The scent of her arousal filled the air with her musky spice. He held in a groan, when what he really wanted to do was flip up the hem of her dress and drive into her. Just like this. From behind, his hands on her hips, his teeth buried in the crook of her neck to hold her steady for his thrusts.
Great Spirit above, it was tempting. To share one night of passion with her, to have this one memory to hold him for a lifetime.
“Please.” She brought her hand up to slip behind his head, driving her fingers through his hair and holding him as he brushed his lips over the shell of her ear. “Make love to me. I want you to be my first.”
He froze. “You’re a virgin?” He should have expected as much, but he couldn’t imagine how any male could have resisted her.
“Yes.” Her voice trembled, but her left hand was steady as she wedged it between them to grip his thigh. “Take it. Take me.”
He couldn’t, for so many reasons. As tempting as it was to make love to her, she deserved better than to have her virginity ravaged on the floor of a cave by a male who would soon belong to another. And he knew, all the way to the depths of his soul, that sex with her would wreck him. He would claim her as his own, would be unable to let her go, and his clan would pay the price.
“I can’t,” he said in a broken whisper. “You deserve more than I can give you.”
She cried out in frustration. “I’ve gone through my salisheye because of you. I need more now. I’ve never felt this way before. Help me, please.”
Oh, hell, accidental or not, he was responsible for her sexual awakening, wasn’t he? Pride and shame knotted in his gut. Pride, because of all of the males on the planet who could have taken her through the salisheye, he’d been blessed with that honor. Shame, because he should have made it more special than a dry hump during transport to a demon realm. Anguish radiated from her, and everything that made him male demanded that he make it better.
Slowly, he slid his hand downward, over her rib cage to her flat, hard abs. The tips of his fingers rested just above her pubic bone, caressing lightly, making her arch into his touch.
“I can’t make love to you, but I can make you feel good. Will you let me do that?” He worked his way lower, down her thigh, until he reached the hem of her dress. “Let me touch you.”
He slipped his hand under her dress, and she moaned. “Yes. Oh . . . yes.”
Victory sang through him, speaking to both the warrior and the male inside him. And yet both recognized that victory came at a price. Tomorrow, he suspected, both he and Aylin would pay it.
AYLIN’S SENSES WERE on overload. Her skin was on fire, her breasts ached, and lightning danced along every nerve strand. And Hunter wasn’t touching anything but her leg.
The fact that he didn’t want to take her virginity stung, but his hand moving upward in a lazy, decadent climb eased the pain. For now.
Don’t think about later, she told herself. Nothing matters but . . . Oh, holy damn, yes! His fingers brushed her core, wringing a strangled gasp from her. Pleasure zinged through her veins, and molten, liquid heat pooled in her feminine place.
Bracing her firmly against him, he wedged his foot between hers and nudged them apart. She held her breath as he cupped her mound and slipped one finger between her folds.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured against her throat.
She squirmed, suddenly embarrassed. Was she supposed to be that wet? Was there something wrong with her?
“Easy, sweetheart.” His guttural voice dripped with promise as he rubbed her in languid circles that somehow soothed her ache and made it worse. “I won’t hurt you.”
No, he was doing the very opposite, making her feel things she’d never felt, and those things could all be described as exquisite.
His finger dipped inside her, and her knees wobbled. “M-more,” she breathed. She wanted him deeper, so deep she’d feel him there forever.
He obeyed, adding a finger and pushing deep. He hissed and rocked his hips into her ass. “Damn, you’re tight.”
He did something sinful with his fingers, stroked something inside that sent electric shocks of ecstasy through her entire pelvis. She clenched around him as he pumped in and out, and when he pressed his thumb against her clitoris, she cried out.
“That’s it,” he said hoarsely. “Ride my hand. I want you to come so hard you scream.”
Scream? She could barely breathe, let alone scream. He withdrew his fingers, and that made her want to scream, but he plunged them back inside and whispered hot, naughty things in her ear.
Would he say those things to Rasha? Would he tell her how beautiful she was, how he wanted to spread her wide and fuck her with his tongue? Would he tell her he wanted to mount her on the forest floor, deep in the wilderness where their primal instincts could be one with nature?
Guilt, confusion, anger . . . it all assailed her at once, waging war with the pleasure Hunter was giving her.
You should have thought about all of this before you begged him to take your virginity. Maybe . . . but then, Rasha had the rest of her life to enjoy Hunter’s attention. Aylin had only now. Besides, Aylin was here for her sister, so she deserved something for herself, right? And there were no guarantees that she was going to survive the challenge tomorrow. They weren’t even in the real world.
What happens in a demon realm stays in a demon realm.
How easy it was to justify taking something that would very soon belong to her sister.
“Come on, Aylin.” Hunter’s guttural voice broke her firmly away from the lake of shame she’d been floundering in. “Stay with me. You’re someplace else right now.” How did he know? Before she could ask, he dropped to his knees and shoved her dress up over her hips. “Grab the wall.”
