Bones inhaled, absorbing her scent before lifting her hips and rubbing his cheek against the rapid pulse in her thigh.

  “Bones.” She gasped out his name as she arched, taunting him by bringing that exquisite flesh closer. “Please.”

  “Not yet,” he ground out, his fangs throbbing almost as much as his cock.

  “Yes, now,” she urged with another sinuous twist.

  He nearly gave in, but he forced his mouth to her thigh instead. “Not. Yet.”

  With that, Bones pierced the artery vibrating against his lips. Her whole body jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. He immediately healed the bite, stopping that instant spurt of blood. Before he could finish swallowing it, she was shuddering from a venom-induced orgasm that tore a shocked cry from her.

  He finally buried his mouth between her legs, licking and driving his tongue into her ambrosia. She arched against him with blatant demand, and he pressed her closer, moving his tongue faster, and reveling in her rising cries. Soon, she was twisting against him with wild abandon as another orgasm neared. His cock swelled until even the fabric from the sheets felt like a rough caress. He wanted her so badly it was painful, but he had one more surprise for her first.

  Bones forced himself to stop even though it felt like it might kill him.

  “Don’t stop! Not yet!” she cried out at once.

  He ignored that, moving back another inch. “Hold still.”

  She didn’t, so he locked his arms around her hips and forced her lower body motionless. An angry sound left her that made him smile. Oh, yes, he was greedy for her, too, but he was doing this first.

  He bent, sucking her clit until it swelled sweetly against his lips. Her cries instantly resumed, but he still held her hips immobile while he filled his fangs with enough venom to make them drip. Then, he pressed their tips against that nub.

  She froze. “You can’t mean to-?”

  Her question ended in a gasping scream as the tips of his fangs pierced her clit, and she climaxed so intensely that Bones had to yank away before her frantic bucks drove his fangs too deep. Her wrists shot free from their restraints next, and if he hadn’t been holding her down, she would have vaulted right off the bed.

  Bones closed the shallow bite before he moved up, covering her body with his. When he thrust inside her, the friction from him pressing against her clit made another orgasm erupt within her. Each wet, frenzied clench yanked away his control, until he was thrusting with increasing abandon, his head ringing from her cries while his whole body burned from pleasure.

  She came four more times before he did.

  By then, he was so swept away by his orgasm that it actually took him a moment to realize there were new voices coming from downstairs.

  “…assure you, officers, there’s no crime being committed here,” Annette was saying in a testy tone. “Unless you count the murder of my pride.”

  “Yeah? Then why is someone still screaming?” a male voice argued.

  “You don’t want to know,” Annette snapped. “Now, shut up and look into my eyes. Everything is fine. It’s a loud telly playing a horror movie, nothing more. Leave, and tell the neighbors to mind their own business.”

  Mutters of acquiescence were drowned out by Cat’s continued cries. Her blindfold was off, revealing blazing emerald eyes unfocused from passion as she rocked against him, driving him deeper into her. Bones didn’t want to stop, but her heartbeat was approaching a dangerous level from so many back-to-back orgasms. So, he pulled out of her and merely held her until those erotic spasms stopped.

  A few minutes later, Cat’s eyes focused, and she stared at him, her green gaze wider than he’d ever seen it.

  He kissed her, savoring the way she gripped him to keep him close when he broke away so she could breathe. “Oh, Kitten, you have no idea how much I enjoyed that. I’ve already spilled myself inside you. Bloody hell, I thought you might castrate me with your pleasure. Do you know how long you’ve been whipping about from the effects of my bite?”

  “No…idea,” she said in a croak. No surprise, she’d damaged her voice from her continued cries. “Five…minutes?”

  He laughed, low and very, very satisfied. “Try twenty, give or take. The police had already come and gone. Annette sent them away. Think the neighbors thought someone was being murdered.”

  Her expression was priceless. “What?”

  She shifted with the question, grazing his cock with her searing honey. New fire burst through him, and he filled her with a single, deep thrust.

