“This is me,” she uttered, shocked.
“You shouldn’t be here, Sadey.”
“How do you know my name?” she asked, rounding on him.
“It’s not safe. If my coven finds out what you are—”
“How do you know my name, Aric?”
His chin was dipped to his chest, but Aric lifted his dark gaze to hers. “It was an accident. I saw the name. You were loud.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I told you my name in the hospital, you said yours back. In your head.”
“You said you weren’t in my head.” She retreated a couple of steps until her back hit the sketching table. She felt violated. “You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I didn’t. I don’t want to be in your mind. It feels…” He shook his head hard. “It makes me feel sick. It’s not something I had control over, though. You were reaching for me. You’re reaching for me now. Begging me to…”
“Begging you to what?”
“Apologize.”
“Fuck,” she gritted out. “This was a mistake. I’ve done this before. I’ve been with someone who wanted every piece of me, and I’m not doing this again.”
“Why are you here?”
“I can’t.” Sadey strode for the door, but Aric pulled her arm, and now his eyes were roiling like black flames.
“Why?” he gritted out. “I want to know because I’ve been doing my part. I’ve been staying away from you, but now you’re in my bedroom, and I can hear you in my head. I can feel you.”
Sadey couldn’t catch her breath. Not here where he was leveling her insides with that impassioned look. Not when he was touching her. Not as his grip lessened, not when his thumb brushed the inside of her arm so softly it made her body react.
“Do you drink girls like the ones outside?” she asked. The answer mattered so much.
“Yes.”
Her heart fell, and she sighed out her disappointment.
“It isn’t sexual for me,” he said.
“How can I believe that after what I saw in the hall? That woman was enjoying it—”
“Listen to my voice, Sadey.” Aric gently pulled her closer, and now both of his hands were on her arms. “You can hear a lie. It’s not sexual for me. I have to eat, that’s all.”
Truth. But… “How can I trust what you say when you can manipulate my mind?”
“I wouldn’t with you.” He cupped her neck with those cold, strong hands of his and raised his dark brows, leveled her with the honestly in his eyes, and repeated in a whisper, “I wouldn’t.”
And she believed him. She had to. Her animal did.
“I won’t hurt you, but you can’t leave right now. Not this soon after coming in. My coven will think something is wrong. Please, just stay for a little while.”
Her gaze flicked to the unmade four poster bed across the room before she could stop herself. Aric frowned and looked behind him, following her gaze.
“Why did you draw me?” she asked on a breath. “Why did you draw my landscaping? Why were you standing outside of my house that night?”
“Because,” he murmured.
“Tell me why or I’m leaving, and screw the consequences.”
“Dammit, Sadey, I’m trying to protect you.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel compelled to! Because it feels like this world would be uglier without you here. Because you make me feel things I haven’t felt in a really long time. Things I thought I wasn’t capable of anymore.”
Before she could stop herself, Sadey lifted up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. It was reckless and wrong, but his words stirred something wild within her. She knew exactly what he meant. She made him feel. She understood. She thought she’d hate men until the day she died after the hell Brock had put her through, but here she was, feeling alive again. And it had been so damn long. Aric couldn’t be more wrong for her. He had a life leading a dangerous coven of vampires. He bled people, fed on them. He was a creature of the night and completely incapable of giving her a relationship she needed. But he could give her something she wanted—an escape. An hour where she didn’t feel jaded and unlovable. He was dangerous, powerful, and sexy, and she wanted him to touch her body, her soul, and yes, maybe her mind was reaching for him because she wanted someone to touch her there, too.
Aric had gone still with her kiss, but then his hand went around the back of her head. He angled his face, dipped closer, and then pushed his tongue past her lips. Sadey shuddered with how good he felt touching her. She ran her hand down his chest to his abs and reveled in the feeling of his taut muscles twitching under her touch.
