Chapter 4 #3
He turned on the bed and wrapped an arm around her.
He felt her melt against him and it stirred his blood.
It threatened to make him go feral like he always promised himself he wouldn’t.
“Only for a moment,” he whispered, and he slowly sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her neck.
He felt her tense just for a moment as he tasted her warm blood and he pulled out to lick at the spot with tender swipes of his tongue, laving the spot, before he bit in again and sucked just enough to bind them.
Now he had marked her. He wanted more. Her blood was sweet and warm and buttery in his mouth.
But he stopped. Still, he held her, dizzy at the scent of her hair and her neck and her blood as she clung to him.
“You’re lying,” she whispered, her hands sliding down his biceps, and he flexed them a little for her benefit. “You’re using something… I’m…”
“I’m not,” he said sternly, frowning, wanting her to believe he would not do that. He needed trust.
“But I want you so badly,” she said in his ear and his arms twined around her of their own volition. “I want you to make me feel good. Can you?”
“Yes,” he breathed.
“Do it.”
He lay her down on her bed that was too small, though he supposed it would do for their purposes.
He hadn’t planned on this but as long as she was so insistent…
He straddled the small bed, observing her nearly naked body, she raised her arms overhead and lifting up the hem of her nighty and revealing the little triangle of her panties.
He removed her shoes, a pair of absurd high heels he saw human women wear sometimes, and slid his hands up the backs of her calves, pausing at her knees and leaning over to the kiss them, marveling at her soft skin.
But he could hear her short breaths and smell her arousal and it was pushing him to want more and more…
Mark slid Crystal’s panties down and she immediately spread her legs for him.
He swelled in his britches, wanting to fill her, but he would give her pleasure first. Gestures like this meant something, he found.
He ducked his head and slowly, but without prelude, he plunged his tongue inside her, tasting her as he gently held her thighs.
She gasped and writhed, pressing herself into his mouth.
Her pleasure spurred him on, making him want her yet more, and he wrapped his arms around her thighs, lifting her up off the bed as he lapped her juices up, finding himself yet more desperate to be sated.
“It’s so good,” she said breathlessly. “Oh… oh shit, you’re good…”
He smiled into her, feeling more pleasure and contentment than he had since his days back with his mate.
But he wasn’t thinking about his long dead mate now.
He was only thinking about this woman he was making arch and squirm and cry out and just when he felt her on the verge of bliss, he stopped and stripped naked.
She watched him with blown out eyes, her nighty pushed up over her breasts and her panties down around her ankles.
She bit her lip and watched him tear his clothes off.
She palmed her own breasts and hummed as she waited and the sight made his cock ache as it jutted out in front of him.
Sliding inside of Crystal was like coming home.
It made no sense; they’d only just met. And yet, there was no other way to explain that feeling of completeness.
Mark had never told anyone about the way he felt like such an outsider.
He had a brother he had not seen in too long.
Kal had been the same way. They only had each other when they were young.
There were others like them, sure. But still, somehow he always felt as if he was on the outside of his race looking in.
Since his mate had died, especially, he felt a volcanic sense of loneliness, a deep dark well of emptiness that threatened to take him over.
Now he felt as if something new was filling that hole.
But now he looked into Crystal’s eyes as he filled her up.
Her arms came around him and her parted, pink little mouth threatened to overwhelm him in new ways he had never thought possible.
When he kissed her, he felt them melding into each other, bliss like a thunderbolt of pleasure overtaking him as he thrust into her slowly.
She tightened around him, wrapping her legs around him.
Finally, he pulsed inside her, and when he bit her neck again and drank from her, she cried out her orgasm, clenching around him.
They held each other through their pleasure and then gradually they went still, coming down, breathing together there on the little bed.
“Was that to your satisfaction?” He whispered, and the question struck even him as funny. He lay beside her and she sighed, curling up to him, her hand resting on his chest, twirling a strand of black chest hair around her little finger.
“Fuck yes,” she said, and smiled a little as she looked up at him. “I mean… I still miss my apartment and my roommates and all my shit but… Jesus, that was almost worth the entire shebang.”
He laughed into her neck and held her. She was small but so soft and pleasurable to embrace, and he liked the way she clung to him.
He felt possessiveness like some wave rolling through him.
Drake would come for her. He had a bad feeling about it.
If he had been interrupted in his “conquest,” he would inevitably want to finish it.
If he had tasted her even a little, he would want to finish what he had started.
“So,” she said softly, tracing little circles along his chest with the soft pads of her fingers. It must have been a human, he thought. No Vampyren woman would make a gesture so meaningless yet intimate. “So you can sniff me out now? If I’m in danger?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’re marked now. You’re…. I don’t want to say you’re mine. Not exactly.”
“I don’t mind,” she murmured. She leaned over and pressed little kisses to his skin. “We’ll see how it goes.” Then she raised her head and her ponytail fell over the side of her face, giving her an endearingly adorable expression. “I really don’t mind if you keep making me feel like that.”
His cheeks heated when she spoke like that but he smiled. He liked her. How strange and interesting.
“If anyone comes for you,” he said carefully, “if anyone even tries anything, I want to know. But I’ll make it known you belong to me.”
“That doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world,” she said, scrunching up her nose in amusement.
“I had a mate, you know,” Mark said quietly. “On our world.”
Crystal seemed fascinated by that and she sat up, bracing on her elbow. He had trouble looking at her eyes and not down at the swell of her breasts over the sheet. “Really? I’ve always heard female Vampyren are impossible? They kill their mates? Eat their young?”
He only shrugged. “I think they have their reasons, to be honest with you. And some of that they can’t help. Anyway, Calinda wasn’t like that. She was tougher than me. Tried to kill me when she met me but never after that.”
“That was nice of her,” Crystal cracked.
That made Mark laugh and she lit up, looking down at him with bright eyes. “You have a nice laugh.”
He reached up and twirled the end of her ponytail around his finger. “I appreciate that.”
She gave him a long look then. “What happened to your mate?”
“We invaded. She died battling your human armies in the first sweep. I believe it was in… Are-can-saw.”
“Arkansas,” Crystal murmured. “Hmmm.”
“What was your life like before the invasion?” Mark said.
“I was in school,” Crystal said. “But I didn’t know what I wanted to be or what I was good at…
I didn’t find out any of that until after the invasion.
I’ll tell you one thing, it’s not being forced into breeding.
I’m good at making deals and knowing a guy and getting shit for people.
That’s my thing. I’m good at leading too. I’m good at being a friend, I…”
She was teary now. It made his heart clench in his chest to see her upset.
He stroked her cheek, wiping her tears away, and he expected her to pull away but instead, she cuddled up to him, holding him tight.
“Will you find them? Jet and Nina? My roommates? Will you tell them I’m okay? They’ll be so scared without me.”
“I will,” he whispered in her ear. “I will, Crystal. I promise.”