I was so hard it was physically painful. The only thing I was conscious of other than her mouth and her exhales of pleasure was the fact that her slit was so fucking close to my cock, it would take barely a tilt of her hips to lower herself onto me.

She was drinking so fast that she choked a little, pulling away with a tiny spatter of coughs. I tilted my head just enough to look at her, and the pure lust on her face—eyes heavy-lidded, lips swollen and parted, a trickle of red-black smeared at the corner—left me vaguely dizzy.

“Good?” I murmured.

Instead of answering, she kissed me.

My blood tasted salty and iron-strong. Different than hers had—not nearly as good, but better for the fact that I was lapping it off her tongue. The kiss was demanding, not waiting for breath, her tongue slipping into my mouth as she forced my head back.

Her hips lowered. Her sex ground against my length in one long roll, making my fingernails dig into her skin, a low wordless sound rolling from my throat.

“So you have my blood,” I murmured. “What else do you want, princess?”

Another roll of her hips answered my question. Fuck. I had never known what it was to need someone before I met her. I had always thought that kind of talk was silly and overdramatic.

No. I needed Oraya. Needed her, like another bodily function.

I knew what she wanted. She knew what she wanted. But I knew she couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. The final vestiges of our game, shaky gates still in place between us.

So she whispered, against another desire-drunk kiss, “Beg.”

It was so damned easy to beg for her.

I pushed down on her hips—just enough so that my tip sat at the slick of her, so sensitive that I felt it tighten at the presence of my cock.

“Let me in,” I rasped. “Let me inside you. Let me feel you come around me. Let me watch you. Please.”

She let out a strangled sigh, pressed her mouth against mine, and lowered herself onto me.

When I disappeared into her wet warmth, everything else fell away.

Immediately, a sound tore from her throat, a mangled moan, and Goddess, it was the most incredible sound I’d ever heard. I thought I’d made myself forget it, put it out of my mind forever.

Stupid of me to even try. And hell, why would I want to? I wanted to drown myself in her. Drown myself in her sounds, her breath, her body—her blood.

She moaned again as she lifted herself off me, lowering again, again, hips rolling, helping me hit where she wanted me. Goddess, I loved it—loved the way she used me. My body still hurt, uncooperative in letting me take her the way I wanted to, but she was more than willing to take what she needed.

My hands trailed her body, memorizing the shape of every muscle, every expanse of skin, from the taut shape of her waist to the full softness of her ass. I kissed her, hard, swallowing all those breathtaking sounds—offering her all of my own.

Our pace was frantic now. Neither of us had patience for this. I wanted everything, and I wanted it now. With every time she took me inside her, grinding against me, allowing me to reach the deepest parts of her, I only wanted more.

I wanted to brand her.

I wanted her to brand me.

My hunger for her was suddenly insatiable, driven to a frenzy by the sensation of her sex around me, the scent of her desire, the taste of my own blood on her lips and the tantalizing scent of hers beneath that sweat-slicked skin.

She broke our kiss, gasping a curse against my lips as I drew her down against me roughly in one particularly deep thrust, her body spasming—and fuck, I almost lost it right there.

“Raihn,” she whimpered.

“Take it,” I rasped out. Knowing, somehow, exactly what she wanted. “All of it. It’s yours.”

She let out a fractured sound between a sob and a sigh of relief, and lowered her mouth to my throat again, drinking deep as she rocked around me.

When she pulled away again, blood smearing her lips, I chased her, desperate to taste her again however I could. But instead, she lifted her chin—exposing the elegant column of her throat.

I paused, a sudden absence of movement that made her tighten around me in protest.

She couldn’t be offering—couldn’t be asking me to—

“Take it,” she said, throwing my words back at me.

My jaw closed. Tightened. It was almost—almost—enough to cut through my haze of lust.

I knew what this meant for her. Knew, too, that the chemical draw of my blood and our sex and everything else between us was probably just as addling to her as it was to me.

I didn’t want to be something else she regretted.

“Are you sure?”

I barely managed to form the words.

She lowered her chin just enough to meet my eyes. What I saw within them stripped me bare. Far deeper than the lust.

“Yes,” she whispered.

No hesitation.

I didn’t even have words to give her after that, just this animalistic growl that came out in a mangled burst as I pulled her closer. Her hips resumed their rhythm, drowning us both in a sea of pleasure that couldn’t be matched, except—

—Except for when my mouth came to her throat.

Her skin there was delicate. Smooth, save for the little scars—two old, two newer. Just as I had once before, I kissed both of them, tenderly, offering some softness before I let the sharpness of my teeth settle over her vein. I could practically taste the beat of her blood beneath, hot and sweet.

My bite was quick, firm, piercing the skin in a single painless strike before withdrawing.

She drew in a little gasp, her hands clutching my shoulders, walls tightening around me.

Her blood flooded my mouth, thick and rich. Nothing had ever tasted like this—like her, at her rawest essence, every nuance and contradiction. From the first moment I had tasted it, I had known it would change me forever.

Better than any wine. Any drug. A pleasure I’d be chasing for the rest of my life.

Maybe it was the sensory overload of the sex, or maybe the venom just worked particularly quickly. Because I scented the sudden spike in Oraya’s arousal rising to an unbearable crescendo. A moan vibrated through her, and I could taste that sound with my next swallow, with every stroke my tongue worked across her skin.

Her pace grew faster now, harder. My fingernails dug into her, leveraging whatever remained of my strength to help her through each thrust.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, the words fractured by ragged breaths. And thank the fucking Goddess she said it, because I couldn’t—I was fucking gone.

It was too much. Everything culminated. Pressure built at the base of my spine. I could feel her getting close, too, her muscles coiling, her strokes growing frantic and her fingernails dragging deep over my back and shoulders.

I needed to feel her come even more than I needed it myself.

I wanted to give her everything.

I tore myself away from her throat, the taste of her blood still thick on my tongue. For one endless moment, her eyes met mine—and so much honesty passed between us, both of us exposed with only our flesh and our desires and our primal impulses.

“Yours,” I ground out. “It’s yours.”

My blood. My body. My soul.

I had given her all of that a long time ago. I even had given her my life.

And I’d do it all again.

I urged her head down as our bodies writhed around each other, rushing to the end. She accepted eagerly, her mouth falling to my throat again, drawing in a deep mouthful of my blood.

I felt her swallow, and then, a moment later, felt her climax take her. A desperate cry, one she didn’t even try to stifle, rang out against my skin—long, whimpering, holding fragments of torn-up curses and pleas.

“Raihn,” she choked out, like she was hurtling through oblivion and desperate for someone to anchor her.