“So you have my blood,” I murmured. “What else do you want, princess?”
Another roll of her hips answered my question. Fuck. I had never known what it was to need someone before I met her. I had always thought that kind of talk was silly and overdramatic.
No. I needed Oraya. Needed her, like another bodily function.
I knew what she wanted. She knew what she wanted. But I knew she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. The final vestiges of our game, shaky gates still in place between us.
So she whispered, against another desire-drunk kiss, “Beg.”
It was so damned easy to beg for her.
I pushed down on her hips—just enough so that my tip sat at the slick of her, so sensitive that I felt it tighten at the presence of my cock.
“Let me in,” I rasped. “Let me inside you. Let me feel you come around me. Let me watch you. Please.”
She let out a strangled sigh, pressed her mouth against mine, and lowered herself onto me.
When I disappeared into her wet warmth, everything else fell away.
Immediately, a sound tore from her throat, a mangled moan, and Goddess, it was the most incredible sound I’d ever heard. I thought I’d made myself forget it, put it out of my mind forever.
Stupid of me to even try. And hell, why would I want to? I wanted to drown myself in her. Drown myself in her sounds, her breath, her body—her blood.
She moaned again as she lifted herself off me, lowering again, again, hips rolling, helping me hit where she wanted me. Goddess, I loved it—loved the way she used me. My body still hurt, uncooperative in letting me take her the way I wanted to, but she was more than willing to take what she needed.
My hands trailed her body, memorizing the shape of every muscle, every expanse of skin, from the taut shape of her waist to the full softness of her ass. I kissed her, hard, swallowing all those breathtaking sounds—offering her all of my own.
Our pace was frantic now. Neither of us had patience for this. I wanted everything, and I wanted it now. With every time she took me inside her, grinding against me, allowing me to reach the deepest parts of her, I only wanted more.
I wanted to brand her.
I wanted her to brand me.
My hunger for her was suddenly insatiable, driven to a frenzy by the sensation of her sex around me, the scent of her desire, the taste of my own blood on her lips and the tantalizing scent of hers beneath that sweat-slicked skin.
She broke our kiss, gasping a curse against my lips as I drew her down against me roughly in one particularly deep thrust, her body spasming—and fuck, I almost lost it right there.
“Raihn,” she whimpered.
“Take it,” I rasped out. Knowing, somehow, exactly what she wanted. “All of it. It’s yours.”
She let out a fractured sound between a sob and a sigh of relief, and lowered her mouth to my throat again, drinking deep as she rocked around me.
When she pulled away again, blood smearing her lips, I chased her, desperate to taste her again however I could. But instead, she lifted her chin—exposing the elegant column of her throat.
I paused, a sudden absence of movement that made her tighten around me in protest.
She couldn’t be offering—couldn’t be asking me to—
“Take it,” she said, throwing my words back at me.
My jaw closed. Tightened. It was almost—almost—enough to cut through my haze of lust.
I knew what this meant for her. Knew, too, that the chemical draw of my blood and our sex and everything else between us was probably just as addling to her as it was to me.
I didn’t want to be something else she regretted.
“Are you sure?”
I barely managed to form the words.
She lowered her chin just enough to meet my eyes. What I saw within them stripped me bare. Far deeper than the lust.
“Yes,” she whispered.
No hesitation.
I didn’t even have words to give her after that, just this animalistic growl that came out in a mangled burst as I pulled her closer. Her hips resumed their rhythm, drowning us both in a sea of pleasure that couldn’t be matched, except—
—Except for when my mouth came to her throat.
Her skin there was delicate. Smooth, save for the little scars—two old, two newer. Just as I had once before, I kissed both of them, tenderly, offering some softness before I let the sharpness of my teeth settle over her vein. I could practically taste the beat of her blood beneath, hot and sweet.
My bite was quick, firm, piercing the skin in a single painless strike before withdrawing.
She drew in a little gasp, her hands clutching my shoulders, walls tightening around me.