She pushed her hair aside and bared her neck for him.

He struck hard and she winced. Shit, that hurt. But as soon as he began a series of heavy lusty draws, her body softened and sank into a deep pool of exquisite pleasure. He grunted over her neck. The word mine repeated through her brain.

In small stages, since he still had possession of her mind, she pushed him out of that horrible locker room and directed him to the memory of last night when she was sprawled across his abdomen, with his fingers buried inside of her. She let him relive the cries that she shouted into the cool night air.

He drank his fill from her neck and she kept the memory in front of his mind. He grunted his approval.

But her body ached now, in so many places at once. I need more, she sent, her hands rubbing up and down his biceps, to his wrists. She rolled her fingers around in his palms.

He finally released her neck, but he looked wild, his mouth red, blood dripping down his chin. He was in so many respects a gentleman that to see him like this both surprised her then made everything within the deepest part of her body pull into a knot. She needed him and she needed him now.

“Fuck me.”

He put a palm between her breasts, his brow low as he stared at her. The next moment her clothes simply disappeared.

Another blink and his clothes were gone.

She looked around, wondering what he meant to do in this place of earth, stone, and water. There was a chaise-longue nearby but she doubted it would hold his weight and hers.

She watched the pad disappear and before she could determine what he intended, he flipped her around and forced her down onto the same pad.

She started to turn over, but his movements were brusque as he pushed a leg wide, then her other leg, her arms as well until she was on all fours and somehow that seemed exactly what she needed.

He was behind her and she thought he would simply thrust into her. Instead, she felt a hand on her hip and the next thing she knew his tongue was all over her, very low, thrusting, tasting, pushing everywhere.

She cried out, arching her back. Oh, God.

His mind, still connected within her, still possessing her, shouting Mine. He swept his tongue up her body then licked at her left buttock. She panted and wept. She trembled.

Then his fangs struck deep into the flesh of her bottom and she felt the potion leave fire and pleasure behind that began streaking down and down.

“Oh, God, oh, God!” she cried, long and loud.

He did the same to her other buttock so that she had two lines of intense sensation flowing toward everything that was delicate, swollen, and aching beyond words.

Then he rose up behind her, pushing her legs farther apart. She felt his thighs against the backs of hers and his hard cock poised at her opening. She could hear him breathing in deep draws. Do you feel the potion? he sent.

“Yes.”

How close are you?

She knew what he meant. She panted, swift short draws of air. Her back arched. Almost. Oh, God. Almost.

She gave a cry, which was all he needed. He drove into her, holding her hips to keep her seated in the position he wanted her. Now he thrust, hard bucks of his hips, taking what he wanted, what he intended to mark.

The orgasm barreled down like a sudden waterfall over a cliff. Pleasure flowed in a hard swift wave of sensation and she screamed and screamed, because it kept coming.

She felt his hand at the back of her neck as he wrapped her long hair in his hand and pulled her back toward him so that her back was arched as he thrust into her.

He was still pumping and she could feel her pleasure building again. The potion intensified every sensation. He had one arm looped low now around her waist as the other, holding her hair, arched her back so that his mouth was against her ear. “You must stay away from other men, do you hear me, Fiona? Do you understand?”

She tried to nod but he held her trapped and she didn’t mind at all, because pleasure began to erupt. “Yes,” she cried out then screamed some more.

That’s when he sank his fangs on the opposite side of her neck and began to drink once more as he plunged into her. He held her immobile but it seemed to help the sensations that worked her flesh. She screamed and screamed.

His body tightened and he was so hard. He released her so that she once more supported herself on her hands. He gripped her hips again and as he came he let out another roar, a resonant sound that filled the stone grotto. His roars echoed up and down the nearby stream, and what had been a mad chattering of birds stopped.

The whole world fell silent before the claiming sounds of his voice as he pumped into her, rocking her body wildly, and giving her what only a man could give.

Her arms ached from holding the position, but she was smiling. She tried to think back on her former life. She thought of her husband, but what a mistake since Jean-Pierre was still within her mind and knew her thoughts. He leaned over her, still connected, and growled in her ear. He huffed as well, several times, blowing into her ear and on her face.

She drew out of the memory. I was thinking only that I had been such a good woman in those days and now I’m here. I thought I was happy then, but civilization robs us of something, I think.

