by Moira Rogers
Chapter Seven
When Diana dropped her earring for the third time, she had to take a deep breath and count to five before reaching for it again, just to keep from crushing the damn thing in her fist.
Nate wasn’t nearly so patient. “I don’t want to join him for a meal.”
They didn’t have a choice. There was too much to do before nightfall, before the moon went dark and uncontrollable lust gripped her. The previous night had been difficult enough, alone in the big bed, her body aching and every one of Nate’s quiet breaths like cannon fire in her ears.
Even now, the memory of her half-sleeping fantasies tightened her nipples, and she grasped the edge of the vanity. No, she wouldn’t make it far past dusk. “We don’t have a choice.”
He stalked past her, his shirt still gaping open and his vest balled in one hand. He threw it at the bed with a snarl and resumed his pacing. He’d started the restless movement before dawn, his path taking him from the heavily curtained windows to the bathroom doorway and back in an endless loop. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him seeing you.”
She straightened in alarm. “What does that mean, you don’t want him seeing me?”
Nate froze mid-stride with a stumbling step that would have been comical under other circumstances, and he grimaced. “Them. Any of them. I’m tired of the way they look at you.”
Her fingers trembled on her powder brush. “Jonah isn’t one of them. He’s our ally.”
“A slip of the tongue.” He resumed his pacing, each movement a study in intense irritation. “I’m unsettled.”
“Are you?” She wasn’t so sure. Diana slipped from her padded stool and reached out, her fingers brushing his back through his shirt.
He stiffened and missed another step. “I slept poorly. I find being privy to the thoughts of vampires even less pleasant than I’d imagined, for all that it gives us an advantage.”
She’d have bet anything that the hunger shaking her also held him bound. “Nate, look at me.”
“No.” He hunched his shoulders and shuddered. “It’s worse when I do.”
Oh, God. “Back in Iron Creek, you told me this didn’t happen. That the new moon didn’t affect you.”
“It makes me irritable.”
“Irritable, yes,” she agreed. “But that’s not all this is.”
Clearing his throat, he took several steps away. “It’s not—I don’t believe this…” A growl. “How am I to tell what this is, when I’ve never experienced it before?”
Diana suspected he would know for certain soon enough. “The sky is still far from dark,” she pointed out. “You may—”
Nate spun on her, and the heat in his eyes should have burned her to ash on the spot. “I’m not a bloodhound.”
No, not entirely. “Your skin doesn’t fit,” she murmured softly. “You want to rage out of it, but not as much as you want…something. You don’t know what it is, not yet. But I can show you.” She touched his wrist, guided his hand up, inside her dressing robe to the swell of her breast above her corset.
His fingers brushed her nipple, and she choked on a shaky moan.
The sound that slipped free of his lips twisted need with relief before melting into desperate denial. “This can’t happen,” he whispered. “You need me whole. You need me sane.”
Her chest hurt from how hard her heart was beating. “You will be, as long as you don’t fight it. If there was another way, Nate—” But there was.
He could take another into his bed.
Diana didn’t realize she was digging her fingernails into his wrist until she smelled blood. Then she jerked her hand away. “I’m sorry.”
Reason slipped from his gaze. She’d seen him aroused, had seen him angry and wanting and hungry and a thousand things, but intelligence had always formed the basis of everything he was. Sharp wit and steely awareness, and both seemed to vanish as he moved forward, looming over her. “You marked me.”
Her own sense fled. “Because you’re mine.”
He dipped his head, lips hovering over hers. “Take off your earrings. Take off everything.”
She obeyed with absent, rote motions, every sense fixed on tracking him through the room as he walked to the door and locked it. By the time she stood by the bed, naked with her clothes in a pile at her feet, he had shed his shirt and boots.
In three swift steps, he was on her.
Nothing about her desire had been unmanageable scant minutes earlier. Now, it fed on his, on the hungry pull of his lips fused to hers. It wasn’t enough, would never be.
Could never be.
