necessary. Let me up, Rafael. I mean it.'
He didn't move, his wide shoulders blocking the sky, his heavy muscles rubbing along her skin causing every nerve ending in her body to come alive. If it was possible, his eyes darkened more, robbing her of breath. 'You do not get to close your eyes to what is between us. I told you I would have all of you and I meant it. If I kissed you and took your body right now, when you are afraid and when you are angry with me, you would let me because you want me. You need me in the same way I need you.' He leaned close so that his breath was against her mouth. 'You are not complete without me. That is why you let me have your body, Colby. It is the only reason. You need me. You wanted sex to be enough, but it is not enough and will never he enough.'
'What then?' She asked him the question quietly, no surrender in her defiant gaze. She would
'I am going to bring you wholly into my world.'
Colby might have been expecting it. She had considered briefly he might ask her, but the way he said it with his hard, implacable resolve was terrifying. Hearing the words said aloud was far different from turning the idea over, however briefly, in one's own mind. For a moment she was paralyzed, lying beneath him like a sacrifice. Her body had betrayed her long ago, soft and pliant, belonging to him, alive beneath his hands, beneath his body, ready for him even when he was holding her captive.
'What have you done to me?' She didn't even recognize herself. He could take her right there, in the midst of her fear with her heart breaking and she would enjoy it. 'This isn't love, Rafael. No matter what you think, it isn't love.'
'It is love to me.' His hands smoothed over her bare skin, shaping her curves, feeling her response to him. 'You have my body and my soul. You have all of me. I want all of you. I will not take less.'
'What have you done?' she repeated, refusing to give in to hysteria.
'To bring a human lifemate wholly into our world it requires three blood exchanges. The woman must be psychic, which you are.'
She stared up at him in horror. 'You exchanged blood with me?'
'Of course. You are my lifemate. It is natural. You become the very blood in my veins as I am in yours.'
She closed her eyes briefly to block him out. 'You gave me your blood?' It was a whisper, maybe even a plea. She didn't want it to be true, yet her eyes had burned in the sunlight and her skin had blistered. Her mind needed the touch of his mind and still did. 'Damn you, Rafael, you had no right to give me your blood. You know I have a ranch to run. You don't have the right to arbitrarily make decisions for me. I don't care what you are, I have rights and you just stepped way over them. How many times? How many times did you do that?'
'Do not judge me by your human standards, Colby.'
She shoved at the wall of his chest. 'Get the hell off of me. Get off me or I'll scream until someone hears and comes running.' She was furious, more furious than afraid of him.
'Do you think I will allow anyone to take you from me? I am more animal than man. More monster than guardian. I am capable of things you cannot conceive of.'
'And you think telling me this furthers your cause how?' She shoved again. 'Get off of me!'
His hand pinned her wrists together and he pulled her arms above her head. 'Kiss me, Colby.'
'Go to hell, Rafael. I don't care what you do to me. It won't make a difference. I decide my fate, not you.'
He bent his head toward her mouth. Colby turned her head away and bit at his shoulder hard. At once heat flared between them. Fire raced through her body. It was maddening and perverse and she didn't want to give in to it. He kissed his way down her throat to her breast. His mouth was tight and hot and he scraped his teeth along her tender skin, lending an edge of pain to the pleasure. Her body reacted with more heat. More fire. With urgent demands. The pressure built fast and sharp deep within her, needing release.
Rafael refused to give it to her, tending her breasts with his hot mouth, massaging with his hands, taking small nips with his teeth and laving with his tongue. He held her down easily while she clawed at his back, her hips frantically trying to align with his body for relief. Deliberately he fed the sexual frenzy in her mind, heightening her pleasure, sharing his own. The way it felt to have her skin against his skin, moving beneath him like satin and silk. The way it felt to take her breast in his mouth, to stroke her body until she cried out for him. He shared the feeling of holding her beneath him, doing as he willed with her body, a body that belonged to him. He shared what it did to him to feel her fingernails in his skin, her hands bunching in his hair, wanting him, wanting more.
