by Kari Gregg
But they were only tall tales, ghost stories told among vampyr like those told by frightened children around crackling campfires. Garrick didn’t believe half of them.
No one knew what mature females were capable of.
No unmated male had ever seen one.
As soon as their mating finished, pair-bonds vanished, and who could blame them?
Garrick didn’t.
He wouldn’t risk Kate on his home turf where headhunting brethren remained familiar with his habits, his favorite haunts, his preferences. Any one of them could turn, and Garrick wanted Kate as far removed from that threat as possible.
Regardless of its opulence, Pridemore served as a temporary sanctuary for mating and as his bride price to Kate should their mating fail.
He’d built his permanent lair in Brazil.
Already, he plotted their journey deep into the jungle. Fully mated, Kate would begin drawing power, but in Brazil, her powers, whatever they may be, would rapidly surpass his.
That much, he did know.
Males were built to hunt and to fight—a last line of defense.
Females developed the powers necessary for concealing mated pairs. Simple logic told him so. Pair-bonds were never sighted, and males, already mature at mating, were incapable of hiding them.
Garrick’s eyes snapped shut when he heard the clumsy slice of Kate’s teeth into Luc’s throat. He sucked in a hard breath at his reprimand, her bite’s withdrawal.
“You nicked the vein, Kate. You must pierce it. Do not rush. No matter your hunger, you must take your time, assess sound and scent for precision. Garrick will not complain, because he is your mate, but you’ll hurt him unnecessarily. You wish to cause him pain? Again.”
Her teeth sank deep.
Garrick’s jaw clenched.
His cock throbbed.
He could try to distract himself with the awesome wonder his mate would become, but nothing eased the hunger for the woman Kate was now.
“Good. A near-perfect bite. Meticulous. An easy glide through the skin. But do you feel how unnaturally my blood splashes to your throat? It should flow smoothly. The angle of your jaw is too high. That will not hurt Garrick, but it will make your feeding awkward, less satisfying. He is your banquet, not a burger and a side order of fries. You must concentrate. Again.”
Every bite was excruciating for Garrick, arousal ripping through his body. With each too brief sample of the sustenance she craved, with every withdrawal of her mouth as she tried to meet Luc’s exacting instructions, Garrick’s desire built. So finely tuned to her mind and body, Kate’s hunger became his. And her hunger, already denied four hours this night, was voracious.
In the end, all he could do was fist his hands and silently beg for it to be over.
“Excellent. No tearing of the skin whatsoever.”
His control snapped.
“Feed her.” Garrick’s eyes narrowed on the two of them, Kate’s face pale and drawn against the seeping punctures she’d made, Luc’s teasing but no less feral grin. He regarded Garrick with one arched eyebrow. “Feed her, or I swear by all that I am, I’ll—”
“Drink, bébé,” Luc said, pushing her mouth to his neck. Kate’s lips fastened to the ravaged flesh. “Drink deeply, for your mate’s discipline is not as it should be.”
Garrick jerked his head away.
He stared once more into the flames, but his pulse pounded. His blood thundered in his veins as the unbearable sounds of Kate’s feeding taunted his overstimulated senses. The whispery draw of her mouth, the quiet slide of her tongue on the wound, her faint hum of satisfaction as Luc’s strength filled her. All maddened him. Desire was an insatiable beast inside him, no stranger to him but never so violent. He sucked in life-giving air through his clenched teeth, fought to tame his greed because Luc was right. His control was a tenuous thing.
He must not frighten Kate.
When she’d drunk her fill, Luc set her firmly to her feet and staggered from the chair. “Much as it pains me, I must feed from his weres to restore myself.” He nudged her toward Garrick. “Go to him. He needs.”
* * *
She studied him while Luc glided from the room, drawing the door shut with a muted click that resounded like cannons in the charged atmosphere he left behind.
