"I don't want you to be afraid of me, Alex." His deep voice rasped, sounding oddly thick to her, and then she realized why. She saw the gleam of sharp white teeth behind his lip as he spoke. His fangs. Not quite hidden, despite his obvious effort to conceal them from her view. When he looked at her now, there was a desperation in his amber eyes. Desperation and longing like she'd never seen before. "I don't want you to hate me, but this is who I am, Alex. This is who I truly am."

Despite the tiny shiver of wariness that kicked her heart into a more frantic beat, Alex leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands. She held his tormented gaze, then let her eyes travel downward, to his parted lips and the bright points of his fangs, which seemed to have grown even larger now, sharper.

"I'm not feeling anything close to hate," she whispered, tilting her head up and wetting her suddenly dry lips. "If you'd just kiss me again, you'd know that."

Sparks flashed like lightning in his eyes in the moment before he descended on her. Alex felt the leashed power in him, and she sensed the control he exerted to keep that power in check as he took her mouth in a hot, hungered, claiming kiss.

Alex gave herself over to him, reveling in the warm, wet brush of his lips on her mouth, her chin, her throat. She slipped her hands under the black cotton of his long-sleeved T-shirt, running her palms up the firm, satin-smooth muscle of his back. She could feel the vague outlines of his tattoos under her fingertips, a complicated pattern of swirls and arcs that she traced with her nails but really wanted to follow with her tongue.

"Let me see your body. I want to see all of you," she murmured, tugging at his shirt. She pulled it over his head and could only stare in wonder once she'd unveiled him. "My God," she gasped. "Those are not tattoos, are they?"

"Dermaglyphs," he said, settling back to let her look at the intricate design that pulsed across his torso, shoulders, and arms as though it were alive. The markings that had been only a shade darker than the rest of his skin were now flooded with variegated hues of deepest wine, indigo, and gold. "We're born with them, the same way Breedmates are born with their mark."

"They're beautiful, Kade." His dermaglyphs were artful, lacy intertwinings, a glorious web of shifting colors. Alex leaned in to run her finger along a particularly graceful line that tracked around the flat disk of his right nipple. The deep purplish hue blushed darker under her touch. She looked up at him, amazed. "How'd you do that?"

"You did it." His mouth quirked. "The colors of the glyphs change according to a male's mood."

"Oh," she said, going warm at his dark, meaningful look. "And your mood is?" He didn't answer, just moved forward and took her in another long, slow kiss that turned her core molten. He pressed her down onto the sofa beneath him and began to undress her, prompting Luna to jump off the far end and slink into the kitchen on a disgruntled huff.

"Uh-oh. I think you may have just lost points with her," Alex murmured in between kisses. He chuckled, a low and deep rumble that vibrated against her mouth. "I'll apologize later. Right now, there's only one female whose opinion matters to me."

He took his time stripping her of her double layer of fleece and cotton shirts and loose-fitting jeans. He covered every inch of her with his mouth, kissing a long, hot trail down her neck and breasts and abdomen, stroking her bare limbs as his glowing, fevered gaze drank her in.

By the time he had her naked, Alex was panting and aching with desire. He knelt on the sofa above her, his thick thighs wedged between the spread of hers. He was still in his jeans, which sat low on his lean hips, straining tight across the large swell of his groin.

She raised up and reached out to him, needing to feel his warm flesh under her hands. All over her body.

Deep inside her.

He said nothing as she unfastened the button of his pants and edged the zipper down. He was naked beneath the dark denim, his rigid cock spilling over as soon as it was freed of its confinement. He rose up as she tugged his jeans off his hips and pushed them down around his knees, a move that brought his gorgeous length within an inch of her mouth.

Alex couldn't resist the temptation. She cupped his shaft and balls and brought him to her, wrapping her lips around the broad head and delighting in Kade's strangled moan as she slid her mouth all the way down to the base of him.

He felt so good against her tongue, hot and earthy, as soft as velvet wrapped around a column of solid steel. Alex drew him deep again, then eased back to suckle at his crest, all the while watching as the glyphs on his abdomen and upper thighs churned in ever-deepening hues.

