“I’m just the girl you brought home to meet your father,” she whispered in between kisses, her feminine power so rich, she was immediately drunk on it. “We’ve just snuck out to be alone.” Her lips curved wickedly against his. “You’ve impressed me with your astronomy. What happens next?”
His palms raked down over Mary’s buttocks, urging her up on tiptoes, lifting her slightly so her sex bore down on his erection, his head falling back on a long moan. “I act like a gentleman, bring you back to the house and tuck you safely into bed?”
“No.” Emboldened by the unsteadiness in his tone, the thickness of his shaft and the knowledge that she was his mate, Mary took the collar of his shirt in her grip and leapt, wrapping her legs around his hips. “That’s not really what you want, Tucker,” she whispered, raking her teeth up to his ear and biting. “Try again.”
His hand slipped into the waistband of her skirt, kept going until his touch invaded her panties to knead her bottom. “Mary, you don’t understand what you’re asking me,” he rasped, capturing her mouth for a thorough kiss. “I want more than anything to pretend we’re a normal, human couple, but we’re not. I’m a predator and you’re my mate. If you let me inside this body, it’ll be the end of my fucking leash.” A slicing sound signaled the dropping of his fangs and the grip on her backside turned bruising. “I’m going to need everything. Going to need your blood. And…”
“And?”
Chapter 17
And?
Her pulse rapped against his skull, the glands in his neck strained beyond the point of pain. Drink. Take. Stop denying yourself. His entire body was pulled tight as a bowstring, his animal nature ordering him to take the sacrifice that was being offered. And goddammit, he’d denied himself too long. Too often. Being in close quarters with his Mary day after day, night after night, had worn his control down to nothing. There was no willpower left for this final test. The ultimate test of being seduced by the girl he wanted more than life or afterlife itself.
Was it possible she was really considering staying with him?
Giving up the things she wanted most…just for Tucker?
With every rub of her tongue, every tightening of her thighs around his waist, every loving scrape of her fingernails on his scalp, he believed her a little bit more. And more. Until he was forgetting why this was a bad idea in the first place. With his body in the driver’s seat, he lost sight of selflessness. Or doing what he believed to be the right thing by her. He could only devour her mouth, clutch her buns in his hands and grind her against his lap, earning hot, little mewling sounds from her throat. Yours it’s yours it’s yours. Her greedy reactions to his touch made Tucker believe. Or desperately want to believe that their love ran in two side by side currents. Not just one. His.
He ached to be shown that physically.
To lay her down on the ground and let out this explosion of need, love, lust, possession that teemed within him at all times. More than that, he wanted to go home. He always had. Always ached to belong, but he could say with total conviction that…with his home sitting not a hundred yards away, Mary felt more like home than anything or anywhere.
She was his home. A home that wanted him back, by some miracle. And that—her need—pushed him into a place of no return.
A place that had him kneeling on the semi-soft ground, never breaking their kiss, and gently laying the girl of his dreams on her back in the field where he grew up. Her radiance glowed and ebbed beneath her skin, golden stars spinning around her head at a dizzying pace. What gripped him hardest was the trust she showed him, not flinching or even feeling around her for the sensation of something familiar when her back met the ground, and God, he didn’t want to take that trust for granted.
If he drank from her, he’d never be able to exist any other way.
Her decision to stay or go would mean life or death for him.
She wasn’t fully decided about forgoing the wedding and remaining by his side. He couldn’t take the decision out of her hands. He couldn’t.
But Jesus Christ, her vitality sang to him, reeled him in, put him in a trance until he could only stare down at his mate, this brave girl with red hair spread out around her in shimmering flames, his every molecule existing for her, and marvel.
Mine. Mine Mine Mine.
He’d have to find a way to keep from drinking her.
He’d have to.
“Tucker,” she whispered, reaching up to drag her palms down his chest, descending farther until she found the fly of his jeans, unfastening the button, her chest lifting and falling faster and faster. “Don’t make me wait any more.”