  Her nails dug into his back, and then raked down it as he pressed his pelvis against her bitten clitoris. Her shout punctuated another fierce inner clench. Her heat was nearly burning him, and with that venom consolidated in her most sensitive spot, she should be feeling that same sweet fire.

  “Feels hot, doesn’t it?” he muttered thickly.

  “Burns,” she moaned, her eyes nearly rolling back in her head from another grinding thrust. “God, it feels so good!”

  Yes, it did. So, so good.

  “Don’t stop; don’t stop!” she choked out.

  Bones didn’t until her sweat coated both of them and her screams ceased because she no longer had a voice. He left her gasping on the bed as he fetched the small jar he’d placed nearby. Once he had it, he returned to the bed and positioned Cat’s back against his chest. He kissed her neck while coating his fingers with jar’s contents before rubbing it between the globes of her arse.

  Shivers broke out over her, and her breathing came faster.

  He coated his cock with that oily mixture next, lust warring with his control as he brought it up against her.

  “It’s all right, Kitten,” he breathed when nervousness tinged her scent and her shivers turned into trembles. “Relax.”

  He waited a moment, but she didn’t move away, shake her head “no,” or push him back, so he pressed more firmly against that other opening. The tip of his cock slid inside, and pleasure gripped him as tightly as she did.

  He stopped, gathering his control.

  She’d never done this before, and if he wasn’t careful, she’d never want to do it again. He caressed her hip before reaching lower to her bitten, throbbing clit. After several lingering strokes, the nervous tension left her body, replaced by delicious rocks against his hand that also pushed her back against him.

  Bones pressed deeper, shuddering as pleasure spiked within him. Then, he froze as a harsh, unintelligible sound came from her.

  “Kitten? Does this hurt?”

  Cat’s voice might be mostly gone, but she had a host of other ways to express a yes or no. When she did none of them, he rose on one elbow trying to see her face.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Her eyes had been closed, and she’d caught her lower lip between her teeth, but at that, she opened her eyes and spoke.

  “N…oo.”

  Her voice was too hoarse to be recognizable, but the word was clear enough. Bones kissed her, stroking her until she was arching against his hand again. Very slowly, he began to move with short, shallow strokes that blistered him with ecstasy even as he focused on her response.

  She only moved against his hand for the first several thrusts. Then, very hesitantly, she began to push back against him. His kiss swallowed the sound she made when he rocked his hips in response, and when she pushed against him again, he followed the motion until they were moving as one. Triumph surged as a choked, passionate sound escaped her.

  “Yes, Kitten,” he groaned against her mouth. “Yes.”

  He kept matching her, speeding up when she did, and slowing when she didn’t. All of it felt incredible, especially when her breathing turned to gasps caused by more than the relentlessly sensual attention he paid to her clitoris.

  When her climax eventually shuddered through her, rapture spiked him so intensely that Bones almost joined her. He pulled out just in time, spilling his seed against her thigh instead of inside her.

  “Don’t move, luv,” he said, rolling over and reaching down. “I’ll clean us both up.”

  He’d left a soapy wash cloth and a bowl of water near the bed for this very purpose. He couldn’t have her scurrying into the bathroom to do it herself. If she did, she’d only become needlessly embarrassed by what they’d done, and he couldn’t have that.

  Her blushes were for tomorrow. Not tonight.

  Bones was quick as he attended to both of them before tossing the wash cloths aside. Then, he pulled her closer.

  “Let’s get your voice back, Kitten,” he said, biting his tongue before kissing her.

  Cat sucked the blood off it with the languorousness of someone sated from multiple orgasms. Then, she pulled away, and stared down at her nipples in surprise. The faint redness that marked where his fangs had penetrated them vanished, his ingested blood healing her far more thoroughly than the sparse drops he’d used to close the holes before. That healing would erase much of the heat from his venom, too, and a disappointed sound escaped her when she realized that.

  Bones laughed. “Oh, I’m not nearly done biting you, Kitten. I can’t get enough of that pop when your skin breaks, or the taste of your luscious blood filling my mouth.”

