Mate
I tilt my head beneath him, baring the long line of my throat. Offering.
“Bite me.”
The words leave my lips raw.
Blake rises onto his knees above me, the thick length of him sliding free only long enough for him to straddle my hips. Shadows coil up from the mattress like living smoke.
His fingers lengthen, darken, curl into hooked talons of living shadow. The claw traces a cross above his heart. It draws a shallow cross over the place where his heart beats. A pirate’s vow over buried treasure.
Dark blood wells at once, rich and luminous, power glowing in every crimson bead.
He cups the back of my skull and forces my mouth to the wound.
“Drink. Seal it. Become mine in every way that matters.”
I latch on.
The first swallow detonates. Molten lava races down my throat and erupts through every vein, rewriting me from the inside out. His blood is addictive—ancient.
The taste is more potent than any drug.
I swallow desperately, greedy, unable to stop. My hips snap upward, seeking friction, seeking the hard return of his cock. Need claws through me so violently I moan against his chest, the sound muffled by the hot flow of him.
Shadows answer.
They slide between my thighs, while Blake drives back inside me in one brutal thrust. Flesh and darkness fill me together—his cock stretching my cunt, a thick shadow length claiming my ass in the same ruthless rhythm. The ecstasy rips a broken gasp past my lips, even as I still gulp.
The blood pours into me and the shadows thrust harder, matching every snap of Blake’s hips.
Pleasure builds like a storm behind my ribs.
When the climax finally breaks it unfurls, slow and devastating, wave after molten wave that leaves me shaking, sobbing, still latched to his chest while the shadows milk every last shudder from my body.
He tilts my head and strikes.
Fangs sink deep into the side of my throat. The mating bite. Fresh ecstasy detonates outward from the puncture points, flooding every nerve while he drinks in long, greedy pulls.
The bond sparks in my chest, surges through him, ignites us both.
Suddenly, his body goes rigid.
A violent shudder rips through him. He tears his mouth from my neck with a choked, wet sound that has nothing to do with pleasure. Black veins spiderweb across his skin. He collapses sideways, convulsing, coughing up dark poison—my blood.
“Blake!”
He suffocates, his throat clicking as he claws violently at empty air, starved of oxygen. I wrench my limbs free from the evaporating, ink-black coils of shadow-binds and haul his twitching head into my lap.
We are slick with sweat and cooling heat, entirely bare against the crushed crimson silk of the mattress.
Heavy, iron-shod boots thunder up the winding stone stairs below, battering the foundations of the tower.
Cain.
The name vibrates through my marrow, an absolute certainty that knobs at my throat. The Crimson Order has breached the outer sanctum.
Blood runs in a bright river from the two fang wounds on my neck, painting long scarlet paths down my pale skin, over the curve of my breast and pooling slickly in the hollow of my navel.
Blake convulses in my arms. Guilt lances through me. I gave him Cain’s rot. My own blood was the cup, and he drank.
The massive oak chamber door shudders under the first brutal impact of a battering ram, wood groaning in protest.
Cain’s telepathic voice invades my skull, smooth and lethal.
“You accepted my blood, pet. You answer to me now. He is weak. The Order is at your door. And you are just one bite away from being mine.”