The urgency in her command channeled something inside of him, a demanding instinct to please his mate that brought his fingers to the hem of his shirt, peeling it over his head and tossing it by the wayside, his fangs throbbing at the sight of Mary pulling down his zipper with her small, elegant hands. She gasped when he filled her palm, running eager fingertips up and down his rigid dick, tongue snaking out to wet her lips, thighs falling open in a way that almost snapped his sanity.
He was on top of her before he registered his own movements, rubbing the heel of his hand side to side against the crotch of her panties, satisfaction expanding his rib cage to find her panties already sodden. “Can’t believe kissing me did this to you.” His voice was threadbare against her mouth. “Can’t believe any of this is happening.”
Mary’s hands ran down the columns of his arms, along his chest and down to his stomach and he automatically reached for her wrist to move it somewhere else, somewhere he wasn’t quite so abundant, but she tugged out of his grip and placed her hands there once more, running her fingers through the springy hair on his rounded stomach. And to his utter shock, she writhed with all the more urgency in the grass, her lungs laboring to draw breath.
“I love how dense you are here,” she whispered. “How substantial you are all over. It matches the man inside and it anchors me. The world isn’t empty when you’re filling it up.”
Heat pressed up behind his eyes, her words filing down the teeth of his long-standing insecurities. So much that he spared little thought about his weight when ripping the panties down her thighs and pressing her down, down with his heft, driving his tongue into her mouth to taste the whimpers she set free into the night air. “If more of me exists, it’s only there to fulfil you,” he rasped, his open mouth traveling down the column of her throat and back up to capture her lips. “Let me do that.”
“I want to satisfy you, too.”
“Every breath you take does that for me,” he growled into her neck, reaching down to fist his cock and brush it back and forth against her entrance. “But ah, honey, there’s something you need to know.” He dropped his head to her shoulder. “I haven’t done this before. Not in this life or the last one. How can I be sure I’ll control myself when I don’t even know what it’ll feel like?”
Silence stretched, followed by an elated sob from Mary. “I’m your first and you’re mine, too,” she breathed. “Focus on the wonder and rightness and weight of that, Tucker. There isn’t room for anything else.”
“You say all the right things,” he said with an unsteady laugh that quickly turned into a groan beside her ear. And he couldn’t keep himself any longer from pressing the head of his shaft into her damp entrance, both of them sucking in a ragged breath. “Christ, Mary, you’re so wet and tight.”
“Give me more,” she whispered brokenly.
Conditioned to give his mate and love of his life what she wanted, he automatically sank in a few more inches, his hand turning to a fist and bashing the ground above her head with such force that a deep crevice formed in the spot, soil and grass flying in every direction. And the humanity left inside him flickered and faded, giving way to the monstrous possessiveness that rode within him like a permanent passenger. “More what?”
Her thighs flexed around him, her pulse flying. “More of you.”
“My dick.” He pumped deeper.
“That’s my dick, honey, and it’s filling you right up, isn’t it?” His hips tilted, bearing down on her clit, his fangs sharpening, hungering. “Tell me you need to be mated. Tell me I’m not the only one who feels like an animal. Tell me you want to be fucked by one out here in this field. Hard.”
As the words were coming out of his mouth, the part of him that remained Tucker, a being clinging to his humanity, begged him to walk it back. To stop being so crude and blatant and raw with this delicate girl who trusted him. But when she reared up with her hips, panting, nails ripping down the length of his back, he saw that she enjoyed it and could do nothing but give her more. No holding back. There was no need. No matter the words exchanged between them as he worked her toward release, she knew him. Knew him better than anything.
“Mate me,” she gasped.
