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 c**k 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.
“My God,” she whispered. “Nathan, look.”
He glanced down, and as they both watched in astonishment, his skin knitted back together. In seconds, nothing of the injury remained.
He uttered a quiet laugh and when he looked back at her, there was wonder in his stormy, amber-soaked eyes.
And love.
So much love, it drowned her. Swept her into a tide of emotion so swift and strong, she could barely breathe.
She could feel Nathan’s love for her in her veins, in her marrow. In every thrumming fiber of her being.
No more doubt, no more hiding for either of them. They were entwined as one now.
This would be their bond forever.
“Forever,” he growled fiercely, as though he understood the depth of her feeling.
As though he felt it as surely, as completely, as she did.
He quickly stripped out of his pants and boots, then prowled back up to her on the bed. Heat rolled off his na**d body as he took up a position between her spread thighs.
He kissed every inch of her, then tongued her sex until she was trembling and gasping beneath him. His eyes were blazing as he crawled back up to loom over her. His lips were slick with her hot juices, his fangs enormous behind the pleased, seductive curve of his smile.
Jordana touched his face, his harsh, handsome face. She stroked his cheek and hard jaw, then gently traced her fingertips down his neck, where she’d tried to kiss away the memory of his punishing Hunter’s collar.
He didn’t stop her from touching him now. He didn’t take his eyes off her, didn’t flinch as she skimmed a tender caress over his strong shoulders and the bulky muscles of his arms.
Only when she reached lower, to where his thick c**k jutted between them, velvety, warm, as firm as steel, did he close his eyes and emit a low hiss between his teeth and fangs. He groaned as she stroked his rigid shaft.
He growled as she squeezed him, then uttered her name like a curse and a prayer as she opened her legs wider to him and guided him through the slick cleft of her body.
Then he devoured her mouth in a consuming kiss, nothing gentle in him now. Only raw desire, fueled by the intensity of their bond.
Wet heat boiled in her core. She was ready, so ready.
“Yes,” she hissed against his mouth. “Take me.”
He sank in on a ragged snarl, plunging deep and hard and full. His h*ps bucked, thrusted, then kicked into a ravenous urgency that made her dizzy. He buried his head against her shoulder, driving into her with the sweetest frenzy, the hottest passion she would ever know. “Ah, Christ. Jordana, you feel too good. I can’t be gentle. Jesus, f**k … I can’t stop.”