I gasped and arched underneath him when he bit me again in the same way. Now both my nipples were sizzled and each breast throbbed with heat. His lips slithered up my arm as he shifted higher in bed, moving off me.

I felt the probe of his tongue on my wrist below where those unseen bonds held me. His mouth covered the spot in the next instant, fangs puncturing so quickly I didn't even have time to tense.

That same throb from my b.r.e.a.s.t.s was now duplicated in my wrist. Hot, pulsing waves beat in accordance with my pulse. If heroin addicts feel anything like this, I thought dizzily as it spread like warm caramel down my arm, then I completely understand why they do it.

"That's the juice from my fangs you're feeling," Bones said throatily. "It's moving through your veins with every heartbeat.

If you were human, I wouldn't dare bite you more. Too much would drug you, but you're not human. So I can do this..."

I moaned out loud when he bit my other wrist. Now that sweet unbelievable heat was covering my entire upper body.

Good G.o.d, but I hadn't known vampire bites could feel like this, or I might have demanded he drink from me every day.

Bones squeezed my wrists, and I jumped. The pressure seemed to push that warmth deeper in me.

"Don't move, luv."

Easier said than done. I wanted to pull on the bonds to have their tautness drive that heat further into me. His skin brushing against my mouth distracted me from that, however, as he slid his body down the length of me and then firmly pinched my nipples.

That sudden jab of double fire had me twisting toward him with a cry.

"More!"

He laughed softly. "Oh yes. Much more."

Antic.i.p.ation heightened within me when Bones parted my legs and moved between them, one arm underneath my hips. His mouth was so close, but he didn't do what I wanted him to. Instead he started nuzzling my thigh.

"Bones, please." The request was ragged. I needed to feel his tongue inside me. Probing me. Licking me.

"Not yet."

The breath from his words teased me, causing the ache to expand. I gritted my teeth, mentally cursing him.

"Yes. Now."

"Not yet."

I was actually going to argue, caught up in a whirlwind of l.u.s.t from the heat running through me, when Bones bit into my thigh.

My whole body arched, and I inadvertently pulled on the bonds holding me. More liquid fire cascaded in me, tripled by the new flames in my leg, and I came with an internal spasm that left me trembling. Holy s.h.i.t! He hadn't even touched me between my legs, and here I was shaking from a 9.0 on the o.r.g.a.s.m scale.

Bones's mouth left my thigh, which was throbbing so hard, it felt like my artery was trying to shove his juices through my veins. I didn't even have time to catch my breath when a dominating lick deep within me took it away. With his arm under my hips, he pressed me closer, his mouth greedily ravishing my pink flesh. My head fell back while my moans got even louder. Another climax drew near, accelerated by his tongue swirling and stabbing inside me, and then he abruptly stopped.

"Not yet!" I cried in blind need.

"Hold still."

Bones's arms hardened around me until I was immobilized from the waist down. A rasp of his mouth against my flesh made me tremble, and then he sealed it over my c.l.i.toris and sucked slowly. Deliberately. Even through the numbing ecstasy, something about the way he did it darted trepidation inside me. He couldn't mean to...?

There was a split second of clarity when I felt his fangs penetrate, and then nothing but white -hot fire. Dimly I felt more suction and heard ear-splitting shrieks, but couldn't register who made them. One after the other the o.r.g.a.s.ms convulsed me, shattering me from the inside out. Everything burned and then exploded, only to burn again. Eventually I fell back into awareness, and found the frenzied cries to be coming from me.

My blindfold was off. The strips of his shirt that had held me to the bed frame were severed, and apparently I had torn up the sheets around us. Bones had me pinned underneath him, restrained by his body. The last haze lifted, and his face came into focus.

He wore a purely masculine smile that had pa.s.sed smug and hovered near conceited. I couldn't stop shaking, especially when he kissed me and I tasted blood and other things on his tongue.

"Oh, Kitten," he growled. "You have no idea how much I enjoyed that. I've already spilled myself inside you, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, I thought you'd castrate me with your pleasure. Do you know how long you've been whipping around from the effects of my bite?"

Not a clue. "Five minutes?"

To my shock, my voice was hoa.r.s.e and nearly unrecognizable. He chuckled.

"Try twenty, give or take a few. The police have already come and gone; Annette sent them away. I think the neighbors thought someone was being murdered."

