what you can’t give me. And believe in what you can.” She shrugged his jacket off her shoulders, let it slough to the ground and started unbuttoning her shirt. “Of course I was willing to do anything to get my sight back. To be whole. It was the reason my mother and I were left behind. My blindness has been a curse my whole life. But you don’t make it feel like that. You fill my head with beauty. You make me feel like I’m already whole. Like I don’t need to change a single thing to be accepted or loved.”
“You don’t,” he said without hesitation, coming closer, so close his voice was above her.
“How do you know?”
“Because I already love you, goddammit, Mary.”
She reached up and thread her fingers into his hair. “I love you, too.”
Tucker made a choked sound and then his mouth was on hers, communicating his desperation with every soft twist of his lips on her, every sweep of his tongue. She bloomed under the kiss, her heart opening for him, as if he were the sunshine, her breasts growing tender against the hard pressure of his chest. His fingertips were reverent on her face, tracing her cheekbones, cupping her jaw, but they traveled south as the kiss grew wilder, scrubbing down to her hips and clutching, securing their lower bodies tightly together and groaning into Mary’s mouth.
“I’m just the girl you brought home to meet your father,” she whispered in between kisses, her feminine power so rich, she was immediately drunk on it. “We’ve just snuck out to be alone.” Her lips curved wickedly against his. “You’ve impressed me with your astronomy. What happens next?”
His palms raked down over Mary’s buttocks, urging her up on tiptoes, lifting her slightly so her sex bore down on his erection, his head falling back on a long moan. “I act like a gentleman, bring you back to the house and tuck you safely into bed?”
“No.” Emboldened by the unsteadiness in his tone, the thickness of his shaft and the knowledge that she was his mate, Mary took the collar of his shirt in her grip and leapt, wrapping her legs around his hips. “That’s not really what you want, Tucker,” she whispered, raking her teeth up to his ear and biting. “Try again.”
His hand slipped into the waistband of her skirt, kept going until his touch invaded her panties to knead her bottom. “Mary, you don’t understand what you’re asking me,” he rasped, capturing her mouth for a thorough kiss. “I want more than anything to pretend we’re a normal, human couple, but we’re not. I’m a predator and you’re my mate. If you let me inside this body, it’ll be the end of my fucking leash.” A slicing sound signaled the dropping of his fangs and the grip on her backside turned bruising. “I’m going to need everything. Going to need your blood. And…”
“And?”
Chapter 17
And?
Her pulse rapped against his skull, the glands in his neck strained beyond the point of pain. Drink. Take. Stop denying yourself. His entire body was pulled tight as a bowstring, his animal nature ordering him to take the sacrifice that was being offered. And goddammit, he’d denied himself too long. Too often. Being in close quarters with his Mary day after day, night after night, had worn his control down to nothing. There was no willpower left for this final test. The ultimate test of being seduced by the girl he wanted more than life or afterlife itself.
Was it possible she was really considering staying with him?
Giving up the things she wanted most…just for Tucker?
With every rub of her tongue, every tightening of her thighs around his waist, every loving scrape of her fingernails on his scalp, he believed her a little bit more. And more. Until he was forgetting why this was a bad idea in the first place. With his body in the driver’s seat, he lost sight of selflessness. Or doing what he believed to be the right thing by her. He could only devour her mouth, clutch her buns in his hands and grind her against his lap, earning hot, little mewling sounds from her throat. Yours it’s yours it’s yours. Her greedy reactions to his touch made Tucker believe. Or desperately want to believe that their love ran in two side by side currents. Not just one. His.
He ached to be shown that physically.
To lay her down on the ground and let out this explosion of need,