Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Her nails drag across my back, and then pause, not because she’s pulling away, but because she’s realized something.
Her hands flatten briefly against my shoulders, then shift, sliding down, finding the hem of my shirt instead.
She pauses just long enough for her to glance up at me, something sharp flashing in her eyes.
“Fair’s fair,” she says, voice rough, a breath still caught somewhere between words and everything else.
Then she yanks.
Fabric pulls tight, then tears, the sound quick and clean as she drags it up and over, not waiting for cooperation or asking for it.
I let it happen.
More than that, I damn well like it.
A low sound slips out of me, something that lands closer to a chuckle than anything else, the edge of it rough, surprised in a way I don’t bother hiding. “This side of you…” I murmur, voice lower now, “… I’m not arguing with.”
Her mouth curves just enough to register before I slam my lips back to hers, the moment snapping tight again, the space between us gone, replaced with heat, contact, and the kind of momentum that doesn’t slow once it starts.
Her nails find my back again, this time with nothing in the way, and the sensation hits sharper now, dragging me right back into it.
I shift, just enough to break the line of her mouth, not pulling away, just changing the angle, finding the hinge of her jaw instead.
My lips follow the line down, slower now, tracking the shape of her neck until I feel it… her pulse.
Fast.
Strong.
Alive.
It hits against my mouth like a second rhythm layered over everything else, louder than anything in the world right now.
I pause there for half a second.
It is not hesitation, it’s acknowledgment.
Then my teeth press lightly against her throat.
Not breaking skin.
Not taking.
But just enough for her to feel it.
Just enough for her to understand exactly what she is to me in this moment, and exactly how close that line is.
She arches into it, her hands tightening in my hair, pulling me harder against her throat, and the low sound she makes travels through my chest like a current finding ground.
I lift my head and look at her, really look at her, bare skin pale and luminous under the starlight, the flush spreading across her chest and up her throat, her dark eyes watching me with nothing left in them that is performing anything.
The hunter is gone, the armor is gone, and in its place, there is just Cali, breathing hard, looking at me like I am both the threat and the answer, and something in me that has been locked for centuries simply decides.
I am done being careful with this.
“You have no idea…” I say, my voice dropped low enough that it belongs only to her, “… how long I’ve wanted to do this.”
She tips her chin up, unimpressed even now, even here, her fingers curling at the waistband of my jeans. “Less talking, old man.”
The audacity of her nearly makes me smile.
Instead, I catch both her wrists in one hand and pin them above her head against the rooftop, and watch her eyes flare, not with fear, never with fear.
This woman doesn’t know how to fear me. And that is the single most intoxicating thing about her, with something bright and challenging that says, ‘there you are,’ like she’s been waiting for me to stop being gentle about it.
“Old man,” I repeat quietly, holding her gaze, and I tighten my grip just enough to make the point. “Let’s revisit that.”
She smiles, sharp-edged and daring, and says, “Make me.”
So, I do.
I start at her throat, and I take my time with it, dragging my lips along the line of her pulse, feeling it hammer against my mouth, alive and insistent, the most honest thing about her.
She tips her head back despite herself. That small surrender does more to me than anything deliberate could, and I file it carefully alongside everything else I am learning tonight about what Calypso looks like when she stops performing.
I trace the column of her throat downward, pressing my lips to the hollow at its base, then lower, following the line of her ribcage, her stomach, learning the contours of her with my mouth, methodically, without rushing, because this is worth mapping properly.
She inhales sharply when I reach the soft skin below her navel, and I feel the muscles of her stomach contract beneath my lips, her whole body drawing tight in anticipation.
My hands find the waistband of her jeans, fingers working the button loose, and she makes a sound that is not quite protest and not quite encouragement, somewhere in the territory of I’m watching you, and I glance up at her from the line of her hip.
“Problem?” I ask.
“None whatsoever,” she says in a tone that is attempting composure and not fully achieving it, and I decide that I enjoy that particular tone enormously.