Permission granted, Tucker plunged the fingers of one hand into the earth for purchase, for leverage, and he rode Mary’s willing body. He kept his lips clamped tightly shut, a barrier to remind him of the consequence for drinking her blood. And he focused instead on her impossibly narrow channel, how hot she ran between her thighs. With obsessive interest, he studied the arch of her throat, the bite marks she was leaving on her lower lip. He listened to the sobbing renditions of his name and memorized them, wrote them on his consciousness to remain for as long as he lived.
“Eager little fairy,” he groaned when she clenched around his cock, signs of her climax already beginning to show themselves. The nearing eruption, the kind he craved beyond words, made her breath shallow, her hands pulling and shoving at his shoulders. “You’re almost there, aren’t you? Stroking me from the inside, over and over. Tight. Asking for it…Jesus.”
Her head thrashed side to side. “Not yet.”
“Yes,” he countered through his teeth, the tempo of his hips picking up. “Now.”
Because he couldn’t withstand the perfection of her much longer. His instinct pleaded with him to lift her chin, tilt her head to one side and drink her blood. To allow his release to flood the snug notch between her legs and claim her forever. To mark her, brand her, seal both of their fates forever. Do it. Pierce her skin. He could put an end to the mounting pressure in his loins that got worse every second he spent around his mate.
No. No.
“Mary, I can feel how badly you want to come.” He ducked his head and licked the underside of her jaw, straight up to her ear, breathing into it. “Do it for me. Let it go.”
Again, she shook her head, though the girl was trembling head to toe with the effort to hold back a climax. “There’s no real pleasure without yours.”
He buried his face in her neck and howled his frustration. “Don’t you think I want to bathe your fucking womb in me, Mary? I can’t, goddammit.” His words started running together, slurring under the inundation of lust, for her body, for her blood. “You know I have to drink from you before my body will let me.”
She rubbed her cheek against the side of his head. “My blood is yours.”
Oh fuck, he couldn’t deny himself any longer. The delicious scent of her made his head swim, made his body coil so tight, he feared he’d snap without freeing the burden he’d been carrying around for so long.
How could he justify this?
How?
If Mary chose Hadrian, she would never know the lack of her blood caused Tucker to perish. Or if she ever did, her feelings for him will have long since faded. She’d be living a new life, her family intact, able to see the world.
All the beauty that could never compete with her own.
If the unimaginable happened and she decided not to sacrifice herself to the dark uprising, Tucker would still give her a choice. If she didn’t want to live as his mate, the female who kept him fed and living, he would respect that. Take his leave of her and this world. Of course he would. His mate would always be given a choice.
Armed with his resolve, Tucker pressed his face to her neck longingly, closed his eyes and broke her skin with his fangs. There was a brief second of sheer horror over making his mate bleed and then it was utter euphoria speeding through his veins. Her taste was something biblical that couldn’t be named. It coasted along his tongue, his taste buds, and trickled down the back of his parched throat, reaching some unnamed part of him, a vampiric land that was undiscovered. That he wasn’t even aware existed until that moment. A feathered, frantic whipping sound grew louder and louder in his ears, his brain desperately trying to identify the source until he realized it was his own heart. Of course. His mate had turned his heart from stone to a real living organ and it pumped only for her, powered by her life force.
Oh Jesus, though, he couldn’t get his fill of the taste of her.
Without conscious thought, he’d gathered her body tightly to his own in the grass, his cock still planted and rifling hungrily between her legs. He’d heard about this. About the female being rendered immobile by their man’s bite. But not Mary. Her fae ancestry allowed her to call his name hoarsely, her heels digging into his thrusting buttocks, her fingers spearing into his hair to hold him fast, turning her head as if demanding he take more.
“My fairy,” he growled. “Mine.”
And he flattened her.
He fucking flattened her, drawing her knees up high so he could drive deeper into her tight, slippery sex, moaning brokenly as she brought him back to life.
