Shivering in ready response, he brushed his lips over the soft skin of her temple, sensing the rapid beat of her pulse. The hunger to taste her blood was near unbearable, but he ignored his ravaging thirst.
“I have conceded to your demands, little one. Now it is your turn.”
“Does this compromise include removing my robe?” she husked.
He chuckled. “It is my robe, although what is mine is now yours, and it most certainly is going to be removed.”
She allowed her nails to scrape lightly over his skin, the sensation sending pleasure jolting through him.
“So confident, my lord?”
He pressed a hard, hungry kiss on her lips before pulling back to regard her with a brooding gaze.
“Desperate. But that is not the compromise I speak of.”
“Then what do you desire of me?”
“I want you to leave Hawthorne,” he said, his voice revealing he was unwilling to bargain on this point. “Your place is in this lair with me.”
“But our bonding is not yet complete,” she said softly. “Would that not mean we were living in sin?”
He frowned at her foolish words. The connection between them was sacred.
“You are my mate.”
“But you are not yet my mate.”
A bleak, ruthless pain spread through his body. He had rarely given thought to taking a mate. Most vampires never encountered the one destined to make them whole. But on the few occasions he had considered the possibility, he had never envisioned binding himself to a woman who did not desire him in return.
“I see.”
She bit her lower lip at his frigid tone, her expression rueful.
“I do not think that you do, Victor, and it’s no wonder. I am making a complete muddle of this.”
“Of your wish to return to Hawthorne?”
“Of my very awkward proposal.”
“Proposal?”
She licked her lips, the nervous gesture astonishingly charming.
“Victor, would you be my mate?”
A wary hope replaced the icy chill of rejection, although he was careful to hide it behind a scowl. He might be mated, but that did not mean he had lost all pride.
“Juliet?”
Her breath caught, a hint of distress marring her beautiful face. “What? Did I do something wrong? Are women not allowed to—”
He captured her lips in a kiss of urgent longing, allowing her to feel just how desperately he wanted to complete their bonding.
“You are certain?” he muttered between frenzied kisses. “The mating is irrevocable.”
Her hands moved in a restless path up and down his back, each caress sending sizzling sparks of heat through his body.
“This mating has been irrevocable from the beginning,” she muttered.