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He stared at me blankly, then a goddamned smile twitched his lips. “There was enough left in the blood dart to take the edge off.”
The one he’d used on Shea. I felt sick, so fucking horrified my voice choked with it. “Does it have to be my blood?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?” Oh God. “You sampled Elaine’s?”
“Yes, from a syringe. Her blood is ineffective. Impotent.” He rested his forehead against my temple, his grip on my head stopping my attempt to turn away from him. “Just as your adapted genetics drive you to hunt the aphid, the arachnid strand in me seeks the coccinellidae.”
The ladybird. When my DNA evolved, it took on the characteristics of the aphid’s predator. Even if I didn’t believe Michio’s research, I had a dozen spots on my back to prove it. And since spiders preyed on ladybirds… “I have a predator for a guardian. Are you hearing yourself? What am I supposed to do with that?”
Something shifted in the way he restrained me. He didn’t relax his grip on my head or lighten his weight against my back, but it felt more…purposeful. More intimate. With my ass flush with his groin and our lips so close together, his aggressive imprisonment of my body suddenly felt aggressively sexual.
He lifted his head, and his hypnotic eyes became my focal point, a view that could seduce me, consume me…infect me. No biting needed.
My breathing sped up, and my face burned in the possession of his gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me about the cravings? About all of it?”
“The last thing you needed was the burden of another person dependent on your blood.” His hot breath fanned over my cheek. “Because I need it, Evie. Desperately. I’ve never felt anything like this…this need to devour you.” His body grew heavier on top of me, his hips pressing against my ass. “While I’m deep inside you.”
A shudder raced down my spine, but rather than tensing to fight, my body melted beneath the grind of his pelvis, the unmoving confinement of his arms, and the hard swell his erection trapped against the seam of my jeans. How could he disgust me and turn me on at the same time?
This was bad, so fucking wrong. I sensed it in the tingle of my skin against his, in the booming tempo of my heart, and in the ache gathering between my legs in anticipation of being stretched and filled. Had he cast some kind of spell over me?
Somewhere amid the debilitating lust, I found the strength to recoil from his hips. “Don’t do this. You’ll infect me.”
Even as I said it, I knew he wouldn’t. We’d had sex numerous times since he’d been bitten, and on several occasions, his teeth had drawn blood. So why was I trembling with fear now?
He grabbed my throat in a bruising grip and yanked my face toward him. “The arachnid pathogen can only be transferred through the venom glands.”
He parted his mouth, and his canines stretched before my eyes. Two ivory blades, whiter than the moon, protruded between his full lips.
My heart slammed against my ribs, and my mind screamed vampire. Of course, vampires didn’t exist, but given this world I was in now—with insectile creatures and winged men who came back from the dead—would vampires really be that strange?
“The glands are located in the hollowed grooves.” His tongue glided over a fang, and his voice reverberated in smooth, heated tones, a mesmerizing melody of sensuality and power. “I can extend and retract the teeth at will.”
“Put them away,” I said hoarsely.
He wrenched my head back with a hard jerk and exposed my throat, his breath dragging over my skin. His chest crushed my back, his lips moved to the curve of my neck, and as his face moved closer to mine, his eyes…fuck. They lured me in, and it was so very, very dark in there. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.
His entire being transformed into a seductive command. One look controlled the tightening of my gut. A single touch gripped my spine. And the curl of his lips opened the vast, hungry reaches of my sexuality.
“Michio.” I twisted my arms in the binds and scraped my boots over the roof shingles, panic rising with my voice. “This is not okay.”
With his chest pressed against my back, he replaced his lips with his teeth and dragged the sharp points down the side of my neck. “I can bite without releasing the spider pathogen.”
He could draw blood without injecting me with the toxins? I shuddered against the stinging scrape, my muscles locked with fear and an unnerving amount of arousal. He terrified me, and I still wanted him, which scared me even more. He was so beautifully and intellectually compelling I felt hooked by a wire. A wire of unbreakable energy, pulling me to him.
