• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“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 cock 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.