He kissed his way down her belly, his hands massaging her breasts, his thigh holding her in place. She sobbed as he plunged his fingers deep into her wet core. She moved against his hand, but he refused to allow her release. She swore at him, tugged at him, but he shook his head, wanting her to know what it was like, the terrible hunger inside of him every time he looked at her. The needs, dark and intense, that bordered on insanity when he grew hard and thick and needed her body under his. He didn't want her to come to him unaware of his demanding nature. He would try to learn tenderness for her, but he knew exactly what he was like and what he would insist on from her.
'Give yourself to me,' he whispered, dragging her legs around his shoulders. His eyes glittered like black obsidian as they met hers. Then he lowered his head to her hot, waiting core.
She screamed, clawed at his back, tugged at his hair. 'I did. I have,' she pleaded when he stopped time after time, keeping her teetering on the edge of release.
'I am taking what is mine,' he replied. 'There is a difference.'
'You're being a bastard,' she pointed out and screamed again when he deliberately renewed his attack.
When she was sobbing, certain she couldn't take it anymore, he lifted her legs even higher, holding firmly to her ankles as he thrust hard into her. A deep long stroke of possession. He buried himself deep inside of her, deeper than he'd ever been, forcing her to take all of him. He filled her, pushing through soft, swollen folds, slick with welcome, hot with need. She couldn't move in the position he held her, could only lift her hips to try to meet the hard, deep thrusts of his. Fire raged in his blood, burned in his belly. Thunder roared in his head. She was so hot and tight he thought he would explode. His body was no longer his own, but a part of hers and he shook with the pleasure and pain of their forceful joining.
'I claim you as my lifemate.' He bit the words out, gasped them aloud, as he surged into her tight channel, again and again, over and over, never wanting to stop. The fierce conflagration was burning out of control, spreading like a firestorm through him. 'I belong to you. I offer my life for you. I give to you my protection, my allegiance, my heart, my soul and my body. I take into my keeping the same that is yours.'
He was killing her with pleasure. Waves of it crashed over her, through her. She climaxed so many times, so hard; she shook as the sensations ripped through her. As he spoke she felt a curious wrenching in her heart. Her soul. As if something was weaving them together inside of her. As if his ferocious lovemaking and his words combined together to weld them into one complete person. 'Stop!' Panic welled up. He held her ankles tightly, keeping her open to him, shattering her, taking her apart and remaking her so completely there would never be any way to go back to what she had been.
Mercilessly he thrust into her, over and over, ruthless hot hard strokes, each designed to take him deeper, to tie her to him in every way possible. 'Your life, happiness, and welfare will be cherished and placed above my own for all time. You are my lifemate, bound to me for all eternity and always in my care.'
She saw his face, the sensual lines etched deeply, the conviction and implacable resolve, and knew he had done something terrible. She felt it. She knew it. She saw it in the glittering black of his eyes, in the harshness of his expression even as he drove her out of her mind with sheer pleasure. She felt his body hardening and thickening deep inside of her. He threw back his head and she caught the glint of his white fangs as he cried out hoarsely, pumping into her, filling her, sending her body into a wild orgasm that blasted her entire body into a million fragments.
After a while she became aware of lying in the grass with her legs spread, up in the air, his fingers circling her ankles like vises. She tugged to get free. His breathing was ragged, matching hers. He slowly loosened his hold on her and lowered her legs to the ground before slumping over the top of her.
Colby lay beneath Rafael. Her heart slammed so hard she feared it would break through her chest. Her body continued to ripple with aftershocks, pleasure shattering her so that she couldn't move, but lay sprawled out in the grass afraid of the terrible craving his sexual needs had set up in her. She could never find anyone who would do this to her body and soul. How could she lie awake at night and not feel his hands on her body? Not feel him driving into her over and over again until they were both screaming for mercy? Tears burned, but she didn't know if it was