"Ah, Christ," he hissed as she played her mouth around the rim of his head, then took him all the way to the back of her throat. His fingers speared into her hair, clutching her skull as his body went tight as a cable. "Alex ... ah, fuck ..."

His hands were trembling as he set her away from him. His eyes threw off an intense heat, and his face was stark with passion as he hastily shucked his jeans to the floor. Gloriously naked, he moved toward her once more and gently wrapped his palm around her nape. His touch was firm with possession, yet he didn't simply take. His transformed gaze was hungry yet patient. His kiss passionate yet tender. There was nothing simple about him.

Nothing simple about the way he made her feel.

Kade was simply a mass of contradictions, each one more fascinating than the last. He made her feel safe and protected, perhaps the biggest contradiction of all. He made her feel cared for ... even loved.

And dear God, did he make her burn.

Her body arched into him as he stroked her, every inch of her hypersensitive and greedy for his touch. She couldn't get close enough, couldn't hold him tight enough, as he prowled on top of her and spread her thighs wide with his.

"I want to take this slow tonight," he said, his voice rough and dark, almost unrecognizable. "I just want to savor you ... savor us."

He watched her as he entered her, thrusting slowly, filling her with deliberate care even though his hips bucked and the tendons in his neck popped tight under his skin. He rocked her gently, stoking her building climax with maddening restraint.

She wanted to scream for him to go faster, to take her as hard as he could if it would ease the coil of need that he'd put inside her.

But making love to him felt too good to rush. She didn't want the feeling--or this night--to end. Neither did he; she could see that in his face. She could feel it in every measured thrust of his hips. In every hot, savoring caress of his mouth as he kissed her breath away.

The hours would pass quickly enough. Tomorrow his mission with the Order would begin again. Tomorrow all the death and danger that lurked outside the haven of this moment would return. Much too soon, Alex thought.

And so she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around the slow, torturously wonderful pump of his hips, and she let herself spin out into a blissful abandon. She welcomed every deep thrust. Sighed with every long retreat. Relished in the weight and warmth of Kade's magnificent body rubbing against her.

When she came, it was a delicious unraveling of her senses. Alex cried out, shuddering as the orgasm rocked her from a place so deep within her, it seemed to detonate from her very soul. She clung to him, catching the muscled bulk of his shoulder between her teeth as an aftershock rumbled through her.

"Kade," she gasped brokenly. "Oh, God ..."

He groaned with sharp force and lifted her pelvis up off the cushions. His thrusts gained strength, driving deeper now, yet still bridled by his rigid control.

"Let go," Alex whispered. "Just let it go. I want all of you, Kade." He snarled, a raw, animalistic sound of refusal. When he scooped her into his arms and tried to hide his face from her view, Alex pushed back. His face was wild with torment, constricted with pleasure and pain. And his fangs ... Good lord, the bright white points filled his mouth as he stared down at her, thrust so powerfully, she couldn't hold back her sharp cry.

Her own pleasure was cresting once more, bringing with it a keening hunger that twisted tight in her belly, beginning a slow boil in her blood.

"Oh, God ... Kade." She panted with sensation and need, all of it centered on him. She dug her fingernails into the bulk of his arms, buried her face in the curve of his strong neck and shoulder as he crashed into her with long, punishingly intense strokes.

The coil of hunger within her contracted even more, burning into a need so primal it shook her. The scent of his skin, its silky, smooth heat against her lips, against her tongue, made her dizzy with desire. His tempo roughened as he rode her, harder and deeper, grunting with each urgent grind of his pelvis. Alex sighed his name. She moaned, lost to the swelling rush of another orgasm. She cried out as it washed over her, a quenching flood of pleasure and release that should have doused the smoldering thirst that lived in her now, but only made it explode into a gnawing demand.

She wanted to taste him.

Not in any way that she had already, but in a way that shocked her. In a way that should have terrified her, but only made her blood race hotter, faster, alive with a dark power she could hardly tame. Beneath her open mouth, she felt the quickened thud of his heartbeat knocking in the vein at his throat. She pressed her tongue against it, then her teeth. Closed them experimentally over the corded tendons and the heated pulse that seemed to beat in the same desperate rhythm within her, as well. Kade snarled a dark curse but only pumped his hips with more fury. Alex reveled in the feel of him losing control. She ran her tongue and teeth over the tender skin, then clamped down harder ...

