The nightmare? Had I truly screamed in my sleep?
“How are you feeling?” Alek asked, his eyes wide as he stepped toward me, hands raised as if I were pointing one of his glocks at him.
“I had a bad dream,” I said, nearly in tears as the images of his lifeless body rose up in my mind.
That quickly, I had my arms around his neck. Barely a thought, and I’d crushed my body to his. “You were dead,” I gasped into his shoulder. His arms snaked around me, holding me to him, gently, carefully.
“I’m here. I’m fine,” he said, smoothing the back of my hair.
I turned my head, nuzzling his neck. “God, you smell good,” I moaned against his skin. His intoxicating scent of dark chocolate and cayenne and earthiness had magnified to the point that I wanted to devour him—
A muscle twitched in my mouth, and I jolted out of his embrace. My fingers flew up to inspect the new pulsing, aching sensation—
Fangs.
Omigod, I had fangs.
“You were dying,” Alek explained, eyes pleading as he watched me. “I couldn’t lose you.”
“My love, you’ve lost too much blood, and the only way you have a shot of making it is if I turn you.”
“Then turn me.”
Broken memories flashed in my mind—the whisper of a gunshot, Lachlan’s roar, Alek’s hand in mine explaining everything, giving me a choice, a doctor…
“Lachlan,” I gasped, my mind whirling. “Is he all right?”
The smallest of smiles shaped Alek’s lips. “You realize you’ve been made vampire, and you ask if my second is all right?”
“He’s your best friend,” I said. “He was shot—”
“So were you,” Alek cut me off. “But yes, after a few…complications…Lachlan is fully healed. He’s torturing himself for not getting to you fast enough.”
“That wasn’t his fault, Alek. It happened so quickly. He was by the car.” I shook my head. “Please don’t blame him.”
“I don’t,” he assured me. “I told him as much. I blame the bastards that keep trying…” His jaw clenched, the muscles in his body rippling as anger churned in his eyes. Power radiated off of every inch of him, but this time I could feel it in a whole new way. More potent, almost as if I could taste the depth of it—as endless as that pit I’d fallen through in my nightmare.
“You turned me,” I said, swallowing hard. A fiery thirst licked my throat, begging to be quenched. “It burns,” I rasped, fingering my neck.
Alek took one step toward me, then two. He sank to his knees and tilted his neck to the side.
That quickly, I wanted him. My thighs clenched, my core filling with a need so much I ached.
“Feed,” he said, the demand in his voice primal as his hands gripped my waist.
The fire in my throat intensified, his scent swirling around me in a crescendo of pulsing hunger. Instinct, ancient and steady, roared in my very soul. The new fangs throbbed in my mouth.
I peeled back my lips, everything inside me screaming mine, mine, mine.
I stopped an inch above his neck. “Will I hurt you?”
Alek smirked, a confident male gaze as he cocked a brow at me.
I narrowed my eyes and sank my fangs into his flesh.
They slid in like knives through warm butter, and his flavor gushed over my tongue in a rush of pure bliss. Warm and rich laced with love and lust and power. I drank and drank, moaning as I devoured his very essence.
“Fuck,” Alek hissed, sliding those hands along my hips and lower, skimming the inside of my thighs.
I drew my mouth back, lapping at the two tiny puncture wounds I’d left in his skin as he had done to me so many times. The holes sealed immediately, and my head swarmed with the power flowing through my body. Tons of it, eons of it. The ultimate drug, the ultimate high. I licked my lips, moaning at his flavor.
“Alek,” I said and tackled him to the floor. I ripped off his shirt in a blink. His pants were next.
Alek laughed, the sound like music to my ears as I shed him and me of the barriers between us. Now that my throat wasn’t on fire, every other piece of me was.
And I burned for him.
I pinned him to the floor, shocked at the power in my muscles, in my body as I glided over him. My slit slick and aching as I rocked over his hard cock.
He hissed, clenching my thighs as I moved on him. Teasing, torturing us both. Relishing the new sensations rippling through my body. Sex had always been phenomenal with him, but this? The mere brushing of my skin against his had tremors of pleasure tickling up my spine.
More.
More.
More.
I shifted, drawing his hard length inside of me in one easy move.
He growled, and I sank atop him again and again.
Each time I sank a bit harder, needing more. He met me with powerful thrusts of his own, his fingers biting into the flesh of my hips with the most delicious tease of pain.
“Alek, God,” I moaned, rocking against him. I yanked on his neck, drawing him up to be with me face to face, chest to chest.
“My queen,” he growled, claiming my mouth. “I thought I’d lost you,” he said between kisses, between thrusts.
“Never,” I said, breathless as I rocked against him. “You’re mine,” I said, the primal claim ricocheting down our bond.
A rumbling growl vibrated from his chest, and in one motion he stood without breaking our connection. In a blink, I was against the wall, smashing into it so hard the stone cracked. A burst of pleasure barreled down my spine from the sensation, and I fluttered around his hard cock, coming in waves like I’d never felt before.
“You’re mine,” he growled, pumping into me faster and harder than he ever had before.
I gasped, drunk with pleasure, with power, and pushed back.
The speed of my new body was unbelievable. One second, I was against the wall, and the next? I’d moved him to the bed, sprawling atop him once more.
His eyes lit with a churning fire, pride and desire and love shining through as I gripped his wrists and shoved them above his head. I rolled my hips, using the momentum from his pinned position to sink atop him over and over until he tensed and growled beneath me.
Until I felt his release soar down our bond which clenched and sighed and purred as we came together.
I collapsed atop him, inhaling the way his desire drenched the scent of his blood.
Instantly, I was hungry.
“You need more,” he said, shifting to pin me to the bed. “Take it. Take what you need, my queen, my mate.” He settled between my thighs, and my body quivered from the delicious weight of him atop me. He lowered his head, teasing his neck over my lips.
My fangs descended again, this time not as jarring, and I gently, lovingly bit into his flesh.
He moaned as I drank, and I writhed beneath him, taking him inside me once again as I lost myself to the pleasure of his blood and his body.
15
Alek
I lifted my head and released the man from both my grip and the compulsion that eased the pain of the feeding. The man walked off, exiting the alley with a shake of his head.
I’d always chosen my sources with care, but now that I had Lyric to feed, I’d gravitated toward a bigger man who could afford the blood loss. Scenting those sources prior to the feed was now at the top of my priorities, too. There was no chance I was taking blood that had been laced with any kind of drug or alcohol back to Lyric.