“Tell me you’re not afraid that I’ll take your sweet, frantic carotid in my teeth right now and do exactly what I’ve been dying to do since I first saw you on that boat last night.”
She was afraid. And for all her desire for him—despite her sense that she had been waiting all her life for him and had never realized it until now—Lazaro’s fangs nestled so dangerously near her throat put an arrow of true panic in her blood.
If he pierced her vein, just one sip of her Breedmate blood would create an exclusive, unbreakable bond. He would be tied to her for the rest of his days—or until her death, should that come sooner.
One sip and he would crave no one else.
He would always feel Melena in his blood, even if they were apart. Even if miles or entire countries separated them.
One sip and there would be no other Breedmate for him, even if he drank from another woman with the mark after his connection was formed with Melena.
And if she drank from him in exchange, their bond would be a complete circle. Sustaining. Eternal. Unbreakable, except by death.
Melena held her breath, suddenly understanding the full impact of what she was inviting. Lazaro Archer, one of the eldest, most formidable Gen One Breed males in existence, his body pressed against her from breast to ankle, his enormous fangs bared and poised over her carotid.
And he wanted her.
Every muscled inch of him was coiled with power, all of it at the razor’s edge of breaking. Desire burned in his eyes—desire for her body and for the vein that throbbed so madly near his mouth. Heat and rigid strength pulsed where his pelvis ground so demandingly into her abdomen.
He was feral and wild and nearly unhinged...and she had never known anything hotter in her life.
“Damn you for making me want you,” he muttered thickly. His searing breath skated across her electrified skin like a lick of flame. “Damn you for making me want this...”
She heard his brief inhalation. Felt his head descend, his lips and tongue sealing over her skin. Then she felt Lazaro’s bite.
Sharp.
Deep.
Irrevocable.
CHAPTER 9
The first hot rush of Melena’s blood over his tongue slammed into him like a freight train. Warm, rich, potent. And laced with the sweetest trace of caramel and dark, ripe cherries—her Breedmate blood scent, a fragrance that had tempted him from the moment he’d first encountered it. Now that scent would call him as surely as a divining rod seeking a spring of cool, pure water.
He would feel her in his blood, everything she experienced most intensely would now echo in his veins. Her joy, her sorrow, her fears. Her hungers. Melena owned him now.
The bond he’d just activated inside him was unbreakable. She had been a distraction to his mind, will, and body before; now she would be his lifelong addiction.
And although better than a thousand years’ of logic strove to persuade him that Melena’s blood was a shackle he shouldn’t want and damned well didn’t need, the part of him that was purely male, elementally Breed, roared with the one word Lazaro never thought he would utter again: Mine.
He had known this feeling before. But what he had with Melena now was all the more intense for how desperately he’d tried to resist it. He groaned with possessive pleasure, knocked off his axis with a force that staggered him.
Amazed him.
Holy hell, it humbled him.
He drank more, starving for her. Twenty years of feeding from human blood Hosts went up in flames as he drew greedily from Melena’s tender vein. Her blood surged into his body, nourishing his cells as it wrapped silken bonds around his soul.
She was his. Even if his mind and will were reluctant to accept that fact, his body knew it with a ferocity he could hardly contain now. And where his desire for her had been consuming nearly from the moment he first laid eyes on her two nights ago, now it was a raging inferno that demanded its own satisfaction.
He wanted her savagely.
Needed her with a fury that left him shaking.
He realized in that moment that it wasn’t only the blood bond that lashed her to him. Melena would have owned him even if he hadn’t given in to his thirst for her tonight.
As unwelcome as that thought was—as unnerving as he found it, to think that she had obliterated his long-standing, iron resolve—it was a truth Lazaro could not deny.