her gaze. Any lingering hesitation was seared away by the smoldering heat that filled his bronzed eyes.
“Satisfied?” she murmured.
“Not nearly.” A slow, wicked smile curved his lips. “Touch me, beautiful Jaelyn.”
Jaelyn’s head tilted back as she eagerly allowed her hands to explore the hard plane of his back.
She wasn’t beautiful. She was too skinny. Her muscles too hard. Her breasts too small.
But beneath his predatory gaze she felt desired.
Growling deep in his throat Ariyal lowered his head, his lips kissing a hungry path down her throat to her collarbone. He pressed hard enough for Jaelyn to feel the blunt edge of his teeth, but she made no effort to pull away.
She shifted her hands to his chest in a restless path, reveling in the satin heat of his skin. It was a fascinating contrast to the vampire lovers she’d taken in the past.
Intrigued with exploring his body, Jaelyn barely noticed when Ariyal lowered his head. Not until he captured a nipple between his lips.
She sighed in approval as his tongue swirled over the sensitized tip, teasing it until her back was arched in delight. Oh, he was good. So amazingly good.
Now if only he would stop tormenting her with the hard brush of his cock and actually enter her.
“Are you going to finish this or not?” she moaned, shivering as his lips traced the curve between the mounds of her breasts before moving to taste her neglected nipple.
“Patience, poppet.”
She hissed, her fingers tugging at the clasp holding back his hair to allow the chestnut strands to spill over her skin, heightening the pleasure that pulsed through her body.
Don’t bite, she fiercely reminded herself, as his hands branded a path down the curve of her hips and over her thighs. Things were complicated enough without taking his vein.
It was a compulsion that was becoming increasingly difficult to resist as Ariyal eased his hand between her legs and sought the aching cleft between them. Her hands shifted to his shoulders, her fingers unwittingly digging into his flesh to draw a pinprick of blood.
The potent scent of herbs filled the air even as his finger stroked over the sweet spot of her pleasure. She was falling into a maelstrom of sensations that were almost overwhelming.
“Ariyal.”
Perhaps sensing her battle against her twin hungers, Ariyal lifted his head to stroke his lips over her mouth.
“Let go, Jaelyn,” he softly urged.
“I can’t,” she rasped.
“What do you fear?”
She moaned as her hips instinctively lifted to press more firmly to his caressing finger.
“Losing control.”
He lifted onto his elbow and peered deep into her wary eyes. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
For a long moment she studied his starkly elegant face.
His beauty wasn’t the same as the frigid perfection of a vampire. He was mist and hot enchantment and dark magic.
Don’t be a fool, Jaelyn, a warning voice whispered in the back of her mind.
She’d been taught a brutal lesson in trusting others.
One she didn’t intend to repeat.
But even as her mind warned of caution, her hands were framing his face so she could kiss him with the pent-up passion that thundered through her.
He groaned, his hand shifting to spear his finger into her body. He swallowed her cry of pleasure as her hips left the mattress, his tongue stroking a dangerous path over her fully extended fangs.
She was being consumed by flames, drowning in the heat of his touch and the blaze of his unrestrained need.
Opening her mouth to his thrusting tongue, she skimmed her hand down his chest. She didn’t mind sharing control, but she wasn’t a passive lover.
Ariyal sucked in a startled breath as she brushed her fingertips over the rippled muscles of his stomach and then clutched his cock in a firm grip.
“Shit,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “I can’t play games tonight.”
She knew the feeling.
She was close. So very close.
“Then finish this.”
“Yes.”
Holding her gaze as she positioned him, Ariyal gave her one last stroke of his finger before sinking his erection deep inside her.
They groaned in unison, holding absolutely still as they absorbed the sensation of being so intimately connected. Then, feeling the hunger once again threatening to overwhelm her, Jaelyn dug her fingers into the tight muscles of his ass.
“Ariyal.”
“I know,” he muttered against her mouth, his hips slowly pulling back before shoving forward with a blissful force. “Hold on tight.”
She pressed her face into the curve of his neck as he set a fierce pace, her fangs aching and the bed shaking beneath the impact of his thrusts.
“Please,” she moaned, the building pressure narrowing