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  Tonight, she needed to feel his arms around her as much as she needed to wrap her arms around him. Tonight, she just needed . . . him.

  There were no words as they walked into the penthouse, fingers threaded together. No words as she led him to her bedroom at the end of the hallway. Nothing but quiet breaths and slow-burning gazes as they undressed each other in silence and slipped between the cool sheets of her bed.

  They kissed for a long while, lying on their sides, facing each other. Caressing each other. A delicious, unrushed exploration of each other’s lips and skin and contours that was somehow even sexier—more erotically intense—than any of the frenzied, ferocious, need-you-now matings they’d experienced before.

  Rune’s loving touch heated her as he traced her shoulder and arm, then circled her taut nipples and the swell of her breasts. Each slow skate of his fingertips over her sensitized skin melted her, made her insides twist with delicious need.

  His mouth roamed over hers, claiming her without demand, coaxing her into a tighter coil of yearning. His tongue tangled with hers, testing, not taking, his sweeping strokes putting her blood on a heated boil in her veins.

  God, she wanted him. Needed him like never before . . .

  She broke their kiss and leaned forward, pressing her lips to the hollow at the base of his strong throat. He groaned as she slid her tongue over his skin, then along the column of his neck.

  Her fangs filled her mouth, but she kept them in check as she dragged her parted lips over his drumming carotid. The hard beat called to everything Breed in her.

  It made her blood answer with equal demand: You are mine, as I am yours. She felt the declaration in her bones, in her marrow. Her veins clamored for confirmation of their bond. For consummation of it.

  But she knew his rules, and tonight she would not test him.

  On a shudder, Rune exhaled a jagged sigh as she moved away from his neck and on to the muscled bulk of his shoulder. She kissed the rounded curve of hard flesh, then moved lower, across the broad, glyph-covered slabs of his chest. He moaned as she teased the flat disc of his nipple, sucking the tiny bud between her teeth and flicking it with the tip of her tongue. His arms came up around her as she guided him onto his back to lavish the same attention on the other nipple.

  His cock was hard, and had been since the moment they entered the bedroom. The steely length of it pressed against her hip where she was draped over him now. She reached down to stroke him as she descended farther, kissing and licking and suckling her way toward his lean stomach.

  She loved the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips, and beneath her questing mouth. The dark flourishes of his dermaglyphs felt alive under her tongue as she traced their beautiful patterns.

  She nipped his hip bone and Rune’s thick cock surged even harder, even fuller, in her grasp. “Ah, Christ, Carys . . . you’re killing me.”

  She knew what he wanted. Her mouth was watering for it too. Drifting down into the thatch of dark hair at his groin, she licked the glyph-ringed base of his erection. He was so large and enticing, steely power encased in velvet softness. She explored the length of him with her tongue, teasing the engorged vein that ran under his shaft, lapping the bead of fluid that wept from the tip of its plum-shaped crown.

  With a strangled groan, he arched off the mattress, hips thrusting in plea for more.

  She was only too eager to oblige.

  Wrapping her lips around the silky smooth head of his cock, she slid him all the way into her mouth. She could barely contain him, he was so immense, so thick and rigid, crowding her throat. But the taste of him, the powerful feel of him, only made her hungry to take more. To take all of him.

  “Ah, fuck,” he ground out tightly as she withdrew nearly all the way, then plunged back down. His arms clutched her tighter as a shudder rolled through his massive body. “Oh, yeah, baby. Fuck, yeah.”

  She kept her rhythm slow, but steady. Sucking him deep. Savoring his taste, his heat, his power.

  His palms held her head now, his hips rocking with every long slide of her mouth. On her tongue, his shaft pulsed and twitched. Salty juices flowed out of him, slickening her rhythm as she caressed his balls and sucked him deeper.

  And with each thrust and groan that shuddered through him, Carys’s body burned hotter, wetter. Her sex clenched with the need to have him inside her, but she couldn’t pull her mouth away from him. Her thirst for him consumed her now.