“Nate.” She whispered it into his mouth as he pressed closer, his skin hot against hers. He growled and thrust both hands into her hair, jerking her head back with a demanding dominance that would do any bloodhound proud. But the mouth that brushed her pulse held the promise of teeth. Fangs. He was hound and vampire, neither but somehow both.
It was clear which hunger rose in him now. He avoided piercing her skin, licking her instead. Words seemed to have left him, but he made low, commanding noises, noises that grew strained as he backed her toward the bed.
When the backs of her legs hit the mattress, Diana dropped to it and reached for the button on his trousers. Her fingers fumbled, more from distraction than clumsiness, and she leaned in to nibble the flat plane of his stomach.
“No.” He caught her face, framing her cheeks as he tilted his head back. A moment later, he urged her gaze to follow his to the ceiling.
To the mirror. “Lie back,” he rasped. “I want you to watch this.”
Her pleasure. Nothing else would satisfy him, and Diana swallowed hard as she stretched out on the bed and her gaze snagged on her reflection. She looked debauched already, her hair mussed, her skin flushed and her nipples peaked.
And Nate—standing before her, half-naked, his shoulders heaving with every breath.
She clenched her fingers around the velvet spread as he dropped to his knees and pushed her thighs wide. One hand slid down her leg to catch her ankle, and he guided her foot up until her heel rested on the edge of the mattress.
His intensity was a tangible thing, tingling over her skin, and she fought not to arch her hips off the bed.
“What will ease the torment?” he whispered, stroking up the insides of her thighs only to stop short of her pussy. Instead, his hands jumped to her hips and skated up to cover her breasts. “Your pleasure?”
“Yes.” She’d never been on the receiving end of this attention, never writhed through someone’s single-minded pursuit of her ecstasy. That it was Nate leaning over her… “Please.”
“I’m on fire.” He caught one nipple between his thumb and forefinger, teasing it to a harder peak before tugging it. “But all I can think of is this. Touching you. Toying with you.”
“I know.” She met his eyes. “Hungry for release, but hungrier still for more. Even when I’m screaming, it won’t sate you. Not at first.”
Nate lifted his hand to his mouth without taking his gaze from hers. Moving slowly, he licked the pad of his thumb and slid it over her nipple again. “You don’t feel that yet.”
“It’s early.” And good fucking thing. Perhaps by the time her own demands grew unbearable, Nate would have exhausted his need to watch her come.
If there was any chance of his desire waning, he gave no sign of it now. He stroked his thumb over her nipple, his gaze skipping from her body to the mirror. “Watch,” he said again, and this time it was an unmistakable order. A command.
She looked at their reflection, too entranced by the resolute authority in his voice to disobey. “I’m watching.”
“What do you like? Soft?” He closed his fingers in a tight pinch. “Hard?”
The rough caress streaked through her. “Tongue,” she whispered, shuddering. “I like your tongue.”
“Where?” He half-rose, leaning over her, and the tip of his tongue traced her breast. “Here?”
She lifted her hands to
his head, tried to guide his mouth to her nipple. “Here.”
His laughter ghosted warm breath over her skin, followed swiftly by the rasping heat of his tongue. Wet and rough, and he was inordinately clever with it, tracing dexterous circles and mindless patterns as if testing her response to each sensation.
He licked a firm circle around her nipple, then flicked it with his tongue. Diana gripped his hair, desperate to pull him closer, keep him there—even beg for more. A plea escaped her, harsh and profane. “Fuck me, Nate.”
“No.” He slid back down her body, ignoring the way she clutched at his hair. He settled between her thighs and brought both hands to rest on her abdomen, his fingers spanning her body and his thumbs grazing the dark curls between her legs. “Not yet,” he amended, nudging her legs wider with his elbows. “I want to taste you in every way possible.”
A sensual promise that bordered on a warning. She touched his cheek. “I’m going to do this to you too, you know.”
