When he bottomed out, her back bowed again, arching her naked breasts into him. Luis found her lips, battered from her biting them, and gave her a deep, searching kiss. He held himself there, sweat gathering under the collar of his shirt as he fought every base instinct — to thrust, to come, to breed, to bite.
She’s perfect,his body howled.She’s perfect and she’s mine.
When her tongue stroked his, he took that as a sign that she was comfortable enough for him to move. Luis took it slowat first, knowing she was sensitive, but he didn’t show restraint for long. Bracing his weight on his forearms, he thrust hard and deep, until he could feel her whole body flex every time he sheathed himself to the hilt. And when he pulled back, her cunt contracted sharply around him, desperate to keep him there — the sweetest feeling in the fucking world.
He didn’t care about the pinch and burn of his stitches with each rolling movement of his body. All that mattered was her. Them. This.
As his orgasm approached, the urge to bite went from a throbbing pain to a sharp stab in the roof of his mouth. To distract himself, he thumbed that angry little bundle of nerves at the apex of her cunt, ruthlessly stroking until he could force another orgasm out of her.
Francesca tore her lips away from his with a cry that came from deep in her chest. Her legs snapped up, circling his waist as tightly as they could. Hips shuttling with more speed and force than rhythm, Luis’s chest rose and fell like bellows as the pressure released in one glorious rush.
She clenched hard around him when he buried himself deep. At the last possible second he whipped his head to the side and buried his fangs in her pillow. Luis came with a groan, splashing her inner walls with the ropes of his release. It felt a bit like it took some part of his soul with him, leaving him lax and dazed on top of her for some time afterward.
An orgasm did nothing for the pent-up venom in his gland or the pain radiating throughout the top of his mouth, but it still felt fucking good.
Carefully rolling to one side, he fumbled with the knot around her wrists. As soon as she was free, he gathered her to his chest and held her tight, his fingers stroking her spine through what remained of her shirt.
She shook in his arms, but he didn’t sense distress. Francesca curled into him, seeking shelter.
“I’m pretty sure I love you, too,” she whispered into the sweaty skin of his neck. “So I guess you win this weird game we’ve been playing.”
He rubbed his bearded chin against the crown of her head. “Not yet,” he replied, breathing deep. “I’ll know I’ve won the day you admit we’re forever.”
TWENTY-THREE
“You’ve gotto be fucking kidding me.”
“No,” Luis said, as reasonable as anything. “I’m being cautious.”
Francesca raised her right hand and shook it. The white rope whipped between them. “I’m not a damn flight risk, asshole!”
“That remains to be proven.”
Glaring at him, she gritted through her teeth, “You — never — said — I — shouldn’t — leave.”
Luis adjusted the knot on his left wrist. “It was implied.”
“This is wildly unnecessary,” she protested. “And how am I even supposed to get in the car? You want me to climb across the console like an animal?”
“Firstly, itisnecessary. You don’t have any bite marks and no one knows you’re considered an Amauri yet. I’ll send word to Marietta so she can get the gossip train going, and Felix said he’d work on getting the message across that you’re not to be touched. But until I can be certain that you won’t wander offandthat no one will try to snatch you away from under my nose, this is how we’re doing things.”
He gave the rope a playful little tug to reel her in. “And secondly… no. I’d never put you in an undignified position, kitten. I’ll untie my end after I help you into your seat.”
Francesca squinted up at him. Still flushed and buzzing and a little off-kilter from what happened in her apartment, she had to work hard to hold onto her outrage. “You just like having me tied up, don’t you?”
That signature shit-eating grin crossed his too-handsome face. “What can I say? This rope holds some very fond memories for me now.”
Tangling their fingers together, he grabbed her suitcase off the floor and guided her out into the hallway.
Francesca couldn’t help but stare at his profile as they walked down the stairs hand in hand. A part of her was fairly certain she’d hit her head at some point and was currently in the grips of a deeply confusing but pleasurable coma delusion. Maybe in a rush to finish a house cleaning she’d slipped on a wet floor and bashed her head on something.
That seemed a lot more plausible than Luis saying helovedher.
She didn’t have any good reason tonotbelieve him, but it was difficult to wrap her head around. As was the fact that if she agreed to a relationship — a real one, not just sex and not just what was contractually obligated — then her entire life would look different.
Amongst the dozens of practical lifestyle changes that came with being a vampire’s anchor, by far the biggest difference was that she wouldn’t be on her own anymore. She’d be forced to rely on someone else and trust that they’d be there. It sounded like the sweetest relief but also the single scariest thing she could imagine.
Her grip tightened a little on Luis’s hand, an unconscious response to the fear that he might just disappear — which was really silly, since he’dtied them together.