anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
Whatever had made him hesitate, her words broke the spell. He bent to kiss her navel and continued below, working toward the powerful ache that only he could cure. He reached her tight nest of curls and slid his tongue into the tender depression beneath.
Alexia moaned as he tasted the soft, moist flesh, stroking and exploring. She tangled her fingers in his thick hair, urging him to drink deeply. He licked his way to her entrance and dipped in, just for an instant, before working back up to her clitoris. He took it between his lips and sucked, drawing Alexia to a nearly unbearable pinnacle of need. Pleasure became pain, pain pleasure. She began to throb and tremble, balancing on the brink of a fall that would never end.
But when she stepped over the edge, Damon was there to catch her. She felt herself pulse wildly against his mouth, felt him lick the moisture from her swollen lips as if it were the only sustenance he would ever need.
But he wasn’t finished, and almost as soon as it was over she felt a renewed ache between her thighs—an overpowering need to be filled with everything Damon could give her.
He licked his lips, savoring the sweet taste of Alexia’s body. He was not ignorant of the many flavors of a woman, but never had he experienced it this way before. Not even with—
He pushed the memories away. Alexia deserved everything he had to offer her, and he needed to be inside her as much as he needed blood to stay alive.
Positioning himself over her, he unzipped his fly, too impatient to remove his pants.
She spread her thighs wide to accommodate him, and he settled between them, his cock briefly resting between her stomach and his. Then he lifted himself, shuddering as her hand found him and guided him in.
His need was too intense to control. With a long, slow thrust he entered her, listening to her gasp of surprise and moan of pleasure as she felt him begin to move. She was tight and very wet, and he knew for all her casualness about sex that she hadn’t been with a man for a long time.
But she didn’t ask him to be gentle, and for all his efforts to move slowly, his hunger continued to drive him. He thrust deeply and pulled out, thrust hard again, and all the while Alexia gripped his shoulders and urged him on. Her head rolled back and her eyelids fluttered. She cried out his name.
When she finally came again, pulsing hard around his cock, he followed her quickly, pumping fast to fill her with seed that could never create life. He released his breath and buried his face in her neck, still tucked inside her, reveling in the scent of her perspiration and the hot femininity of her sex.
But this wasn’t only about his pleasure, his need. He lifted himself up again so that he could see her face. It was flushed and relaxed, but when her eyes opened and her lips parted to display her teeth, he knew she wasn’t really seeing him. She wasn’t aware what was happening when her incisors grazed his neck, pressed gently down and pierced the skin. She had no idea that she was saving herself as she licked up the blood and sucked it from his veins, but for him it was pleasure even beyond pushing deep inside her body, and he knew it was the same for her.
He wasn’t forcing her. Her own body was doing what instinct told it to do. She was keeping her promise to him, and he wasn’t going to stop her, not even if she hated him afterward.
A strange feeling overwhelmed Damon, and it was so unfamiliar that he didn’t recognize it until he heard his heart beating in time with hers.
It was joy. And as he felt Alexia’s tongue trail over his skin and his blood flow into her mouth, he knew this moment, this emotion, would never come again. When she jerked again beneath him in a third orgasm, her thighs locking around his waist and her gasps of pleasure mingling with his, he thanked whatever gods might be that they had found each other for this brief moment in time.
When Alexia woke, everything had changed.
She felt it first in her heart, beating strong and steady for the first time since her patch had been stripped from her skin. Next she noticed that the pain under her arm was gone, and when she felt the wound she found it cool and dry to the touch, hardly even a trace of a scab remaining. Her whole body hummed with energy and an inexplicable happiness.
Breathing in a lungful of late-morning air, Alexia realized that all her senses had been renewed, sight and smell and hearing, as if she had taken one of the illegal drugs that were said to create a sense of oneness with the world that could change a human’s experience for a lifetime.
But the only drug she had ingested was her joining with the man beside her, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, his expression so relaxed that she realized just how much he had suffered trying to protect her and keep her alive. Here he had no masters, no ugly memories...only peace, for a few precious hours.
She had new memories now—
And she remembered him moving inside her, fitting so perfectly that she could imagine it was her first time, her first lover, and there could never be another. She remembered her own moans and cries as he thrust deeper, harder, carrying her into a white-hot sun of pleasure beyond description.
After that...Alexia sighed, closing her eyes as the warmth of the rising sun, creeping over the hills to the east, bathed her face and shoulders. There had been those few moments of utter bliss at the end, an explosion of sensation that had blotted out all thought and consciousness, everything but that eternal moment of ecstasy. She could still feel her body humming with it.
Had Damon felt the same thing? Did it really matter? They had comforted each other, giving and taking in equal measure. That was all anyone could ask.
More than
Unwilling to wake Damon, Alexia rose silently and went for her pack and canteen. Her balance had returned, along with the strength in her legs. She knelt to pick up the canteen and realized it was nearly empty. So was Damon’s. Almost certainly he had given her most of the water when she’d been ill, but she was pretty sure even Daysiders needed to drink something other than blood.
There was a creek within two kilometers of their current location, but it lay at the foot of the hills to the east, at the edge of the very same valley where the illegal colony stood.
Even though she and Damon had been left alone for over twenty-four hours, Alexia had no illusions about the risk they would be taking just to replenish their supply of water.
The very idea that she could be thinking of taking a hike through the hills startled Alexia. She paused to take stock of her body again, listening to the even throb of her heart, the clean feel of air in her lungs, the healthy hunger that reminded her how long ago she’d eaten.
Her first thought had been right. It was exactly as if she’d taken a drug. The most powerful drug anyone could imagine.
The canteen dropped from Alexia’s hand. She touched her mouth. The taste was faint, almost imperceptible, but it was there.
Blood.
She shook her head fiercely, but the idea would not be dislodged. Surely it was impossible. She couldn’t have done it without being aware of it.
But she hadn’t been fully aware the first time she had offered herself to Damon, when she’d been too ill to know what she was doing. And there was that blank spot in her memory at the very pinnacle of the night’s lovemaking.
Could sex with Damon have so completely erased her inhibitions, everything she believed in?
She turned to look at Damon, struggling with the urge to shake him awake and demand an answer. His face was still peaceful, as innocent as any Daysider’s could be.
Almost content.
Was he content because he had finally gotten her to do exactly what he wanted without forcing her? Had he taken something else for himself in the process?
Probing her neck and shoulders with her fingertips, Alexia could find no tenderness that would indicate the
