She hadn't been prepared for such a swift, stunning reaction. Inside she was molten, going liquid and boneless...wanton.
When she tried to pull away, Tegan placed his palm on the back of her head. His large fingers spanned her skull, burrowing through her hair. There was no denying his strength, yet the pressure he held her with was light. But it was also unyielding.
Elise glanced up at him, anxious now. Maybe this wasn't a good idea at all. Maybe she'd been wrong.
Tegan's eyes glittered, pupils swamped by fiery amber.
You shouldn't have started if you weren't prepared to finish. His face was starkly serious, unforgiving. Take more. You know you need it.
Her breath sawed out of her at his invitation. God help her, but she did need more. Already she could feel Tegan's blood mixing with her own, pounding in her temples. She licked her lips, savoring the wild, powerful taste of him on her tongue.
Tegan's jaw went visibly rigid.
Christ, he ground out tightly. His fingers were a searing presence across her nape and up along the back of her head. He could have pushed her down so easily, but he only held her there, tender beneath all that coiled Breed power. Take more of me, Elise. Panting now, every nerve ending firing off inside her like a hail of sensory explosions, she lowered her head and latched on to him once more.
Tegan sucked in a sharp breath as Elise fastened her mouth to his wrist and took another long pull from his opened veins. She moaned as she swallowed more and more of him. Her hunger was rising. Greed for more made her pull harder, deeper, even as she quenched herself on him. Her tongue was a moist, hot demand against his skin, but it was the light scrape of her teeth that made Tegan's sex surge even harder than it already was.
He knew he wasn't alone in his arousal. He could feel her body's response; he absorbed her thoughts and emotions through his fingertips, which were buried in the silky layers of her short blond hair, resting against the warmth of her nape. He indulged in a brief few strokes of her soft skin, then drew his hand away when the sensations became too intense.
Jesus, she was on fire with need--both the physical thirst and the carnal one that Breed blood inspired in females bearing the teardrop-and- crescent-moon birthmark.
Absurdly, Tegan fought to distance himself from the gravity of what was happening. He tried to occupy his mind with a clinical mental inventory of her features--anything to dull the erotic movements of her mouth on him--but it was no use. Elise was too real, too damn hot, the way her spine arched and snaked with each long draw of her mouth. Her breath heaved, rapid and deep, and her lips were making deliciously wet noises in the quiet of the room.
Her eyelids flicked open as if to beg permission and Tegan was struck by the lovely amethyst color of her irises now that hunger and desire had darkened them. Her cheeks were pinkening already from his blood in her system, her lips stained a glossy, beautiful red where they held fast to his wrist.
Finish it, he told her, his tongue thick, his own mouth dry as bone. Take your fill.
With a throaty groan, Elise pushed him down onto his back and followed him there, never breaking contact as she crawled alongside him on the bed, his arm raised to accommodate her continued feeding.
Even though he was hard as granite in his jeans, Tegan wanted to remain detached from the entire catastrophe playing out before him. He needed to tune out the incredibly desirable woman who was now writhing against him in nothing but a modest cotton bra and panties, throwing off erotic heat like a furnace.
And her emotion was swamping him. Her need was so raw, so honest.
Christ, he had forgotten what that felt like. He didn't want to think about how long it had been since he'd lain with a woman. Didn't want to acknowledge how empty--how willfully chaste, physically and emotionally--his life had been for the past five centuries.
He didn't want to think about Sorcha....
He couldn't think about her, not when Elise was driving him to the edge with every moan and sigh and catlike slide of her body next to him. To his surprise, he wanted very much to touch her-- not to flex his psychic talent a little more, but to just touch her.
Reaching over with his free hand, Tegan traced his fingers along the smooth line of her shoulder and upper arm. A spray of gooseflesh rose along the trail he'd made on her skin. Beneath the thin white cotton of her bra, her ni**les tightened into hard pearls. He brushed his thumb over one pebbled bud, his breath catching in the back of his throat as she arched into him uninhibited, the blood fever from her feeding making her know no shame.
He could take her, Tegan knew. She probably expected it, since it was rare that the act of blood-drinking with a Breedmate would end without sex to relieve a female of her need.
But he'd told her no mercy, and a cruel part of him wanted to make good on that promise.
Especially since he was the one being used in this scenario.
Elise's legs flexed and scissored as he continued his tactile exploration of her body. He traced his fingers along the dip of her flat stomach, then up the graceful flare of her hip. She was liquid in her movements, undulating and arching as her suckling at his wrist became more urgent. With a low, breathy moan, she opened her legs for him and moved his hand down where she wanted him. She clamped her thighs together, holding him to her and grinding when he hesitated to touch her on his own.
It was too much to resist, even for him.
He brushed his fingers along the moist cleft shielded by her panties and she jerked as if he touched her with an open flame. He stroked her again, with more purpose, feeling her need ratchet tighter with every slide of his fingers.
Tegan, she gasped, turning her head aside to look at him with dazed, brilliant eyes, Tegan...please...do something.