Again, she shook her head, though the girl was trembling head to toe with the effort to hold back a climax. “There’s no real pleasure without yours.”
He buried his face in her neck and howled his frustration. “Don’t you think I want to bathe your fucking womb in me, Mary? I can’t, goddammit.” His words started running together, slurring under the inundation of lust, for her body, for her blood. “You know I have to drink from you before my body will let me.”
She rubbed her cheek against the side of his head. “My blood is yours.”
Oh fuck, he couldn’t deny himself any longer. The delicious scent of her made his head swim, made his body coil so tight, he feared he’d snap without freeing the burden he’d been carrying around for so long.
How could he justify this?
How?
If Mary chose Hadrian, she would never know the lack of her blood caused Tucker to perish. Or if she ever did, her feelings for him will have long since faded. She’d be living a new life, her family intact, able to see the world.
All the beauty that could never compete with her own.
If the unimaginable happened and she decided not to sacrifice herself to the dark uprising, Tucker would still give her a choice. If she didn’t want to live as his mate, the female who kept him fed and living, he would respect that. Take his leave of her and this world. Of course he would. His mate would always be given a choice.
Armed with his resolve, Tucker pressed his face to her neck longingly, closed his eyes and broke her skin with his fangs. There was a brief second of sheer horror over making his mate bleed and then it was utter euphoria speeding through his veins. Her taste was something biblical that couldn’t be named. It coasted along his tongue, his taste buds, and trickled down the back of his parched throat, reaching some unnamed part of him, a vampiric land that was undiscovered. That he wasn’t even aware existed until that moment. A feathered, frantic whipping sound grew louder and louder in his ears, his brain desperately trying to identify the source until he realized it was his own heart. Of course. His mate had turned his heart from stone to a real living organ and it pumped only for her, powered by her life force.
Oh Jesus, though, he couldn’t get his fill of the taste of her.
Without conscious thought, he’d gathered her body tightly to his own in the grass, his cock still planted and rifling hungrily between her legs. He’d heard about this. About the female being rendered immobile by their man’s bite. But not Mary. Her fae ancestry allowed her to call his name hoarsely, her heels digging into his thrusting buttocks, her fingers spearing into his hair to hold him fast, turning her head as if demanding he take more.
“My fairy,” he growled. “Mine.”
And he flattened her.
He fucking flattened her, drawing her knees up high so he could drive deeper into her tight, slippery sex, moaning brokenly as she brought him back to life.
When one of her hands slipped out of his hair and landed lifeless on the ground, his heart that had so recently started working again nearly slammed to a stop. As carefully as possible, he retracted his fangs from her skin, grunting miserably at the sight of the two holes he’d left behind. “Mary.” He shook her. “Oh God, honey—”
Her eyes opened and she smiled at him.
The utter beauty of his mate momentarily stunned Tucker, allowing Mary to roll him onto his back and there she rode him in the sliver of moonlight, her hips bucking furiously, her fingers knotted and twisting in his chest hair—and he broke.
He broke with a roar, the pressure in his loins crumbling and dispersing. Filling his mate.
Red and black warred in front of his eyes and when he saw real life again, she was back beneath him, gasping at each of his frenzied thrusts, her own climax making her shake, seize up around him. And this was fulfilment. Being in this place of vulnerability and power with the woman he would die for, hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but prepared no matter what. Because there was nothing in this world or the next more precious or beloved than Mary. So he lifted her into the cradle of his arms to let her know, over and over again, until the threat of sunlight brought him to his feet, carrying his mate back to the house.
Chapter 18
Tucker was so content to hold Mary in the field, passing the hours until morning by stroking her glowing skin, that he almost didn’t make it to the basement in time to avoid the sun. He’d carried Mary inside at warp speed and settled her sleeping form in his childhood bed, before getting down to the safety of the underground floor. Truthfully, even if he’d been paying enough attention to know the Tuesday morning sunrise was imminent, he still probably would have waited until the last second, just to continue holding her in his arms as long as possible.