Aric lifted her off the ground with a wild sound in his throat and slammed her back against the door. His kiss became desperate as he pressed his rock-hard erection between her thighs. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, his hand was there, strong on the back of her knee, encouraging her to stay just like this, curved around his body. Sadey hugged his neck and moaned as he dipped his tongue into her mouth over and over, rocking his hips smoothly, hitting her clit just right.
She was burning up, and this was all too fast, but for the life of her, she couldn’t conjure a single care. She couldn’t stop this right now if she tried. Aric yanked her away from the door and walked her slowly back toward the bed.
Sadey lowered her lips to his neck and sucked hard, and the hiss in his throat revved her up even hotter. His hands were strong on her, as if he knew what her body was capable of. He didn’t need to be gentle because she wasn’t some fragile human. She had an animal side that reveled in rough affection. Teasingly, she clamped her teeth on his neck. Silly vamp, offering a predator his throat. He must trust her.
Aric held her tighter and eased them onto the bed, ground his erection against her. His skin was so cold on hers. As he leaned down and took her mouth, he slid his hands up inside of her shirt, brushed her ribs, and cupped her breast. Damn bra. Desperate to touch more of his skin, she pulled off her shirt. Aric eased up just enough to let the fabric slip between them, and then his lips crashed onto hers again.
His hands were rough in her hair, and she fucking loved it. Loved the way he angled her face back to level her lips with biting kisses. Loved how he trailed his kisses along her jaw to her neck, hesitated there to suck on her skin, then moved down. He undid the clasp of her bra and yanked it off, then sucked on her nipple until she arched against the mattress. She spread her legs for him, inviting him closer.
Reaching down, she popped the button of his jeans and unzipped them so he wouldn’t be confused by mixed signals.
“Tell me to stop now, Sadey,” he growled out.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she said breathily.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and then her pants were on the floor with his. Just a second was all he had needed to unfasten them and strip them off her legs.
He ground his hips again, and she could feel the head of his swollen shaft at her wet entrance, and a sudden desperation took her. “Please,” she whispered, digging her nails into his back.
His lips were on her neck again, and there were the sharp points of his fangs, but he wouldn’t drink her. Not if she didn’t tell him to. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. She could trust Aric not to hurt her.
When he eased back, there was raw hunger in his eyes. It should’ve terrified her, but it didn’t. Instead, the heat in her stomach turned molten. How sexy to be wanted so desperately by someone. Fuck Brock and his memory. Fuck her ex for forcing her to pick up the scraps of his affection. Fuck his other mates. Right here, right now, she was enough for Aric.
“You’re more than enough,” he whispered, pushing into her. “Don’t reach, Sadey. I can’t keep out if you reach for me.”
But keeping him out seemed like a lot of work when she could barely think straight. Aric pushed into her again, stretching her, filling her. She gasped out a helpless sound as his lips collided with hers. His abs flexed against her with every
stroke he pumped into her. His smooth, cold skin stole the warmth from hers. His sharp teeth grazed her lips and still, he felt perfect right now. So perfect.
“You’re the perfect one,” he murmured against her lips. Gritting his teeth, he moaned and bucked into her again, gripped her waist. “Fuck, you feel so good.”
The pressure built to blinding in her middle. How could anything feel like this? How could she feel this connected with another person? His lips were back on her throat, his teeth right there, and his look of hunger from before flashed through her mind. Her stomach turned with a sudden desperation for something to sate her thirst. What was he doing to her?
He slid into her again, so hard, so good, and she lost her mind completely to the release she teetered right on the edge of. “Do it.”
“Do what?” he ground out.
“Drink me.”
There was no hesitation. His teeth pierced her throat, and it should’ve hurt, but it didn’t. Not when her orgasm exploded through her body at that exact moment. “It’s okay. Okay, okay. It’s okay.” The words tumbled around in her mind, echoing, tripping over each other. “I’ll take care of you.” Aric was there in her head making beautiful promises.
