“If I was your mate, I’d bend you back over this desk and bury myself inside you.” I lifted my mouth to her clit and teased the swollen flesh with flicks and stabs of my tongue.
“Yes,” she groaned, rocking her hips against my face.
“I’d fuck you so hard I’d have to carry you from this room.” I slid a finger inside her and moaned at how tight she was. How wet and ready she was. All for me.
She cried out. My cock throbbed with my pulse at the sound of her need, her pleasure.
“Then I’d take you back to our room and fuck you again.” I slipped another finger in, turning my wrist so I could crook my fingers inside her. “And again. And again.”
“Ransom,” she pled, her hips rocking faster, her thighs tensing around my head.
“I’d make you come so many times you’d get wet the second you heard my voice,” I promised, licking her from opening to clit. God, I’d never get enough of her taste, her scent, the sound of her breathy little cries.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, her body drawing tighter than a drum.
“But this will have to do.” I sucked her clit into my mouth and lashed at it with my tongue as my fingers took her over the edge of her climax.
She muffled her cries with her fist, and I drank her down as she came once, then twice, shuddering above me with aftershocks as I licked her down, easing her through the waves.
My cock, my instincts, my entire body demanded I take her, fill her, claim her.
I rose to my feet, licking my lower lip to catch every last drop of her.
She stared up at me with wide, hazy eyes, both satisfied and hungry at the same time, which was exactly how I felt. Hungry for her. Appeased by her pleasure.
If I was your mate. That’s what I’d said to her.
But I wasn’t.
I was her friend.
And I hadn’t just crossed the line—I’d obliterated it.
“Ransom,” she reached for me, her eyes so deep that I knew I’d lose myself if I looked too long—if I stayed another second. “I can sense your hunger.” She drew the tip of her tongue across her own fangs.
I nearly came at the thought of those sharp teeth sinking into my throat, taking what she needed as my lifeforce poured into her, sustaining her.
“Hungry.” I stroked my thumb over her plump lower lip, and she licked at my skin.
“Come here,” she beckoned, her voice low and sultry.
I had to get out. Now. Before I took us somewhere we couldn’t come back from. “You’re right. I’m hungry. Thirsty. Whatever.” I raked my hand over my hair and then did something I’d never done in the face of any enemy in my hundreds of years.
I ran the fuck away.
8
Olivia
“Competitors will be in mated pairs.” My father’s voice boomed over the sound system they’d hauled out here for this occasion. “There will only be one team declared winner. The prize?” he asked, teasing the crowd of mated couples standing all along the vast shoreline in the southwest portion of the island. The entirety of which had been transformed into an obstacle course worthy of our race.
“Is that a four-hundred-foot ramp?” Ransom whispered in my ear, chills erupting along my skin.
His head between my thighs.
His tongue teasing my swollen flesh.
The way he licked his lips after pushing me over the edge twice.
The memories had been on repeat since he stomped off, hunger glazing his eyes in a primal way that made my toes curl in my shoes even now. Somehow, I’d managed to not jump him the second he returned from feeding. Somehow, I’d managed not to demand more and more from him and focus solely on this competition.
Because if I didn’t? If I gave into those red-hot memories of last night? I’d truly terrify him. He ran last night out of a need for food, but if he knew the truth about how I felt about him? He’d run in fear. Fear of losing our friendship, fear of hurting me because he had no interest in anything long-term—he never had with anyone before—and fear of ruining our perfect working relationship.
I couldn’t do that to him.
“Yep,” I finally managed to answer, noting the first and only visible portion of the course resting several hundred yards beyond the podium where my father still held the crowd in anticipation.
The moonlight reflected off the Arctic Ocean to our left, the waves crashing against the rocks below. Torches had been lit all along the course, and our special uniforms had been given to us at first night—dark clothing rimmed in paint that glowed with our team colors. My mother had chosen bright blue—likely to match Ransom’s eyes—for the pair of us.
“Unearthed from this very soil,” my father said, my mother approaching him with a golden, jewel-encrusted box in her hands. Father flipped open the lid as she held the box, dipping his hands in to retrieve two items. “Genuine Russian emeralds, forged by the best craftsmen in Kranitel!” He raised the two wrist cuffs up over his head, the emeralds set within pure gold flickering in the torchlight. The crowd cheered, recognizing the high honor of having a chance to win pieces made by the Kranitel craftsmen. Their pieces were rare because they took so long to forge and were rumored to possess magic only those deemed worthy could access. A fun bedtime story when I was a youngling, but now? A real, tangible piece of competition.