His firm tongue stabbed her between her legs. Shocked by the sudden sensation and light-headed at the extreme intimacy, she fell forward, barely catching herself on the rocky cave wall.
“Hunter!” she cried.
His tongue swept along the length of her, from clit to core, plunging deep inside her as his hot breath caressed her most private places. Her own breath exploded from her lungs as he mimicked intercourse, thrusting in and out, finding a rhythm that made her dizzy.
Closing her eyes, she memorized every detail of what he was doing to her. From the delicious onslaught of licks to the almost unbearable pleasure of his tongue diving deep inside her and the light sucking when he opened his mouth wide against her entire sex.
Her legs and arms shook so hard she thought they might give out, but abruptly, he was on his feet again, his arm around her waist to hold her steady as he pushed two long fingers inside her. He stroked her faster and faster, until she was panting and quivering with the need for release. She was rocking her hips now, trying to reach her peak, but he denied her, changing up his rhythm and speed as she got close.
“Please,” she moaned. “Please . . . now.”
He flicked his thumb over her swollen knot of nerves, and pleasure cascaded through her. And then he was rubbing her flesh at the top of her cleft, the pad of his thumb just barely feathering over her clit as his fingers worked her core, and she saw stars.
The orgasm ripped through her, far more powerful than the one that had surprised her at the portal. Hunter’s touch was seductive, ruthless, and so masterful that as her climax waned, another built behind it, battering her with new waves of ecstasy that went on and on.
As she came back down, her muscles gave out. Hunter caught her, lifting her into his strong arms as if she weighed no more than a house cat. She barely had the energy to cling to him, but she managed, burying her face in his throat as he carried her to the hot springs pool.
“I’m going to bathe you and feed you, and you aren’t going to argue.” His voice was both commanding and teasing, and she was too tired to argue anyway.
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll eat and bathe when you’re done.”
“No, I meant . . .” Cheeks heating, she cleared her throat. “You didn’t come. Let me help.”
He went taut. “You’ve done enough already.”
She frowned at the way he said it, as if it were an accusation. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Just the opposite,” he said gruffly, leaving her even more confused.
He set her down next to the pool and removed her boots before helping her out of her dress. After what he’d just done to her, she shouldn’t be nervous about him seeing her naked again, but maybe that was exactly why she felt so anxious. She’d been vulnerable in so many ways in her life, but never like this.
Making it worse, he’d gone robotic, his actions brisk and economical, as if he were unsaddling a horse instead of undressing someone he’d just given an orgasm.
As he helped her ease into the hot, bubbling pool, she was grateful for the steam that swirled between them. She’d just experienced the most magical moment of her life . . . but if the devastation on Hunter’s face was any indication, he didn’t feel the same way.
Not even close.
THERE WAS NOTHING like strained silence to make a male throw himself into mundane tasks with a vengeance.
While Aylin relaxed in the hot spring with a packet of blood, he built a fire, sharpened the weapons on a rock splashed with water, and sucked down his own nourishment. All the while, his dick throbbed and his balls ached, and what he wouldn’t give to let Aylin “help” him with that issue.
But he’d already risked too much by giving in to his desire to touch her and taste her, to watch her come apart in his arms. He couldn’t afford to create more of a bond between them. He was already dangerously close to entertaining idiotic fantasies—like running away with her.
And spending the rest of their lives being hunted by ShadowSpawn.
Brilliant, Hunt. That’s just effing brilliant.
“Hunter?” Aylin’s drowsy voice drifted to him as he tossed a stick onto the fire.
He didn’t look her way. “Yeah?”
“Tell me about growing up. Your parents. How you became chief.”
She couldn’t have chosen more uncomfortable subjects if she’d tried. Had anyone else asked about those things, he’d have told them to fuck off. But this was Aylin, the female who had risked her life when her sister wouldn’t, and she deserved answers to anything she asked, even the ugly things.
Sinking to the ground, he propped his back against the wall of the cave and slung his arms over his knees as he stared into the fire.
“My mother was a war prize.” Closing his eyes for a moment, he wondered if they looked as glazed as they felt. “My father took her when he killed her mate—BlackRiver’s chief.”
Over the crackle of the fire and the soft gurgle of the water, he heard her sharp inhale. “How did she handle that?”
“She was a warrior, and her clan followed the Way of the Raven, so she accepted her fate.” He smirked. “But that doesn’t mean she was nice about it.” The fights he’d witnessed between his mother and father had been vicious and sometimes violent. Pretty much how he imagined his union with Rasha would be. “My father made it worse by refusing to let her bring her two sons into the clan.”
“My father would have done the same thing. He wouldn’t want the offspring of another leader in his clan.”
Exactly. As harsh as it was, those children could grow up and, with the mother’s help, overthrow the clan chief. “It was a little more complicated than that,” he said. “The boys weren’t hers. They were her sister’s. Her sister was mated to the clan chief before my mother was, and when her sister died during the second child’s birth, my mother mated with their father and took over their care.”
“What happened to the boys? Your cousins, I guess?”