The only answer he gave was to shift his body while remaining connected low. He pushed away her hair then, without using his fangs, he bit down hard and held her like that, his big gorgeous teeth sunk into her neck and holding her immobile.

His breathing was ragged. She still gasped for each breath. She had the weirdest thought that she wanted to stay like this forever, that no matter what happened, life could get no better than this … ever.

In stages, he began to withdraw from her mind and when he left, the sense of aloneness pinched at her. She almost begged him to return.

He took his time leaving the well of her body, almost as though he knew, too, that once separated, life would again swell in a huge wave, flow between them and pull them apart once more.

But when he did withdraw, she rolled on her back on the soft pad, pulling up her legs to maneuver around his since he didn’t move. He was on his knees at the very end of the pad. He looked so serious, which made her concerned. What on earth was he thinking?

* * *

Jean-Pierre stared at the woman he had just taken. His brain seemed fractured and incapable of pulling together in order to once more start forming rational, sensible thoughts. He had taken her roughly, as someone who had become more beast than man. He had brought her repeatedly, so he knew she had been pleasured, but what must she think of him now? He hardly knew what to think of himself.

“The breh-hedden is an exacting master,” he said at last.

She nodded, her lips parted. She had bruises on both sides of her neck. She looked well used, her eyelids low, her lips swollen and bearing a faint curve. She was still breathing hard, as was he.

Her gaze moved over him in such a way that he swelled his chest and tightened his abs. She lifted up on her elbows then leaned forward to extend a hand to the dark line of hair below his navel. She drifted her hand lower until she touched his cock, which hung both satisfied and still partially erect off to the left.

She didn’t touch him, though, perhaps understanding that he would be sensitive. Instead, she planted her hand, her thumb around the base, so that her skin met his skin and part of his thick pubic hair. “Mine,” she whispered.

In another circumstance, he might have smiled. Instead, though, he met her gaze and covered her hand with his. “Yours, chérie. Yours.”

She leaned down, flat on her back. She drew her knees up then spread them wide. She would probably never understand how that affected him, that she exposed her greatest vulnerability to him like that, offered herself so willingly, this woman from pristine Boston, this blood slave.

He leaned down and put his lips to her mons and kissed her repeatedly. He felt her hand on his hair, petting him softly.

“Jean-Pierre, this is madness,” she whispered once more.

“I know.”

What did he have to give her?

What did she have to give him?

Their bodies? Oui. For now.

Would it be enough for the future?

He did not want to think of that, not right now.

Every barrier has its own set of teeth.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Chapter 13

Fiona planted both hands on the tile wall beneath one of several showerheads in Jean-Pierre’s massive master bath. She let the water drench her long hair, run down her head, down her face, over her shoulders, her back, hoping that the heat would take some of the tension out of her body and some of the itch from her goddam wing-locks.

She took a deep breath but ended up huffing it out of her lungs because for some reason she was pissed off.

She shouldn’t be. She should be happy-happy because she’d just gotten laid. That’s what Endelle would have told her.

And yes, it had been wonderful, even extraordinary in a very primitive way, but … Yeah, that damn but was so big and it was really bugging her right now.

The water had been running a long time.

She turned around and tilted her head back, wishing the hot water would soothe her brain, maybe even shut her brain down.

She couldn’t stop thinking about … everything.

“Fiona,” Jean-Pierre called from the doorway. To his credit, he didn’t step into the room but gave her some much-needed space. But even that bugged her. Why did he have to be such a great guy that he gave her space when she needed it?

He continued, “Endelle wants to see us both again in her office. Evidently, she has an apology she wishes to make.”

“She said that?”

“No. Marcus did. I just spoke with him. Thorne told him what happened so that Marcus was able to enlighten Her Supremeness as to the nature of the problem … with me.”

The problem … with him.

She shut the water off. She couldn’t hide in there forever.

She folded a towel from the sink. She knew he still stood in the doorway. She could see him from the mirror above the sink, but he was turned away, again, as if he could read her mind, as if he understood she needed this separation.

She whisked herself dry, quick hard rubs with both hands until her skin looked like she’d been in the sun for about an hour. She threw the towel on the floor then folded another towel to wrap up her hair.