God, what an alluring offer. She hadn’t been taken care of in a really long time.
His hand gripped the side of her neck as he rammed into her and froze, his shaft pulsing as the first jet of heat shot into her. He sucked on her neck hard, bit deeper, and she groaned with how incredible her body felt. He pushed into her again and again, drawing every aftershock from her as he emptied himself completely. And as the final, faint pulse of her release subsided, Aric loosened his jaw, released her torn neck, and licked where he’d bitten her.
Her skin sealed with her shifter healing, and he sucked gently there as if he was silently thanking her.
He hadn’t taken much from her. Not even enough to make her feel faint or for her fingertips to turn cold. He’d stayed in control and only sipped at her through their orgasm. It shouldn’t have been, but that was the sexiest thing she’d ever been a part of. What did that say about her? Right now, she didn’t care. Not when Aric was trailing kisses down her collar bone and stroking along her arm, coveting her. And she repaid him in kind—kissing his skin, biting him gently, rubbing her cheek against his affectionately. She would never tell him, but that was a sign of deep adoration for shifters like her.
Aric lifted up and smiled as though he’d heard that last thought. And then slowly, he eased forward and nuzzled his cheek against hers. Her chest heated with something unexplainable. Something incredible, blinding, and overwhelming.
The door creaked open. “Hey boss, do you have any extra twenties?” Garret asked. “Oh, shit!”
With a gasp, Sadey covered her face in mortification as Aric threw the covers over them. “Garret, get out!”
Sadey peeked through her fingers, but Garret was standing there, staring at Aric with such a strange frown on his face. “What’s happening right now?”
“Garret, I’m serious, get the fuck out of my room. That’s an order.”
Garret’s eyes narrowed to slits as he dragged an angry gaze to Sadey. “What did you do to him?”
Aric blasted off her, melded into a thick plume of bats and smoke and waved violently this way and that until there was a deafening crash. Aric was across the room and pinning Garret to the wall, which had shattered behind him. “I gave you an order, so why the fuck are you still here? How I feed is my business.”
“Except that wasn’t just feeding!” Garret yelled. “I can feel your goddamned bond.”
He lifted an accusatory gaze to Sadey, but she was crouched defensively on the bed, ready to Change and rip his throat out if the vamp came a step closer.
Garret huffed a humorless breath. “All right, King. I’m leaving.” He lifted his hands in surrender as power hummed through the room.
When Aric pushed off Garret, he was holding a splintered piece of two-by-four against Garret’s chest, right over his heart.
Garret meandered to the door but paused at the open doorframe. “Nice eyes, shifter,” he growled out with one last hate-filled glance at Sadey.
The slamming door rattled the room, and Aric yelled a feral sound and chucked the two-by-four against the wall so hard it speared the sheetrock and hung there, five feet above the ground, shaking from the force.
And she could feel it now, too. Something invisible tethered them and drew taut as he paced away, then eased when he came closer again.
Hand over the hot spot on her chest, she asked, “What just happened?”
Aric settled his hands on his hips and shook his head over and over. And when he lifted those pitch-colored, blazing eyes to her, she could see it there—the realization of what they’d just done.
“I didn’t just feed on you, Sadey. I think I gave you a claiming mark.”
Chapter Five
Aric wanted to break everything after that meeting with his coven. Such vitriol had spewed forth from his people, he wanted to throttle every last one of them.
His truck nearly went up on two wheels as he turned into Sadey’s driveway, but when he slammed on his brakes and rocked to a stop, he couldn’t understand the scene before him.
Her rental car had all its doors wide open, and the trunk was packed with boxes. The ding, ding of the keys in the ignition sounded, and the front door to her house was wide open. One of the boxes had tipped over, and the porch was scattered with papers and books. Long claw marks ran down the side of the box.
What in the hell?
