She closed her eyes. Those words he spoke. She remembered every one. She had held on to them for so long, they had grafted to her bones, until they had spun on an enchanted spindle into a fairy tale of devotion that happened rarely to other people in other lives. To hear him say them again after so long . . . She shuddered. “You can’t promise that.”
“Shut up,” he said. “I can promise any goddamn thing I want.” His voice was quiet, even. He watched her put a shaking hand to her forehead, but he was not tempted to relent in the slightest. His long, lean muscled torso moved as he took a deep breath. He fingered the short, untidy hair at her temple and stroked her devastated face. His expression was clear, determined. He looked as steady as a rock, and just as moveable. He said softly, “I will never leave you. I will never let you go. I will not let you fall, or fail. I will always come for you if you leave, always find you if you’re lost. Always.”
She looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her as her beautiful mouth shaped the word in silence. Always?
It was as if she were too afraid to say the word aloud. Everything inside of him wanted to pounce on her, to cover her vulnerability with his strength, to take her until she screamed with pleasure again. His instincts strained against his self-control.
But she was also a predator. If he did not engage those instincts in her too, no matter how he tried to hold on, eventually he would lose her. And he could not let that happen. He would not.
He whispered back, “Always. But you have to want it too. You have to own up to it and admit you want me.”
Own up to it. Like she had taken ownership of her own life. Own it, take it, claim it.
He backed away from her until he reached the bed. His hands went to the buttons of his shirt as he toed off his shoes. His gaze held hers as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it into a corner, and that was when he began to lie. “You have to take me,” he said, “or I really will give up and go find someone else.”
“You wouldn’t,” she breathed. Her gaze was riveted to the bare expanse of his broad, tanned chest. The unsteadiness left her as her body went tense. Her beautiful lips parted. She did not look hungry. She looked starving.
It was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. He wanted to growl in triumph. It was his, that expression was for him. But it wasn’t enough. He hadn’t pushed her hard enough.
Come on, baby. Get cranky. “I would,” the gryphon lied to his witch. His hands went to the fastening of his trousers. Then they came open. He wore nothing underneath. He pushed them down over his lean hips, the long heavy muscles of his thighs flexing as he kicked them off. “There would be nothing to stop me.” He cocked his head. “Maybe after all these years, I’ve discovered I have a type. Maybe I’ll find another dark-haired, beautiful woman. One who doesn’t argue about wearing pretty fashionable clothes or wearing makeup.”
Carling hissed, and her eyes flashed that pretty, scary red.
He put his hands on his hips and stood there nude, that insouciant alpha male, and he dared to taunt her while the sight of his body drove all the reason out of her head. Her hands fisted as she stared at him. He was built for both speed and power, wide in the shoulders and long, without an ounce of extra flesh anywhere. Washboard abs rippled down to his large erection. His large, tight testicles had drawn up underneath his penis. He was beautifully formed everywhere, with a hard warrior’s body that was poetry in motion.
Rune gave her his sleepiest, most disingenuous smile. “Maybe I’ll find someone who bites.”
A scorching image flashed in her mind, of him caressing an unknown woman who took his vein. She bared her teeth and launched at him.
He fell back on the bed as he caught her, and then she was on top of him, hands planted on the bed on either side of his head as she straddled him. His hard, wild face was flushed with arousal, and lit with a bladelike smile. Carling snarled, “Do you think I don’t know you’re playing me?”
“My give-a-shit button’s broken, baby,” Rune said. He cupped the back of her head and coaxed her down toward him. “Kiss me,” he whispered. “Take me. Don’t let me go—or I’ll go.” Then he said telepathically the same words he had said to her, so very long ago. But this man who is in front of you—I am waiting for you with everything I am.
She looked at him with such feral bewilderment he might have laughed if the stakes weren’t so high. “You have legions of women, and I don’t share.”
“There’ll be no one else, ever again. I’m all yours,” he murmured. “Body and soul.”
The Vampyre sorceress, who had been Queen, hissed in his face, “Swear it.”
“I swear it,” he whispered, stroking her hair. In this one thing they mirrored each other, for he needed her dominance and tenderness too. He opened his eyes wide again to take all of her in because he didn’t want to miss a single moment of this gorgeous, deadly woman.