Demon Blood

curled around her waist. Water slapped the tiles.
    Rosalia slipped into the pool. Heavy warmth enveloped her wingtips, saturated by water. Deacon pressed her up against the pool wall, his hands sliding up her back, and pausing when he encountered the base of her wings.
    She shivered as his fingers traveled up the soft, downy feathers covering the frame.
    His mouth hovered over hers. “That feels good?”
    “Yes.” Not like the almost unbearable caress between her legs, but like a stroke over sensitive skin. “I’m not used to anyone touching them.”
    His hand skimmed down her spine. She shivered in the same way, and he laughed quietly.
    “What part of you is used to a touch?”
    She didn’t think it mattered. Even if he did this a thousand times, she would still enjoy it. And enjoy the feel of her hands on him even more.
    The thick muscles of his chest, the broadness of his back. She found nothing that she didn’t love to explore. The sensitive spot on his side that made him jerk away from her fingers, warning her not to tickle. The ridge of a scar, the coarseness of the hair that drew her fingers down. He kissed her deep when she found him hard beneath his shorts. She wrapped her hands around his length and freed him.
    She couldn’t resist. “Does that feel good?”
    He laughed. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he braced his opposite hand on the lip of the pool, and with a powerful surge, lifted them out.
    Her wings drooped, heavy and sodden. She shook them. Her skin prickled in the heat. The soaked silk of her dress clung to her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.
    Deacon led her to a patch of lawn, laying back on the grass and pulling her down over him. Straddling his hard stomach, she leaned forward to kiss him, stroking his fangs with her tongue, relishing his groan of need.
    “I want these in me, too,” she told him.
    His body went rigid, and he stared up at her with intense, heated eyes. “You liked that?”
    “Yes.” Oh, God, yes. When she’d imagined the pleasure of him taking her blood, she hadn’t come close to the reality. “And I don’t have anything to hide.”
    Still, she trembled as he cupped the back of her neck and scraped his teeth against her throat.
    “You’re shaking,” he murmured.
    “I want it again. That doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.”
    “Afraid of losing control? Trust me.”
    “Always.”
    A faint pain stung her throat. The flat of his tongue swirled against her skin. Pleasure twisted through her, tightening her nipples, a subtle ache in her clitoris that demanded friction. She rocked her hips, grinding her sex against his ridged abdomen.
    Breathing hard, Deacon gripped her thighs. “You taste so good, Rosie.”
    “More,” she said. “Everywhere.”
    He followed a scrape against her collarbone with another lick. She arched back, panting, her blood turning molten, heated through to her core. Beneath her, his stomach flexed as he rose onto one elbow. He offered a wicked smile before he ripped the front of her dress.
    His tongue circled her nipple. Rosalia tensed, her anticipation so high it was almost a pain inside her. She worked her hips, pushing her sex in a slick burn over his stomach. He drew the tip of her breast between his lips. Rosalia moaned. His mouth felt so good, he didn’t even need to—
    The soft bite came as a surprise. She jolted forward, but he caught her. Then he began to suck and she could only feel him, in her blood, hard behind her, beneath her. Crying out, she cupped the back of his head and held him close, her eyes shining across his dark hair.
    She wanted to weep. She wanted to laugh. But she only gasped, her face tilted to the night sky, euphoria moving through her, expanding through her veins and tightening her skin, a frenzy of sensation. His left hand slipped between her legs. His fingers parted her, pressed in, began a slow, slow rhythm until she came apart, her body stiffening, her wings flaring out and shaking.
    Deacon released her breast, returning for a soothing lick before laying back in the grass and staring up at her. Something in his eyes hardened. “I shouldn’t even be touching you, princess.”
    Rosalia thought she would die if he didn’t. Leaning forward, she kissed him. “You should. You truly should.”
    His laugh held a harsh note. “I’m too damned needy to disagree.”
    If he needed, then she’d give. She kissed him again, a sweet, wet tangle of lips and teeth and tongue. When she broke away, his eyes