Jesse #2
Her chin tipped up and her lips parted, exposing her long fangs.
I missed the feeling of those fangs sinking deep into my throat, my thigh, my cock, or anywhere else she wanted to feed from me, but I'd take what I could get.
I set my wrist against her mouth and felt the first warm drag of her tongue.
With a moan, her hands came up and locked on my forearm and she pulled hard on the veins.
My knees nearly went out from under me.
She wasn't gentle, although Shea could be gentle when she chose. But when she was starving, she was not. And that was okay with me. I preferred to feel her hunger for me. It didn't matter if it was for my blood or my body or both.
Her fangs broke the skin, sinking deeper into my wrist, and the pull of her mouth on me was a bolt of desire that ran straight from my wrist, through my chest, between my hipbones, and down the length of my swiftly hardening cock.
With my free hand, I tangled my fingers in her long, soft hair and tipped her head back until her mouth was more firmly against my wrist. The ragged sound of need she made as the first mouthful hit her throat made me smile.
Good girl. Keep drinking. I put the thought in her head, unable to speak out loud. At that moment, the whole fucking plane could've come apart around us and I wouldn't have moved my wrist from her mouth.
She drank and I watched as she transformed before my eyes.
The hollows under her cheekbones filled out.
The gray tones beneath her skin bloomed into a warm honey.
Her fingers on my arm tightened. I felt her thirst, her hunger, her desire, like it was my own.
The feel of blood inside of her—my blood—started shifting from need into something darker, because feeding between mates has never been just blood, and it never will be.
Her thigh pressed between mine.
I let her because I'd been hard since the first pull.
Because the bond between us, always burning like embers, turned into an inferno every time she took from me.
Because we'd been miserable in separate leather seats for too many hours in a place that bent time.
She sucked harder and my hips rolled forward on instinct.
Her free hand slid up my ribs and fisted in the front of my shirt.
"Shea…love…"
She growled against my wrist. A question.
A warning. I didn't care what it was. I slid my hand from the back of her head to her jaw and tilted her face back so her mouth came off me.
I watched a bead of my blood run down her chin as her eyes fix on mine, dilated and feral.
Then I leaned in and kissed her, deep and slow, tasting my own blood on her tongue.
"Don't stop."
She put her mouth back to my wrist, holding my arm with one hand as the other found the waistband of my pants.
My back hit the mirror as she pressed her body against the front of mine.
She was soft and warm, the heat of her rising up through her skin where it'd been hibernating.
Her heart beating so hard I felt it through our clothes.
I slid my free hand under the hem of her dress and up the long line of her thigh. She trembled under my palm as blood lust took over. She needed me more than she'd let on.
"You should have told me sooner," I scolded.
I hooked my fingers in the thin cotton of her underwear and pulled them down her thighs and let them go.
They dropped to her ankles in a pale whisper.
She pressed her hips forward against my hand and a short, needy sound came out of her when I found the most sensitive part of her, hot and wet, and stroked her with my fingers.
I watched her — eyes closed, my blood on her mouth, her body straining — and there was no version of me that had ever existed or ever would who would let anyone else be the thing that put that color back into her face.
She came almost immediately, her hand tightening around my cock to the point of pain.
I kept my wrist pressed to her mouth and slid two fingers inside of her so I could feel her break apart around them, small and vicious and mine, and when her teeth clenched through the pulse point she'd hooked into, a bright jolt of heat punched up my arm and into my spine.
I leaned my forehead against her temple and made a noise I wouldn't have allowed in front of anyone else alive.
MINE.
I was lightheaded when she finally pulled her mouth off my wrist and sealed the punctures with a slow, lazy pass of her tongue. And when she tipped her head back and looked at me, her color was almost all the way back.
Almost.
Mine wasn't. A cold hollowness had settled into my arms while she drank, the price of being the well she drew from, and I braced my shoulder against the mirror, casual as I could make it. But I was a fool.
Her eyes widened with anxiety as she stared at me, and I moaned as she pulled her hand out of my pants.
"I'm fine," I reassured her. I wanted to fuck her, but I feared I'd pass out if I tried.
So instead, I cupped her jaw and ran my thumb along the soft curve under her eye, where the bruised look hadn't entirely left despite my best efforts.
This place drank the life from us faster than one feeding could refill.
I'd felt it pulling at me even while she drank from me.
My father's greed in every breath this place allowed us to take.
"It's enough." She answered the question I know she saw in my eyes.
"Now who's lying."
She pressed her forehead into my chest. I held her there for a beat as I closed my eyes and pretended, for just a few seconds, that we weren't going to die here.
Then I waited, fastening my pants and pulling down my shirt while she straightened her dress and fumbled her underwear up off the floor. Her fingers were steadier than before. That was something.
I tucked her under my arm and unlocked the door, putting my arm out for Cruthú. If she noticed the way I leaned on her, she didn't say anything.
No one had moved while we were gone, but I knew Christian had heard every sound.
I didn't care. I'd fuck Shea right here in the aisle if she'd allow it and I had the strength.
Just to prove that I could. That she was MINE.
I didn't care that the vampires thought they had any kind of claim on her just because they knew her first.
I settled Shea back into her seat and sat down beside her before I passed out. My blood would replenish. It was more important that she survived.
The gray outside had not changed.
It never changed. That was one of the most unnerving things about this place — light without source, sky without weather, distance without measure. But the magic holding it around us had a texture to it.
I blinked, wondering if I was actually seeing what I thought I was or if it was just the lack of blood to my brain. Still not quite believing, I laid my palm flat against the cool window and tried to read the shape of the cage my father had built us.
It was weaker.
Absolutely weaker. I wasn't going crazy.
I ran my hand up the glass and back down.
The grasp he held us in was loose in places now, thinner in patches, his fingers loosening.
Not loose enough to get out. Not yet. But the hand that had built this cage had been using both fists, and now it was…
distracted, for lack of a better word. Whatever had grabbed his attention on the other side had pulled it hard and deep, and wherever his focus had gone, it had not come back yet.
Hope and dread poured into my bloodstream.
Hope, because this could possibly mean a way to escape.
Dread, because my father never let go of something he wanted.
The only reason he would loosen his grip on his children was if he'd found a bigger prize.
Somewhere out there in the world beyond this gray, he'd sunk his teeth into something, and the fact that I didn't know what it was sent a cold shiver between my shoulder blades that had nothing to do with the lack of blood in my body.
Cruthú rustled her wings against my ear.
"I know," I murmured. "I know, clever girl."
Shea was watching me again.
"Go to Shea," I told the raven. Cruthú stepped from my shoulder to hers.
"What's happening?"
"I'm not sure yet. But something is definitely taking my father's attention from us."
"Can we get out?" Shea said.
"We will."
"When?"
I took her hand, watched my thumb move over her knuckles as the hum of my father's cage filled my bones, just a little quieter now.
"Soon," I said.
My father, who had never learned to let anything go, had found something new to bind himself to.
And I had a very sick feeling about who she might be.