just as she’d learned to do over the years with her magic.
The sound of water falling into a pool grew in intensity. She imagined the spray, tiny droplets, hitting her face as the water entered from where it fell naturally from the wall. She made certain to color the water, that deep crystal blue she always found waterfalls and the pools beneath them to be. The beautiful ones. Her rock formations followed the lines of a natural basin, collecting the water as it ran off the wall. There was natural drainage, a small runoff that took excess water out of the cave, to run back into the ground.
Once again, she stepped forward, raising her hands into the air to aid her near-perfect illusion. Isai blocked her. “Before you do that, look at what you’ve done.”
She could hear the water falling into the pool, the sound as real as the illusion in her mind had been. She’d always been good at illusion because she did pay attention to detail. She turned her head slowly and the basin was there. Solid. Real. She stared at it for a long time and then looked up at him.
“You did something.”
He shook his head. “No, little mage. You did something. You created exactly what you wanted to create because you are Carpathian. You are also mage, and that makes you extremely powerful. And dangerous to your father and his followers.”
She couldn’t help the little surge of hope, but she didn’t dare believe him. She would have known, right? How could she not know? It didn’t make sense.
“Come here to me. You need to feed. You are very pale. If you are going to continue to create things, you will need your strength. I have fed, although, I do crave the taste of your blood. A lifemate’s blood is perfection to him.”
She was a little obsessed with his taste. She had continually pushed aside the need that would come at her out of nowhere. Just him making the offer to her brought such a surge of absolute hunger for his taste alone, it shook her. That wasn’t right. She recognized that she shouldn’t want his blood to the point that everything else went out of her head. Worse, the moment he made his offer, she wanted him to take her blood.
Daringly, she looked up at him, already taking the few steps that separated them, so she was standing in front of him. “I want you to take mine as well.”
“That can be dangerous, kislány hän ku meke sarnaakmet minan.”
“We both live dangerously,” she pointed out. “Just by being who we are.” She ran her hand up his body, from his wonderful abdomen with its multitude of muscles to the defined muscles of his chest. Her lips followed the path of her palm. “You taste delicious. Your skin.” He did. She didn’t care what that sounded like, need was on her. Overwhelming her.
She found his heartbeat and then slid her tongue over the beating pulse just above that. She felt the slide of her teeth and she bit deep. His body jerked. She felt the lengthening of his cock while the taste of his ancient blood burst through her senses. Perfection. Absolute perfection.
She stroked his cock, petting him, wishing his clothes were gone. He couldn’t possibly know what she was thinking, so she built that picture in her mind while she drank. Isai. Naked. Her hand around the thick length of him. Shockingly, his clothes were gone, and she found herself with his hot girth in her fist. That was even more perfect.
She drank more and slipped her thumb over the wide crown to smear those pearly drops and use them to help pump him while she consumed his blood. When his hand came up to warn her to stop, she did so immediately, licking across the twin little holes that proclaimed him hers and then licking her way down his chest and abdomen to his cock.
Take my blood. She had to entice him. She could already feel his rejection, the way he was steeling himself to back away from her. He hadn’t been able to resist her when she was feeding, the erotic pull between them was too strong, but now that her tongue had closed the twin holes, he was gathering his strength. Please, she added.
He murmured something in his language she didn’t catch. She was certain she hadn’t caught it because there was a strange roaring in her ears. Her head felt chaotic. Her