Page 48 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

She takes a while. The light off the valley has got into her eyes and turned the violet in them pale.

“Because I don’t feed on anyone I know,” she says. “Not once, not ever. A stranger forgets my face by morning. You wouldn’t.”

“That’s your reason. It isn’t mine.”

“You don’t have one. That’s the problem.” She sits forward off the wall and her fangs are down when she does it. “You’d put your arm out for anybody who asked. I’d take it. Then you’d have seen me with no hold on myself at all. There’s nothing to me at that point. There’s just the hunger and whatever’s in front of it.”

“I’ve stood in front of worse things than a hungry woman.”

“Not one that wanted you.”

I’ve got no words for that.

I know what I’m good for. Every pack that ever took me in wanted the same three things. Somebody who could stand out all night. Somebody who could carry what two men couldn’t. Somebody who wouldn’t ask why the worst of it was always his. None of those three is a man they wanted.

“Nobody has ever said that to me,” I say.

“I know.”

“How.”

“Because you looked away from me. You haven’t done that once all day.”

She’s still sitting forward with her eyes on me. She leaves it out there between us.

Four steps and I’d have her mouth. Neither of us would have to say another word about any of it.

“Don’t,” she says.

“I haven’t moved.”

“You’re going to.” She doesn’t move an inch. “There’s nothing holding me together right now. If you put a hand on me at this end of it you don’t get the woman who just said that to you. You get whatever’s left of her once the hunger has the rest.”

“Then I’ll wait.”

She doesn’t answer that.

Nobody says anything for a long time. The light off the valley moves a hand’s width up the wall behind her head. Her fangs don’t go back up.

I’ve wanted her since the first time I laid eyes on her. I’ve kept it somewhere nobody could see it, the same as I keep everything else. It won’t stay down now. Her breathing hasn’t been right since she told me to stay put. Four steps of stone floor is all there is between us.

“Valen.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to come over there.” She isn’t asking me. “If I get near your throat you put me down on the floor and you hold me there. Say you’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it.”

She comes off the wall before I get my back off mine. She straddles me and takes my face in both hands.

She kisses me hard. I get one hand into her hair. The other goes to her ass and drags her down onto my cock. She moans into my mouth. Then she grinds down on me through both our clothes. Slow. She does it again.

Her fangs catch my bottom lip. She doesn’t open it.

Then her mouth comes off mine. It goes down onto my throat. Open. Then it stops.

She holds there. I can feel both points against my skin. Neither of them goes in.