Page 136 of Hunted

Before I can taunt him back, he surges up, bands one arm around my back.

Then flips me over.

28

VALENTIN

For a suspended stretch of time, I lie with Eira pinned beneath me and discover that restraint is a far crueller discipline after satisfaction than before it.

Her skin is damp where it meets mine, her warmth threaded through the cooling air, the scent of her release clinging to my sheets and body with an intimacy so complete it borders on possession. I breathe her in and the word rises again, unwelcome and precise.

Unique.

Before today, I would have called it a cliché. A lazy descriptor for men too unimaginative to name what they wanted.

Yet applied to her, it fits with humiliating accuracy.

She met pleasure the way she meets danger, half suspicious, half furious at how much she wants it, and every startled sound she made as I pushed her further only tightened something in me I no longer trust.

Gods, the smell of her. Her skin. Her kiss. The taste of her.

Everything about Eira Cross is beginning to border on an obsession I barely control.

What kind of vampire does that make me when I have not thought of my fated mate in hours?

The answer is not one I care to inspect too closely.

The Twelve press at the edge of my mind, a restless hum of unease in the wake of what I scented in the alley. I should rise. I should call for Malachi. Contact Rafael Navarro before rumour outruns strategy.

Instead, I want to remain here and replay every second of what just occurred.

Certainly, some of the intensity could be blamed on abstinence. A male who has gone years without release is unlikely to emerge entirely objective.

That is the rational explanation.

My bones, and my cock, already know it is a lie.

It is this woman.

This hunter.

Sire.

Malachi’s voice enters my mind with practised calm, firm enough to be heard, restrained enough not to provoke my temper.

I ignore him, tilt Eira’s chin up and kiss her again, slower this time, tasting the soft, drowsy heat of her mouth. She makes a sleepy little sound that turns dangerous in me at once. My body answers with instant readiness, my shaft thickening against her thigh.

The slick evidence of what we have done is still drying against my skin.

But Gods, what I would not give to sink into her.

I felt her tight little hole beneath my fingers and mouth, learned enough to know I would have to move slowly or risk hurting her, and the image strikes so sharply that I close my hand over her hip to stop myself from abandoning sense altogether.

Sire? May we have a discussion?

The second summons carries weight Malachi does not often use.

I tense.