that soon became a roar of swelling, compounding power.
It hit her so fast, she moaned from the intensity, feeling instantly overwhelmed. Warmth boiled through her limbs and into her core, pulsing hard, rolling like a tide.
She hadn't been prepared for such a swift, stunning reaction. Inside she was molten, going liquid and boneless...wanton.
When she tried to pull away, Tegan placed his palm on the back of her head. His large fingers spanned her skull, burrowing through her hair. There was no denying his strength, yet the pressure he held her with was light. But it was also unyielding.
Elise glanced up at him, anxious now. Maybe this wasn't a good idea at all. Maybe she'd been wrong.
Tegan's eyes glittered, pupils swamped by fiery amber.
You shouldn't have started if you weren't prepared to finish. His face was starkly serious, unforgiving. Take more. You know you need it.
Her breath sawed out of her at his invitation. God help her, but she did need more. Already she could feel Tegan's blood mixing with her own, pounding in her temples. She licked her lips, savoring the wild, powerful taste of him on her tongue.
Tegan's jaw went visibly rigid.
Christ, he ground out tightly. His fingers were a searing presence across her nape and up along the back of her head. He could have pushed her down so easily, but he only held her there, tender beneath all that coiled Breed power. Take more of me, Elise. Panting now, every nerve ending firing off inside her like a hail of sensory explosions, she lowered her head and latched on to him once more.
Tegan sucked in a sharp breath as Elise fastened her mouth to his wrist and took another long pull from his opened veins. She moaned as she swallowed more and more of him. Her hunger was rising. Greed for more made her pull harder, deeper, even as she quenched herself on him. Her tongue was a moist, hot demand against his skin, but it was the light scrape of her teeth that made Tegan's sex surge even harder than it already was.
He knew he wasn't alone in his arousal. He could feel her body's response; he absorbed her thoughts and emotions through his fingertips, which were buried in the silky layers of her short blond hair, resting against the warmth of her nape. He indulged in a brief few strokes of her soft skin, then drew his hand away when the sensations became too intense.
Jesus, she was on fire with need--both the physical thirst and the carnal one that Breed blood inspired in females bearing the teardrop-and- crescent-moon birthmark.
Absurdly, Tegan fought to distance himself from the gravity of what was happening. He tried to occupy his mind with a clinical mental inventory of her features--anything to dull the erotic movements of her mouth on him--but it was no use. Elise was too real, too damn hot, the way her spine arched and snaked with each long draw of her mouth. Her breath heaved, rapid and deep, and her lips were making deliciously wet noises in the quiet of the room.
Her eyelids flicked open as if to beg permission and Tegan was struck by the lovely amethyst color of her irises now that hunger and desire had darkened them. Her cheeks were pinkening already from his blood in her system, her lips stained a glossy, beautiful red where they held fast to his wrist.
Finish it, he told her, his tongue thick, his own mouth dry as bone. Take your fill.
With a throaty groan, Elise pushed him down onto his back and followed him there, never breaking contact as she crawled alongside him on the bed, his arm raised to accommodate her continued feeding.
Even though he was hard as granite in his jeans, Tegan wanted to remain detached from the entire catastrophe playing out before him. He needed to tune out the incredibly desirable woman who was now writhing against him in nothing but a modest cotton bra and panties, throwing off erotic heat like a furnace.
And her emotion was swamping him. Her need was so raw, so honest.
Christ, he had forgotten what that felt like. He didn't want to think about how long it had been since he'd lain with a woman. Didn't want to acknowledge how empty--how willfully chaste, physically and emotionally--his life had been for the past five centuries.
He didn't want to think about Sorcha....
He couldn't think about her, not when Elise was driving him to the edge with every moan and sigh and