The heartbeat came and went.
Casteel’s mouth tugged at my skin, and I felt that staggering pull in every part of my body. The pain flashed out as quickly as it had overtaken me. All that was left, all that existed in the world was the feel of his mouth at my throat, the deep, long draws of my blood leaving me and filling him. My eyes had been open, fixed on the dull white plaster of the ceiling, but now they drifted shut as my lips parted. He drank from me, the fingers in my hair curling. His mouth lifted—
“That’s not enough,” Kieran said. “That’s nowhere near enough, Cas.”
Casteel’s forehead pressed to my shoulder as the hand against my back fisted the material of my robe.
The connection thrummed intensely, and I could still feel his hunger. It had eased a bit, but it was still acute. Kieran was right. He hadn’t taken enough.
Tentatively, I lifted my hands and touched his arms. Not his bare skin. I didn’t know if easing his pain would cause him to stop or not. “I’m okay.” My voice sounded breathless as if I had run circles around the fortress. “You need more. Take it.”
“She speaks the truth.” Kieran placed his hand above mine, squeezing Casteel’s arm. “Feed.”
Casteel shuddered, and then he lifted his head slightly. His lips grazed my jaw, and then the line of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine as I bit down on the inside of my cheek. His lips pressed to the skin above the bite, a whisper of a kiss that startled me, and then his mouth closed over the tingling skin once more.
Every part of my body seemed to focus on where his mouth was fastened to my throat. Thoughts scattered as an ache blossomed to life low in my stomach and between my thighs. I tried to remember that Kieran was there, monitoring my pulse, and what we were doing was almost like…like a life-saving procedure, but I couldn’t hold onto any of those thoughts. With each pull against my skin, each tug that seemed to reach all the way to my toes, that throb pulsed, and the ache grew and grew, heating my blood and my skin.
I needed to think about anything but what it felt to have Casteel at my neck, his lips moving, the muscles of his arms bunching under my palms. But it was no use, and—oh, gods—the connection to him, it was still open. There was hunger, yes, but there was also more. A spicy, smoky flavor filled the back of my throat. The taste, the feeling, was heady and overwhelmed my senses. My body jerked with a pounding flood of desire that weakened my legs. I didn’t know how I was still standing or if Casteel or Kieran held me up. Each breath I took seemed too shallow as the ache moved to my breasts. Tension coiled tightly inside me, to the point of near anguish—a razor-sharp type of pleasure that left its own version of scars.
A sound came from Casteel, a throaty rumble. And then he moved suddenly, tugging deeply at my throat as he pressed into me—pressed me back against Kieran with unexpected strength. The wolven hit the wall behind us with a grunt as Casteel trapped us both. His mouth moved against my neck as his hips jerked against my belly—
Oh, gods.
I could feel him against me. I could feel him inside me—his desire and mine, churning and twisted together. A dull roaring sound filled my ears, and I was suddenly drowning in a torrent of sensations that came at me in endless waves. Trepidation and concern over what was happening while we weren’t alone, with Kieran there, lodged behind us, fully aware of what was occurring. Shame over the rush of slick dampness Casteel answered with a grind of his hips as his hands dropped to my waist. Desire that somehow merged with something deeper, something irrevocable, and disbelief as I curled my arm around his neck, as I held him, wanting to drown in this fire. Until I realized I already was.
I didn’t know at what point things had spun so out of control. When the way he held me, the way he pressed against me was no longer about quenching his thirst and more about assuaging a different hunger. I didn’t know exactly when I lost the fight against my body. I didn’t know when I’d stopped thinking about the fact that it wasn’t just Casteel’s body that touched mine, it wasn’t his chest that my head fell back against.
Was it the bite? Was it the need and the want that had been stroked to life the night at the Red Pearl that had never gone away, becoming the fire in my blood that simmered any time I was close to Casteel? Was it something reckless and wicked inside me, in the core of who I was, that allowed me to let go and to forget…everything? Or was it all of those things combined? I didn’t know—I didn’t know anything when Casteel’s hands trembled as they slid down my thigh, over the robe. He lifted me onto the tips of my toes, and then higher, drawing one leg around his waist. The lower half of the robe parted and the upper part slipped off my left shoulder. When his hardness pressed against the softest part of me, all I knew was that I had become the flames in my blood, something utterly unfamiliar to me, something daring and shameless. I was the fire, and Casteel was the air that fed it.