Another roaring cheer rose up around them. The warriors bowed their heads.
Shayla was overwhelmed as her whole world changed around her, but above it all was her need for him. For Kael. She was dying to kiss him. It was almost painful to keep her mouth away. She bit down on her lip, hard, and chewed. With her eyes, she pleaded with him.
His gaze narrowed. “I understand, dearheart. Soon.”
She undid the fastenings on her robe as he undid his. She exaggerated the lift of her hood, not wanting to catch the jewels in the circlet of her hair. Kael did the same, revealing a magnificent crown that made her hands itch with a need to bury themselves in his glorious hair. They both dropped their cloaks behind them.
Then Shayla gasped. Her gaze trailed down to the golden skin of his chest, painted with red markings. She breathed deeply and exhaled a needy moan she couldn’t restrain. “My lord?” she whimpered, completely overwhelmed by his scent. It was him, only magnified by a million, and it drove her crazy. She shook and panted, was on the verge of begging for…she didn’t know.
“What do you want to do, Shayla? What urge are you fighting? Give in to it.”
Her gaze cut from the red to his flaring eyes.
“Give in. Do it. Now.”
Chapter 10
Shayla licked her lips as she gazed at the red-painted knot over Kael’s heart. She wanted to…to…
She sprang at him and opened her mouth over the red. The moment her tongue touched his skin, she groaned, a nearly strangled sound from deep in her throat. This was the urge she’d been feeling all day. She licked and sucked at the spot over his heart until only his clean tattoo remained. She drew back, whimpering.
Not enough. It wasn’t enough.
“Here,” he rasped. He pointed to another symbol painted on the bulge of his bicep.
Needy sounds spilled from her as she pulled his arm to her mouth. She feasted on the mark, but it, too, was gone too soon.
He held his hair away from the left side of his throat. “Again.”
She moaned and climbed up him. His other arm strapped her against him, held her in place while she sucked and licked the red away. Kael grunted and shook under her frenzied attention and it drove her on.
It was blood. His blood. It sang to her, beckoned her.
She needed more. So much more.
Kael couldn’t decide which ached worse, his throbbing fangs, elongated in preparation for the blood exchange, or his cock, which had hardened when Shayla walked into the room and approximated something like steel the moment her eyes discovered his blood.
She was so magnificent in her bloodlust that he reveled in every wanton lick and rough suck of her mouth on his skin. Her need and enthusiasm was more than he had hoped, and so sexy he feared he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from burying his shaft in the wet heat he could already smell right here in the Great Hall.
There were too many eyes here for that, though.
The witnesses were there to affirm the worthiness of the chosen, testify to the strength of the blood match and communicate to the human mate her acceptance into their community. In his case, the warriors’ presence also assured the acceptance of whatever newling heirs he and Shayla might have—having witnessed the match, his brethren would be able to defend the child’s birthright if ever challenged. Beyond what was required for the ceremony, though, Kael would never share her naked body with another male, not even just to watch.
The very thought made him prone to violence.
Shayla whimpered and panted against Kael’s left ear. “More? Please?”
“My back,” he said, his voice a raw scrape.
She spun around him and pressed up tight against him as she feasted on the large mark that spanned his shoulder blades. Her arms wrapped around him and her fingernails dug into his chest muscles.
Nearly three hundred years had passed since a female had fed from his veins, since he’d had the deep satisfaction of nourishing a woman from the fruit of his body. His soul nearly sang for the return of such raw, primal pleasure.
Shayla’s arms circled his throat. “Oh, my God, Kael, what’s happening to me? I…I…”
“One more, Shayla. You’re doing so well.” He hauled her body around his and laid her head in his lap. He took a deep breath that failed to calm, then stuck his thumb under the buttons of his leathers and pulled down, opening his fly on one side to expose the flat expanse of his lower abdominals.
Fingernails dug into his clothed ass as her mouth latched onto the fertility symbol. She sucked so hard he was sure she would leave a bruise, and he relished the idea of her marking his body, claiming him in every and any physical way.
She whined, and he knew the blood was gone. Triumph surged through him.
Nearly frantic to have her, he threaded his hands under her arms and drew them both into a standing position. She swayed at the sudden movement, but he easily steadied her. For the first time, he had a full view of the incredible silk gown that skimmed over her luscious feminine curves. Her eyes refocused and raked his flesh, and he felt it as an almost physical caress.
It was time.
He was so hungry for companionship. For love. He had no doubts now, none at all, about what he felt for the woman before him.
Kael reached up to his crown and grasped the central ornamental spike. Pushing a concealed release on the back, it clicked free and became the handle to a small hidden dagger. Shayla gasped when she saw it, then her face went pale when he placed the glinting blade to the taut base of his neck and sliced into his carotid artery.
Blood flowed freely in a dark, pulsing stream over his collarbone to his sternum.
And Kael just smiled.
Shayla’s thoughts had completely devolved to animalistic urges and she reveled in it. The heady spice of his blood—its taste and scent—unleashed an erotic euphoria within her that she didn’t think she would ever be able to give up or live without.
So as the thick red spilled down his chest, Shayla’s whole body ached to have it.
Her gaze flashed from the blood to Kael’s face, and what she saw there lanced heat and need through her body—pride, encouragement, desire.
He gave her a single nod.
She hesitated only a second more before gripping the corded muscles of his lats and curling her tongue around the heavy bead of blood running downward. The life-giving nectar exploded in her mouth, tasted about a thousand times more powerful directly from the source.
The source.
Her gaze fixed on the wound. Licking fast and greedily up his chest, Shayla arrived at his collarbone, swallowed the savory fluid coating her mouth, and latched her lips and teeth around the cut.
Shayla was utterly unprepared for the ecstasy of drinking directly from him. On the first full pull of his blood, she came so hard she went blind for the full duration of her orgasm. Brilliant light filled her entire visual field as every nerve and muscle in her body seized and jerked. Her juices trickled from her and slicked up her thighs.
Kael’s tight embrace supported her and he cried out a victorious roar that echoed through the hall.
Her entire physiology seemed to explode and remake itself as his blood completed the alterations she now knew the mating mark had begun. Almost instantly, she felt lighter, healthier, stronger, invincible.