Only on her terms, not his. She relaxed her right leg and Cage’s grasp loosened; when she shot out her left leg and slammed her foot into his shoulder, he had to release her to break his own backward momentum. Advantage: eagle. “So sorry. Did you hit your head on the concrete?”
He wiped his hand across his temple, and the fingers came away bloody. Which reminded her . . .
Robin slipped the tiny pocketknife from her pocket and flicked it open, waving it in the air to make sure he saw it.
“Robin.” His voice held a warning. “Don’t test me.”
She drew the knife across the base of her throat, just an inch-long cut where her clavicle met her sternum. It wasn’t a silver blade, nor was it very sharp, nor was the cut deep. But it made a little trickle of blood she’d barely registered before Cage lunged, pinning her to the mat, his heavy weight on top of her.
“Taste me, Cage.”
He wanted to; she could see it. His eyes had lightened even more, as silvery as they were green. His breathing had turned ragged, and he’d fixated on her neck. The blood tickled as it seeped out and ran toward her shoulder. She whispered, “Do it.”
“Damn you, little bird.” He dropped his mouth to the edge of her shirt, nearest her shoulder, and the swipe of his tongue was pure silk as it traced the line of blood back to the cut. He groaned as he took a light pull on the cut, or at least Robin thought he did. The sensation when Mirren had bonded her felt nothing like this. That had been a burst of power, where this was power and sex and thunder and lightning all rolled into one, coming in waves and settling into her core.
“Touch me.”
Cage raised his head, his lips stained from her blood, eyes unfocused, breath ragged. “What?”
She ran her fingers down his arm until she reached his hand, then pulled it to rest between her thighs. “Touch me. Please.”
“We can’t do this.” Cage sat up, jerked the cord out of his hair to let it spill free, and threw it across the floor.
Robin took a deep breath, her brain finally engaging again. “What just happened?” Had she begged him to touch her? She didn’t beg. Ever.
He looked up at her with his silvery eyes, running the edge of his tongue along the edge of his bloodstained lips, and she knew she could lose herself in him and it would be okay. Because he’d always bring her back to herself in the end. She could lose herself but not be lost.
It was the scariest fucking thought she’d ever had.
“Have you ever heard about the mating of Mirren and Glory?”
Robin thumped herself in the head, because he couldn’t really have asked that question. “We just backed away from the edge of the best-sex-of-our-lives cliff because you want to talk about Mirren Kincaid?” No wonder the Americans had kicked the Brits’ asses in the Revolution; those people had serious emotional issues.
Cage grinned. “We haven’t backed so far off that cliff we can’t return to it, sweetheart.”
He got up, walked to the door of the mill, and flipped both dead bolts. When he got to the edge of her mat, he dropped on all fours again and crawled toward her, looking sexy and predatory and hungry, and by God that was her role. She flipped him on his back with a hard shove and sat on his stomach, digging her knees into the mat on either side of his waist to hold him in place.
“Well, isn’t this an interesting position? I rather like it.” He molded a big hand around each of her thighs and shoved her back until she could feel the hard ridge of him pressed against her. As badly as she wanted not to let him know it got to her, she had to move against him. Just a few times, rocking back and forth, the friction of their clothing adding to the heat until she—
He flipped her again, and she let out a long, shuddering breath. Damn it. So close. “Asshole.”
He continued as if nothing had interrupted. “So Mirren and Glory had this incredible chemistry, or so the story goes, and she was his familiar. But one day, they got rather carried away and fed and fucked all at the same time, and a funny thing happens to vampires in such a situation.”
Okay, maybe he did have a point in his rambling. “What kind of funny thing?” Because it sounded pretty damn sexy—or it would if it were she and Cage and not the big old hulking Scotsman.
“It’s called a bond-mating ritual in the vampire world.” He wedged a knee between her legs and rolled on top of her again, lowering his mouth to her neck, creating the most delicious scrape of fang against her skin but not biting. He stopped with his mouth just above her ear and whispered, “It’s a lifelong bond. Literally until death you do part.”