I peel the denim down her legs, dragging my palms against the outside of her thighs as I go because I can, because she is warm, real, and she has been at an arm’s length for weeks, and I am done with arm’s length.
She kicks the jeans free herself, which is very Cali—even now she’s handling the logistics— and I hook my fingers into the thin fabric of her underwear and draw that down, too, and then she is bare under the open sky.
I take a moment to look at her. All that fierce capability lay open, watching me watch her with dark eyes that are still hunting for answers even now, still sharp, still alert, still her.
“You going to stare all night?” she asks.
“Possibly,” I reply, and I mean it, but I drop my head anyway because she is not the only one who has been waiting.
I press my mouth to the inside of her knee first because I want her to understand how much ground I intend to cover, and I feel her thigh muscle jump at the contact.
I drag my lips upward along the inside of her thigh, and her breath is already changing, shorter, less controlled, and I haven’t even arrived where I am aiming for yet.
The skin here is impossibly soft, thin enough that I can feel the warmth of her blood moving beneath it, feel the pulse of her alive against my lips, and the hunger shifts in me.
Not the cold, indiscriminate thing it usually is, not the mechanical pull toward sustenance, but something entirely new, something that is tangled up with wanting her specifically, only her, in a way I have no previous framework for.
I press an open-mouthed kiss to the crease where her thigh meets her hip, and she makes a sound bitten off at the source, swallowed before it can escape.
Then I let my teeth graze the inside of her thigh, a warning or a question, and she goes very still, the way she does when she is quickly making a decision.
“Do it,” she says, low and certain, and that is all the answer I need.
My fangs drop, a hiss escaping me as I hesitate. But her fingers smooth through my hair as I glance up at her, her eyes locking with mine, giving me all the clarity I need.
God, yes.
My head arches back, and I sink my teeth in.
Not deep, not to take, just enough to breach the skin, just enough to feel the heat of her blood rise to meet me.
The sound she makes is something between a gasp and a moan that she makes no effort to contain, her fingers driving into my hair and gripping hard.
The bite itself is sharp and clean, and I feel her thigh tremble under my hands as the pain and pleasure hit simultaneously, and I know…
I know how that feels for a dhampir. The way the vampire blood in her responds to a bite, the way it is wired to, not with fear but with something that rides the same nerve endings as everything else I’ve been doing to her tonight.
Then her blood reaches my tongue, and every coherent thought I possess stops.
It hits like nothing I have tasted in five centuries of feeding—copper, heat, and something underneath it that is neither fully human nor fully vampire but something richer than both.
It’s the double-natured complexity of what she is arriving on my tongue all at once, wild, warm, and devastating.
It moves through me like the first breath after nearly drowning or sunlight through a crack in a wall that has been dark for decades.
My eyes close involuntarily. My grip on Cali’s hips tightens to the edge of too much, and I feel the hunger rear up, vast, ancient, and suddenly, ravenously awake.
I clamp down on it with everything I have, because I am not taking from her, I am not turning this into something it isn’t, and I hold that line through sheer force of five centuries of discipline even as every instinct I possess is screaming at me that this, that her, is the finest thing my blood has ever known.
Pulling back with a growl, I drag my tongue slowly up the thin trail of blood running down her inner thigh, following it back to the source, and the sound that comes out of me against her skin is not something I have made before.
Low, wrecked, and entirely involuntary, the sound of something ancient encountering something it did not know it had been waiting for.
She feels it vibrate against her skin, and her whole body shudders in response.
“Scar.” Just my name, nothing else, in a voice I have never heard from her before, stripped of every layer she normally keeps between herself and the world.
I seal my tongue gently over the small wound, closing it, and lift my head to look at her.
Her eyes are half closed, her chest rising and falling in uneven pulls, her fingers still knotted in my hair, and she is looking at me with an expression I have never seen before, something that holds desire, surprise, and the unmistakable look of encountering something that wasn’t part of the plan.
I glance up at her from where I am, because I want to see her face for this.
Her jaw is tight. She is visibly exercising restraint.
“Breathe,” I tell her.
“I am breathing!”