“Taking you to bed.”
She made a low, sexy sound of satisfaction and began kissing his neck hotly. He carried her up the stairs, knowing she occupied the solitary loft bedroom. He stared straight ahead, focusing on his wavering mission while Christina tormented him with her mouth and nibbling teeth.
He closed her bedroom door behind them.
She cried out in surprise when he tossed her down on the bed. He stared down at the vision of her, her midnight hair splayed across the pillow, her cheeks flushed pink, her full lips parted slightly, making them the sweetest, sexiest target for penetration Saint had ever seen.
Before he knew what he was about, he was sliding his first two fingers between those lips, into the warm, wet haven of her mouth. Her eyes went wide in surprise at his actions.
“You think you know what it would be like to bed a creature such as me?” he growled as he thrust his fingers into her mouth.
She nodded and tightened her lips, sucking hungrily. He cursed under his breath but couldn’t stop himself from penetrating her lush lips again and again.
“You’re wrong. I have very little control once I become aroused, and you arouse me like no other, Christina. How are you going to react if I take you in the manner to which I’m accustomed? Are you going to like it when I replace my fingers with my cock and fuck your beautiful face?”
She mumbled an assent around his plunging fingers, her green eyes shiny with excitement as she gazed up at him. Trying to push her away with his crudity and threats of his feral nature was having the opposite effect—and not just on Christina, himself as well. His cock lurched against the confining material of his jeans, demanding he do just what he’d threatened.
He grunted in irritation at his inability to control his swelling desire. Gods, if he was so stupid as to allow himself to touch her, he should have at least done so in his subterranean bedroom, where he possessed various mechanisms designed to control his ravening hunger when he planned to pleasure a particularly attractive, powerful woman.
And there was none more so than Christina.
She made a sound of dismay when he withdrew his fingers from her mouth and roughly untied the halter of her sundress. Stretchy elastic around the back allowed him to drag it over her body and off her feet without difficulty. He tossed the dress aside and straightened as he stared down at Christina, who was wearing nothing but a tiny triangle of silk that barely covered the neatly trimmed black pubic hair between her thighs.
He placed his open hand on her belly, the sense of feral possession that rose in him freezing his lungs for several seconds. His hand moved up and down as she panted.
He’d long admired the hue and sheen of Christina’s skin. Her stomach looked strikingly pale next to his hand, although her long legs and lithesome arms were a shade darker. Her skin possessed an apricot hue, as though she carried the sunshine around inside of her. Her breasts were high and firm, the nipples large and succulent. He moved his hand slowly, entranced, and ran his fingertips along the lower curve of one breast. Her skin felt as soft as a dewy rose petal. Her nipples grew stiff as he stroked her. He looked into her face when she whimpered, pausing at the trust mixing with the lust in her green eyes.
“I can’t, Christina.”
“You can. You yourself told me my lifeforce shines brighter than anything you’ve ever seen. I can sustain you. Please…let me. Let me end your suffering.”
Her words soaked into his lust-drunk brain. “The end of my suffering will mean the beginning of yours,” he grated out miserably.
“No,” she insisted. She sat up partially when he dropped his hand to his thigh. She looked incredibly beautiful to him at that moment, her cheeks stained pink with her arousal and indignation, her bare breasts heaving shallowly. Her vitessence sparked furiously around her. He smelled her blood as it tore like a torrential stream through her throbbing veins. The need to bury himself in her suffused every cell of his being in a potent rush, blinding him temporarily.
He barely resisted an urge to throw back his head and howl in anguish. When his incisors lengthened against his will, he turned and walked out of the room without a backward glance.
Afterwards, he realized how foolish he was to think he could actually walk away from Christina for long when they were both primed to mate.
Chapter Eight
Christina awoke with a start. The trees outside her window thrashed frenziedly in the howling wind, causing eerie shadows to flicker against the drawn shades and the walls of her room. A summer storm was brewing.
She knew before she glanced at her glowing bedside clock that it was sometime between two o’clock and dawn. Sure enough, the dial showed that it was three-twenty-two a.m. She hadn’t fallen asleep until a little over an hour ago, after she’d stewed in a vat of fury and helplessness when Saint walked away from her for the second time in twenty-four hours.
This time had been different, though. She better understood his bitter ambivalence about his desire for her. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. But he was afraid he would harm her.
He was wrong.
After she’d ranted at him both in her mind and out loud, with her mouth pressed against her tear-soaked pillow for over an hour, her anger had begun to fade. She kept imagining the naked longing on his handsome face as he’d stared down at her, his hand open across
her belly. That longing tortured him, flayed at the soul he insisted he didn’t possess.
Recalling Saint’s anguish had altered her bitter tears of fury to tears of sorrow. It hurt her, like a physical pain, to think of him suffering so greatly when she had the power to comfort him.
Her anger had faded even more as she considered her and Aidan’s situation. How were they going to function if, as Saint said, the only place they were safe was on Whitby’s grounds?
And why was that, anyway? Christina realized with a burst of frustration she’d forgotten to ask Saint the question.