Which was no place for Ehlena.
He released her vein and licked his lips. God…she tasted good.
“Do you want more?” she asked.
Yes. “No. I’ve had enough.”
She resumed stroking his hair, her nails rasping against his scalp. Closing his eyes, he felt his muscles and bones strengthen as what she had so graciously given him revived his body.
Yeah, it wasn’t just his arms and legs coming to life. His cock swelled and his hips surged forward, even though he was half-dead and his shoulders were on fire. But hard-ons were what happened to male vampires when they’d taken the vein of their mate.
Biology. He couldn’t help it.
As his body temperature stabilized, he uncurled from the heat-conserving crouch he’d been in, and in the process kicked off part of the blanket that was around him. Worried that he was flashing his cock, he reached down to pull the thing back into place.
Ehlena got there first.
And her eyes flared in the darkness as she tugged the cover back where it had been.
Rehv swallowed a couple of times, her taste still on his tongue and down the back of his throat. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.” She smiled and stared into his eyes. “You can’t help it. Besides, it means you’re probably out of the danger zone.”
And into the erotic one. Great. Nothing like extremes to spice life up.
“Ehlena…” He released a long, slow breath. “I can’t go back to the way things were.”
“If you mean being a drug lord and a pimp, somehow I’m not crushed.”
“Oh, that shit would be over with anyway. But no, I can’t return to Caldwell.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t respond right away, she said, “I hope you do. I want you to.”
The bonded male vampire in him was all, Yeehaw, sign us up. But he had to be practical.
“I’m different from you,” he said again, like it was his theme song.
“No, you’re not.”
Because she needed convincing and he could think of no better way of proving the point, he took her hand and moved it under the blanket, putting it on his cock. The contact made him shudder from pleasure, his hips bucking, but he reminded his libido that he was doing this to show her exactly how different he was.
He guided her to his barb, to the place at his base that was slightly uneven. “Do you feel that?”
She seemed to work for control for a moment, as if she were struggling against the same erotic current he was. “Yes…”
The husky way she drew out the word made his spine lift and recede, making his arousal slide in her palm. As his breath got short and his heart pounded, his voice grew deeper. “It locks in place when I…when I come. I’m not like what you’ve had before.”
As she explored him, Rehv tried to remain still, but the power in his body from the feeding, coupled with where her hand was, proved to be too enticing. He moved against her hold, arching in her lap, feeling strangely at her mercy.
Which was just another huge turn-on.
“Is that why you pulled out of me?” she said.
Rehv licked his lips again, remembering the feel of her core surrounding his-
The Escalade went over a bump in the road and he was abruptly reminded that the dark haven of the far back of the SUV was only semiprivate: They were not, in fact, alone.
But Ehlena didn’t remove her hand. “Is that why?”
“I didn’t want you to know about any of this. I wanted to…be normal for you. I wanted you to feel safe around me…and I wanted to be with you. That’s the why of the lying. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you. I didn’t want that for you-”
“What did you say?”
“I…I’m in love with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way I feel.”
Ehlena grew so quiet, he worried that in his delirium he had seriously misread everything between them. Had he merely projected onto her grid that which the weak part of him had needed to find?
Except then she dropped her mouth to his and whispered, “Don’t hide from me ever again. I love you the way you are.”
A rush of gratitude and holy shit and OMG and thank you, manna from heaven overrode everything logical, and Rehv reached up for her, holding her head with care as he kissed her. At that moment, he didn’t give a fuck that there were complications way above and beyond their control, things that would drive them apart again as sure as the burning sun would rise at the end of the night.
To be accepted, though…to be accepted and loved for exactly who he was by the one he loved in return was too great a joy to be capsized by cold reality.
As they kissed, Ehlena started moving her hand under the blanket, her palm going up and down his hard shaft.