Dark Demon Page 0,22

holding Natalya locked in position.

Vikirnoff needed desperately. The heartbeats were so loud it was almost a roar in his head. He needed blood and a way to control the danger emanating from his lifemate. He willed the nurse to get out before disaster struck. Trying to hold Natalya in check was difficult when his life was ebbing away from the loss of blood.

Slavica moved slowly, intelligent enough to sense the danger, and courageous enough to walk around the bed and make her exit, pulling the door closed behind her.

"Come here to me," Vikirnoff ordered, his tone dropping an octave until it was velvet soft and hypnotic.

Natalya shook her head as if trying to clear the haze from her mind. Unlike others Vikirnoff called to him, his lifemate was well aware she was under compulsion. Strangely she didn't fight him as she could have, instead she took a reluctant step forward, compelled by his black, black eyes and the stark hunger she couldn't define. The same hunger was in her, clawing with very real pain and power, threatening to consume them both.

She was acutely aware the appetite was mixed with desire, with lust, a passionate need that bordered on obsession. Fascinated by the intensity in his eyes, she emerged from the shadows, one slow step at a time, almost in freeze-frame.

She looked ethereal, her muscles moving suggestively beneath the bands of skin glowing strangely in the faint light. Not quite real. Definitely not human. Vikirnoff tried for a moment to probe deeper into her mind, to uncover the secrets that lay hidden behind her strange brain patterns. Hunger beat at him without mercy. Hers? Or his own? He couldn't separate the two. He couldn't tell which were his emotions, so intense, swirling out of control. Was she jealous? Or was that his own beast rising with a ferocious need?

Women were of the light. Did they feel the razor-sharp clawing at their gut? On the verge of killing? Unblinking, he watched the way she emerged out of the faded bands of light coming toward him. Her strangely colored eyes focused on him and stared as if he were the prey, not the other way around. The tigress was on the hunt and the tension stretched to a screaming point. Danger thrummed in the air between them.

Natalya couldn't stop moving forward. She felt in a dream, one she wasn't in control of, standing off to the side, watching the action with a pounding heart and screaming at herself to wake up. She honestly didn't know if she intended to kill him. She feared him. She sensed the darkness in him rising and self-preservation was strong in her, yet she was

unable to stop each step forward.

Vikirnoff's fingers shackled her wrist. Enormously strong. Incredibly gentle. His touch set her heart pounding and her knees inexplicably turned to rubber. She sank down onto the edge of the bed. His hands slid up her arms, fingers tunneled through her hair and settled in a frame around her face. His black gaze burned over her, held her captive. She couldn't look away from him even as he forced her head toward his.

Natalya felt her stomach turn over. Every nerve ending leapt to life. She felt but she couldn't move. He lay injured, a hole in his chest, bleeding from the deep rake marks she'd made in his back and countless other wounds, weak and seemingly vulnerable, yet she went to him like a willing sacrifice.

His lips touched hers. Cool. Firm. Velvet soft. Her heart jumped in her chest. He trailed kisses from the corner of her mouth to her neck, tiny pinpoints of flames dancing over her skin. In her mind she screamed at herself to run, yet no sound emerged and she leaned closer to him, lifting the hair from her neck.

She wanted his touch. Needed to feel his hands on her. He belonged to her. No other woman had the right to touch him, to smooth fingers over his bare skin and be so close as to exchange air.

Fire raged in Vikirnoff's veins and stormed through his mind until thunder roared in his ears and the need to assuage his terrible hunger, a hunger that was mixed with sexual need, with possessive lust, was near frenzy. He inhaled her scent, took it deep in his lungs. Listened to the ebb and flow of life sizzling through her veins. She was calling to him, a timeless, haunting call of female to male, an aphrodisiac that enhanced his