by Pam Godwin
He dried his face and returned to his imposing stance, looming over me and watching me from beneath dark brows.
“It didn’t hurt.” I dragged a fingertip over his needle-tipped fang and lowered my palm to his chest. “There was a sting then an incredible amount of pleasure. I’d love to feel that again, while we’re not hanging from a cliff.”
His fingers followed the curve of my neck, tracing the puncture marks. He leaned closer, his sweat pants rubbing against the hem of my shorts. I felt his desire as sharp as my own. In the swell of his cock. In the heat of his exhales warming my face.
His eyes, like dark brown caverns, stared down at me. Calmer now, but still filled with remorse. “When a nymph bites a cured woman, a healing agent is released and the wound quickly closes. When a spider bites, the damage festers, bruises, and can become infected. Why do you think the nymph heals while the spider harms?”
I had a bad feeling about where he was going with this. “Nymphs are driven to be healed, so I guess it makes sense for them to safeguard the source of the cure and preserve the continuation of human women. But the spiders…they’re not seeking a cure.”
“They’re designed to wipe it out, to erase humanity. There is nothing good or beneficial that comes from this.” He drew back his lips and flashed his fangs.
“You’re not one of them.”
He shut his eyes, not to shut me out, but to lock me in, to savor my words. I knew this because his eyelids lay gently closed, his lips softened, and his breaths eased.
When he looked at me again, his gaze was raw and vulnerable. “I loved biting you. Loved your thick, rich flavor spilling down my throat. Your taste, that feeling of consuming you, of being consumed by you, I want more, Evie. Your blood, your tears, your body, your heart… I want all of you.” His tall frame flexed around me, and he hissed menacingly past his fangs. “That makes me one of them.”
If he wanted to scare me, he’d have to try harder.
“How many people have you bitten?”
“Two.” A growl.
Elaine and me. My breath snagged on a bloodthirsty lump in my throat. I wanted to hunt her down and rip out her slimy spine. I balled my fists and scanned the room, searching for something to smash.
“Evie. Look at me.”
I forced my rising temper to cool and lifted my eyes. God, he was stunning, with his eyebrows drawn together and his muscles all pumped up, as if prepared to chase me if I fled.
I wasn’t planning on going anywhere without him.
His hands found my waist, holding me against him, and he lowered his forehead to mine. “Aiman made me bite her.” His face twisted with disgust. “It was sickening.”
I remembered him telling me in Georgia that Elaine was weak, that he’d sampled her blood from a syringe and found it ineffective in satisfying his cravings. Maybe she was just too tainted with evil.
His thumbs absently caressed the skin above my hips. “My venom was useless in enabling Aiman to take control of the child in Elaine’s womb. So he bit her himself, only to discover my bite had inadvertently made the child immune to his programming.”
My gaze flew to his, wide with surprise. “That means both her child and mine will be normal?”
“If by normal you mean they’ll be in control of their minds, then yes.”
“That’s why he didn’t make you bite others? Because you carry a vaccine?”
He nodded.
My mind raced through the implications. “You could extract your venom and distribute it to pregnant women. They could inoculate themselves with it to protect their children. How can you not see that as a good thing?”
“I can’t extract the venom.” He glanced behind me, where three of his fangs lay in the sink. “I’ve tried.”
Oh. “But you can bite them.”
“You want me to travel around the world, biting pregnant women?”
“Fuck no.” I didn’t want him to leave my side ever again.
He gathered me in his arms. “I won’t bite strangers, Evie. It’s too intimate.”
I shivered and snuggled against his chest, soaking in his warmth. Slowly, unassumingly, I trailed a finger along a raised vein in his bicep, studying his face as I dipped downward, across the crease of his elbow and through the dusting of dark hair on his sinewy forearm. Every inch of him was gorgeous and oh-so very lethal.
Aiman and Elaine had tried to break him, but here he was, an indestructible stone wall standing like a divider in time, putting the past behind us and bracing against the future.
