Page 41 of Bought for Blood

“Ah!” My fingers twist into the sheet. His thumb drags across my nipple. Heat spikes from it straight down to my clit, and my head goes back into the headboard hard enough to knock. His mouth keeps its rhythm at my throat through all of it.

I go for his shirt. His teeth stay in my flesh while my knuckles fumble the buttons, one, then another, then two at once.

Why does he have this many buttons, dammit?

On purpose, probably.

I’ve never truly touched him either; it’s always been clinging or clenched fists. Now I take my time. His skin is smooth everywhere, over the muscle of his chest, down the lean line of his stomach. My arms carry months of needle scars; his body is completely unmarked. He’s beautiful. I’ve known it since the corridor and refused to think it. Tonight I think it.

My palms land on his chest. His skin is cool under my hands. His chest is silent. I slide my hands up over it to his shoulders and push the shirt wide off them.

I brush my mouth along his collarbone. His skin carries almost no taste at all. This close, his scent should fill my nose: his skin, the day he’s had. He smells like cold air and stone instead, and my wolf breathes him in anyway. I press my teeth against his skin, a light echo of what he’s doing to me, and against my throat, muffled by the work of his own mouth, a word gets away from him.

“Merde.”

His teeth slide free. His lips stay on my skin. They travel up the side of my throat, open and steady, over my jaw, to the soft place under my ear. The punctures sit open behind them. My blood runs free down my neck while his mouth moves, and he’s kissing me.

He iskissingme.

“What are you doing?” It comes out as a whisper because I’m fighting for my voice.

His mouth pauses under my ear. Then it moves on, and the small hairs lift all the way down my arm.

A drop rolls warm from the open wound toward my collarbone. He follows it down and catches it with his tongue, low on my throat. Then he carries his mouth back up to the punctures, and drinks again, slower.

His hand leaves my breast, slides down my stomach, under the waistband of my pants. His fingers glide through the slick heat of me and find my clit.

“Oh!” My hips push forward. For once, there’s something to press against.

His mouth pulls at my throat. His fingers circle. The pull and the circle arrive together, one beat.

Each draw at the vein hits me twice now, once from the inside, once under his fingers, until my body stops sorting which is which. The heat climbs fast. I get a hand between us and press my palm over the front of his trousers. His cock stands hard under the fabric, thick, straining at it, and his hips thrust into my hand before he catches himself. His rhythm stumbles for half a stroke.

“I want… I want…” I can’t tell him what I want. It’s not part of the arrangement. But then again, I never thought this part would be either.

His free hand comes up to cup my jaw and his thumb traces my lower lip. I take it into my mouth and bite down.

He moans against my throat, and my thighs clamp on his hand. He keeps the same pace inside them. I’m gasping now, pressing up against his fingers, one hand gripping his hip hard, the other fisted in the sheets—and it hits. My spine arches and my thighs clench hard against his forearm.

“There…there… Yes! Oh, God, yes!”

I’m moaning freely now, cries echoing around the room, and probably down the hallway, but I don’t care.

He drinks through all of it. His fingers go gentle as I ease down. I end up slumped against his shoulder, damp-faced, heart banging out of rhythm. My breath is loud.

Under the last of it, the ache sets in. Deep inside my pussy, where he hasn’t been, a hollow throb the orgasm never touched. I want him inside me. The whole rest of me agrees, and my hand is already at his belt. I get the leather through the buckle before his fingers close on my wrist.

“No,” he says.

“Why not?” I almost wail it, but I’m beyond pride right now.

He seals the small bite marks, then hstands and steps back from the bed. His shirt hangs off his shoulders where I pushed it, and the moon is silver on his pale skin. He looks like marble, hard and smooth and impossibly beautiful. His fangs are down. His hands close at his sides, open, close again. He looks down at them for a moment. He takes one slow breath he doesn’t need and lets it go.

Control. He’s fighting for it.

I did that. Me. To him.

“Why?” I repeat, because I know he wants it.