  “Carys,” he gritted out harshly, his cock stiffening even more.

  Tension wracked him. His fingers closed into fists in her hair. She picked up her tempo when she felt him coil tighter with each stroke. He was close, so close. She wanted to push him over the edge. She wanted to leave him room for nothing but pleasure, nothing but the two of them.

  He raised his head to look at her, his dark eyes ablaze with amber fire. His fangs gleamed bright white, sharp as daggers. She’d never seen anything so magnificent. And he was hers.

  “You’re mine, Rune,” she murmured against his throbbing flesh. “Tell me you know that. I need to hear you say it now.”

  The strangled groan that wrenched out of him was somewhere between pleasure and pain. “Fuck yes,” he rasped. “Only yours.”

  She took him deep, brought him to the point of no return. A low growl exploded out of him. He bucked hard against the back of her throat, then the sudden, hot and glorious rush of his seed filled her mouth.

  CHAPTER 19

  Holy hell, this woman owned him.

  Rune couldn’t hold back his raw shout of pleasure as his release tore out of him. Wave after wave, tremor after tremor. An inferno he couldn’t have held back if he’d tried. Nor would she have allowed him to. No, Carys was in complete control of his body in that moment and damn if she didn’t know it, revel in it.

  The sheer force of his climax was staggering, but it was the hot suction of Carys’s mouth that undid him even more. He hadn’t lost a bit of his hardness, even as the last aftershocks of his release shuddered out of him. Carys milked him with her lips and tongue, sucking him deep, then slowly drawing back, showing him no mercy at all. He held her head in his palms, his fingers sifting through her silken hair as she licked him clean of every last drop.

  “Christ,” he hissed through clenched teeth and throbbing fangs. Heavy-lidded, firelit amber eyes lifted to meet his gaze, and the sly smile she gave him sent an arrow of lust straight to his balls. “Keep that up any longer and I’m going to come again.”

  She moaned in approval and took him all the way to the back of her throat. The pleasure was staggering, nearly impossible to resist. But he was hungry too.

  On a growl, he seized her shoulders and rolled her onto her back. “My turn now.”

  They’d experienced each other virtually every way possible in the weeks they’d been together, but tonight it was different. Still raw and carnal and consuming, but Rune had never felt more intimate with Carys than he did right now. Never more naked. He loved this woman, and it didn’t take an exchange of blood to cement his feelings for her.

  But he couldn’t lie to himself by pretending the need to claim her in that irrevocable, eternal way—to bind her to him by blood—wasn’t pounding in his veins like a war drum.

  No.

  He pushed the temptation away with a snarl as he rose over her and drank in the sight of her beauty. His hands actually trembled as he skated his fingers along her cheeks, across the plump softness of her lower lip.

  The pulse points in her neck throbbed as he followed the delicate lines of her veins. That hard pound beneath his fingertips was torment, almost more than he could resist. His own heartbeat jackhammered in his temples. In his chest. In his painfully erect cock.

  His transformed eyes felt like fiery coals in his skull, his thinned pupils fixated on the delectable prize that lay spread out before him, his for the taking.

  He crushed her mouth to his in a fevered kiss, thrusting his tongue past her parted lips that still tasted of him. He wanted t
o devour her, starting with that wicked mouth that had given him no quarter. Caging her head between his bent forearms, he delved deeper with his tongue, thrust harder, with a greed for her he could barely contain.

  She was gasping as he drew away from her, fangs bared and gleaming behind the swollen cushion of her lips. He licked the sharp points, groaning at the erotic graze of their tips against his tongue.

  “You’re amazing,” he uttered thickly, his voice taking on the otherworldly timbre that was pure Breed. “I can never get enough of you.”

  He palmed the rounded swell of her breasts, a low, possessive rumble building in his chest as she arched into his touch, writhing and moaning in eager response. He bent his head and took her nipple between his lips, sucking it hard, tweaking it with a sharp nip of his teeth.

  He released the tight bud with a kiss, then lifted his hungered gaze up to hers. “You’re mine, Carys.”

