And sexy as hell.
She rose up to touch his face, cupping his stern jaw in her palm when a scowl thundered across his expression. “It’s been a while for me too,” he said, then gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not sure I can be as gentle as I’d like for you. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”
Melena saw the torment in his aura, even if his body was being driven by a stronger need now. He didn’t want to let her in, but he couldn’t shut her out either.
He cared, even though he wanted to deny it.
She thought back to what he said to her in the cave. That just because he’d helped her stay alive, didn’t mean she was safe with him.
Melena had never felt more protected or secure with anyone in her life.
And she’d never known anything so raw and consuming—so impossible to deny—as how it felt being with Lazaro.
She wrapped her hand around his nape and pulled him down in a deep, scorching kiss. With her other hand, she sought out his c**k and grasped it firmly, pumping his length in sure, steady strokes. She didn’t let go of his mouth or his penis for a good long moment. When she did, she gave him a smile against his parted lips and the fangs that now filled his mouth even more than before. “See?” she told him. “I’m not going to break.”
He uttered a low, vicious curse that sounded to be half relief and half anguish.
Then he positioned himself at her body’s entrance and drove home, deep and slow and long, all the way to the hilt.
He filled her so completely she could hardly summon her breath. Then he started to pivot in and out, rolling his h*ps in controlled, tantalizing swivels that dragged a curse out of her too. Sweet pressure spiraled within her core as he pushed her toward another cl**ax. He didn’t go gently, instead driving into her so far and fully, it was all she could do to hold on to him and let her body shatter in his arms.
Lazaro watched her as she came, his eyes locked on hers. She couldn’t look away. The power of the connection was too intense. He felt it too—he had to have felt it.
As his own release built, then broke on a coarse shout, he kept his gaze fastened on hers too. It was so intense, so startlingly real, this thing coming to life between them.
If anything had the power to terrify her, it was this.
The feeling that she had already given herself to this man. A man who had pretended he barely remembered her when he first saw her on Turati’s yacht.
A man who warned her not to get close to him, all but threatened that he would only hurt her.
And here she was, giving him her body.
Staring into his eyes as she surrendered the most intimate part of herself to him, and imagining that she could so easily let herself fall. That maybe she already had. Maybe the men in her past had been right. They would never have been good enough for her.
Because all along, what she wanted them to be was someone like Lazaro Archer. Brave. Loyal. And yes, heroic, even if he refused to accept that truth.
She didn’t need him to be perfect, because even through the haze of affection and searing desire, she knew he would never be perfect. He didn’t need to be. Not for her to want him like she did. Not for her to feel so right, so safe and contented in his arms.
Oh, God...could she be falling so fast?
Did she dare?
Melena finally broke his gaze then, turning her head away from him to the side, bewildered by her epiphany.
Her heart was pounding hard, making her carotid tick palpably in the side of her neck.
She didn’t have to look back to him to know that Lazaro’s amber eyes had drifted to that fluttering vein. She felt the heat of his stare. Then she heard a dangerously low growl curl up from the back of his throat.
She went very still, terrified he might bite her.
Terrified he wouldn’t.
“Lazaro?” she whispered, uncertain what she was about to ask him to do.
She slowly pivoted her head back to look at him and saw torment in his handsome, otherworldly face. And fury. He drew back from her on a hiss.
His expression was wild looking, intense...and his smoldering aura told her he was balanced on the razor’s edge of a rigidly held, but tenuous, control.
* * * *
What the f**k was he doing?
Lazaro came to his senses as if physically struck. He was still buried inside Melena’s hot, wet heat, his pulse still charged and racing. His c**k was still hard, still greedy, even after the cl**ax that had ripped through him with brutal ferocity.
And he’d been reckless enough to let his fevered gaze drift to the vein that throbbed so enticingly in the side of her vulnerable throat.
Christ.
He’d nearly lost control—something he never allowed to happen. Not once in twenty years had he even been tempted. His guard was always up, his will impenetrable.
Even then, he’d made a habit of avoiding women like Melena, females with the Breedmate mark. To drink from one of her kind would tie him to her singularly, irrevocably. He would always crave her. He would always feel her in his blood, in the root of his soul...unless death severed the bond, as it did when he lost Ellie.
Why the thought didn’t freeze his thirst or shrivel his desire for Melena, he didn’t want to know. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit there pondering that fact as she gaped at him in mute terror.
“Damn it.” He pulled out of her on a roar. As difficult as it was to deny himself the feel of her silken grip on his shaft—as much as he wanted to have her now, still, again and again—he needed the separation more.
What he needed was to put as much distance as possible between her soft, inviting body and the blood hunger that was suddenly twisting him in vicious knots.