Page 38 of FoolSilver
I shifted her in my arms, turning her so her back rested against my chest. Her spine pressed to my sternum, and her head tilted to expose the long line of her neck. My arm wrapped around her waist. I could feel her heartbeat through her back, steady, steady, then a skip when my lips brushed the skin below her ear.
“Breathe, Eirath,” I murmured against her throat.
She relaxed against me, trusting me, which I knew didn’t come easily for her. I pressed my mouth to the pulse point and held it there. Let her feel my lips, the coolness of them, the deliberate pause before what came next. I wanted her to feel the restraint before I allowed my fangs to descend. Slowly. I pierced the vein with care, and her breath broke on a sound that went straight to my cock.
The first pull undid me.
Nectar. Flame. Midnight sun. The same devastating sweetness from my memory, but deeper now, richer. Something new had fused into her blood, something powerful. I drank, and the hunger that had been clawing at my insides for days finally went quiet.
My eyes closed. My arm tightened around her waist. She was mine, and I would never let her go.
The moment my venom entered her bloodstream, her body arched against mine—involuntary, beyond her control. Her head fell back against my shoulder, and her moan made my cock throb with raw need.
No one else had ever resisted the venom. Every donor I’d taken had surrendered completely, begging for more, weeping with pleasure, will and mind dissolved into euphoria.
Max fought it.
Her hand fisted the sofa cushion, knuckles white, fingernails cutting half-moons into the leather. A tremor started in her thighs and traveled up through her stomach, her chest, her shoulders. Her whole body vibrated with the effort of holding still.
The venom was flooding her now, liquid warmth pooling low in her belly, climbing through her veins like honey set on fire, and I could feel every wave of it through her pulse because it quickened each time she almost gave in. Her lips parted on a ragged breath. Her hips shifted against my lap, a fraction, a bare involuntary roll, and the sound she trapped behind her teeth was close to a whimper.
She caught herself. Locked her spine rigid. Squeezed her eyes shut. But her grip on my forearm was bruising now, her nails biting through the fabric of my sleeve, and the flush on her skin had spread down her throat, her chest, painting her in shades of desperate want she refused to name.
She was barely hanging on. One more pull and her resolve would crack, and we both knew it.
And I was no better.
Twenty-six years of discipline. A decade of feeding from donors without a tremor in my hands, without a single lapse of control. I’d drained enemy combatants mid-battle with precision. I’d held screaming women in my lap as the venom took them, and I’d felt nothing beyond appetite and clinical satisfaction.
This was nothing like that. This was madness.
Every sound she swallowed hit me like a fist. Every involuntary shift of her body against mine sent fire scorching down my spine. Her scent had deepened with arousal—darker, richer, a note underneath the sunlight that made my fangs ache and my hands shake and the predator in me howl to take what was right here, right now, willing and warm and trembling in my arms.
I wanted to slide my mouth lower. I wanted to peel the shirt from her shoulders and trace the flush down her throat with my tongue. I wanted to hear the sound she’d make if I let my hand drop from her waist to the heat between her thighs. I wanted all of it. Wanted it so badly my vision had gone red at the edges and my cock strained painfully against my trousers and every controlled instinct I’d forged over a lifetime screamed at me to stop fighting and justtakeand bury my cock into her willing cunt.
But I’d given her my word. No sex. Her call. Always.
So I held the line. I gentled the pull. I kept my hands exactly where they were and forced my breathing to steady, even as every cell in my body rioted against the restraint. This wasn’t like denying a donor. This was denying myself Max, and the difference was the distance between a candle flame and an inferno.
I took lessthan half of what I normally needed. My girl was exhausted, and she had still chosen to come.
I sealed the wound. One slow pass of my tongue over the puncture marks, and a shudder moved through her.
“You didn’t take enough,” she said roughly.
“I took what I needed.” I pressed my lips to the sealed marks. My marks.
She looked like she wanted to argue. Then the fight left her, and she let me pull her in.
I held her. Just held her, arm around her shoulders, thumb tracing slow circles on her upper arm, her warmth seeping into my cold skin. She fit against me as if she’d been made to.
I found myself wondering if anyone had simply held her before. In the mine, comfort cost more than food.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” I kissed her temple. “When the time comes, I’ll be there. We’ll get her back. Tell me what you need. Anything you want, it’s yours.”
She lifted her head, her midnight eyes finding mine. Clear and steady, with a determination that made my chest ache.
“Train me, Nikolai. I need to be ready before I go after Missy.”