  “Yes.” She reached to caress his face, breath racing out of her in shallow pants. “Only yours.”

  The same words she’d wrung from him in pleasure a few moments ago. He wanted to hear her scream those words before he was finished with her now.

  He shifted his position and cupped the warm mound of her sex. Silky wetness met his fingertips on contact, and he slid inside her folds on a ragged breath. He stroked her cleft, reveling in the impossible slickness, the beckoning heat.

  The walls of her sheath seared the two fingers he pushed into her. Tiny muscles rippled under his shallow thrusts, making his cock jerk in envy. He penetrated deeper, feeling her plush walls grasp for him with each slide of his fingers.

  Her clit was a hard pearl that quivered as he ran the pad of his thumb over it, coating it with her juices. He flicked and teased and massaged it while his fingers continued to slide in and out of her.

  He glanced up to find her watching him. Her amber eyes were scorching, so hot and wild with need. Her dermaglyphs danced with rich colors across her breasts and the slender planes of her abdomen. Passion swamped her face.

  “Harder,” she rasped, demand in her husky voice. “Go deeper.”

  He chuckled low under his breath. “Oh, not so fast, love. We’re only getting started.”

  Her head dropped back on a thready groan, stretching that pretty column of porcelain skin and the delicate blue veins that beat frantically beneath its surface. Rune had to look away and he did so on a vicious curse.

  Pumping his fingers into her, coaxing the bundle of nerves into an even tighter knot of pleasure for her, he bent his head to kiss and suckle her breasts. He was ravenous for her, but he wanted her mindless with need before he gave in to his own cravings.

  Some primal, selfish part of him wanted to know that he was branded on her senses, stamped deep in her marrow. That she could never belong to another.

  He drifted down the length of her body, kissing and nipping, tonguing every taut curve and valley. He shifted so that his face loomed over her sex, which glistened under his gaze, flushed dark pink and ripe for the eating. The sweet, musky scent of her was a drug to his sanity, but he was already addicted to this woman.

  His woman.

  “Show me,” he growled, sounding more savage than man. His fangs ached as painfully as his cock, twin hungers that demanded to be sated. “Let me hear you, baby.”

  She answered with a throaty moan that nearly undid him on the spot. Her creamy juices drenched his fingers, making slick, wet sounds as he picked up his tempo. Her clit felt like a hot pebble as he rolled and stroked it with his thumb. She bucked under his touch now, her legs falling wide apart, moving restlessly as he commanded the last shreds of her control.

  A cry built in the back of her throat, raw and untamed. It drove him on, turned him savage with the need to feel her shatter. She moaned his name, a shudder traveling the lithe arc of her body.

  “Oh, God. It’s too good.” Arms flung up over her head on the mattress, her fingers twisted in the coverlet as she writhed and quivered under the relentless rhythm of his hand. “Rune, I’m going to come. Please . . . let me come now.”

  He growled his approval and took his thumb from her clit only long enough to cover her with his open mouth. He took the bud deep, his tongue doing the work now, his lips buried in her sweet nectar, his fingers fucking her fast and deep. He stroked and sucked and savored, holding her against his face as her orgasm built to a frenzy. She came on a roar that nearly undid him. Vibrations wracked her strong, lean body, one after another.

  He needed to taste more of her. He wanted to feast on her. Cleaving his tongue through the plush folds of her sex, he speared deep into the molten honey of her core. He lapped her up, just as she had done to him, greedy for every creamy, sweet drop.

  His cock couldn’t take the denial of her heat a second longer. Rune snarled as he pulled away from her, incapable of speech now. Lust raked him, and there was no gentleness in his hands as he cupped her ass and angled her high for the first hard thrust of his hips. He drove inside on a coarse grunt, then fell into a furious, rolling tempo. Crashing into her. Slamming deep. Rocking in and out like a piston.

  Carys started to come again. Her moans built toward ragged cries. The soft, grasping walls of her sheath rippled around him as he lost himself to the intense, unstoppable pressure of his own mounting release.