"Huh?" I croaked, and then gasped when he moved lower and thrust fully inside me with one stroke. That gasp turned into a cry when his pelvis ground into my bitten, throbbing c.l.i.toris. It felt like lightning just struck me below the waist.

He groaned in satisfaction. "Feels hot, doesn't it?"

That didn't even begin to describe it. "It burns. Burns. G.o.d, Bones, it feels so good!" My vehemence surprised me on an internal level, but skin-deep, I wanted more. Needed more, and wasn't shy about telling him.

"Don't stop, don't stop!"

Bones moved harder, faster, and I reveled in his fierceness. Every thrust sent new heat blasting into me, making me almost insane with desire. His chest flattened my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pressing on my nipples, and he clamped his hands around my wrists. The combined pressures sent me spinning into another o.r.g.a.s.m, and yet it still wasn't enough. I urged him on in between shouts, crying out for more until I couldn't speak, and when he came, I joined him with a scream that took most of my voice with it.

Bones pulled out of me and left the bed, but I hardly noticed. I couldn't move, and my heart was beating so rapidly, I felt certain it was dangerous.

He came back moments later, turning me until I lay on my side. His fingers slid between my thighs with something liquid but thicker coating them. He kissed my neck, and then smeared the substance into the crease of my b.u.t.tocks.

I trembled. Oh G.o.d. I knew what he intended.

Bones curled his body along the length of mine, positioning. "It's all right, Kitten, don't fret. Relax..."

Wordless grunts emerged from my throat when he spread my cheeks and I felt the first start of penetration. A soft cry escaped me, almost a wheeze. Bones moaned, grasping my hips. His next thrust breached me and the tip of him slid inside.

He throbbed, or perhaps it was me. Either way, the new sensation was strange and almost disturbing. Bones reached down, rubbing my c.l.i.t to quickly reignite that heat in me. Then he slowly invaded further into the depths that had never before been crossed. Another jagged noise left my throat. Bones stopped at once.

"Does this hurt?"

His voice was thick with l.u.s.t, but he didn't move as he waited for my response. The fullness inside me wasn't pain in the strictest sense, but it was indescribably intense. I wasn't sure if it hurt me, or I liked it, or both.

When I didn't respond in the affirmative, he asked another question. "Do you want me to stop?"

My voice, when it came, was scratchy and very soft. "No."

Bones craned his neck to kiss me. His fingers bombarded my flesh while he began to move in and out, slowly, a little deeper each time. I didn't know if it was the pa.s.sion in his kiss, his fingers stoking the fire in me, or something else, but when my back arched, I was shocked to find myself moving with him.

"Yes," he groaned. "Yes..."

My mind might still be objecting to this new activity, but my body had no morality. Bones increased the motion by infinitesimal degrees, building a gentle rhythm I couldn't help responding to, while rubbing my c.l.i.t with every stroke. I dug my nails into his arm, moaning into his mouth, and let a hidden instinct take over.

I didn't think it was possible. It probably wouldn't have been possible if I'd been thinking at all, but eventually my release hit me as surely as the astonishment over what caused it.

Bones growled deeply in his throat and abruptly pulled out. A warm wetness spilled onto my thigh moments later.

"Don't move, luv," he whispered, voice still vibrating with his climax. "I'll clean us up."

Seconds after the unnecessary command, because I didn't think I could move anything, he drew out a sudsy towel from a nearby bowl and ran it over my thigh. With half-closed eyes, I watched him wipe himself with another cloth after I'd been attended to. Then he threw the rags to the floor and took me in his arms.

He kissed me, biting his tongue so his mouth was flavored with drops of blood that I swallowed as if I were thirsty. That soreness in my throat vanished, which was a plus, but then that flaring heat in me also ebbed. I broke the kiss to look down at my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The puncture marks in my nipples vanished before my eyes. Bones's blood had healed more than my voice, of course, and I couldn't help feeling the tiniest bit disappointed.

He smiled when he saw where I was looking. "Oh, Kitten, I'm not nearly done feasting on your flesh. I can't get enough of that pop when your skin breaks, or the taste of your luscious blood filling my mouth..."

He proved his statement by biting me in every place he had before, until I was in danger of damaging my voice once again.

Not that I cared while I was on top of him, each rock of my body shooting exquisite pleasure into me. Vocal cords? Who needed 'em?

Bones sat up, brought me closer, and sank his fangs into my neck. G.o.d, if he didn't kill me before dawn, I'd be amazed.