Kade arced sharply above her, threw his head back, and roared.

Chapter Twenty-one

He couldn't hold back another second longer.

His release shot out of him in a scalding rush as Alex's blunt little teeth grazed his throat in a teasing, testing bite that almost--not quite--broke the surface of his skin. She couldn't know how badly he wanted it. How staggering the need he had for her to draw his blood into her mouth, to drink from him. How intensely he wanted to claim Alex for his own and bind her to him forever.

"Fuck," he gasped as her satiny walls milked his pumping cock and her mouth wreaked holy havoc on his senses. "Alex ... ah, Christ!"

He came harder than ever before, lost to his desire for her. Lost to the deafening drum of his pulse that demanded she was already his, blood-bonded or not.

His woman.

The only female he would ever want again.

His forever mate.

Kade raised up onto his knees to look at her, his sex still buried inside her heat, still hard for her and hungry for more. His neck burned from the playful nip of her mouth. He could still taste the sweetness of her blood on his tongue from when he'd so stupidly let his fangs graze her lip as he'd kissed her. That small taste had damned him, and maybe her, as well.

Desire and bloodthirst swamped him, sharpening his vision and making his fangs throb with the urge to penetrate her tender flesh. He clutched her hips and rocked against her, watching as she arched beneath him, following him toward the peak of another shattering release.

She cried his name, her spine bowing upward, blood flushing her pale skin with a pink glow. Kade watched her in tortured admiration, never having seen anything as beautiful as Alex in the throes of erotic bliss.

He wanted to give her more, the kind of pleasure and release--the passion, and, yes, the love--that only a blood-bonded male could give his mate.

God, how he wanted.

"Alexandra," he rasped, the only thing he could manage when hunger and desire for her swamped him, stripping him of all thought except the want of this female. He wanted to warn her that he was dangerous like this, but all that left his mouth was a sound somewhere between a curse and a moan. She should have pushed him away, but instead she did the exact opposite. Her hands came up to reach for him, bringing him back down atop her. Breath rushing through her lips in short gasps, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him, a deep, wet, welcoming joining of their mouths. Kade tried to fight the need--the hunger--but Alex was quickly undoing every bit of his control. Dimly he realized that he hadn't fed since leaving Boston a few days ago, and as much as he wanted to blame his thirst on basic survival, he knew to his marrow that it was the taste of Alex he wanted. Only her.

He was unhinged now, treading the edge of a very deep crevasse and about to drag her down into it along with him. He knew this. He knew damned well that he should make sure Alex knew it, too. But then she deepened their kiss, sucking his lower lip between her teeth with a hunger he would not mistake, even at his most sober moment. And he was anything but sober now, when his body was smoldering, his blood racing through his veins like liquid fire.

Kade broke away from her mouth on a growl. He traced his lips and tongue along the delicate line of her jaw, then down to the tender spot beneath her ear, knowing it would doom him but too far gone to stop now. The feel of her pulse ticking against his mouth dug spurs into the soft belly of his need, turning raw ache into fierce agony.

"Ah, God ... Alex," he whispered harshly, then took the tender flesh of her throat between his teeth and fangs and slowly pressed down into her vein.

She drew in a sharp gasp as he penetrated her skin, a sudden flinch stiffening her body and halting her breathing. Kade paused as though slapped, horrified at what he'd just done and fearing he would not have the strength to pull away now, even if she hated him.

But then Alex's hands relaxed on his shoulders, began to stroke him. She exhaled a tremulous, pleasured sigh and he responded with a rough, grateful moan as he drew the first sweet taste of her into his mouth.

And, oh, she was sweet.

Alex's blood swept over his tongue like silk, the unique honey-and-almond scent of her mingling with the musky heat of her arousal. Kade drank her in, stunned by the roar of heat and pleasure that flowed into him with each draw he took from her vein. Her blood quenched him, empowered him. Inflamed him all over again, more intensely than before.