He could feel the sweat building on his chest as he tried to force more into her and she fought him further. She was in a position of control, slippery and wet, and tempting him. Tempting something he didn't recognize within his own lust.
He tried to breathe in, to clear his head of the red tide of lust sweeping over him, but all he could smell was her challenge, her need ripping through his senses.
He strained against her and she lifted again. His hands tightened on her hips to slam her down on him, and she wiggled, fought until she was free of him.
It was the final straw.
"I dare you," she groaned.
With a surge of power, he lifted her, flipped her to her stomach and rose over her. He wrapped an arm beneath her hips, lifted her, held her and buried himself inside her.
She took part of him in the first thrust with a strangled cry. She took more with the second; on the third powerful stroke of his hips, he was buried full-length inside her and almost roaring out his triumph as she screamed out her pleasure.
It was pleasure. Her sheath convulsed around him, her juices spilled along his shaft, and her body writhed with impending release.
"Taken." He rose over her, locked his teeth on her shoulder to hold her in place and began thrusting inside her with all the raging lust and hunger that had been inside him for a lifetime.
It didn't take either of them long. The hard, powerful strokes of his c**k inside her sent them both hurtling into ecstasy. Mercury felt her tighten, felt her pu**y spasm and heard her release in the strangled scream that filled his head. Her cries mingled with his growls as he felt his own release begin spilling from him. And still he thrust, stroked, snarled with the power of the pleasure. Until he had given her all he had, more than he had ever thought he could give a woman, and collapsed over her.
Hell, he hadn't even taken her gown off. He hadn't stroked or sucked her pretty br**sts. He hadn't tasted the sweet flesh between her thighs again. He had just taken her. Savagely. And never had completion been so deep, so satisfying.
He still lay over her, hating the thought of pulling free of her, of releasing her from his possession and once again facing reality.
She had no idea the power of her hold on him, and it wasn't just physical. It went deeper. It called something from him that made no sense, something he knew he should be wary of, and yet couldn't find the strength to search for answers to.
"If you move I'm gonna kill you," she sighed drowsily.
"I'm heavy." He kissed her shoulder.
He had bit her. A smear of blood stained her shoulder now; the print of four sharp canines were indented into her flesh.
"You're so warm," she sighed, and he could hear the exhaustion in her voice. "I'm so tired of being cold, Mercury. Keep me warm, just for a few more minutes. Inside and out. Let me stay warm."
He stilled against her, looked at her profile. Her lashes covered her eyes, and he swore she was but seconds from sleep. And she wanted only to be warm for a little while longer.
Could he deny her that? He knew what the cold felt like, that feeling that there was nothing to warm him, that the loneliness had dug its way so deep inside him that he would never know what true warmth was.
Yet she had warmed him.
He realized that. Something frozen inside him had been warmed the moment he glimpsed her, and right now, holding her just like this, there wasn't even the slightest chill inside him or outside of him.
He wouldn't deny her that, when she had given it to him.
He held her, let her slip into sleep, then pushed the forgotten laptop to the corner of the headboard before jerking the comforter around them and easing beside her.
She moaned at the loss, but only until he wrapped himself around her. He surrounded her with his arms, embraced her legs with his and let her head tuck against his neck, the feel of her breath against him there comforting.
And he felt the need for sleep himself. Just a nap. Just something to restore his sense of balance. Because somehow, somewhere, Ria had shaken his life up as nothing else ever had.
* * *
The animal watched from eyes that were wary of detection. It forced the sleeping man's eyes open, looked around and saw only the darkness of the room where they slept.
It looked down and saw the woman. Into its ragged, pain-ravaged soul it felt the first sliver of peace arise. That little bit of light that gave it hope.
The woman had made the man's control weak, made him less diligent, less suspicious when the animal came to awareness.
The man's emotions were finally breaking free, and with that, the animal could feel freedom just at the edges of its mind.