Ah, Christ. That tender admission was more than he could bear.
Pleasure seized him, pushing his hips into a fevered tempo. Each thrust took him deeper, made his hunger for her coil tighter, testing its already razor-thin leash.
Bella moved beneath him, meeting every hard stroke, taking him even deeper as she lifted her hips and wrapped her long legs around him.
Her hands roamed his face and shoulders, caressing him, worshipping him. The knot of his orgasm gathered at the base of his spine, wringing a sharp groan from between his clenched teeth. Blood pounded in his temples, in his cock…in the deadly lengths of his fangs.
“Oh, God,” Bella gasped, tipping her head back as the flush of another release swept over her skin. “Ettore…I can’t hold on. You feel too good.”
He was beyond words now. He was only instinct and need, pure male. Utterly consumed by the remarkable female in his arms. He responded with a triumphant growl as she cried out beneath him. He couldn’t stop his hips from moving, nor his blood from pounding with the overwhelming urge to claim his female in every possible way.
The urge became a mantra as his orgasm sped toward its peak.
He didn’t realize he was staring at her throat until he heard Bella’s soft voice filter through the haze of his blood-tinged thoughts.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Ettore. I want it too.”
When he met her gaze, he found her brown eyes steady and unafraid.
So full of love, it staggered him.
He knew he should turn away, be the stronger one.
He should give her this choice when they both were clear-headed and fully able to process the ramifications of what a bond would mean. One taste of her blood and he would feel her in his veins for as long as either of them lived. He would know her deepest emotions as his own—every joy and sorrow, every pleasure or pain.
And if she should die before him, he would be cursed to feel that too.
The bond was irreversible.
Unbreakable.
Eternal.
Concepts that had never entered his mind with another woman were all he could think of now that he was here with Arabella.
He loved her.
To his soul, he had loved her all this time. And the part of him that was more than mortal wasn’t willing to wait another moment to claim her. That possessive, primal part of him wanted to bind her to him irrevocably.
Forever.
There was no place for logic in it, no room for regret.
There was only need.
Only love.
He roared with the ferocity of everything he felt, and as his release took hold of him, Ettore lowered his mouth to Bella’s neck and sank his fangs into her tender flesh.
Chapter 10
If the bliss of making love with him had nearly wrecked her, it was nothing compared to the pleasure she felt at the sudden, sharp penetration of his fangs into her carotid.
Bella gasped at the piercing pain, feeling his bite all the way to her marrow. But that initial jolt gave way to a pleasure that defied description as his lips fastened over her skin and he drew the first sip of blood from her wound. Heat raced through her veins like rivers of quicksilver, all of her senses—every fiber of her being—drawn toward the pulse point that now flowed beneath Ettore’s mouth.
Each suckling tug, every erotic sweep of his tongue, confirmed what she had already known.
She was his.
If she hadn’t been before, the connection he had just activated between them ensured she always would be. He could never take another as his Breedmate so long as his bond to her was intact. For him, there would only be her.
The joy that understanding gave her was almost too much to bear. It filled her heart, even as it awakened something raw and primal inside her.
“You belong to me now, Ettore.” She tunneled her fingers through his hair, holding him to her throat as he drank. “Mine.”
He moaned, still rocking atop her, their bodies intimately joined. His strokes intensified along with the suction of his mouth against her vein. The combined sensations flooded her with desire, stoking her need all over again.
“So good,” he murmured, his deep voice as rough as gravel, his breath rushing hot against her throat. She felt his tongue sweep over the twin punctures, sealing them closed.
He lifted his head to watch her now. His eyes were glowing as bright as coals, gazing at her with such a ferocity of emotion it stole her breath. She had never seen his fangs look so sharp and unearthly. She licked her lips, hungry to feel them at her throat again.
Everywhere.
He was ferocious and otherworldly, the most magnificent man she’d ever seen.
His wicked mouth curved as he caressed the side of her face and the tender skin where his bite had been. “I can feel you inside me, Bella. I feel your blood in my own veins, in every cell of my body. And I feel your pleasure. I feel how badly you need me to make you come again.”