his lap. His deft fingers were traveling over the orderly lines of stitching, tracing a hyacinth.
“This must have taken a long time to do,” he murmured. “It’s another excellent distraction.” She came over and sat down with him. “Keeps my mind engaged just enough so my thoughts don’t spin out of control.”
“Maybe I should take it up.” He put the pillow aside. “I could sell them and live off the proceeds.”
“It helps me pay the bills.”
“Well, I’ve given up sleeping, so I have extra time on my hands now.” They stared at each other. And when she leaned in his direction, she wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Things were better than they had been right after the needing, but there were so many unknowns.
Boone stopped her by putting his forefinger on her lips. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I specifically asked Doc Jane if, you know . . . if I’m not pregnant, whether the fertility lasts any longer than the symptoms. She said it doesn’t. So we don’t have to worry.” She frowned. “Unless things have changed for you.”
“You mean whether I want you?” He brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “They haven’t. I’m still not going to tell you no. Not now, not ever.”
She could have said something to him in return, communicated with words that though their situation was complex, her feelings for him were not.
Instead, she let her mouth do the talking by sucking his finger in between her lips and rolling her tongue around it.
The purr that came out of him was what she wanted to hear. And Boone’s next move was to retract his finger and replace it with his tongue as he licked his way into her. The kiss was everything she needed, and she arched against him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. When he pushed her back into the sofa, she let herself go.
Except she wanted him to know she wasn’t using him as a distraction. She did not want to think, it was true. But there were so many other reasons she needed him in this moment.
“Boone . . .”
“You don’t have to explain.” He pulled back. “I just want to be with you and I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
Helania stroked his face as she scented the dark spices that she had come to associate with him. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Ditto.”
Their mouths fused in an even deeper kiss, and they kept that up as clothes were pulled off and stripped down and thrown to the floor. When they were naked, she parted her thighs and welcomed him.
“I’ll go slow,” he said. “In case you’re still sore.”
“Okay.”
She did wince a little, but then he was filling her up, deep inside, thick and hot. Yet he didn’t move.
“Helania . . .” he whispered. “Take my vein.”
Unbidden, her eyes shot to the thick jugular that ran up the side of his throat. It had been so long since she had fed, and the stress she had been under compounded a sudden piercing hunger.
And then there was the possibility she was pregnant.
“Are you sure?” she breathed.
“Do you want me to beg?”
Her fangs dropped down out of her upper jaw in a rush, and he groaned as her lips parted to reveal the twin points. With a quick shift, he repositioned their bodies so that she was on top of his hips, in control . . . dominant.
“Take me,” he said. “Use me.”
The hiss that left her was the kind of sound she had never made before, and as she struck at his throat, Boone shouted her name, his hips punching up, his arousal pushing even farther into her. His taste in her mouth and down the back of her throat was an intoxicating thrill, and as she began to drink, he began to move his pelvis.
Swallowing the nourishment only he could give her, she was filled up in her belly and in her sex as he orgasmed, the sweet pain of her bite clearly sending him over the brink. And that was all she needed. She found her release, too, the rings of pleasure radiating out from her core joining the rush of elation that went along with the strength he was giving her.
As incredible as the sensations were, as tempted as she was to keep going with his vein, she was very careful not to take too much. The fact that he was so pure of bloodline, and had also recently