Garrick glanced away. He didn’t dare look at her, helpless to conceal lust from his eyes, his face. His whole body tensed when he heard the rasp of her skirt brush her hips as she crossed to him. When she stood between his parted knees, Garrick’s determined focus on the fire in the hearth never wavered. He refused to allow his eyes to feast on her smooth, trim legs. He wouldn’t as much as glance at the graceful turn of her ankle as she edged a toe forward to trace his thigh.
“Kate,” he muttered under his breath in harsh plea.
She sank to her knees before him.
His eyes snapped shut.
“Rick.” Her small hand retraced the trail her exploring foot had made. “Here?” Her fingers lingered over his inner thigh, where his pulse throbbed, so fiercely she must feel its beckoning call through his clothes. “This is where Luc does not want me to bite. He thinks my mouth there might incite you. Push you beyond the limits of your self-control.”
His heart slammed against the wall of his chest. “At times, Luc can be very wise.”
Her hand brushed his khaki pants, against his straining cock.
He sucked in a hard breath, his gaze flashing to meet hers.
Her eyes were fully dilated. Her chest rose and fell in shallow pants, her skin flush with the desire raging inside her. “Do you burn?” When she leaned forward, her breasts grazed his chest. Her already pebbled nipples scraped through the material of both his shirt and her dress. “I do.”
She reached for his zipper.
He grabbed her wrist, handcuffed it with his fingers before she pushed him too far. “The feeding stirred your vampyr.”
Her eyes flashed brilliant with temper. A low, sexy protest rumbled in her throat.
Garrick’s pulse skyrocketed. “Luc can be very, very wise.”
Her small teeth nipped at her bottom lip. Buried deep in her mind, he shared her edgy restlessness, the jittery vibration of her body. “I hate it. You did this to me, and I hate it. It’s not fair that you don’t feel the same.”
He leaned forward to sweep her lip, soothe the small injury. “Oh, but I do. I’ve wanted you for five hundred years.”
“You lie,” she said, her eyes sparking indignant fury. “How could you want me for centuries when I’m only twenty-six years old?”
“I don’t want to fight. Not tonight.” He manacled both wrists in one hand, and with the other, he stroked her soft, dark hair. “What you’re feeling is natural. Inevitable. Resenting it, or me, won’t change what we are.”
Wetness gathered in her eyes, but obeying the screaming instincts inside her, Kate angled her cheek into his touch. “You did this to me. You did this, and you have to make it stop.” Her voice broke.
“I will.” Praying for more control than he’d mustered so far, he lowered his hand to her breast and cupped its lush weight. Perfect. Her shape, her fullness, the way her breast molded to fit his palm. When her back bowed to push her body into his touch, he shivered because he’d never felt anything so awesome, so right. Her tight nipple stabbed into his palm, begging his attention. “Your vampyr is incredibly strong.”
She lowered her hips over his, and her slick, damp heat settled over his dick. He winced, struggling against the urgent desire that exploded through him. “Forget what I said about Luc,” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s a fool. I’m a fool. This is happening too fast.”
Her full, red lips curved to a delicious bow. “Not nearly fast enough.”
The wet heat of her clawed at him mercilessly.
He wanted to beg.
Instead, he stiffened his spine and said, “You won’t provoke me.”
Her chest rose and fell with ever-increasing pants while his finge
rs plucked, rubbed, and caressed the aching peaks of her breasts through the thin fabric of her dress. “Won’t I?”
“No.” The impassioned glaze of her eyes, the rushing of her blood called to him, but as lusty as the vampyr within Garrick was, the man who desired her as his mate wanted her mind and her heart more.
“If you provoke me, I won’t do this.” His hand left her breast to slide the first button of her bodice free, then the next. “You want my mouth on you.”
“Yes,” she moaned with a husky abandon that made his blood roar in his ears. “No,” she said. “I hate you.”
“I imagine, right now, that you do. Come here, love.”
Sliding the bodice of her dress wide, he pulled her forward to flick the bead of her nipple with his tongue. She squirmed in his arms, arching her spine to best offer her breasts to him.
