Page 31 of Claimed

There’s only his body driving into mine, his breath harsh against my ear, the obscene perfection of how alive he feels under my hands.

‘Look at me,’ he commands.

I do.

His eyes are black-red and blazing. ‘You feel that?’ he rasps.

I do. Gods help me, I do. The thing between us is no longer only hunger. It’s recognition without language, a truth trying to tear through every spell wrapped around my blood.

My climax rises fast, frighteningly fast, dragged out of me by the rhythm of his hips and the rough pressure of his thumb where I’m swollen and slick around him.

‘Valentin—’

His mouth opens over my throat.

Blood.

I stiffen at the mind-spoken request. ‘We don’t know what happened before, Valentin. I don’t think⁠—’

My choice. Need you. Blood.

My fingers dig into his hair, even as he moves his hips and a deeper compulsion steals over me.

‘Yes,’ I find myself whispering, and hate how close it sounds to surrender. ‘But don’t you dare die on me afterwards.’

I can’t do anything about my pounding heart or overwhelmed senses that seemed determined to succumb to this vampire, but belatedly, I throw every wall I have around the locked rooms inside my head, the place he breached once before when he stripped information from me.

I’m right to protect my emotions too, because Valentin Moretti is still a threat, even if the thought arrives bruised, breathless and far less convincing than it should.

A laugh tears from him, dark and broken.

Then his fangs sink in.

Pain flashes then pleasure follows so violently my vision whites out. I come with a cry I cannot hold back, body clenching around his as he drinks. One swallow. Then another. Too much, too deep, a great shudder running through him as my blood pours into his mouth.

The mark explodes with light.

I wake screaming.

For one horrible second I’m back in my guest room, twisted in sheets, throat whole and heart trying to smash its way out of my chest.

Then the scent of him hits me. Wine-dark. Ancient. Male.

Oh fuck. This is real.

I’m really in the Lower Vaults.

On the slab. Naked beneath my bunched-up nightshirt, sprawled across Valentin Moretti while he stares at me with a look of absolute, stunned horror.

My hand flies to my throat.

Two punctures. Fresh. Bleeding. ‘Oh, fuck,’ I breathe.

Valentin goes still. For three seconds neither of us moves. Then I shove him hard enough that any normal man would have gone flying.

He barely shifts.

‘Get off me.’