Jordana leaned forward and fastened her mouth over the punctures.
At first she was tentative, careful with her suckling. She moaned as the first swallow moved down her throat. Both her hands came up to hold on to his arm as she drew another, deeper pull from his vein.
Nathan was rock hard now, every muscle in his body rigid, all of his senses trained on the erotic suction of her mouth. He groaned a curse, his spine arching as if she were sucking his cock at the same time.
With his free hand, he petted her head as she drank more of him. His fevered gaze latched on to the pulse point throbbing frantically in the side of her delicate neck. He could hear her heart beating. Could practically feel the rapid tick of her carotid echoing in his own veins.
Jordana owned him, with or without the blood bond, but he couldn’t wait another second to make her his completely.
He smoothed his palm over the graceful column of her neck. Jordana whimpered as he stroked her, then she angled her head to give him clearer access.
It was all the temptation he could take.
On a hungered snarl, Nathan lowered his mouth onto her pale skin. The points of his fangs sank in deep, then a rush of hot, intoxicating blood flowed over his tongue.
Ah, Christ.
She tasted like heaven. Citrus and elusive, exotic spices and purest, otherworldly light.
The first hot gush of her blood roared into him, nearly making his cock explode. Like liquid lightning, her blood coursed into his body, into his cells, into his soul.
He could feel her light envelop him, engulfing him from the inside. Heat flowed up the arteries in his neck, his limbs, every fiber of him infused, nourished—completed—by the heady power of Jordana’s Atlantean blood.
Emotion erupted inside him, so intense it rocked him. It was overwhelming, a total flood of pleasure and sensation … of naked, boundless love.
Jordana felt it too.
He knew, because their emotions were now twined together through their bond.
She drew away from his wrist on a sigh, her face aglow with desire and something so much deeper.
“Make love to me.” A soft but undeniable command. One he was desperate to obey. “Now, Nathan. I need to feel you inside me now.”
He didn’t know if he answered or not. He wasn’t even sure he was capable of speech, for the intensity of his feelings for this woman.
His woman.
His mate.
Pausing only long enough to seal their bite wounds with quick sweeps of his tongue, he lifted her up into his arms.
She was on fire as he brought her out to the waiting bed in the other room. Every cell inside her was enflamed, enlivened. Supercharged with light and unearthly energy.
But running undercurrent of all that was a raw, dark power that was Nathan.
She’d felt his strength pour into her as she drank from him. The first taste had been a shock, a revelation. The second had been pure bliss. Heady, intoxicating.
And as she’d taken more and more, Jordana understood that her bond to him would be an addiction unlike any other.
She would always crave him, even without the connection of his blood joined with hers. But now she hungered for him in a new, deeper way.
A wild, demanding way that knew no patience. No mercy.
She couldn’t tear her clothes off fast enough as he set her down on the bed. The linen tunic and loose pants were gone in an instant, cast aside on her throaty growl of need.
Jordana reached to unfasten Nathan’s black fatigues and only then did she hesitate.
Because the blade wound that had pierced his torso was no longer bleeding. Not even a little.