Bound by Night(16)

Nicole’s therapist was a huge fool if she thought vampires were more afraid of humans than humans were of them. Dr. Bhatia was so fired.
Riker’s gaze shifted down. To her throat.
Then his mouth shifted down. To her throat.
Boris’s face flashed in front of her eyes, and panic squeezed her heart in a cold fist. Like she had so many years ago, she tried to fight, but Riker held her easily, pinned to the wall with his weight. As his lips closed over her skin, she stopped breathing and waited for the rip of his teeth.
Instead, there was only a warm sweep of his tongue and, with it, the most bizarre and disturbing sense of pleasure.
Vampires could release a chemical through their saliva that created a euphoric feeling in their victims, but she doubted Riker would use it on her. And even if he did, given her background, how could she possibly feel even the slightest amount of pleasure? Self loathing gurgled up inside her like a storm sewer after a torrential rain.
But her disgust didn’t stop the odd tingle of awareness that spread from where Riker’s tongue soothed her laceration to every part of her body that touched his. Everyone said that vampires were inherently sexual creatures, dangerously seductive even when they weren’t trying. Hell, a special market existed for vampire sex slaves, which Nicole had never understood.
Until now.
Now she got it. But she wished she didn’t.
On her wrists, Riker’s fingers were callused, his skin hot. Vampires ran three to five degrees warmer than humans, and she felt the difference in body temperature with every blistering stroke of his tongue and every point of skin-to-skin contact.
Why was he being so . . . well, she wouldn’t call it gentle, exactly, but he could be causing her a lot of pain. Vampires are crafty. They’re predators that play with their food. They feed on blood, pain, and fear.
One of her father’s many lectures rang in her ears, and she started to tremble. Riker wasn’t hurting her at the moment, but he would. The way Boris had so easily hurt her after years of being kind to her.
A slow roll of anxiety threatened to smother her.
She drew a deep, calming breath, desperate to keep her head clear.
Think. Hard to do when there was a vampire licking you.
Think. Her bottom lip stung. She was biting it again.
Think, dammit! She needed a weapon, a . . . duh. The ring. How could she have taken leave of her senses so easily? Other than the fact that a vampire was licking her. And then there was the distraction of her tingling breasts and an odd ache starting low in her pelvis.
Jesus, if Riker was ever captured by hunters, he’d be tagged for the sex market, for sure. Too bad he hadn’t been caught a long time ago, because if he had, maybe Terese would still be alive.
The thought was enough to hurtle Nicole back to her senses, and as she ran her thumb over the cool metal ring, she thought about how ironic it was that
Riker was going to be taken down by his own mate’s jewelry.
Smiling, Nicole wedged her fingernail under the ruby lid’s latch.
This is for you, Terese.
 

Chapter 6
Sixty seconds ago, rage and pain had twisted through Riker, so intertwined that he couldn’t separate them. The stupid human had put a blade to her own throat. Why did this keep happening to him? Why were females so damned eager to kill themselves?
Fuck it all, this one wasn’t going to die. Not until he was ready.
So he’d put his mouth over the scarred skin of her throat with the noble intention of sealing the wound.#p#分页标题#e#
But the moment he tasted her, a jolt of sheer, burning bliss streaked all the way to his groin.
Full. Stop.
He hadn’t felt much in the way of a sexual stir from feeding in decades, let alone with a female he despised. A human female, at that.
He froze, his body tense as a trip wire, but his heart was pitching a fi t against his rib cage. His fangs throbbed in time to the pulse in his swelling cock as both body parts made it clear how much they wanted to sink deep into warm, wet flesh.
“Stop,” Nicole whispered in his ear. “Please, stop.”
Her voice quivered, and shame formed a knot in his belly. He’d never worried about his victims before, but then, he usually brought down his prey quickly, taking pride in a swift, silent kill few of his kind could match. It was a special-forces skill left over from his military days and amplified by vampire speed, strength, and supertuned senses.
His prey rarely had time to know the sour taste of fright. When they did, it was because he’d wanted them to.
This was different. Nicole had been in a prolonged state of fear and would be until they got Neriya back.
She might be the CEO of the most reprehensible company on the planet, and she might be complicit in crimes against his people, but he’d never been the type of male who reveled in a female’s fear.