I broke away from his kiss just long enough to tear my shirt off over my head. A rush of cold air hit me as Vale pulled slightly away, despite my rough exhale of protest.
Those amber eyes moved over my body, taking in my bare skin. The hunger in them was unmistakable now.
You should be afraid, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.
But I’d never been afraid of death.
No, that hunger just fueled my own. My breasts were peaked with desire, begging to be touched—my core slick, begging to be filled. His eyes drank me in for what felt like an age and an instant.
Then, like his own desire had overwhelmed him, he reached for the buttons of my trousers and yanked them open. I lifted my hips to help them off, and I had barely kicked off the fabric before his hand was between my legs.
Pleasure sparked up my spine. A whimper escaped me. My fingernails dug into his back, and my body, of its own accord, jerked to be closer to his—even though he held me down to the bed.
He let out a low groan.
“I was right that night.” His mouth curled into a smirk against mine. He sounded satisfied with himself. “You do want this.”
He’d been right then, and I wasn’t even ashamed of it. I’d wanted him for a long time. That night had been the first time I thought of him when I found my own pleasure in bed, imagining my own hands to be his, and it had only gotten more frequent since then.
Now that his hands were there, circling in on the epicenter of my desire… gods, it was better than I’d imagined.
It was hard to speak, hard to think. He teased me like he knew it, too, though I could see that he was also having a hard time focusing on anything but that, see it in the way his eyes hooded when my breath hitched.
“You’ve been thinking about it for a long time, too.” My hand slipped farther beneath the waistband of his trousers, slid over smooth skin and coarse hair and settling at the rigid length of his cock straining against the fabric, responding immediately to my touch.
I took a moment—just a moment—to run my palm up and down that beautiful length, just softly enough that I knew it would be a little torturous. Just to make sure he knew we were on equal ground.
He smiled into my kiss like he knew it, too.
But then I kissed him hard and ripped the buttons of his trousers open.
Time.
We didn’t have time.
And that realization seemed to crash over him at the same time it did me, because he pressed me to the bed, our kisses frantic and messy, his tongue exploring my mouth, fingers sliding into me—the sudden press of them coaxing a choked moan from my throat, my thighs opening wider for him, though he held me still when I tried to chase the friction my body wanted.
His kisses moved from my lips to my cheek, pausing at my ear—his breath rough against the sensitive skin there, teeth catching my earlobe, something I never thought could feel as good as it did in this moment—then moving down, to my throat. He paused there, tongue pressing against my flesh.
His breath was ragged. My heart pounded. I was sure he could feel my pulse there. Smell it.
For a moment, I thought maybe he might do it.
For a moment, I thought maybe I wanted him to.
But he just skimmed his mouth up my neck, my jaw, moving back to my mouth and kissing me hard. His thumb pressed down at the core of my need, and that, combined with the penetration of his fingers, sent a wave of pleasure through me that left me gasping.
Time.
I pushed him off of me, my eyes meeting his in a way that communicated all of my demands, and started to roll over onto my hands and knees. I wanted him as deep as I could have him.
But he stopped me.
“No,” he said. “I want to watch your face.”
I hesitated, and my uncertainty must have shown in my expression, because Vale smiled—smiled fully, to reveal those deadly fangs.
“All this time you’ve gotten to study me. That isn’t fair.”
And strange how having him at my throat, teeth one heartbeat from my blood, didn’t frighten me, but the idea of letting him do that—the idea of looking into his eyes when I was so exposed—gave me pause.
But his fingers circled my bud, and I let out a strangled moan, and he smirked in a way that said he knew he had me.
And he was right. He could have me however he wanted.
I let him push me to the bed. My thighs opened around his hips. He kissed me languidly as I reached down to position him at my entrance—even the first pressure of his cock there making us both groan.
He yanked my hand back, pressing down on my forearms to hold me beneath him, and thrust into me.
I was so wet, so ready. It took just one single thrust. He was bigger than anything I’d had before, and that first thrust almost—almost—hurt, in every wonderful way.
I didn’t even realize I’d made a sound until he reacted to it, a hiss of pleasure as he buried his face against my hair. He worked at me slowly for those first couple of strokes, my hips rolling and pressing against his movements. Forcing him deep, gasping at every new angle that he hit inside of me.
He pushed himself up enough to look at me, and my impulse was to turn my head, to look away. But he grabbed my chin, held it—held it, so that he was looking right into my eyes.
He withdrew slowly, then pushed back into me, deeper, until my hips were lifted off the bed with the force of it. Sparks shot up my spine, pleasure spreading through my core. My one free hand reached for something, anything, to hold onto, finding his shoulder and clutching so hard that surely I was leaving marks on him.
He held that pressure for a few agonizing, incredible seconds, watching me as each minuscule shift made my breath quicken.
“Yes?” he said, softly.
“Yes,” I answered.
Gods, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
He withdrew again, painfully slowly.
His next stroke was harder still. My moan came out ragged, ripped from me without my permission.
Another stroke. Faster. Forceful.
He was still watching me, his face serious and focused, and I wanted to look away, wanted to hide myself, but I couldn’t—his eyes, the amber gold of a wolf in the woods, transfixed me.
Again.
He was slowly increasing his speed, his pressure. His free hand, the one that was not holding my forearm to the bed, traced the curve of my hip, my waist, circling the peaked hardness of my nipple just as he pushed into me again.
This time, my moan became a cry.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I gasped.
Still, we didn’t look away from each other.
He was decoding me, solving me, the way I had solved him. I was being projected onto the wall like I had projected his blood, and I knew with a strange, terrible kind of certainty in this moment that he found me just as remarkable.
He wasn’t the only one. Because even though he had let go of my chin, I didn’t look away from him, either.
No, I barely blinked as he continued fucking me, every carefully measured stroke loosening in control. He was a quick study. He learned fast what I liked, what angles made my moans loudest. Learned what to give me when desperate, nonsensical pleas tumbled from my lips, even when I myself didn’t know.
Every muscle of my body, every shred of awareness, rearranged around him. The pleasure was unbearable, agonizing. I wanted to throw my head back and scream his name—I wanted to bury my face against the smooth expanse of his skin and breathe him.