He drew on the punctures while shifting me on his lap until my legs wrapped around his waist. His thrust brought on another shallow suction, and another, and another, while vaguely I wondered why my skin wasn't smoking, because it felt like I had to be on fire.

"Bite me, Kitten. Drink me as I drink you."

I buried my teeth into his neck with far more roughness than he'd shown. There was a giving way of skin-yes, a pop- and then blood filled my mouth. It was warm, heated from being in my body minutes before, but irrevocably altered after being in his. We drank from each other, me more deeply, and nothing seemed separate anymore. His body was my body, his blood my blood, our blood, and it flowed back and forth between us with every swallow.

Scent began to fill my nose. Colors sharpened, becoming clearer. My heartbeat, which had sounded loud before, now practically deafened me. Just as an overwhelming hunger hit, Bones wrenched me away.

"No more."

In fury I clawed him to get to his throat. He slammed me back on the mattress, tearing into me with an unbridled vehemence that still wasn't enough. There was a creak as the bed broke under us.

"G.o.ddammit, Bones, give me more!" I roared, and didn't know if I called out for blood, or s.e.x, or both.

"Is that all the fight you've got?" he taunted me.

I laid open his back with my nails, trying to lick his blood off my hands from the scratches. He held my wrists together and plunged repeatedly inside me, his throat tantalizingly near. I wanted that throat in my mouth. Wanted to tear it and feel his blood spilling into me, overflowing me, covering me. Something had taken over inside me, and it was clawing to get out.

"You'd better not stop f.u.c.king me," I snarled, and a decadent grin lit his face. "Because if you do, I'll drain you dry."

Bones laughed, savage and exultant. "You'll drain me dry, but not my neck, and you'll beg me to stop before I'm finished,"

he promised before abandoning himself to the battle.

THIRTY-THREE.

WAKE UP, LUV. IT'S NEARLY NOON.".

My lashes fluttered open to meet a pair of dark brown eyes. Bones sat on the bed. Or the remains of it.

Lucidity returned with a vengeance. He laughed at the color that immediately scalded my face.

"And there is my payment, the rubies in your cheeks. Are you properly scandalized by your wicked behavior? If you were Catholic, you'd singe the ears of the priest you confessed to. Do you remember making me swear to repeat all those naughty actions again, no matter what you said this morning?"

Now that he brought it up, I did recall saying that. Great. Betrayed by my own immorality.

"G.o.d, Bones...some of that was depraved."

"I'll take that as a compliment." He closed the distance between us. "I love you. Don't be ashamed of anything we did, even if your prudery is on life support."

I studied his neck where I'd bitten him. There were no marks, of course, and none on my own throat. With all the blood I'd drunk from him, I'd probably heal as fast as he did for the next few days.

"I'll never look at your fangs the same way after last night. A part of me wants to apologize for holding you back before, and the other part wants you to apologize to me because you knew better!"

He laughed again. "I still have more to show you, trust me, but there isn't time now. We're behind schedule as it is since I let you sleep."

I threw the covers off me and headed to the bathroom. Behind schedule or not, I was taking a shower. Bones was already washed and dressed. His hair was still slightly damp.

"There's something you should know," he called after me. "Tate's here. He spent the night."

The shampoo squirted across the wall instead of in my hand. For the first time, I noticed the heartbeat downstairs. "Why?"

There was tempered deliberation in Bones's words as he entered the bathroom. "He convinced Rodney to drop the others off and bring him back here, out of misguided concern for you. When he arrived, you and I were well occupied. Annette invited him to stay and entertain her. He accepted."

The shower rod came off when I yanked the curtain back too hard to look at him. Bones caught it and hung it back without comment.

"Tate and Annette? Not playing poker, were they?"

"No, why, are you jealous?" he bluntly asked.

"No, are you?"

"Not at all. Just annoyed at her spite toward you, but that's been dealt with."

"Tate called me a necrophiliac once." There was an edge to my voice. "I'll have to return the compliment."

"You just did. He's listening, I can feel it."

Was he? Nosy p.r.i.c.k. He knew I didn't like Annette. She wasn't the only one being spiteful. Another thought registered.

"You knew last night, didn't you?"

Bones inclined his head in acknowledgment. "You can forget asking me why I didn't tell you. Not for worlds would I have interrupted us, and if he chose to stay, that was his prerogative. Never fear-I forgot about him at once, because you demanded all my attention."