She understands what I'm asking. I see it in her eyes, the flash of surprise followed by something darker. Hunger of her own.
"Yes." She tilts her head back, baring her throat to me. "God, yes."
The trust in that gesture undoes me.
I lower my mouth to her neck. Press a kiss to the sensitive skin first. Then I let my fangs graze the spot, testing, giving her one last chance to change her mind.
"Do it," she breathes. "I want to feel you everywhere."
I bite.
Her blood floods my mouth, and the world fractures.
She tastes like fire. Like lightning captured in liquid form. I feel her strength, her defiance, her stubborn refusal to break no matter what the world throws at her. I taste her fear and her hope tangled together. Her desire, sharp and urgent, matching my own. The trust she's placed in me, terrifying in its completeness.
And underneath it all, something else. Something that makes my chest crack open.
She cares for me. Not just wants me, cares. Deeply. Fiercely.
The taste of it overwhelms me.
Celeste cries out beneath me, her body arching off the bed. The bite has intensified everything for her, too. I can feel it in the way her walls clench around me, the way her nails score my back, the way she's shaking apart.
"Maximus." My name tears out of her, broken and desperate. "I'm going to…"
"Let go." I seal my mouth over the wound, drinking deep, feeling her pleasure echo through her blood. "I've got you."
She shatters.
Her release rips through her with a cry she doesn't bother to muffle. Her body clamps down on mine, pulsing, pulling, and I follow her over the edge with a groan that sounds like it's been ripped from somewhere deep. I bury myself as deep as I can go and let it take me.
For a long moment, neither of us moves.
Then she laughs. Soft and surprised and thoroughly wrecked.
"I think you broke something."
I lift my head to look at her. "What?"
"I don't know. My brain. My ability to form sentences." She grins up at me, and the sight of it, her hair a disaster, bite marks blooming on her throat, makes something warm bloom in my chest. "That was…"
"Not enough."
Her grin widens. "Not even close."
I'm still inside her. Still hard, or hard again. Vampire stamina has its benefits.
I pull out slowly, watching her face, the way her eyes flutter, the way she bites her lip. Then I flip her onto her stomach.
"Maximus, what…"
I pull her hips up, positioning her on her hands and knees. She looks back at me over her shoulder, eyes dark with renewed hunger.
"We have all night," I say. "I intend to use every second of it."
I push back into her and start again.
The second time is slower. Deeper. I grip her hips hard enough to bruise, watching myself disappear into her body, watching the way her back arches, listening to the sounds she makes with each thrust. She drops to her elbows, changing the angle, and we both groan at the difference.
