Demon Moon

too. Awareness burned from their linked hands to her body. Her nipples were sensitive and aching beneath her shirt, and desire pulsed low and heavy and wet. His stride lengthened as he turned down the alley beside the salon, pulling her through to the back lot. The slap of her flip-flops against her soles seemed incredibly loud in the darkness.
    The streetlight glinted against his watch, and she looked down, catching her breath. His shirt cuff edged high on his wrist, exposing its lean, strong lines. He led her across an intersection, and the tendon in his inner wrist flexed; it should have looked soft, not powerful.
    “How much farther?” She wasn’t going to last more than a second when he finally touched her.
    He threw her a heavy-lidded glance over his shoulder and led her into another narrow alley, cutting between the back of an apartment complex and the side of a convenience store. “To my car? Or my bed?”
    Just the word from his lips made her crave smooth sheets and naked skin. But that could be for later, as could leisure. “Do we need a bed the first time?”
    His steps faltered. “No.”
    His mouth muffled her cry of surprise; he’d pressed her up against the shop’s cold stucco wall before she’d registered his movement. His tongue dipped between her lips as he lifted her and wedged his hips into the tight cradle of her thighs.
    Oh god . Too much denim, too many clothes keeping her from that rigid, thick length. She rocked against him desperately and dropped her shields, hoping to urge him faster.
    A shudder wracked his body, reverberated through hers. His lips closed over her tongue, and he began sucking on it with slow, excruciating tenderness.
    “In me,” she gasped when he stiffened against her, raised his lips from hers. He’d come just from her kiss before—and a bit of blood. She wanted to go over with him this time.
    “Wait, Savi…wait.” He was breathing hard, his chest pushing against her breasts with the rough rhythm of it. “I’m—” He broke off and shook his head, as if to clear it.
    She tugged on his shoulders, tried to pull his mouth to hers again. “The bloodlust? Don’t stop because of that…it’s kind of the point tonight, isn’t it?”
    He inhaled deeply, turned his head to look down the alley. The tension in his body heightened.
    “What is it?” she whispered.
    “Wyrmwolf,” he said quietly, but he sounded uncertain. After a frozen moment, he relaxed and glanced down at her. “I don’t sense it now. Likely a false association with the taste of you—from the night at Polidori’s.”
    “You can taste me?” She stared up at him; shadows hid most of his expression, but with his enhanced vision he would not mistake the arousal on hers. “When you said that before…I didn’t realize you meant it literally.”
    “I did.”
    “Just my mouth? Or everything?”
    His lids lowered. “That’s what I intend to discover, my sweet Savitri.” He bent his head, and she instinctively arched her neck toward him as his tongue ran up the length of her throat. Her core seemed to melt, hot as liquid copper. “Yes,” he breathed as he reached her jaw. “Your skin, a light flavor. Your lips, like sweet nectar.” His hands pulled her hips tightly against him, and her inner muscles fluttered and grasped for fulfillment—but she remained empty. So empty. “What shall we find here, I wonder? I may decide to drink from you in every possible way when I taste you here.”
    She should have been frightened or disgusted, she realized dimly. But the thought of his fangs piercing her so intimately pushed her beyond reason—as did the knowledge that she was the only one he could taste. Two, three days from now, when he had another…she would not give him what Savi had.
    And she should have been ashamed of the depth of her triumph. It was impossible to hide it from him; her emotions were wide open for him to read.
    He laughed softly and nipped at her bottom lip. “It’s not so easy, is it? But I’ll not think you an ass for it.”
    Chagrined, she raised her shields. Better to keep them up until she controlled her stupid—
    His head snapped back, his eyes wide. His skin drew taut over his cheekbones.
    “How quickly can you run now, Savi?”



CHAPTER 11

    The holiday in Brighton should be an amusing diversion; I may decide to bring back to Beaumont Court an ocean landscape, and depict myself as the beautiful hapless victim of a siren, bashed upon the rocks. By the by,