Dark Legend Page 0,21

in a deep, hard rhythm, taking them both toward a shattering release. Gabriel was shaking with the effort to hold on to his control. She tasted like nothing he had ever had. Heady, sexy, everything he could possibly want. Hot. Sweet. Addictive. His body was going up in flames, burying deeper and harder, making them one.

Gabriel swept his tongue over her breast. "Please, Francesca." The words were husky with need. At once she responded to the urgent plea. Her mouth moved over the heavy muscles of his chest. His body clenched as her teeth teased his pulse, scraped back and forth, nipped. "Francesca." He spoke her name with desperate urgency. Francesca found she had to comply. It was more than a black magic spell; the age-old lure was on her. His body was so strong, so hard, so perfect. She smelled his blood, his life force calling to her, beckoning. Her mouth moved sensuously over his muscled flesh, her teeth teasing him until he groaned with need. She sank her teeth deep. Lightning splintered through him and he buried himself in her hot, tight sheath, losing himself in the sheer ecstasy of her body. "I claim you as my lifemate. I belong to you. I offer my life for you. I give you my protection, my allegiance, my heart, my soul and my body. I take into my keeping the same that is yours." He could barely manage to get the ritual binding words out. Her body was rippling around his, shattering, fragmenting, milking his with hot fiery velvet so tight he thought he would go up in flames. "You are my lifemate, bound to me for all eternity and always in my care."

Francesca swept her tongue across the tiny pinpricks she had made in the heavy muscles of his chest and clung to him. He was the only safe anchor as her body was swept away on wave after wave of sheer molten pleasure. She was drowning in it; her body was not her own anymore. It never would be again. She lay beneath him, her heart hammering loudly in her ears, her blood racing, the taste of him in her mouth, his body buried deep inside of her, and for the first time in her endless existence she was truly content.

Gabriel lay over her, pinning her beneath him, and felt he never wanted to move away from the beauty of her body. He lifted his head to look down into her eyes, fully expecting censure. Francesca stroked back his damp hair. "So, that's what we've been missing all these years." She said it softly, in wonder.

He bent his head to place a kiss against the soft, vulnerable line of her throat. His hands bunched in her hair possessively. "You are so incredibly beautiful, Francesca." His voice whispered seductively over her skin.

She closed her eyes and allowed him to seep into her body and mind. He had bound them together. She had hoped he wouldn't, but it made no difference. None of this made a difference. Francesca was glad she had experienced what should have been hers, but it wasn't enough to hold her to earth. Hundreds of years had passed; her life had gone on endlessly. She could not start over as a Carpathian woman bound to a domineering male. She relaxed her body, soaking up the feel of his. He was so different from her, so much more muscle and sinew, all masculine and hard, angles and planes.

He was moving again, slow and gentle, building the heat between them once more. Francesca had studiously avoided all thoughts of sex and the sexual act once she realized it would never happen to her. Now she wished she had included it in her extensive education.

"I did,"

Gabriel assured her and once more took complete control of their bodies. He directed her with his mind; his hands, cupping her rounded bottom, moved her body to meet the rhythm of his.

There was no denying him; Francesca didn't even want to. In all the long centuries of her solitary existence, she had never betrayed her lifemate. As long as she knew he lived, she had waited, hoped in the way women often do. But as the empty years passed by, she'd realized he wouldn't come for her. Then she had turned her attentions to finding her way into the sun. Her life with Brice would have come next. But now it was so different. No other could ever make her feel as Gabriel