He watched me intently as I explored his narrow waist, tracing the ridge of the V that indented his hip and outlined his abs. I skimmed along the top of his waistband. Lingered on the thin path of hair that disappeared beneath the elastic.
It would be too easy to stay right there forever, wrapped in his protection and lost in the sensuality of his powerfully-built form. But we were in a public restroom with a sink full of fangs and unanswered questions.
I shifted my thoughts back to the conversation. “Your venom is altered because you consumed my blood. We could donate my blood to volunteers—to men since women don’t grow fangs—and you could bite those men after they drink my blood and send them off to spread their bites to pregnant women.”
But there was a downside. I met his patient eyes and realized he’d already considered this and found the holes in it.
I sighed. “Your bite would make those men infertile, and their bites would do the same to the women. All of which works against the proliferation of mankind. Fuck. What would happen if you bit Jesse and Roark? At the very least, it would vaccinate them against spiders. I don’t know if they’d be down with you biting them. Well, Roark would probably get off on it, and he’s already infertile. Your bite would protect them and—”
“Evie.”
“Hmm?”
“We don’t have to solve the world’s problems tonight.”
“I know. But there’s an answer there somewhere, with your venom, my blood, our child—”
“Stop talking.”
“But—”
He captured my mouth, kissing me like he had the first time during my captivity in Malta. Tender nips. A tongue touch. His lips tightly pulled over his teeth. Too much constraint.
I moved my mouth against his. “Let me feel your fangs.”
His groan vibrated against my lips, and with it came the biting scrape of teeth. He ate at my mouth, delicately, expertly, guiding my tongue around his fangs, letting me feel their sharpness without drawing blood. Every lick and taste we exchanged stoked the blaze in my belly, fanning it downward, heating and throbbing between my legs.
He rolled his hips and nudged his hardness against my clit, and soon, his soft and steady kiss morphed into urgent and bruising. I gripped his shoulders, the cords beneath my hands bunching and his strength holding me up, as his kisses strengthened.
Fueled with urgency, his lips moved faster, his jaw pressed harder, fangs dragging and scratching, and his tongue…fuck, his tongue fought and wrestled and conquered. I couldn’t match his aggressive strokes, didn’t want to. I wanted to fall apart in his arms and let his hunger devour me.
He broke the kiss. “You’ve already been sated by two men tonight. You don’t need—”
“I won’t be sated until you are.”
Perhaps it was a biological survival mechanism, like maybe my overcharged sex drive was meant to draw my protectors to my side and keep them so thoroughly satisfied they’d never leave? Whatever it was drove me to push this, to connect with him in the most primitive way.
I nibbled at his lips. “Blowing up aphids isn’t the only weird thing I’ve acquired with this pregnancy. I have this supercharged energy and my libido… Trust me when I say you can’t keep up with me.”
Oh, I’d dangled a challenge there, knowing he would exhaust himself to prove me wrong. Honestly, of my three guardians, he was the one most likely to wear me out.
He arched a disbelieving brow and s
lipped a hand between our bodies. Fingers trailed over my stomach, and I knew he was thinking of our child as he lingered there, tenderly caressing, his expression thoughtful. Then he continued downward, beneath the waistband of my shorts, lower, deeper. He slid a finger around my clit, through my folds, and ahhh, I gasped as he dipped inside.
I adjusted my stance, parting my legs to ease the thrust of his fingers. His mouth fused with mine, plunging us into a furious melding of tongues and wet breaths. His fangs grazed my lips, and our need collided, hot and panting, deep and defining. I’d missed this, his exotic musk and overbearing possession. God, I’d missed him.
Lowering a hand from his shoulder, I brushed my fingertips along the outline of his long, hard cock, where it strained against its sheath of tight fabric. I waited for him to pull back, to give me a sign that he wasn’t ready. But he deepened the kiss and ground his length against my hand, assuring me, encouraging me.
I wrapped my fingers around him through the cotton, stroking, reveling in the feel of his abs twitching against my arm. He groaned and jerked his hips, fighting to thrust harder in my grip. He fucked my fist urgently, dragging his hard length back and forth, limited by the strain of his pants.