The water swished, and he finally risked a glance in Aylin’s direction. She’d moved to the edge of the pool and propped her arms on the smooth stone border. Her damp hair framed her face, and in the smoky firelight, she could have been a water nymph rising up to seduce him to his death.
What a way to go.
He tore his gaze away before he did something stupid, like join her in the pool. “They were sent to the Native American tribe of their ancestors. This was before the tribes separated themselves completely from vampires.” Since born-vampire children appeared human and had human needs until their teens, many tribes accepted them . . . until their inner vampires made an appearance, and humans became food.
Another swishing sound. “How long was it before you were born?”
“I was born exactly nine months after my father killed her mate.”
“He didn’t waste any time, did he?”
“No.” And Hunter could only imagine how not well that had gone.
More swishing and splashing. What was she doing in there? “Did your mother . . .”
“Did she resent me?” He stared up at the ceiling, hating going back to that time in his life. The clan had been such a dark place, its members little more than cavemen. “I think so. But she never treated me badly. She was just . . . distant. At least, until her sons reached puberty, and the tribe they were with kicked them out. They came to MoonBound, begging for a place to live.”
“Did your father allow that?”
He closed his eyes. “He left the decision up to me.”
It had been a cruel thing to do, and Hunter often wondered if his father had done it out of cruelty or if he’d been trying to teach Hunter about hard decisions. Maybe both. Probably both.
Aylin uttered something under her breath. “That’s terrible. How old were you?”
“I was ten.” An infant, by vampire standards. “I sent them away.” He risked a look at her, expecting horror or pity or some equally awful thing, but all he saw was curiosity and patience. Still, he got defensive, maybe because he still questioned his decision. “I had no choice. If I’d let them stay, my father would have eventually killed them.”
“What did your mother do?”
A lump formed in his throat. Dammit. He’d thought he was past what his mother had done to him, but nope. Apparently, trauma was the gift that kept on giving. “She never forgave me. Decades later, I started questioning the way my father ran the clan. Most of the members were loyal to him out of fear, but a few felt the way I did, that things needed to change. So my father told me to take a hike and start my own clan. The problem was that a lot of the members wanted to go with me. Obviously, my father was . . . less than pleased.”
“What did he do?”
“He tried to kill me. We fought. He died.” Sounded so simple and clean, didn’t it?
But Hunter could never forget how, as years of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse boiled over during the battle, he’d become the very monster he’d sworn to avoid. And when he’d delivered the death blow, as his father lay bleeding out on the forest floor, he’d felt . . . satisfaction. And maybe a little joy.
Even now, he couldn’t shake the guilty pleasure of the kill, and he wished like hell Samnult had included a bottle of vodka in the supply kit. Drowning the shame was a lot easier than remembering it.
“And your mother?” Aylin asked.
“Like I said, she never forgave me. She undermined my authority, tried to turn members against me. I had to banish her. She left during a snowstorm, and I never saw her again.”
He finally looked over at Aylin again, and wished he hadn’t. She was still facing him, her arms propping her out of the water from the shoulders up, but now her lower half floated, her feet kicking gently in the water. Her firm, rounded bottom breached the surface, drops of water beading on her smooth skin. What he wouldn’t give to lick those beads away.
He wouldn’t stop there, either. He could still taste her on his tongue, and he wanted more.
So much more, and he couldn’t have any of it.
AYLIN WAS GOING to turn into a prune if she didn’t get out of the water, but despite the fact that she was in a dangerous land and she’d nearly been killed several times already, this was the most relaxed she’d ever been. She knew it was wrong of her to be enjoying her time with Hunter, but this was the first time any male had taken an interest in her, and she didn’t want to waste a second of it.
“Enough about my parents,” Hunter said, as he turned back to the fire. “Tell me about your mom. I know she was human when your father claimed her and that she died during childbirth, but that’s all I’ve heard.”
Okay, so maybe this wasn’t as enjoyable as she’d thought. “My father’s clan raided a railroad camp in the 1860s. They killed the men, kidnapped the women.” She pulled herself out of the water and wrapped herself in a towel. “You can guess why.”
Hunter nodded, the dancing shadows on his face emphasizing the disgust in his expression.
“Well, my father became infatuated with my mother, and he spared her life, keeping her captive long after the other women were dead.” Aylin had heard the stories over and over, from her father and from clan members who were nostalgic about the “good old days,” when vampires roamed freely, and their heinous acts could be blamed on the native human tribes. “Eventually, he turned her into a vampire, but according to some, she never really came around. By all accounts, she was the only thing my father ever loved.”
Hunter looked up, and she swore his eyes darkened as he took her in. “Do you believe that?”
Even his voice had gone dark and husky, and warmth spread across her already warm skin. He’d said he wanted her, and now that he’d shown her the truth of that, she could see it, plain as day. Guilt and pleasure rolled through her, mixing so thoroughly that she couldn’t latch on to one. He belonged to Rasha, but . . . he didn’t want her.
He wants me!
More pleasure. More guilt.
This sucked.
“I believe my father loves Rasha,” Aylin said, as she slipped into the filthy dress she’d worn all day.