He'd never been a man inclined toward poetry. Hell, he'd never been inclined to wax rhapsodically on anything, but Chiara made him wish he had the words to express just how beautiful she was to him. Speech failed him as he stared down into her face now.
He had no words, but inside, every fiber of his being sang with emotion.
“Mine,” he said simply, possessively. Reverently.
He didn’t feel the pain of his injuries or the limitation of his missing hand as he lifted her into his arms. He carried her into her bedroom and placed her beneath him on the mattress. She helped him shed his clothing, her fingers as light as butterflies as they skimmed over his bandages.
Her brow knit with concern. “Are you sure, Scythe? Your injuries—”
“My injuries are nothing. Your blood is already mending me.” It was true. He could feel his bullet-torn muscles and bones healing just moments after he took the first sip of her blood. He smiled down at her, blatantly carnal. “As for the rest of me?”
He laced his fingers with hers and dragged her hand lower to cup his heavy erection. Her gasp tangled with his low hiss as she closed her fingers around his cock. He was harder than he’d ever been before, and so large his girth exceeded her petite grasp.
He thrust into her firm, silken hold. “Your blood has made all of me stronger.”
“Let me feel it, Scythe. I need you inside me now.” Her plea was breathless, but filled with demand. She shifted beneath him, wrapping her leg around the back of his thighs and arching her hips in sultry invitation.
Scythe couldn’t have denied her if he were bound and chained under the full blaze of a noonday sun. He had to have her. His need swamped him, pushed everything else to the furthest corners of his mind.
He and Chiara would be safe until night fell again. For now, there was just the two of them. Just this hunger for each other that owned them both.
With his weight braced on his right arm, he slid his hand under her and tilted her hips to meet his invading thrust. He sank in deep, swallowing her cry in a kiss that matched the ferocity of his passion. He plunged hard and wild, unable to take it slowly when every primal instinct within him was pounding with the urge to claim her.
As his woman.
As his mate.
As the future he never knew he wanted until her.
“You’re so hard,” she murmured, her rich voice husky with wonder and unabashed feminine desire. Her sensuality laid him low and he swallowed a snarl. She moved, taking him deeper, until stars began to burst behind his closed eyelids. “Oh, God... you feel so good inside me, Scythe.”
He agreed, although good was too paltry a word for what he felt when he was inside Chiara’s heat. She fit him as though she were made for him, as if there were no delineation between the point where he ended and she began.
He was bound to her, but these chains were a shackle he had no desire to escape.
It only made him want more of her.
He wanted her bound to him too.
On a growl, he threw his head back and tried to think of anything but that. Anything but how good her skin smelled and how sweet her blood still tasted on his tongue. How right it would be to seal his mouth to her neck and feel her delectable blood pulse into his mouth in hot, glorious bursts.
As for that other temptation, it refused to let him go. The dangerous whisper of his Breed genetics urged him to complete the circle of their bond by sinking his fangs into his own flesh and feeding Chiara from his opened vein.
He squeezed his eyes shut, clamping down on that part of him that wanted to pretend he was anything close to the kind of mate Chiara deserved.
He wanted to be the man she seemed to believe he was.
Right now, he only wanted to give her pleasure enough to forget what awaited them once night fell again. He focused on her body’s responses, pushing her closer to the edge and reveling in her moans and sighs and shuddering gasps.
“Oh, God, Scythe... It’s so good. Tell me you feel this too.”
“I feel everything,” he rasped, astonishment pouring over him.
His own sensation was doubled by the link he had to her now through her blood. Her passion was his. Her mounting climax was a current of electricity that amplified his own building release. She angled to meet his savage thrusts, her plush walls rippling along his length as the first tremors of orgasm vibrated against him. He couldn’t stop the rush of heat that rocketed through him. Chiara’s orgasm broke at the same time, her cry entwined with his harsh shout.
He’d never felt anything so powerful, so miraculous, as his woman’s pleasure spiraling through his senses while his own body quaked with the aftershocks of the most staggering release of his life.
On a low groan, he finally rolled away from her, propping himself against the headboard. Chiara carefully moved onto his lap, her breath still coming in rapid pants as she tenderly ran her fingers over the skewed bandages on his chest. He draped his arms over her, idly stroking her as they both came back down to earth.