When one of her hands slipped out of his hair and landed lifeless on the ground, his heart that had so recently started working again nearly slammed to a stop. As carefully as possible, he retracted his fangs from her skin, grunting miserably at the sight of the two holes he’d left behind. “Mary.” He shook her. “Oh God, honey—”
Her eyes opened and she smiled at him.
The utter beauty of his mate momentarily stunned Tucker, allowing Mary to roll him onto his back and there she rode him in the sliver of moonlight, her hips bucking furiously, her fingers knotted and twisting in his chest hair—and he broke.
He broke with a roar, the pressure in his loins crumbling and dispersing. Filling his mate.
Red and black warred in front of his eyes and when he saw real life again, she was back beneath him, gasping at each of his frenzied thrusts, her own climax making her shake, seize up around him. And this was fulfilment. Being in this place of vulnerability and power with the woman he would die for, hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but prepared no matter what. Because there was nothing in this world or the next more precious or beloved than Mary. So he lifted her into the cradle of his arms to let her know, over and over again, until the threat of sunlight brought him to his feet, carrying his mate back to the house.
Chapter 18
Tucker was so content to hold Mary in the field, passing the hours until morning by stroking her glowing skin, that he almost didn’t make it to the basement in time to avoid the sun. He’d carried Mary inside at warp speed and settled her sleeping form in his childhood bed, before getting down to the safety of the underground floor. Truthfully, even if he’d been paying enough attention to know the Tuesday morning sunrise was imminent, he still probably would have waited until the last second, just to continue holding her in his arms as long as possible.
“What a way to go, am I right?” he sighed now, about two hours later, flicking the top off the dusty shoebox marked Farah Moore, almost putting it right back on. Lying right on top of dozens of loose papers were the bright yellow Post-Its she used to slap on everything, labeling the house from linen closet to wrapping paper drawer.
Don’t forget to fill the ice cube trays, said the first one.
Tucker frowned. Now that he thought about it, Farah had done a lot more than label drawers and cabinets, hadn’t she? She’d put reminders everywhere on the same sticky yellow paper. Check milk for expiration on Tuesdays. Trash goes out on Thursday morning. The mailman’s name is Todd. Tucker’s pediatrician’s number is…and so on.
Note after note of the same messages sat in the shoe box. Hundreds of them.
/> A creak on the basement stairs brought Tucker’s head up, his heart throwing itself into a sprint when he scented his mate., even though he’d only seen her a matter of moments ago when she’d implored him to get inside, lest he turn to a puff of ash. The new blood in his body raced south and thickened his cock in the old pair of sweatpants he’d found in the drawer, the act of becoming aroused so much stronger and swifter now that his heart was functioning again. His momentary dizziness caused a split-second delay in helping Mary and he cursed his ineptitude, jumping to his feet and reaching her fast enough to blow the notes from his mother all over the basement.
“Did you sleep?” he asked, taking her hand and guiding her into the relative darkness.
“A little.” A smile curved her lips. That was the only warning Tucker was given before his mate let go of the railing, spread her arms and let herself free fall forward into his arms. Of course he caught her. Of course there was no chance of a different outcome when her safety ruled his actions, but his throat muscles closed up all the same.
“You woke up in a playful mood,” Tucker choked out, carrying her down the stairs smashed against his chest, her toes dangling somewhere near his shins.
“Yes.” She laid her cheek against his chest and grinned. “I was more relaxed knowing you weren’t hungry or…”
“Horny?” His laughter was pained. “I got news for you, that’s an ongoing problem.”
He was on the bottom step when their lips met in a melting slide of a kiss, her moan causing every nerve ending in his body to vibrate. “Let’s fix it.”
Tucker groaned, his palm raking down her back and stopping just short of her ass. His hunger demanded to be appeased, his fangs waiting eagerly on standby, pulsing in his gums. But the heart she’d brought back to life ached so fucking badly. The organ wailed pitifully in his chest at the uncertainty of their future together. He was a mated vampire that craved eternity with his fairy, but despite loving each other, their time together was dwindling.
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