He tore his mouth away and spun me toward the mirror. The reflection of his eyes captured mine as his fingers glided down my hips, sinking beneath my shorts and shoving them down my legs.
I watched him watching me in the mirror, my body singing beneath a surge of tremors and my pulse humming with his aura.
His gaze fixated on my swollen lips and lifted to my eyes. “You’re devastatingly beautiful.”
My chest hitched, and my nipples hardened beneath the suddenly itchy shirt. I shifted to remove it, but he was faster, yanking it up and over my head. Then he was on me, his chest blanketing my back, his fangs scraping my neck, and his hands moving everywhere, squeezing my breasts, tracing the scar on my chest, palming my belly, my ass, my inner thighs, his fingers seeking, sliding through my arousal, and fucking me until I lost the fight with my laboring lungs.
With his fingers still inside me, his other hand fumbled with his waistband, freeing his cock. His pants dropped to the floor as he lined himself at the apex of my legs.
He moved his mouth to my ear, studying my face in the mirror, his body trembling against me. “I haven’t had an orgasm in five months.”
The confession scraped from a lonely place deep inside him, roughening his voice and clawing my skin, like an echo from hell.
I reached back and caressed his jaw beside mine. “Not since the roof in Georgia?”
He pressed a kiss to my wrist and slid his finger in and out of my pussy. “No, and for five months, I couldn’t even think about that night, couldn’t relive the memory. Not once. Not with Aiman and Elaine…”
The crack in his voice shredded my insides. If he’d thought about us together, Aiman would’ve snatched the memory and tormented him with it. If he would’ve become aroused thinking about us, Elaine would’ve used it to her vile advantage.
Five months without sexual fantasies or self-pleasure to keep him company.
Those thoughts were a cruel torture, hardening his features and sinking my heart. But he was here now, solid and breathing, breathing heavily, his body seemingly ready to demand repayment for all his forced self-denial.
“I’m barely holding it together, Evie. I’m so damned hard it hurts.” He pressed himself against me, pushing against my opening. “Once I let go, it’s going to be brutal. Frantic. Unforgiving. I have months to make up for. Months you spent with them.”
My hackles went up. “Michio—”
“I’m not jealous, but I’m still a man. A man who is madly in love with a woman who shares her heart and her body with two others.” His fingers curled inside me. “I can feel them inside you. Can feel where you’ve milked their pleasure, where they’ve satisfied you in ways I haven’t in a long time. It makes me want to fill you with so much come all you’ll feel is the pleasure I give you. I want to spill so deeply inside you it won’t matter how many times they fuck you tonight, tomorrow, or next month, because you’ll still feel me.”
Maybe he’d mastered his jealousy, but he was competitive and possessive by nature. He would probably always vie for the strongest, fiercest position among my guardians, pounding his chest and staking his claim. It was part of who he was, and I would never try to change him.
He dragged his fangs across my neck, watching me in the mirror. “Have you had any cramps? Spotting? Any concerns with the pregnancy?”
His question didn’t surprise me. He’d told me just a few hours earlier that my health was his only concern.
I clamped down around the wicked twist of his fingers and lifted on my toes, rocking against him. “Everything’s great, Dr. Nealy. I feel healthier and stronger than ever.”
Hunger glinted in the depths of his brown eyes, and his restraint shook through his muscles in waves, crashing against me. I trembled under the fierceness of it.
He slid his fingers out of me and pressed his thumb against my clit. “Put your hands on the sink.”
My heart skipped, and the instant I obeyed, he entered me with a hard, unapologetic thrust.
Holy shit. I adjusted my grip on the sink and hung on tightly. He didn’t pause, didn’t give me time to get used to his size, pounding his hips viciously, deeply, as his strangled groan echoed through the room.
The impact was jarring, battering the back of my pussy. He kicked my feet farther apart and threw his full weight and strength into the force of his fucking, as if attempting to chase away his demons and permanently brand my insides at the same time. It was shocking, insanely animalistic, and such a fucking turn on.
