Then before he sensed what she was about, before he could counter the mouth, her lips were touching his, her tongue flickered past his lips to the hormone-rich interior of his mouth. And she freed the animal raging inside him.
CHAPTER 16
Logic. Sanity. They fell by the wayside the moment her tongue touched his. So sweet and cool, tempting, stroking against the tortured flesh of his own, Jonas lost what little control he had been hanging on to.
He felt that final thread snap as the man was pushed aside and the animal he'd sworn he would never become took over.
There was only the most distant awareness of the baby sleeping peacefully on the other side of the room. Just enough awareness so that when his hand clamped on the back of her head to hold her to the kiss, the other arm wrapping around her hips, lifting her, he knew he had to get her to the bedroom.
The journey there was endless, torturous. It was hell trying to stumble to the next room, his senses, his entire being focused on the rush of adrenaline-spiked pleasure tearing through his body. His leg caught the corner of the chest. He banged against the dresser. He kept his mate carefully sheltered from harm as his tongue pumped in her mouth, his harsh, "Suck it," a rasp of demented hunger before he filled her mouth with the mating hormone.
He was known as a graceful, predatory lover. A man who knew all the right moves. A Breed with the patience and experience to drive a woman wild for hours at a time.
That was the man.
The man wasn't in control now.
The graceful, predatory lover of the past was now primal. Possessive. It was starved for the mating, obsessed with the taste of this woman's kiss, the stroke of her hands over his body.
He was the animal that even he feared.
The glass doors on the two-sided fireplace had been secured from the bedroom earlier, but the fire blazed warm and bright, sending flickering fingers of red-gold over her face, along her body. The room was quiet, cool, but nothing could pierce the haze of fiery heat raging through his body.
A heat he knew he would regret, come morning. A pleasure that overshadowed anything that had come before it. Jonas knew there was nothing in his life that would ever compare to the complete, sensual bliss to be found in Rachel's touch. In touching her. Stroking her. In pumping his tongue in her mouth and feeling her suck at it lightly, tentatively.
Tomorrow, she would regret it. She would regret him, and he knew it. For now, his tongue was thrusting into his mate's mouth, f**king it with wild, primal hunger. The hormone spilled freely from the glands beneath his tongue now, as though the warmth of her mouth, the touch of her tongue, the gentle, pulsating sucks as she tried to capture it, had been all that was needed to end the agony he'd suffered for months.
There was no pleasure so great as holding her to him, feeling the soft, hesitant little licks and sucks against the agonized flesh of his tongue. As though each small stroke touched more than those swollen glands. It touched his soul, warmed it. Built a fire inside him where once there had been nothing but cold emptiness, a hollow, haunted shell of a man.
The more she gave him, the more he wanted.
His hands stroked down her back, over her hips and up again. As the soft material of her blouse caressed his palms, he felt the claws tucked beneath his fingertips slowly stretch forward, revealing themselves, reaching for the cool pleasure of her flesh.
Licking at her tongue, holding her close, Jonas felt the claws as they suddenly sliced through her soft white blouse.
He wanted to apologize. Ah God, he wanted to go so easy. He wanted to show her he could be a man, that he could touch her, love her, as he had so longed to do. But he had waited so long. The mating hormone had taken too much of a toll on his natural restraint. He didn't want to smell her fear. He didn't want to tear her from the arousal the hormone would ignite inside her.
But he couldn't wait. Even the few minutes it took for the hormone to react on a female's system was too much time for the animal. He needed her now. He had hungered for far too long.
He pulled the shreds of her blouse from her body, tossing them to the floor. The soft skirt came next. The feel of it was exquisite against his palms. The black velvet stroked over his flesh as his claws ripped through it, drawing a gasp from her as she pulled back, fought to free herself from his kiss.
"Rachel." His voice was fractured, more animal than man now, a harsh, primal sound that had him fighting to hold on to the restraint needed to not harm her.
As though the animal part of his genetics was a separate beast inside him, his mind railed at the thought, that even amidst this singular impulse of total sensation, he could never harm her.
"Let me breathe." She was panting for air, her hands gripping his wrists as his fingers fought not to clench at her hips. He could feel the silkiness of her flesh, knew how fragile it would be beneath the razor-sharp points of his claws.
Turning his hand, he stroked the backs of his fingers up her back, down. He needed to touch her, needed to experience the warmth and softness of her flesh without terrifying her.
He gave her a moment. His lips moved along her jaw, his incisors scraped against her flesh as his tongue lapped at her flesh, infusing each touch with the potency of the hormone spilling from the glands now.
He could feel her beginning to heat. Sensed the fires already igniting inside her body as they began to slowly, seductively, burn hotter.
The scent of it, the sweet rush of feminine lust and need, tore through his senses with the power to splinter his senses. He was losing all sense of place and time. Nothing else mattered--just this touch, this woman, nothing else.
His lips covered hers again, his tongue pushing into her mouth once again as he tore at his own clothes, desperate to meet her flesh with his own. He wanted her br**sts bare against his chest, her hips silky and sweet sliding against his, her thighs parting, spreading for his.
Pumping his tongue past her lips, he growled again when she tried to pull back. Gripping the hair at the back of her head, Jonas held her still. One more minute. Just another second to relish the sweet, cool relief as the glands beneath his tongue began to ease marginally.