He had bitten her, tasted her blood and licked the wound with a tongue painfully swollen, the glands at the side of his mouth spilling the sweet, dark taste of lust into his mouth.
Each time he swallowed, he burned.
He bit off an oath as he thrust against her buttocks, feeling the heat of her flesh through the soft velvet of her pants and the denim of his jeans. If he didn’t get inside her, if he didn’t fuck her, he was going to die.
She was his woman. His mate.
He had known it. For years, despite his denials, he had known this woman belonged to him, and yet he had stayed back. Some impulse, some knowledge he couldn’t make sense of, had kept him from taking her, from stealing her away from her home and hiding her for his pleasure alone.
The animal inside roared in triumph as he turned her, wrapping his arms around her and slamming his lips to hers. There was no time for finesse. No time to consider each touch for pleasure or pain, no control to temper the animalistic lust with tender words or with comforting kisses.
There was hunger. God, the fucking h
unger was going to kill him. He speared his tongue past her lips, growling in satisfaction as she immediately enveloped it, her mouth tightening, suckling it.
Sweet God.
His hands tore at her pants, ripping fragile material, hearing in a distant corner of his mind the rending of the material. But he felt her flesh, naked, soft as satin, hot and arching toward him.
Pleasure burned through him as she sucked the sweet hormone from the glands in his tongue, and with each pulse of the liquid she moved with deeper sensuality, moaned against his kiss with strident need.
It was burning her. He could feel it. Smell it.
This wasn’t just mating heat. This was more, so fucking much more.
He had been insane, crazy to think that he could ever allow Cabal to touch her without losing his mind. To believe that another could ever mark her, hold her, and he would survive it.
He could barely survive having Cabal in the same room with her. He had forced himself to walk away. Forced himself to do what he thought he had to do.
The animal, though, had known. He had pushed that beast so far back into the darkest corners of his mind that when it slipped his bonds, there had been no stopping him.
His nails raked over her back before he clenched his hands in her top, ripping it from her. He wanted her naked. Wanted her hot and wet and dripping over his cock as he slammed inside her.
And she was dripping. His fingers tucked beneath her buttocks, thrusting inside her pussy, feeling the slick hot cream covering his fingers, easing his way inside her.
Her hands were in his hair, her arms bracing against his shoulders as she reached for him, trying to climb against him as his lips slanted over hers and she sucked deeper at his tongue.
Mating heat was slamming through him now. Grasping control of the animal and the lust was impossible. Tanner had never known a time that he didn’t control the animal and the sexual hungers. There hadn’t been a woman he couldn’t control, couldn’t finesse. Until now. There was no controlling this.
He didn’t bother to pull his shirt off. Pulling it off required breaking the kiss, the suckling heat of her mouth that was spilling more and more of the hormone into both their systems. He couldn’t allow that.
He ripped the buttons apart before shrugging the material from his shoulders. His hands moved immediately to his belt, tearing it loose before loosening his jeans, pushing them just past his hips and freeing the engorged length of his dick.
He had to fuck her. If he didn’t get inside her hot pussy and screw the painful need from his system then he was going to implode. He was melting beneath the heat burning through his body, causing sweat to drip from his pores and growls to vibrate unceasingly from his throat.
He gripped her thighs, spread them, lifted her.
A primal, muttered snarl vibrated from his chest as her pussy settled on the tip of his cock. Fuck yes. Her cunt was hotter than fire, lava-hot, melted-iron-hot, and he needed more.
She was tight. The wide crest pressed inside her, parting clenching tissue and muscle as he pumped his tongue in her mouth and staggered to the wall.
No time for the bed. It was too far away. He had to get inside her now. All the way inside her.
He tore his lips from hers to breathe, his lashes lifting to check her face. God, she had to need this. He couldn’t bear to see the pain in her face that he had smelled as he raced through the tunnel to the cavern.
There was no pain. No expression of it, no scent of it. Pleasure, rich and vibrant, suffused her expression, tilted her eyes further and gave her an exotic, otherworldly appearance that had his hips jerking, forcing his cock deeper into her snug pussy.
“I won’t let you go,” he snarled, his hands clenching on her hips. “Ever. ”