“A biological impossibility,” he murmured, slicking both thumbs between her folds before parting her wide. His tongue followed before she could reply, the flat of it swiping over her in one long lick until he reached her clitoris.
It rocked her like an electric shock. “Oh, fuck.”
He rumbled his pleasure and did it again, lingering to flick the tip of his tongue against her. “You taste good.”
She was empty, aching and yearning to be filled. “I want you inside me.”
“How? My tongue? My fingers?” He lifted his head, his smile flashing the sharp points of his fangs. “Something more dangerous?”
Anything he would give her. Everything. “I want all of you.”
Growling, he pushed her legs wider and set about giving her just what she’d asked for. His tongue first, perfecting everything he’d practiced with her nipples, mapping her as if he intended to make a study of her responses. A scientific inquiry, one he seemed in no hurry to complete.
Careful, but far from cold. Diana whimpered, and her foot would have slipped from the edge of the bed without his hand around her ankle—unyielding, a directive of its own. “Don’t let me hurt you,” she murmured.
He just laughed, low and hungry. “You can’t.”
Perhaps not. Perhaps she truly was at his mercy, as powerless as his strong hands made her feel.
Powerless, but alive. The mere thought of yielding control, even for a little while, made her whimper again.
He licked her again, slow and leisurely. “I like the noises you make. I want to hear more of them.”
Watching him was too intimate, even with the separation and distance offered by the mirror. Diana closed her eyes and squirmed. “Nate…”
His tongue thrust inside her. “Again.”
“Nate.” She breathed the word as she arched her head back, opened her legs wider and gave in to the pleasure of his mouth. “Nate.”
He dragged her higher, his studied finesse lost as he worked her with encouraging growls. Only his tongue at first, and then his fingers, two of them thrusting deep and hard, coaxing her into a frenzy. But every time she stopped chanting his name he would slow, the command in his lazy teasing clear.
She’d never been on the receiving end of this torment, never understood how maddening it could be. Diana bit her lip hard to hold back the next desperate plea and shook her head, though she couldn’t stop her hips from rocking against his hand.
Nate surged above her, his fingers still working her pussy in torturous strokes. “No more?”
“I can’t.” How many times had she heard those words only to prove them a lie with another caress? “It’s too much.”
“It’s never too much.” He lowered his head until his lips hovered over hers. “You’re a bloodhound, Diana. Has any man ever pushed you to your limits? Has any man been strong enough to try?”
Only one answer, a confession that stripped her bare before him. “No.”
“Then let me.” Dipping lower, he licked her ear and whispered the next words. “I want all of you. No holding back.”
Tempting. So damn tempting. “I don’t know if I can.”
A growl. He might have access to words, but it was clear that Nate still rode the feral edge of a bloodhound in the grip of the new moon. “Tell me what you need,” he rasped, his rough tone turning a plea to an order.
She dragged his mouth to hers, muttered the answer against his lips. “Don’t stop.”
He licked her mouth as his fingers resumed their rocking. “Like this? Or would you come harder around my cock?”
Diana’s breath caught, and she gripped his shoulders. Yes. God, yes—but instinct stilled her tongue. “Not yet. Just like this.”
He tensed above her. “You’re lying. Why?”
“I’m not.” But the longer she drew this out, the more it would satisfy him. And the thought of Nate in the spiky grip of what she knew to be agonizing hunger… “I want it. For you.”
Nate paused, licked the corner of her mouth again and straightened. He stripped away his unbuttoned shirt and reached for his trousers, his gaze burning into her. “I suppose this is why even the hounds partial to the company of other men don’t pass the new moon together,” he murmured, sounding almost like himself for a moment. “How do you satisfy someone who can only be satisfied by satisfying you?”
Every inch of skin he bared twisted tight the hunger inside her, until finally she shivered and clenched her fists in the covers. “I don’t know.” She didn’t know anything but him—the way he tasted, the way he felt under her hands. She wanted it again.