Desire, raw and untempered, coiled in his gut and made his hands shake. His tongue laved her nipple, his teeth lightly scraped, and he groaned low in his throat. He released her hand, and her fingers speared through his hair to pull him more tightly to her. “You like this?” he asked, his hot breath fanning her sensitive skin so that she whimpered. “I know that you do.”
“Tell me.”
Her hands fisted in his hair, her fingernails digging into his scalp. “Don’t,” she said through parted lips. “Don’t you dare tease me.”
“I’m not teasing you,” he said against her nipple, drawing it into his mouth to suckle. “I’m teaching you to enjoy how I touch you. Not because you body needs it, but because you like and want it.”
He shifted to lavish her other breast with the same enflaming licks and nips. When she cried out, Garrick pulled back and slammed his eyes shut. “You like how I make you feel when—”
She yanked his lips back to her tit. “More.”
Laughing, Garrick surrendered to her vampyr and the leashed demands of his body. “Then more you shall have.”
He sucked at her, hard and ruthless, so that she shivered and moaned. He jerked the bodice of her dress down her arms, leaving her bared to the waist.
“No,” she panted in heart-wrenching protest when he drew back to stare at the swollen red pout of her nipples. “Don’t stop.”
“You are beautiful.” He gritted his teeth against the need to take her. His finger traced the damp wet circle his mouth had left on her. His heart raced in his chest at her greedy, responding moan. “Why should I not look my fill?”
“I need…” she said and, trailing off, bit her bottom lip.
It was the worrying of her lip that did it, that soft show of vulnerability that stripped him to his core. “Touch me, love. I know what you need.”
Her fingers released his hair and dropped to his shirt. Staring into his eyes, so much he was lost in her, he waited, chest heaving as Kate fumbled with the first button, then the next and the next until her shaking hands spread his shirt wide.
He smiled at her gasp, at the reverent glide of her small hands on his skin. They left a trail of quivering flesh wherever her caress explored.
Garrick had coupled with other women.
Not many.
If his faith hadn’t forbidden casual sex, his heart would have. He’d lain with women when the need to share some sort of intimacy—any intimacy—had driven him to desperate facsimiles of it. He’d given them his body. They’d yielded theirs, but no matter his lover’s skill or her beauty, he’d walked away empty. Cold. As alone and lonely as he’d ever been.
He wasn’t cold now.
Garrick had been with more talented and inventive lovers, but none who melted him as she did.
“You wanted fair. This is fair, Kate.” He loved the way her dark eyes narrowed on him, sparkling with both defiance and suspicion. Loved how she shifted nervously over him, though it pained his aching, needy dick and taxed his control considerably. He loved how she wrinkled her nose in disapproving wariness at him. He loved. “However, wherever I touch or look at you,” he said, heart swelling inside him, “you may touch and look at me as well.”
She licked her lips.
“Truly?”
If it killed him. “Yes.”
Her mouth curved to a feline smile that seared him to the bone.
She captured his wrists and, testing, drew them behind him to the base of his spine. He shuddered when she reached around him, at the brush of her breasts against his chest, soft as velvet and just as warm.
His eyebrow arched when she tried and failed to manacle both of his hands there. “Your hands are too small, love.”
She scowled at him.
Oh, how he loved her. “But I will not move, if that is your wish.”
“It is.”
“Trust me.”
Left with little choice, she withdrew her hands to splay them across the expanse of his chest.
His muscles bunched in anticipation.
His nostrils flared.
His heart thundered under her palm like a racehorse given its head.
She eyed him, her brow lifting to a skeptical arc.
“I won’t move. I swear it.”
Chapter Nine
With a disbelieving sniff, Kate stroked his skin. Her curious fingers traced the hard curve of his shoulders, skimmed his flat brown nipple. She tested the baby-fine hair on his chest before lowering her hand to outline the abs defined by his taut stomach.
Garrick quivered at the tender investigation, then moaned, but he remained still as stone no matter how much he ached to thrust up against her, to feel her slick heat against his cock. He clasped his hands at the base of his spine until his muscles corded.
He would not reach for her.
