her smile. He hooked his arms under hers and leaned down, guiding her back onto the floor, their bodies still intimately joined. He drove into her, a hard push of his cock. His tempo was urgent, fierce, full of barely restrained power.
Dylan held on as he rocked against her, reveling in the feel of his muscles bunching and flexing under her palms. Overhead, the candles threw erotic shadows on the ceiling, the flames flaring brighter as Rio buried himself deep inside her and shouted with the force of his release.
As Dylan stroked his strong back, she felt like weeping for the depth of pleasure she'd just experienced with him...and for the voice in her head that warned she would be a fool to fall in love with him.
A fact she had to admit, had already come to pass.
Chapter Twenty-six
If he'd been worried about making more mistakes, particularly where Dylan was concerned, Rio had to admit he'd just crossed one gaping point of no return.
Taking her vein like he had was bad enough; Breed males with even the smallest scrap of honor would never feed from a Breedmate simply for their own gain. That quenching taste of Dylan's blood had pulled him through what would have been hours of anguish, and a blackout that would have left him vulnerable to discovery by humans, other vampires...shit. Vulnerable on more levels than he cared to examine.
But whether he'd needed it or not, it had been wrong to take Dylan's blood. Even though she'd given it to him freely, she hardly understood what she was doing - binding herself to him, and for what? Charity. Maybe even pity.
It burned him to think he'd been too weak to turn her away. He'd wanted what she was offering - all of it. And it was a little too late to call his actions back. What he'd done here was irrevocable. He knew it, and maybe instinctively she did too, since she'd become so quiet as she rested in his arms.
Rio was linked to her now, by a bond that could not be undone. With her blood swimming through his body, into his cells, Dylan was a part of him. Until death took one of them, Rio would sense her presence, her emotional state - the very essence of her - no matter how distant their separate futures might take them.
As he stroked the impossibly soft curve of her bare shoulder as she lay in his arms, he had to wonder if the blood bond was somewhat incidental to the profound attraction he was feeling for this woman. He'd felt a connection building with her from the very beginning, ever since she wandered into that cave and he heard her voice in the dark.
Making love with Dylan tonight had been perhaps as big a mistake as drinking from her: now that he'd tasted her passion, he only wanted more. He was selfish and greedy, and he'd already proven to himself that he couldn't count on honor to keep his wants at bay.
He focused instead on her - shallow breaths, careful silence...a heaviness within her that had nothing to do with the myriad mistakes that had transpired between them.
She was mourning privately.
"How bad off is she...your mother?"
Dylan swallowed, her hair sifting over his chest as she gave a vague shake of her head. "It's not good. She keeps getting weaker." Dylan's voice trailed off. "I don't know how much longer she can fight it. To tell you the truth, I don't know how much longer she will try."
"I'm sorry," Rio said, caressing her back and knowing that he could only offer feeble words.
He didn't want Dylan to hurt, and he knew that she was weathering a deep pain. It didn't take a blood bond to tell him that. And he was ten kinds of bastard for doing what he did with her here tonight.
"We can't stay here," he said, not meaning it to come out like a snarl. "We need to get moving."
He shifted beneath her uncomfortably, groaning when he only succeeded in making their position even more awkward. He muttered a curse in Spanish.
"Are you okay?" Dylan asked. She lifted her head and looked up at him, frowning with concern. "Is the pain coming back now? How do you feel?"
Frustration rose up in his throat on a scoff, but he bit it back. Instead reached out to stroke her cheek. "Have you always tried to take care of everyone around you before yourself?"