She tasted like sin and fire, like every dark thing he’d tried so foolishly to outrun when all along the darkness was the very thing keeping him alive.
He slid his hands around the backs of her thighs and brought her closer, drinking her, sucking. She gasped again, frantically tugging his hair, and he slid his mouth to her center, dragging his tongue through her wet heat, then back again, lapping up the blood that spilled across her skin.
Jacinda hadn’t yet come a second time before she’d demanded the bite, and now he took pleasure in making her wait, drawing out her release as he took his fill, sucking here, licking there, teasing her with soft strokes of his tongue until he knew she couldn’t take another moment of his torture.
Swallowing the last bit of blood he dared to take, Gabriel returned his attention to her clit, sucking it between his lips, flicking her with his tongue until she clamped her thighs tight around his head and cried out, tugging his hair so hard it made his eyes water.
When he finally pulled back, both of them were breathless. Panting.
A blush swept across Jacinda’s cheeks and throat, a dark contrast to the white rose petals that haloed her silver hair.
The sweet fire of her blood sang through Gabriel’s body, electric and pulsing and hot.
Magic.
He felt strong. Fuckingalive, as if she’d just awoken him from a grave he hadn’t even realized he’d fallen into.
A deep, possessive rumble vibrated through his chest. She belonged to him, only and always, and he needed to fuck her.
Now.
Without another thought he flipped her onto her stomach, hauling her hips up until she was on her hands and knees, half perched on his jacket, half in the dirt, her lush backside bared for her vampire prince. With a gentle touch that belied his desperation, he palmed her arse.
Jacinda arched her back and moaned in pleasure, a soft, decadent sound that stirred a deep ache in his balls.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He closed his eyes, focusing entirely on the heat of her skin against his palm. “Fuck.”
With his other hand he freed his cock and moved closer to her, sliding along her entrance, making her shudder with every stroke.
“Don’t stop,” she begged again. “Please, Gabriel. I need you inside me. I feel like I’m onfire.”
The longing in her voice matched the ache in his chest. In his balls.
He fisted her long hair, winding it tight around his hand. With the very last breath in his lungs, he whispered, “I won’t stop, little moonflower. I promise.”
Gabriel took her right there. Down in the dirt between the rosebushes, her pale fingers clawing at the damp earth, thorns scratching her arms. He pulled her hair and forced her head back as he slammed into her again, hard and deep, a collision that unleashed a shock of desire so fierce it was like a living thing itself, a force the enchanting witch had resurrected just as she’d resurrected the flowers, with no more than her touch and a warm, heady breath.
He filled her completely, one hand gripping her hip, the silk of her hair twined in his fingers as he fucked her beneath the tangle of blooms and thorns, beauty and pain, the air thick with the scent of blood and roses and sex. She pushed back, meeting every thrust, taking him deeper, grinding against him until they reached the very edge of the cliff together.
This time, he issued no commands. Made no claims but the promise of his fevered touch.
Still fisting her hair, he plunged inside her one last time, blissfully erupting in an explosion of pure, white-hot ecstasy, and when she came for him, she cried out and shuddered around him, a full-bodied tremor that reverberated into his very bones, marking him as deeply as he’d marked her.
Mine.
* * *
When the breath finally returned to his lungs, Gabriel slid out from inside her, and Jacinda turned over and stretched out on her back, her eyes closed, a smile touching her lips. He collapsed on top of her and held her close, nuzzling her neck, breathing her in, listening to the rhythmic beat of her heart. The taste of her lingered in his mouth—blood and desire both—and Gabriel closed his eyes and sighed, remembering the Tarot card that’d slipped from her deck the night she’d told him about its messages.
A vampire embracing his woman on a bed of roses.
The Lovers.
That night, he’d asked her if she believed love was a choice.
Now, holding her beneath the rosebushes, he knew the truth of it.
Love wasn’t a choice at all.