If he tore every ligament in his arms to stop himself, he would not.
Because she touched him now not because her vampyr drove her to seek him. She explored him because the woman underneath her body’s urgent demands wanted to know her mate. He wouldn’t think of it as wishful thinking. Couldn’t. If her vampyr had driven her to him, wouldn’t her touch demand? Would not her caress show her greed? Instead, her fingers skated light and gentle over his heated skin. Slow. Tempting. As a lover’s should be.
So he gave her what she needed.
He saturated his senses with the scent of her wafting around him, let her hands stoke the desire that fired his blood and set him to trembling. “Kate,” he finally whispered.
She bent to his stomach and, starting at his navel, trailed her tongue to the small of his throat in one long sensuous lick.
Garrick’s body tautened like a drawn bow.
He threw his head back. He groaned at the sizzling jolt of pleasure that flashed through him.
“You liked that, yes?” she asked, voice husky and wanton in his ear. “I know that you do. Tell me.”
Though his body screamed an agony of need, Garrick chuckled at the words she repeated back to him. But unlike Kate, he obeyed.
“Your hands are like fire on me, your touch so light it maddens me, and your mouth—” He shuddered, closing his eyes against the desire that swamped him, only to force his heated gaze to hers so that she, too, saw his hunger naked and glittering. “I’d kill, gladly, to feel your mouth on me, tasting me again.”
She smiled, circling his nipple with one finger. “Here?”
His lashes fell so that he stared through passion-drugged slits. “Yes.”
She dipped her head.
Garrick’s eyes snapped shut.
Her tongue darted, laving him.
Garrick wondered that the back of his skull didn’t explode for the miracle of sensation she stirred in him. His blood roared. Pleasure teased his every nerve ending, and when her mouth settled on his nipple to gently suck, he tensed in helpless anticipation. “Bite me, love. Please.”
Her gaze shifted higher to meet his, her rosy lips a breath from his skin. “So greedy.” Her mouth curved to a taunting bow that rocked him, but when her teeth scraped, then finally jabbed into him, the shallow pinpricks she made mocked his mounting need.
When she sipped the miserly drop she’d released, Garrick’s control snapped.
A feral growl escaped his throat. His hands lunged from behind his back to her hips so that he could seat her firmly atop his cock. She rubbed against him, welcoming his hardness through the frustrating barrier of his trousers.
Garrick rolled on the floor, pushing her into the carpet beneath him. Kate licked and nipped at him unabated, squeezing her thighs around his hips. She lifted hers, thrusting her drenched pussy against him.
His mind spun.
His hands shook.
She wanted him. Almost as desperately as he wanted her, but it couldn’t be all physical. The mind-melting passion that churned and pitched and boiled inside him—inside them both—had to run deeper.
“Kate.”
She released his nipple, obeyed the low, rumbling command in his voice.
“Look at me.”
When her gaze met his, passion glittered in her stare like stars on a moonless night, sharp and so pure she staggered him.
“I’ve dreamed about this, about you, for centuries. Let me love you. Trust me to care for you, protect you, keep you safe. My heart is yours. My life is yours. My body is yours. Choose me, Kate. Choose me.”
She arched her back, offering herself to him. Her breasts brushed the heated skin of his chest, scalding him with her fire so that they both burned. Mindlessly burned. “Yes.”
Garrick took her mouth, sweeping his tongue inside to tangle and dance with hers. He tasted his blood on her, in her. Gluttonous pleasure at her eager lips, her welcoming body, the wonderful sounds she made in the back of her throat, they fed his desire, as he fanned hers.
Kate wrapped her arms around him, crushing her delicate body into his. Their lips molded. His mind reeled at the amazing softness of her breasts against his sensitized skin, the voracious play of her sweet, sweet lips. She kissed him as though she meant to consume him, mind, body, and soul. Her mouth devoured him, destroyed him, made his hands urgent and awkward when he tore her skirt away, desperate with the need to feel the smooth sweep of her bared thighs cradling his body in hers.