His pants hit the floor, and he kicked free of them before standing before her, naked and hard, the arrogance of a bloodhound doing visible battle with the anxiety of a man still uncomfortable in his own skin. But he was beautiful despite the self-consciousness.
Whether he realized it or not, he carried his new body with grace.
Diana sat up, slowly enough to give him a chance to stop her, and traced her fingertips up his legs to his hips.
He shuddered. “What do you need?”
“Let go,” she whispered. “Trust me, Nate.”
“With my life. With everything.”
Hunger surged at the assurance, and she reached for him. He hoisted her up, but only for one toe-curling kiss, and then he tossed her in the center of the massive bed. He was over her by the time her body settled, kneeling astride one of her legs. The other he lifted, guiding it up and over his shoulder. “Do you trust me?”
She caught her breath as his muscles flexed beneath her calf, underscoring the relative power of their positions. He had control, and all she could do was hold on for the ride. “You know I do.”
He pressed his open mouth to her calf, teasing her with a swipe of tongue and a hint of fang. “Onto your side,” he murmured, already coaxing her to obey with a hand under her ass.
She shifted to her side, the position seeming dirtier with each passing moment. “Are you going to do what I think you’re—?”
He cut her off with a growl and a thrust, his cock pushing into her in one endless, unforgiving stroke that brought him deep.
She arched away instinctively, but there was nowhere to go—he held her tight, fingers digging in to her skin. But the panic lasted only a moment, a heartbeat, and then sheer sensual pleasure washed away everything else.
Hard. Hot. Diana whimpered and clutched at the bedspread. She tried to say his name, but her voice broke as he shifted his hips the tiniest bit, sending another scalding wave of need coursing through her.
Nate stroked her hip, smoothing his hand up her thigh as he pushed closer, pushed deeper, stretching her legs wide as his breath fell against the inside of her knee. “You feel like Heaven.”
“More.” The word rasped out of her before she could think, before she could do anything but beg. “Please.”
He gave it to her, but slowly. A long retreat and a slow advance, then a lingering pause while he ground his hips in maddening circles and used his fr
ee hand to toy with her. His thumb grazed her nipple before his fingers returned to tug and pinch, building the sensations from feather soft to the edge of pain as he watched her expression with dark, rapt eyes.
It no longer mattered how much he needed her pleasure, or how much she wanted to give it to him. His touch pulsed through her, every grasp and graze, and everything else vanished.
His breath tickled her skin. “Do you want all of me?”
He’d already buried his cock in her, as deep as he could go. Diana shivered restlessly. “What are you willing to give?”
Even though he turned his face to her calf, his gaze never left hers. He licked her skin and smiled wide enough to show his teeth. “Anything you’ll take. And I’ll take anything you’ll give.”
Still hesitant, even now. “Nate?”
“Diana?”
“You talk too much.” She rocked her hips against his as hard as she could. He met her thrust with his own, met her challenge with a growl as he gripped her ankle and pressed his open mouth to her skin.
And then he bit her.
She’d never liked pain. She still didn’t, though years as a bloodhound had taught her brain to connect it with fighting, with satisfaction. That instinctive reaction rolled through her now, turning the slice of Nate’s teeth into an undeniable thrill of excitement that melted into bliss in the blink of an eye.
He’d bitten her before, but not like this. Not while he was already inside her. It multiplied the pleasure of his sharp kiss tenfold, and Diana squirmed in his grasp. “Oh, fuck.”
His voice echoed through her mind, silk on skin and burning hot as his hips snapped forward in his first hard thrust. “I could be inside you forever.”
Observation or promise? Her head started to spin as the paradoxically lazy ecstasy of his bite collided with the burning hot pleasure of his next thrust.
He licked the spot he’d bitten and gripped her thigh as his speed increased. “Tell me you want this.”
“I want it, Nate.” Had she ever wanted anything else this much? “I want you to fuck me.”
This time, when he stroked his hand down her body, he didn’t stop at her breast. His clever fingers slipped straight to her clit, his touch timed to the rhythm of his thrusts. “Then start coming.”