He might dissolve into a lost past too. Even if he remained her neighbor.
“Promise me you won’t do that.” She braced her palms against his shoulders. “Promise me, Max.”
“I promise.” His lips rested against her forehead. “But…Edie, I keep telling you. You’d be foolish to trust the promises of others. Particularly the promises of a predator.”
“Fuck everyone else.” When she poked his chest gently, there was no give there. Only hard muscle and coiling tension. “What aboutyourpromises? Can I trust them?”
For all the chill of his flesh, his heart thumped strongly against her palm. Quickly. And maybe he didn’t say yes, but he wasn’t telling her no either. Not anymore.
It wasn’t such an insignificant shift. And she’d rather take a risk than let someone else give him what he needed or experience that kind of intimacy with him.
Fine, then. “Bite me.”
He didn’t react. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Unlike her, though, he could see in the dark, and she knew those sharp eyes were trained on her face. She could feel them, as hot as the summer sun on bare, tender skin.
He wouldn’t spot hesitation in her expression. Wouldn’t locate even a whisper of unease.
“Feed from me.” Her doubts had been vanquished, leaving only desire and demand. “Make it feel good, and make sure I remember how good it felt.”
A rough sound from deep in his chest rumbled through her. She basked in the sensation, arching and rubbing her body against his, until his hands caught her and held her in place.
“You need to be certain.” His mouth swept to her temple and pressed there hard enough to emphasize the firmness of his teeth behind his soft lips. “Are you?”
She cupped the back of his skull and pressed him even closer, until those tempting lips parted and his incisors became an insistent, sharp prickle against her skin. A featherweight more force, and she’d draw her own blood.
“Don’t you dare leave me hanging, Euro Chad,” she whispered against his jaw, then licked its jutting edge. “If I’m satisfying you, you’d better satisfy me too.”
He didn’t move. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” she said, and nipped that arc of bone.
In an eyeblink, before she was aware of moving or being moved, she was upright and straddling him, perched atop his lap with her knees indenting the sofa cushions on either side of his hips. To sleep, she’d stripped down to a clean tank and a fresh pair of panties, and the velour of his boxers swept against the insides of her thighs in a soft caress. His broad, strong hands gripped her ass and pressed her down firmly, grinding her clit against the solid ridge of his dick through two layers of fabric.
She gasped and involuntarily spread her legs wider, dropping deeper, rubbing harder. The rhythm he set with his sinuous hips was unrelenting and carnal and voluptuously slow, and she followed his lead. She chased the drag of his hard cock between herlegs and the jolt of heat and electricity with each rock of her own hips, each scrape of her fingernails against his satiny skin. She clutched his shoulders and used his immoveable strength for leverage. For her own pleasure.
“Such a hot little chatte.” His breath dusted her earlobe before he bit down. Hard enough to pinch deliciously, but not hard enough to draw blood. Yet. “When I finally get inside you, you’ll burn me alive, my Edie.”
“And you’ll thank me for it.” With the next sway of her hips, the perfect pressure and friction, white fireworks burst behind her eyelids. “Won’t you?”
He didn’t respond in words. One hand remained on her ass cheek, pressing and squeezing and urging her on. The other circled her wrist and guided her arm above her head, twisting it slightly, until the knob of her elbow pointed away from him. His fingers slid through hers and twined. They were holding hands up in the air.Hewas holdingherhand. Tenderly. Loosely enough to offer little resistance if she tugged away from him.
It felt as intimate as his fingertips slipping through her vulva had the previous day.
Then he ducked his head, his lips teasing the sensitive skin inside her raised upper arm and sliding toward her inner elbow. He nipped there, forcing a needy sound from her throat, and began slowly lowering their interlaced fingers as his mouth dragged over her prickling flesh. He drew a trail of heat along her inner forearm with his tongue, her nerves firing to life inch by inch.
At her wrist, that agile tongue traced precise, branching lines. Her veins, she dimly realized, and shivered. He was mapping her veins in the darkness, leaning his forehead against the knot of their hands and nuzzling against her with his nose.
His mouth sealed over her pulse point and sucked, his tongue swirling. She moaned aloud for the first time, long and low, arching back to grind harder against his cock. Desire had transformed from a tease to a fiery ache between her legs, hunger and emptiness andneed.
He stopped moving, stopped rocking and licking and squeezing her ass.
In that stillness, two sharp, needlelike spots of near pain became recognizable. His fangs. Her inner wrist. His final, silent demand for consent before he bit down and swallowed.
Her grip of his shoulder eased, and she slid her palm toward his nape, cradling the back of his skull. She held him there for a heartbeat, still and quiet. Suspended in the moment.
Then she used her hold on his head to press him forward, tighter and harder, until his teeth broke her skin. Until her blood flooded his mouth.
“Yes,” she said, and slid her tongue over the rim of his ear.
