only one word slipped off her tongue. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 7
He hadn’t truly expected that answer.
But that didn’t keep Mathias from taking Nova’s petite frame up in his arms, then carrying her through the small apartment to the bedroom at the end of the short hallway.
He knew she wanted him. Hell, he knew she was as fevered and hungry with desire as he was. He tasted it in her kiss. He saw it in her pale blue eyes, which had gone dusky with need before he’d even brushed his mouth against hers the first time.
But he’d fully anticipated her rejection, not a breathless surrender.
She was scared to be with him; she’d admitted that easily enough.
What she hadn’t been so forthright about was the reason for her fear. Part of him wanted to believe it was because she was inexperienced with sex, but the few things she’d told him about her past had given him reason enough to understand that Nova wasn’t a virgin.
She’d been misused before, and it made him want to gather her to him like a broken bird and soothe her with gentling words and careful hands.
But Nova was also a fiery woman--a sexy, vibrant female who made everything male in him want to stand up and beat his chest, show her in the most carnal, primal way that she was his tonight, and that no man would ever come near her again without coming through him first.
As he walked over to the bed and sat her down on the edge of it, Mathias struggled with the two warring sides of himself.
The urge to get her naked beneath him had his blood running hot in his veins, his fangs throbbing as fiercely as the erection that strained against his pants, demanding release.
It took all the control he had not to act on that impulse. Instead, he smoothed his hand over her silky black-and-blue hair, let it sift between his fingers. He stroked her creamy, velvet-soft cheek, let his thumb trace the shell of her ear, over the combination of small silver and black hoops that rode its delicate perimeter.