  So saying, he bent and captured her nipple. Her arms latched around his head at once. He laughed again as she began to squirm with impatience when he only teased the tip with his tongue instead of piercing it again. He’d always known that she would love his bite. He’d only waited to show her how much until she was ready to know it, too.

  “Now?” he asked with another taunting lick.

  She yanked him closer. “Fuck yes.” Then, her grip loosened. “Um, I mean yes.”

  Now his laugh was darker. She thought that was aggressive? He’d show her what she was truly capable of.

  He bit her nipples, wrists, thigh, and clit again. By the time he thrust into her, she was nearly wild from passion, but “nearly” wasn’t enough.

  He wanted her as feral as he felt.

  Cat had been straddling him when Bones sat up, intensifying his thrusts. Her head fell back, and her creamy throat was too tempting to resist. His fangs sank into it, and they both moaned. His bite had been shallow, allowing him to suck on those tiny holes as he swallowed each sumptuous mouthful. Pleasure seared his every nerve ending as her blood filled his body while he continued to fill hers. He needed her to feel that same total, complete immersion, and she could. Right now.

  “Bite me, Kitten. Drink me as I drink you.”

  She did, sheer force causing her flat teeth to puncture his skin since she lacked fangs. Pain was only another sensation Bones savored as she swallowed his blood. Her neck healed almost instantly, so Bones sank his fangs into her again. Her blood was liquid fire, her body an inferno, and he couldn’t get enough.

  Neither could she. “Don’t stop,” she moaned, pressing his head and his hips closer.

  He moved faster while biting her as soon as those previous holes closed. Cat’s grip became ironlike as she kept biting his neck and swallowing his blood, too. Her movements on top of him became harder, faster. He would have feared injuring her except that was impossible now. So, he kept drinking her while their bodies slammed together until ecstasy nearly maddened him. Nothing had ever felt this good. Nothing had even come close.

  Still, Bones tore her mouth away when she yanked his head back hard enough to nearly snap his neck. She needed to stop now lest she risk losing the scant part of her that was still human.

  “No more,” he said, holding her mouth away from his neck.

  Her nails ripped bloody furrows into his arm as she struggled to bite him again. “Yes! More!”

  She was caught up in bloodlust. When that happened years before, he’d restrained her until she got past it. This time, he’d give her something else to think of.

  Bones flipped them over until he was on top, holding her down and driving into her with glorious abandon. Cat matched every stroke while still struggling to get to his neck. A sharp crack heralded the bed breaking beneath them. The rough jolt as they landed knocked him into her harder than he’d intended, but his concern vanished at her instant scream of “Yes!”

  Bones kept up that new intensity, his skin feeling like it would split because it couldn’t contain this much rapture. This wasn’t just worth killing for. It was worth dying for.

  “Goddammit, Bones, give me more!” Cat roared.

  Oh, he would, but not his blood even though she still snapped at his throat.

  “That all the fight you’ve got in you?” he challenged.

  Her eyes blazed a brighter shade of emerald at the taunt. Then, she ripped her nails down his back and began licking his blood from her fingers.

  The flash of pain in his back only turned him on more. He laughed as he grabbed her wrists.

  “Clever, but not good enough,” he said, holding her wrists above her head with one hand. The other gripped her hair, keeping her snapping teeth away from his throat.

  Cat tried to wrest free, but all that did was increase the explosive friction between their bodies. Her eyes closed in bliss for a moment, and then they snapped open again, and she stared at his throat with her teeth bared.

  “You’d better not stop fucking me, Bones, because if you do, I swear I will drain you dry!”

  He laughed, glorying in her unbridled ferocity. Let her do her worst. He would absolutely love it. “Oh, you’ll drain me dry, but not my neck, and you will beg me to stop fucking you before I’m finished. That’s a promise.”

  40

  Dawn was just breaking when Bones finally rolled off Cat. She lay back with a final gasp at her climax, and then almost instantly fell asleep.

  Bones smiled as he pulled the blankets up to cover her. “Promise kept, Kitten.”

  A soft snore was his only response.

