Kellan exhaled gruffly, amber eyes searing into her. "Damn it, Mira. I told you not to leave this room."
"Afraid of what I might see?" She lifted her chin, jealousy still burning like acid in the back of her throat. "Guess you should've been more careful, Bowman. You're the one who left the door unlocked."
His stare didn't leave her, not even for an instant. But behind her, she heard the metallic clack of the tumbler sliding into place, turned by the force of his mind alone. "It's locked now."
He bared his teeth and fangs as he said it, his voice a dark growl that should not have made her heart race like it did. Her veins shouldn't have been humming, pulse gone wild and electric, as he held her there, trapped in an unbearable place between anger and hurt, awareness and need.
She didn't want to crave him - not now. Not when she was fuming, still fighting off bitter tears that threatened to spill at having seen his mouth on another woman. A human woman who could feed him, nourish him, give him something Kellan had never taken from Mira.
"Why didn't you tell me?" The words, a broken whisper, slipped off her tongue before she could call them back. "Why couldn't you just say there was someone else?"
Fiery eyes flared brighter. "Because it wouldn't be the truth."
"I saw you, Kellan - just now, with Candice. I saw your fangs in her wrist. Her blood was on your lips - "
"Yes," he admitted, unblinking, unflinching. "I fed from Candice out of necessity. I've fed from her many times, because I am Breed and I cannot live without blood. I feed from her because I can trust her and because she demands nothing from me."
Mira huffed out a harsh breath. "How convenient for you."
She meant it to sound sharp and uncaring, but there was no hiding the fact that she was wounded. She hated the rawness inside her, hated that he might hear it now, would certainly see it in her moist eyes. She shuttered herself with a downward glance, but Kellan wouldn't permit it.
Merciless, he lifted her face, then made the ache even worse by smoothing away the trail of one fat tear with a brush of his thumb across her cheek.
"Look at me, Mira. Tell me if you think there's anything more to what you saw back there than what I'm telling you it was." His voice was level yet intense. "Look at my eyes. They're still glowing. They're still inflamed with hunger, even though I drank my fill of Candice's blood. Look at my glyphs, Mira. Do you see satiation in them, or are they still livid and churning with hunger and with the dark colors of a different, deeper need when I'm standing here in front of you?"
Mira didn't want to look at him, but he gave her no choice. And as she obeyed his demands to see him - really see him, as a formidable man and a dangerous, preternatural creature both - she realized that everything he was saying now was the truth. While the edge of his blood thirst had been curbed, he was far from satisfied.
Kellan pressed into her, letting her feel the full, hard length of his body. He bent his head down next to hers, his voice a low growl against the sensitive shell of her ear. "Do I feel like a man who's taken what he wants from someone other than the one woman he craves above all others?"
Mira's breath caught in her throat, leaking out of her in a small moan. She felt his rigid arousal, felt his desire for her radiating out of him in palpable heat.
Kellan muttered a dark curse. "For eight years I've wished I could find someone to make me forget you. But there's been no one, Mira." His lips closed around her earlobe, suckling it gently between his teeth and fangs. His warm breath rasped against her ear, reaching down into her, making her pulse race and her thighs tremble. "There's been no one since you, Mira."
He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Not the gentle nip and brush of his mouth just a moment ago, but a fierce claiming. Possessive and hot, his kiss invaded her without patience or mercy. It was a demand, raw and unbridled.
And Mira gave in to it with abandon.
She couldn't deny him, nor the passion that shot through her body in molten waves as he dragged her deeper into his kiss, pulling her body against his hard planes and rigid edges.
Like a dam breaking, Mira's meager resistance flooded out of her, along with the last small bit of her fight. She wrapped her arms around him and opened herself to his plundering kiss. Inside, she was melting. Blood ran hot, pooling in her core. Limbs went weak and unsteady, turning to gel beneath her.
She wanted him. God, how she wanted him.
Wanted this moment to last forever.
"Kellan," she murmured, arching into the heat of him.
She gasped a second later, when his strong hands skimmed around to the front of her and slipped beneath the loose cotton of her T-shirt. His fingers were rough against her bare skin, more callused and hardened, battle-worn. But his touch was light, raising a shiver on her as his palms skated up her ribs, toward the na**d swells of her br**sts. He cupped them in his hands, squeezed them, rubbed his thumbs over the ni**les that were tight as pebbles under his caress.
Mira buried her face in the curve of his strong shoulder, relishing the feel of his hands all over her bare skin. She touched him too, running her fingers along the muscled bulk that flanked either side of his spine, retracing every inch of him, remembering his body as though they'd never been apart. "Oh, God . . . Kellan. I've missed this so much. I've missed you . . . us."
His reply was a low growl that vibrated all the way to her marrow. Without words, without asking for permission, he wheeled her around in front of him and guided her toward the bed, kissing her every step of the way.
She couldn't have resisted if she tried. Everything female in her was willing and wanton and wet, so ready to welcome him back to her.