Slowly, Aric slid out from his ride and froze, listening for Sadey. He took the keys from the ignition to stop the annoying sound. They jingled in his hand as he made his way across the yard to the porch stairs. The floorboards creaked under his shoes as he peeked inside her house. Boxes were everywhere, but that made no damn sense—she’d only left his house two hours ago. That wasn’t enough time to do this amount of packing.
He locked his arms against the doorframe, his frown so deep his forehead ached. “Sadey?” he called out carefully.
Nothing. No scuffle of her shoes, no clatter of rushed packing, no greeting. He listened harder, but there was nobody here. There was no pulse in the house. “Shhhit,” he murmured, pushing off the door. He couldn’t go in without her invite, but he didn’t need to. Sadey was in the wind.
Aric rested his hands on his hips and glared down at the shredded box thoughtfully. He inhaled deeply. Fur and Sadey. And that’s when he felt it—the hair raising on the back of his neck that said he was being watched. That he was being hunted.
He scanned the woods around the house, but even with his heightened night vision, he couldn’t see the reflective eyes that would tell him his hunch was right. Clever little predator.
Inhaling deeply, he hopped over the last couple of stairs on the porch and made his way slowly to the tree line. His scorched arm tingled, as if reminding him what had happened the last time he’d messed with a pissed-off shifter, but that was different. Sadey was different, and he couldn’t even imagine what she was going through right now. Anger, maybe, but definitely fear over what they’d done. She had grabbed her purse and left his house, him trailing after her, begging her to stay and talk about the claiming mark. And that’s when he’d seen a name in her mind—Brock. She’d thought that name with such hatred he’d almost missed the fear she kept bundled in the middle of all that anger.
She’d been hurt, and now look what Aric had done. He’d linked her to him—a complete stranger. He’d given himself power over her. The thought of it made him want to double over with the ache in his chest. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. He was supposed to choose a human woman who could make him forget his maker. The law said registered vampires could Turn one human, one mate, one forever-love. And what had he done? He’d chosen a shifter, who couldn’t be Turned and who didn’t want the bond.
He deserved her claws.
Maple and birch trees towered over h
im, and as the blue moonlight filtered through the sparse branches, it created a spiderweb of shadows on the forest floor. It would be spring soon, but right now, the wind was bitterly cold. When he’d been human, he’d loved nights like this. Big moon, chilly-wind nights where he would sit near a fire pit in his old backyard, drink beer and shoot the shit with his friends from his old life. Now his friends were all vampires, and beer tasted like soggy ashes. Sadey had been a beautiful distraction from his anger over his new life, and now he’d hurt her.
When he stepped on a twig, it snapped loudly. Freezing into place, one leg locked against the soft ground, one leg bent and resting on the toe of his boot, he listened for a heartbeat. That was one advantage to his job. He could hear the pulse tripping, fading, or holding strong. He could listen to the thud, thud of a victim’s heart and know how much time he had to work on them. But here in Sadey’s dark woods, he couldn’t hear a thin—
Bam!
Aric fell forward under a great weight, as if he’d been shot in the back by a cannon. He hit the ground hard and resisted the urge to shift and give the bats his body to escape the pain. Sadey snarled as he rolled over and covered his face from her raking claws. Desperate to see her, he opened his eyes, and his breath clogged his throat.
She was beautiful and not at all what he’d expected. Why? Because shifters like Sadey didn’t exist.
Pain slashed across his neck, and then she was at him, teeth on his throat, dragging him backward.
“Sadey, I’m sorry!” he gasped out.
The massive snow leopard stopped, every muscle still. She loosened her powerful jaws and dropped him. Aric was bleeding and clawed up, but it was nothing his swift healing wouldn’t fix. Right now, the important thing was that she had taken a few steps back and was looking at him uncertainly. The snarl was softer in her throat, and when he moved to sit up, she lowered to her belly and hissed out a warning.
Aric held out his hands in surrender. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about my bite bonding us. It’s never bonded me to anyone before.”