  He stretched out in the ruined remains of the bed. In truth, he was knackered as well. She’d made him earn that promise, and as predicted, he’d loved every moment of it.

  Bones only slept for an hour when the sound of his mobile chiming downstairs woke him. He would have ignored it had it been any other ringtone except this one. Ian was calling him.

  Bones slipped out of bed and ran downstairs, answering it before the fourth ring. “Hallo?”

  “Crispin.” Ian sounded surprised. “I fully expected you to send my call to voicemail.”

  “I can hang up and do that now, if you’d like,” Bones replied with all the sarcasm Ian would expect.

  Ian chuckled. “No need. I just was ringing to say I’d found the Red Reaper.”

  Bones tensed. Of all the ways to ruin a truly spectacular evening… “Indeed? Well, that makes two of us, then.”

  Ian let only a second of surprised silence pass before he said, “What?” in a truly cold voice.

  “Why do you think I answered?” Bones replied, thinking fast. “Found her myself last night. She’s in Virginia, as you know, but what you don’t know is that I spent the day running down her closet mates. I’ll have three of them in hand later. She always was more amenable when she had something to lose.”

  “What a coincidence.” Ian’s voice was still glacier cold. “I had the same intentions. In fact, I have a gala this evening to showcase my acquisition of the Red Reaper, and with the person I’m collecting, she’ll agree to all my terms.”

  A gala meant Ian in room full of his closest allies. That wouldn’t do. “Save your money on the overpriced champagne. I can bring her to you without the fuss.”

  “I like a fuss,” Ian replied. “And capturing three of her friends is nice, but it isn’t enough. I’ve got someone capturing the real collateral, though I suppose I can always slaughter one of the blokes you’ve got to show her that I’m not to be trifled with, and as repayment for Magnus.”

  “Magnus?” Bones repeated.

  “Didn’t I tell you? She murdered him the day she came after me. Magnus served me faithfully for over forty years. Killing someone she cares about is the least I can do to avenge him.”

  This had gone from bad to terrible in a blink. “Who’s the ‘real’ collateral you’re getting?” If it was Denise, Cat would be beside herself trying to rescue her.

  “Her human lover,” Ian said with a derisive snort. “Fellow’s a veterinarian, of all things.”

  Bones almost whooped with relief. Ian’s intel had been good enough to find Cat, but it hadn’t alerted him to the fact that she’d broken up with Noah, or more importantly, who else she had resumed a relationship with.

  “Max volunteered to fetch him,” Ian went on.

  Bones froze. Ian already had all the “collateral” he needed. He couldn’t let Cat in the same room as Max. She’d forget everything aside from her lifelong quest to kill him.

  “Going to have anyone interesting at this gala?” Bones asked while mentally rearranging his plans.

  “Oh, yes,” Ian said with satisfaction. “And you’ll be there, too.”

  “Will I?” Bones asked with open challenge.

  Ian laughed. “I haven’t commanded you to do anything in decades, but you can stay for the festivities instead of dropping off her mates and skulking away like you usually do.”

  “In fact, I will stay,” Bones said. “Will be interesting to watch you spar with the Reaper. She may yet have a trick up her sleeve.”

  “Yes, that’s where she keeps her knives,” Ian said with a chuckle. “That’s why I’ll make sure she isn’t wearing sleeves.”

  Bones’s jaw clenched, but his voice was light when he said, “Where and when is this gala?”

  “My new house in Brookville, New York, at midnight, but I’ll want my hostages well before then.”

  Not much time at all, but he’d manage. “I’ll deliver them before nine, and I’ll see you at midnight, Ian.”

  He hung up, sitting in silence until Annette came into the room. She was wearing a robe, and she smelled of Tate in much the same way that Bones’s skin was now layered in Cat’s scent.

  He stared at her, letting his shields down. She shuddered as if his rage were beating her with invisible blows.

  “Crispin-”

  “Nothing you say matters. Only your actions do, and we both know what those were.” A harsh laugh left him. “It’s ironic that as I’m plotting to betray my sire, the first vampire I made has betrayed me, too. On that count, I suppose I deserve it.”