Page 102 of Hunted

She arches into me when I kiss her harder, and my free hand, acting on appetite before permission, finds her breast through the layers between us. The soft, dangerous fullness fits my palm with a perfection that makes my control stutter.

I squeeze. Torment one hot peak. The sound she makes this time is broken, half protest, half need, her fingers clutching at my shirt as if she is torn between pushing me away and pulling me closer.

The latter wins.

I lift my mouth from hers only long enough to breathe, though breathing is courtesy now, not necessity. She follows, mouth rising, chasing mine with a hunger she would deny if I named it.

The sight nearly unmans me.

The little hunter, all barbed wit and defiance, opening for me as if she has forgotten every argument she arrived with.

A thought returns, the one that haunted me through the night.

Perhaps this is the way through. Excess. Indulgence. Completion.

Take her to my suite. Strip this antagonism down to truth. Fuck the defiance and confusion and snark out of both of us until the compulsion burns itself clean.

Give her the full experience of what she keeps baiting and backing away from.

Perhaps then she will stop running because there will be no mystery left to tempt her.

Or… perhaps she will run harder because I have fed the part of her that already answers me.

And if she lets me bite her⁠—

The thought is so forceful, my fangs ache outright.

I break the kiss and grit my teeth against it.

She looks up at once, flushed and breathing hard, eyes bright and dazed and furious at herself for being dazed.

She notices the change in me and her gaze flicks to my mouth, then my eyes, and back again.

‘No fangs,’ she whispers, less snark now, more plea and definite warning.

I drag in a measured breath I do not need and force the hunger down another inch.

‘No fangs,’ I growl, and the promise costs me.

She exhales, shuddering, and that shudder is its own temptation.

I gather her up before I can reconsider, one arm behind her back, the other beneath her thighs, and blur across the space to the sofa in a streak of motion that would terrify most mortals into screaming.

Eira squeals but the sound is not fear.

It is exhilaration.

She clutches my shoulders, eyes flashing with something wild and alive that makes my mouth curve before I can stop it.

‘You like that, little hunger?’

The name slips out before I can refine it, a private correction to the one I have used until now, and her expression changes at once. Surprise. Heat. Then a glare she snatches into place too late.

‘Don’t get cocky,’ she breathes, and drags me down by the front of my shirt, kissing me before I can answer.

So we are lost again.

I let her have my mouth, then take hers back with interest, one hand braced behind her, the other roaming with restraint that feels more like torture than virtue. Her clothes shift beneath my fingers, then give. Skin appears in fleeting, incendiary glimpses as I bare Eira Cross inch by maddening inch.