Not now.
Not when she was coming apart in his arms, her fingers digging into the muscles of his biceps as she cried his name and shattered with the force of her orgasm. The tight walls of her sex vibrated along his cock, tiny muscles gripping him like a slick fist as wave after wave coursed over her taut body.
He watched her come, trying to slow his own release just so he could revel in the pleasure he was giving her. But his need owned him. This female owned him, and trying to temper what she stirred in him was like trying to cage a wildfire.
He took her mouth in a deep kiss, drinking up her little sighs and moans as her climax began to ebb. When her eyelids slowly lifted, she gave him a blissful smile that he would kill to see on her lips for the rest of his life.
His voice was gruff, raw. “You’re mine.”
“I always have been,” she whispered.
Ah, Christ. That tender admission was more than he could bear.
Pleasure seized him, pushing his hips into a fevered tempo. Each thrust took him deeper, made his hunger for her coil tighter, testing its already razor-thin leash.
Bella moved beneath him, meeting every hard stroke, taking him even deeper as she lifted her hips and wrapped her long legs around him.
Her hands roamed his face and shoulders, caressing him, worshipping him. The knot of his orgasm gathered at the base of his spine, wringing a sharp groan from between his clenched teeth. Blood pounded in his temples, in his cock…in the deadly lengths of his fangs.
“Oh, God,” Bella gasped, tipping her head back as the flush of another release swept over her skin. “Ettore…I can’t hold on. You feel too good.”
He was beyond words now. He was only instinct and need, pure male. Utterly consumed by the remarkable female in his arms. He responded with a triumphant growl as she cried out beneath him. He couldn’t stop his hips from moving, nor his blood from pounding with the overwhelming urge to claim his female in every possible way.
The urge became a mantra as his orgasm sped toward its peak.
He didn’t realize he was staring at her throat until he heard Bella’s soft voice filter through the haze of his blood-tinged thoughts.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Ettore. I want it too.”
When he met her gaze, he found her brown eyes steady and unafraid.
So full of love, it staggered him.
He knew he should turn away, be the stronger one.
He should give her this choice when they both were clear-headed and fully able to process the ramifications of what a bond would mean. One taste of her blood and he would feel her in his veins for as long as either of them lived. He would know her deepest emotions as his own—every joy and sorrow, every pleasure or pain.
And if she should die before him, he would be cursed to feel that too.
The bond was irreversible.
Unbreakable.
Eternal.
Concepts that had never entered his mind with another woman were all he could think of now that he was here with Arabella.
He loved her.
To his soul, he had loved her all this time. And the part of him that was more than mortal wasn’t willing to wait another moment to claim her. That possessive, primal part of him wanted to bind her to him irrevocably.
Forever.
There was no place for logic in it, no room for regret.
There was only need.
Only love.