Then his mouth fastened on hers and took possession. He was not breaking or rending her bones…he was kissing her? His need assaulted her senses, his energy a live entity that broke through her telepathic shield. His lust was acute and intense and threatened to consume her. She pulled her lips from his, breathing raggedly. “Lachlan, I—”
He stole the air from her lungs by pressing his lips to hers. The warmth of his body drove away the shivering she hadn’t been able to stop since she’d shattered his barrier. Desperation drove her to open her psychic eye to read him and encounter a violent wave of molten lust and need for her. She absorbed the ferocity of the emotions, alarmed when she encountered the vermillion hue of desire and tenderness. She gasped, her distress allowing his tongue inside. These were not the seductive kisses she had received from him before; there was no gentle nibbling, teasing foray, sweet passion. The need of the man and beast were one, and they battered at her mind, replacing her fear with a torturous heat. He stole her breath, her reason, her fear, and replaced it all with a burning, all-consuming desire. He held her like that for a long while, kissing her, letting her feast on the petrifying sensations he was evoking.
Shilah moaned as he slanted his mouth over hers roughly. Darts of fire raced through her bloodstream with the hottest arousal, frightening because she had no business feeling such need for the Darkan holding her as if he would never let go.
She flinched and tried to draw back as sharp teeth sliced at her lips. The metallic taste of her blood filled her mouth. The snarl from his throat had her stilling as fear warred with lust inside of her. He swirled inside of her mouth, licking up the blood and sucking at her lips. The sting immediately stopped, and her mouth tingled. He had her pinned to the cage, and his erection felt hard and heavy against her stomach. His enormous strength was intimidating.
He found her throat, soft and vulnerable. Then a sharp pain lanced through her as he pierced her flesh with his fangs. Shock and arousal tore through her body in a whip of flames. His throat pulled, and the snarl of satisfaction washed through her. The pleasure so intense that she could feel her body gathering, chasing the violent storm stirring inside.
* * *
Hunger swept through Lachlan, a gnawing, clawing need that he feared would never be assuaged. His throat worked, and the princess’s life force rushed into his mouth. An exquisite, rare taste beyond anything he’d ever known burst through his fucking soul, trickling down his throat to seep into his veins, pouring through his body like the elixir of life.
Find the Princess of Boreas’s Queen's guards, the witch, and take them with his mate from the dungeons. That should be his focus but need battered at him with such force. It felt as if the beast in him was trying to claw through his stomach. The princess stirred such depths of feelings after such a barren existence, it terrified him, broke him apart, and then melded him with the darkness. A terrible craving that tore through him, relentless, insatiable, he knew at this moment this yearning would never end as long as she existed. Sane thoughts caught at the sharp edges of his mind but couldn't carve its way through the dark mire of need and lust and pulse-pounding desire.
She was his…and he would take her. She tasted like nothing he had ever had, and he never wanted to stop consuming her blood. Fire, hunger, need, obsession. All those and more she made him feel.
Her taste was rich, dark, and evocative. He drank her blood, let the liquid slide down his throat, savoring the taste of it, and fed provocative images to her mind of what he wanted to do with her, of what he would do. She whimpered, and a growl rumbled from him as lust and fear wafted from her to him. The stench of fear from the woman he would give his life for was repulsive.
“Do not fear me.”
He pushed it along the mental pathway he could feel forming between them, their lei—the mental path unique to all mated Darkans. He could see the link in his mind and felt it anchoring their souls together, darkness and purity, a joining that should be impossible. Along the thread connecting their souls, bright, vivid lights of blue, gold, and silver danced over her thread, and hovering around it was a thread of oppressive darkness. It tried to seduce the light, but it fled from the malevolence. And he saw it as an omen for how their mating would be. She was not of his kind and would run from his mating until he would have no choice but to bend her to his ruthless will.
“I cannot help but fear you.”
Her response was a soft whisper along th
eir link.
“You threatened to harm a man who was promised to me before you met me.”
He retracted his fangs and released her throat, allowing her blood to trickle along her neck. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, her eyes enormous in her delicate face. She was everything he was not. Soft. Pure. Beautiful. And he sensed she wanted some reassurance from him, one that would lessen her dread, and it was beyond him to offer it. He would never lie to her.
“I made no such threat. I promised to slaughter anyone who would dare.”
Her eyes widened until they were enormous bottomless pools, stark horror staring at him.
He lowered his head and licked her skin, closing the wounds on her throat, before reclaiming her mouth. He brushed his lips gently, almost reverently over hers, hoping to communicate that she would always be safe with him. Then he deepened the kiss, and with a muffled moan she arched into him, kissing him back with a beguiling clash of innocence and carnality. She was like a living flame, burning him with her sweet wildness. His body clenched into a painful, hard, unrelenting ache. He smelled her arousal, hot and spicy, and wanted to sink to his knees and devour the wetness he knew he would find.
He showed her what he wanted to do, and she trembled in the cage of his arms, the hard points of her nipples stabbing into his chest.
And yet…her fear never abated.
“Do not fear me, even in eternity I shall belong to you.”
Confusion now flavored her chakra, and he had no notion how to explain what she was to him and what she would forever be.
“I…I do not understand. We do not know each other. What are you saying?”
Instead of wasting time with words she would never understand, he spoke with his tongue, his hands as he used one of his hands to palm her breast and rolled her nipple between his fingers. Arousal rode her hard, and her thoughts spilled to him along their tentative link.
She wanted him to touch her, to explore every inch of her skin with his mouth, to lick along her wet pussy, and then slowly feed his cock into her. The gentleness she envisioned, craved as he pleasured her felt strange to him. He wanted to dominate, to slake the lust rising between them with raw strength and passion.
He released her swollen lips and bent his head to place a kiss against the soft, vulnerable line of her throat. Shilah’s skin was warm satin beneath his stroking fingers. Her pulse fluttered too fast, and he heard the rush of blood, smelled its sweetness, and succumbed to his lure. His fangs once again burst forth, beyond his control, and he sliced them deep into her throat, bemused by the need to give her all the tenderness she imagined.
The need to lay the world at her feet was a gut-wrenching necessity, and Lachlan feared he would never be able to give her the snatches of the kind of lover and life he felt along their thread. Savagery and darkness were bred into his very soul, and he had found the only sliver of light that could possibly keep him from being eternally damned. And as sure as the kingmaker would bring war to his realm, he would lose his mate before he would get the chance to claim her, for he did not understand love, or kindness, or mercy.
He was a monster, the darkest kind.