His hot, leaden weight bore down on my back, making me feel both fragile and protected. If the strength of his unharnessed passion didn’t shatter me, the burst of pleasure splintering through my body would.
But he was attuned to my every reaction, his gaze roaming my body in the mirror, searching for discomfort. He knew me so well, knew how far he could push me, knew every secret spot that would hurl me over the edge.
The pressure of his thumb on my clit built in varying degrees. I writhed against it, throbbing around the steel rod of his pistoning cock. Fuck, he was so hard and swollen I felt every turbulent inch of him stretching me, ravishing me.
But it was the predatory look in his eyes in the mirror that sent me spiraling toward ecstasy. There was a feral glint there, prowling in the shadows. A warning. I braced for it a half-second before his fangs elongated and slammed into my neck.
The stinging prick quickly transformed into a full-body spasm of pleasure. Each sucking pull of his lips felt as though it were connected to my clit, pulsing with drugging intensity. I came instantly and violently, my mouth falling open in shock as I convulsed around the unfaltering drive of his shaft.
I slumped against the support of his arms, hovering in a blissful haze, as he drew on my vein, greedily, hurriedly, sucking and gulping and moaning, his fingers digging into my flesh as if expecting me to chase him off before he was quenched.
He could suck and slurp away, but if he expected me to come again, I would need a moment. Several of them. I couldn’t even drag my eyes open.
As he found his release, he refused to leave me behind, his thumb rubbing my clit at the perfect angle, tempo, and diabolical pressure. He roared and shuddered against me, his fangs retracting and his head falling to my back. Sweet fucking hell, my body locked up as the onslaught of another orgasm took hold, jolting me through a rampant cascade of shivery tingles.
Spent and quivering, I collapsed over the sink, but he didn’t stop his thrusting, didn’t soften, and didn’t pause to catch his breath. He released his hold on my sensitive clit, the only reprieve he gave me for the next minutes, hours…God, I didn’t know. The room faded away, taking all sense of time with it, as he fucked me through an endless dream of hungry, needful orgasms.
Finally, he pulled out, only to whirl me ar
ound, clutch the backs of my thighs, and pound me against the wall. His insatiable tongue stroked my mouth, and I devoured him, his scent, his grunts, his orgasms, and every starving kiss he gave and received.
He slammed against my inner walls, digging deeper, driving harder. “I can’t stop. Can’t get enough. I’m losing my fucking mind.”
I hooked my legs around his waist and held onto his shoulders. “Then don’t stop. Don’t let me go. Not now. Not ever.”
Eventually, he did stop. When my limbs hung limply in his grip and every ounce of energy had been fucked from my body, he quickly found his final release and lowered my feet to the floor.
I floated through a heady fog of happiness as he held me beneath the shower and rinsed the sweat and come from our bodies. I lay my head on his shoulder as he carried me through the bathroom, collecting our clothes and drying us off.
When he reached for the fangs in the sink and turned to drop them in the trashcan, I stopped him.
“I want those.”
His eyebrows dug together as he wrapped me in a towel and knotted another one around his waist. “Why?”
For all the hours he'd just spent with me, touching every inch of my body, kissing my lips, sipping my blood, and making me climax over and over, how could he not understand?
“They’re a part of you, and I want every last part.”
Cradling my exhausted body in his arms, he regarded me for a long moment before wrapping the fangs in the bundle of our clothes and carrying me out of the bathroom with slow and relaxed strides. I felt sluggish and heavy, as though I weighed a thousand pounds, yet his muscles didn’t strain, not a twitch, as he held me against his chest.
We didn’t pass anyone in the dimly lit tunnels, though I might’ve nodded off, clinging to the view of his hooded eyes and swollen lips. “You had…um, a lot of orgasms.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “So did you.”
“But guys have limitations. Recovery periods. Does your fast healing negate that?”
He nodded.
I chewed on my lip. “When the spiders bite humans, do they experience arousal?”