her hair over one shoulder, baring her beautiful neck. 'Then you have to be strong.'
He swallowed tightly. 'You're inviting me to drink you?'
She said over her shoulder, 'You have been for a day.'
And I've missed it? He joined her in the bed, turning her to face him. 'No wonder I feel so damned good.'
She glanced up from under a blond curl, and said in a throaty voice, 'How good?'
He stilled. 'Remarkably.' Even with his body so beaten, his cock swelled in anticipation. 'Tremendously.'
'We'd have to be creative,' she said, with her eyes already flashing silver. 'So we don't hurt your arm.' Her idea of creative was to strip off his shirt that she'd slept in, then lay back at the foot of the high bed, positioned for him with her shining hair spread out, and her nipples already hard.
'I like creative,' he rasped, ripping off his own clothes. His hands itched to touch her in a million different ways and places. He wanted to kiss her for hours.
'This should work, don't you think?' she asked. 'Are you sure you're ready?' The look he gave her made her say, 'Okay, okay! Just checking—'
Her words died in her throat when he crouched down and eased her legs open. He loved kissing her between her thighs and would take any opportunity to taste her. She cried out at the first touch of his tongue to her wet flesh, and moaned when he languidly suckled her.
'Bastian, please,' she finally whimpered. 'I need to feel you inside me.'
He pressed a kiss to her thigh. When he stood, her knees fell even wider apart in blatant invitation. For him. This was still so new to him—to have this beauty asking him to be inside her was still unbelievable.
He gripped his shaft and positioned himself at her entrance, then reached forward to cover her breasts with his palms. She arched, pushing into his hands until he squeezed and groaned at the feel of her soft flesh.
As the head of his cock pressed deeper, filling her, she moaned with each inch. When she took him as far as she could, his knees went weak, but from pleasure.
With her legs locked around his waist, she undulated her hips, slowly at first, but soon she was so frantic he thought he might come just from her working her sex on his shaft. 'More, Bastian!'
I'll always give you more, he remembered vowing that first day. Until I die. He had to hold on...
He leaned down and licked her stiff nipples, one and then the other, but when she threaded her fingers in his hair and arched her back, it made him want to come even more.
He rose, about to pull out and take her with his mouth again. But she grasped two of his fingers and softly sucked the tips into her mouth, wetting them. She placed them against her clitoris, showing him exactly what she desired.
Shuddering, he strained every muscle in his body not to spill that instant. When he stroked her there, lightly pinching, she went wild, twisting and writhing on the bed.
'Drink, Bastian,' she said between panting breaths. 'I need you to.'
Need me to drink? He never thought he'd hear those words, and his fangs ached in response.
Still thrusting, he clutched her slim shoulders, brushing his lips against her neck. When he pierced her skin and sucked, she cried out, and his eyes rolled back in his head. He growled against her flesh when her body tensed in a shuddering orgasm.
He withdrew his fangs, throwing his head back. Her blood raced through him, burning and pulsing, making him mad with lust. Her sex squeezed him, demanding, hungry. A haze seemed to cover his vision. He felt as if something inside him had been unleashed, and knew he'd need to take her hard.
When he pulled out and turned her around, she gasped in surprise and shivered. Clasping her to him with a hand over her front and the other cupping her sex, he pulled her bodily back, then bent her over the bed, her breasts pressing into the mattress. Readying. Positioning her.
He clenched her hips, pinning her in place to receive him as he eased his shaft back inside her. He withdrew slowly, then returned in agonizing strokes, soon finding a driving rhythm that made her moan.
'Harder. Please!' When he heard the thunder drumming outside, he plunged fully into her.
Building, faster, until he was slamming into her, his skin slapping hers, using his whole body to take her. He couldn't believe he'd bent her over the bed like this. Couldn't believe each time with her was more pleasurable than the last.
The headboard was banging against the wall, and still she demanded more.
With a brutal yell, he gave it to her. He held nothing back, fucking her with all his strength as her cries grew louder.
When he reared back, he could see her face turned to the side, her lips parted, her eyes silver. Her arms were stretched out, tensed in front of her. 'Bastian,' she cried softly, stunned as well. Her reactions and the lightning outside were his permission.
'I'm going to be inside you all night. Drink you all night.'
'Yes!' she cried. 'Anything, Bastian... '
Anything. No constraints. Utter freedom. He gave himself up to it. Years of doubt evaporated. The past grew dim against a future with her. 'You need this?' he grated.
'Yes!'
'You need me?'
'Oh, yes, yes!' She stretched her arm back, offering her wrist to drink from as he continued to buck against her. When he pierced her flesh again, she instantly came with an anguished cry. He could no longer resist the pressure welling inside him, so he took as he gave, drawing her blood from her body as he emptied his seed hotly into it.
Once he could come no more, he stretched over her, still thrusting slowly.
His breaths ragged, he rasped at her ear, 'You're mine now, Katja. And I will never let you go.'
40
T he first Lore battle Sebastian would ever experience would be a clash that had occurred a millennium in the past, and was one of the most notoriously brutal ever seen.
Tonight he and Kaderin would retrieve her sisters, fully expecting to land in the middle of that war.
They'd strategized about where to use the key, deciding on the flat, mainly because the coven would try to kill him at Val Hall. She wasn't too keen on being in the city, though, in case the two didn't 'travel forward well.'
Kaderin was nervous about seeing them after so long and had endeavored for an hour to find clothing that didn't look too modern. As he'd waited, he'd sat back against the headboard, watching her dress, thinking over the last two days while his arm had healed.
'We're going to need more time,' she'd told him after the first night.
He'd grinned. 'I trust my nurse.'
During that time, when he hadn't been inside her, they'd talked about everything. She'd told him what her sisters had been like, and he'd revealed what had happened with his family. He felt he could tell her anything, and that she had completely opened up to him as well.
He was learning all about her—and learning how satisfying it was simply to live with her. At his leisure, he got to kiss her ears just to make them twitch. He could study her delicate hands for what seemed like hours, enclosing them completely with his own and running the pads of his fingers over them. He got to watch her sleep— that is, when he wasn't exhausted beside her. His Bride was as insatiable as he was.
She was abandoned, free with her body, and gave him anything he wanted, anything he'd ever fantasized about. When he'd admitted how little experience he had, she'd seemed determined to give him everything he'd missed.
In the end, their time together confirmed what he'd known from the beginning. He never wanted to part from her.
The only obstacle to his happiness was the knowledge that the key did, in fact, work.