  He’d never felt anything as addicting as the way their bodies fit together. So primal, so goddamn perfect. He tucked her beneath him and folded his body atop hers, watching her face, holding her fiery gaze, as her orgasm swamped her. Her fingernails sank into his shoulders with her pleasured scream.

  Fuck, yeah, baby. He was right behind her, release rolling up on him fast. He wouldn’t be able to hold it back more than another second.

  His muscles went rigid. His blood turned electric in his veins, roaring in his temples, throbbing in his shaft with every driving thrust of his body into hers.

  His pace turned furious now, beyond his control. His fangs ached to penetrate too. Breed instincts fired up like sparks as his climax coiled into a tighter knot, ready to blow. His pupils homed in on the frantic tic of Carys’s carotid.

  Christ, he could hear that rapid beat drumming in his ears. Echoing in his veins. Calling to his blood and everything Breed in him.

  He wanted to claim her completely.

  He wanted her bound to him forever, whether he deserved that gift or not.

  In that dangerous moment, his control slipping, he’d never wanted anything more in his life.

  Instead, he clamped down with everything he had. He shut his eyes and threw his head back on a raw bellow, then sank in all the way to the hilt as her tiny muscles milked him into a blinding haze of pleasure and the oblivion of a staggering release.

  CHAPTER 20

  They made love again, and eventually worked their way into the shower in the large en suite bathroom. After washing each other under the steamy overhead spray, they lingered there, kissing and caressing, neither one eager to let go of the moment, or each other.

  Sex between them was always incredible, but there was a raw honesty to it tonight—an unspoken vulnerability—that had intensified everything. Carys’s entire being still thrummed with an electric awareness of him, with a craving that would never be fully sated.

  As his large palms skated over her back and shoulders, massaging her in slow circles, she ran her wet hands over the muscled slabs of his strong chest and the elegant tangle of his glyphs. From the first time they’d lain together, every inch of him had been emblazoned into her memory, into all of her heightened senses. Tonight, she explored him with new eyes. With a deeper understanding of the solitary, unreadable man she loved.

  She dipped her head to press a kiss to his sternum, directly over his heart. The powerful drum of his pulse vibrated against her lightly parted lips and the tip of her tongue.

  He groaned deep in his chest, a contented, pleasured sound.

  She smiled in response, delighting in the fact that she had something to do with his current s
atisfied state.

  Of course, she’d enjoyed all of the ravenous, wickedly carnal states that had preceded it too. She’d enjoyed everything about the past several hours, and could only bask in the peace she felt as Rune held her in the wet quiet of the shower.

  “Thank you for tonight,” she murmured, glancing up to meet his heavy-lidded gaze. “For coming to the museum and taking me out on our date. For letting me in. For all of this.”

  “You don’t have to thank me—”

  “I do,” she said. “Because I know it probably wasn’t easy for you to go there—back to your past. You want to leave it behind. I understand that. I just want you to know what it means to me that you trusted me enough to let me see what you’ve been through. Where you’ve come from.”

  “Carys.” He slowly shook his head, looking uncomfortable with her praise. His hand came up to cup her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her lips. “You deserve more than I can ever give you.”

  “You’re all I want, Rune. Like this, tonight. This is all I’d ever need.”

  His sensual mouth quirked wryly. “Then the pressure is on now to deliver no less than four orgasms a night.”

  She laughed. “Careful, I might hold you to that.”

  “With pleasure, love.” He tilted her chin up and took her mouth in an unhurried kiss.

  His lips were tender and affectionate, and it was all she needed for the banked embers of her desire to kindle with renewed heat. Arousal stirred to life, and she clung to him, her body beginning a slow melt with every brush of his mouth on hers, every light stroke of his tongue.

  She would always crave this man. She knew that in her bones, in her blood.

  She’d meant it when she’d said she was his. Only his.

  When their kiss broke, Carys reached up to hold his handsome face in her hands. “God, I love you, Rune. So much it hurts.”