In a rush, his lids peeled wide as though along with, We're going to Disneyland!, and, How about some drive-thru for dinner?, what she'd said was the last thing he'd expected to come out of her mouth.
As his lips parted, she stopped him before he spoke. "If you ask me why, I'm going to be forced to give you a time-out."
A small smile quirked the edge of his mouth, but then was lost. And even though his fangs had dropped down, their sharp tips suddenly revealed, he shook his head.
"Not like you," he murmured, touching his tattooed chest with a weak hand. "Not good enough...for your blood."
She shrugged out of one half of her parka and yanked up the sleeve of her turtleneck. "I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much."
As she put her wrist over his mouth, he licked his lips, his hunger rising so much, so fast, that color returned to his pale cheeks. And yet still he hesitated. "Are you...sure?"
She had an odd memory of the two of them in the clinic forever ago, jousting, circling each other, wanting and not taking. She smiled. "Absolutely. Positive."
She dropped her vein onto his lips and knew he wouldn't be able to resist her-sure enough, he tried to fight it...and lost. Rehvenge bit clean and sucked deep, a moan bubbling up as his eyes rolled back in bliss.
Ehlena stroked the hair that had grown out on either side of his mohawk and rejoiced quietly as he fed.
This was going to save him.
She was going to save him.
Not her blood, but her heart was going to save him.
As Rehvenge fed from his love's wrist, he was overwhelmed and overwrought, at the mercy of emotions more powerful than his mind. She had come for him. She had gotten him out. And even knowing all she did about him, she was letting him feed and staring down at him with kindness.
But wasn't that more a measure of who she was as a person than what she felt for him as a male? Wasn't this duty and compassion instead of love?
He was too weak to read her grid. At least at first.
As his body revived though, so did his mind, and what she felt became known to him...
Duty. Compassion.
And love.
A complex joy flared in his chest. Part of him felt like he'd won the lottery against crippling odds. But the core of him knew that what he was would drive them apart even if the rest of the vampire population never found out about his mixed blood: He was supposedly the head of that colony.
Which was no place for Ehlena.
He released her vein and licked his lips. God...she tasted good.
"Do you want more?" she asked.
Yes. "No. I've had enough."
She resumed stroking his hair, her nails rasping against his scalp. Closing his eyes, he felt his muscles and bones strengthen as what she had so graciously given him revived his body.
Yeah, it wasn't just his arms and legs coming to life. His c**k swelled and his hips surged forward, even though he was half-dead and his shoulders were on fire. But hard-ons were what happened to male vampires when they'd taken the vein of their mate.
Biology. He couldn't help it.
As his body temperature stabilized, he uncurled from the heat-conserving crouch he'd been in, and in the process kicked off part of the blanket that was around him. Worried that he was flashing his cock, he reached down to pull the thing back into place.
Ehlena got there first.
And her eyes flared in the darkness as she tugged the cover back where it had been.
Rehv swallowed a couple of times, her taste still on his tongue and down the back of his throat. "Sorry about that."
"Don't be." She smiled and stared into his eyes. "You can't help it. Besides, it means you're probably out of the danger zone."
And into the erotic one. Great. Nothing like extremes to spice life up.
"Ehlena..." He released a long, slow breath. "I can't go back to the way things were."
"If you mean being a drug lord and a pimp, somehow I'm not crushed."
"Oh, that shit would be over with anyway. But no, I can't return to Caldwell."
"Why not?" When he didn't respond right away, she said, "I hope you do. I want you to."
The bonded male vampire in him was all, Yeehaw, sign us up. But he had to be practical.
"I'm different from you," he said again, like it was his theme song.
"No, you're not."
Because she needed convincing and he could think of no better way of proving the point, he took her hand and moved it under the blanket, putting it on his cock. The contact made him shudder from pleasure, his hips bucking, but he reminded his libido that he was doing this to show her exactly how different he was.
He guided her to his barb, to the place at his base that was slightly uneven. "Do you feel that?"
She seemed to work for control for a moment, as if she were struggling against the same erotic current he was. "Yes..."
The husky way she drew out the word made his spine lift and recede, making his arousal slide in her palm. As his breath got short and his heart pounded, his voice grew deeper. "It locks in place when I...when I come. I'm not like what you've had before."
As she explored him, Rehv tried to remain still, but the power in his body from the feeding, coupled with where her hand was, proved to be too enticing. He moved against her hold, arching in her lap, feeling strangely at her mercy.
Which was just another huge turn-on.
"Is that why you pulled out of me?" she said.
Rehv licked his lips again, remembering the feel of her core surrounding his-
The Escalade went over a bump in the road and he was abruptly reminded that the dark haven of the far back of the SUV was only semiprivate: They were not, in fact, alone.
But Ehlena didn't remove her hand. "Is that why?"
"I didn't want you to know about any of this. I wanted to...be normal for you. I wanted you to feel safe around me...and I wanted to be with you. That's the why of the lying. I didn't mean to fall in love with you. I didn't want that for you-"
"What did you say?"
"I...I'm in love with you. I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel."
Ehlena grew so quiet, he worried that in his delirium he had seriously misread everything between them. Had he merely projected onto her grid that which the weak part of him had needed to find?
Except then she dropped her mouth to his and whispered, "Don't hide from me ever again. I love you the way you are."
A rush of gratitude and holy shit and OMG and thank you, manna from heaven overrode everything logical, and Rehv reached up for her, holding her head with care as he kissed her. At that moment, he didn't give a f**k that there were complications way above and beyond their control, things that would drive them apart again as sure as the burning sun would rise at the end of the night.
To be accepted, though...to be accepted and loved for exactly who he was by the one he loved in return was too great a joy to be capsized by cold reality.
As they kissed, Ehlena started moving her hand under the blanket, her palm going up and down his hard shaft.
When he tried to pull back, she recaptured his mouth with hers. "Shh...trust me."
Rehvenge collapsed into the passion, riding the wave she called out of his body, letting her do exactly what she wanted to him. He tried to keep quiet, not wanting the others to know, and prayed that at least the two in the seats in front of them had passed out.
It didn't take long for his balls to cinch up tight and for his hands to crank down on her hair. Gasping against her mouth, he gave one last great thrust and came hard, soaking her hand and his stomach and the blanket.
When her touch drifted down to his barb and she felt the extension, he froze, praying she wasn't disgusted by the way he was built.
"I want to feel this inside me," she groaned against his lips.
As her words sank in, Rehvenge's body exploded in orgasm again.
Man...he couldn't wait for them to get wherever they were going.
Chapter SEVENTY-TWO
The following morning, Ehlena woke up naked in the bed she'd slept in before they'd all gone up to the colony. Next to her, Rehvenge's huge, warm body was as close to her as it could get, and he was awake.
At least in one sense of the word.
His erection was hot and hard against the back of her thigh, and he was rubbing it against her. She knew what was coming next, and she welcomed him as he rolled on top of her, mounted her, found his way between her legs. As he sank in deep and moved with sleepy instinct, her body echoed his rhythm and her arms went around his neck.
There were bite marks on his throat. A lot of them.