Page 121 of Spar of Hearts

With a single bite, her heart belonged to him.

The wolves howled and yipped in the distance, but it was muffled. So wonderfully muffed. All she could hear was the low, rhythmic pump of her veins against his fangs. It thrummed in her mind like a drum, an all-encompassing cadence that started in her chest and vibrated out the tips of her fingers. The beat was joined by the tender suck of his mouth against her skin and the smooth bob of his throat as he swallowed.

It was hard to believe she’d once held a sword to this man’s neck. Now, he was fangs-deep in her own.

“Oh,” she moaned, sinking her claws into the log beneath them as his tongue dove deeper into the piercings. He pressed himself harder against her. She answered with a whimper, arching her back, desperate to be closer to him. Roderick was in her, on her, his scent practically dripping down her back. The glorious pain satisfied the ache in her belly, the urge to be forever marked by her mate. If she could bear his marks, a piece of him would always be with her, come what may.

“Anya, my Anya…” Roderick whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to the fang marks. A hum reverberated in his chest as he spoke. “I love you. Divine Almighty, I love you. You’re free with me. You’re safe with me. You belong to the stars, yet you are mine, and by the moon you adore, I am yours. I am completely, utterly, hopelessly yours.”

“You’re my mate,” she whispered, brushing her cheek on his. “My knight, my North Star, my torch on the bow.”

He pulled back, gazing into her eyes. His pupils were dilated, cheeks flushed, hair mussed from her unbidden grip. But best of all was his fangs. Those beautiful, damned fangs, dripping with strings of saliva and crimson as he panted, smiling down at her like she was truly a star he’d caught in his palm.

He chuckled with a disbelieving air. “I have a mate. I have a mate!” he called to the forest. His voice echoed back through the shivering leaves.

Anya cradled the scruff on his cheek and smiled ear to ear. “You’re stuck with me now, Bryson.”

“I sure hope so.”

She crashed her lips into his, tasting her blood on his tongue. A breathy gasp escaped his chest as he returned her kiss with tenfold passion. His fingers slid to the small of her back, pressing her body flush with his.

She smiled against his lips as they wove their fingers and their lives together. Her blood was coursing through him, and his scent in her—but she needed more. To make him shiver and shake and call her name for the whole forest to hear, not caring who heard or saw. They were part of spring, laying together beneath the stars and coursing through each other in blood and scent and love, a testament to everything yet to be said and done and lived.

He slipped his arms around her waist, standing with a grunt as he hoisted her up. She locked her legs around his waist and rubbed her cheek on his over and over and over, unable to quench the demands of the wolf in her chest. She finally felt every bit the Lycanian she truly was.

He laid her onto the soft earth beside the fire, pinning her beneath his broad shadow. “If we keep going, I won’t be able to stop,” he rasped. “I can feel the moon, Anya, it’s singing in my veins, pulling me toward you like the tide.”

She slid her fingers between his stomach and trousers. “I took a tonic. You don’t have to stop.”

A fire lit behind his glacier-blue eyes.

The constellations shimmered through the canopy of trees above them. Her heart threatened to burst from her chest as he trailed his lips down her neck to her breasts, then her belly, until he finally looked up from the crest of her thighs.

“Lay back and look at the stars. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Chapter 40

Roderick Bryson

I’m not opening my eyes.

Not ever.

The shivering leaves and perfume of blossoming flowers stoked Roderick’s senses, assuring him that last night wasn’t but a dream. When he dared to peek an eye open, the diamond piercing over Anya’s right brow caught a dappled ray of sun from the canopy overhead. They were both as bare as they’d laid their hearts the night prior, entwined in each other’s arms beneath the wool blanket they shared.

Well, they’d shared more than a blanket last night. While he’d lent himself to such pleasures before, it hardly deserved to be called that anymore. What he did then now seemed…mechanical. Hollow. Being with Anya was entirely new. He thought only of her, not of covering guilt or numbing pain or escaping anything, just her.

He skimmed his hands over the soft swell of her hips, memorizing the shape of her body. She was beautiful, so beautiful, even unseen.

Anya stirred. “It’s a crime to wake a sleeping Princess,” she mumbled, nuzzling into his chest.

“Punish me then,” he whispered, a sultry invitation to his tone.

Her voice started as a murmur, “Maybe I…WILL!” she growled playfully, pinning him beneath her. Blonde hair tickled his face as they tussled, laughing and teasing one another with amorous touches that quickly grew heated.

He groaned as Anya shifted her weight onto his center.

She hummed with a knowing smirk and threw her head back, golden locks glowing from the muted light emanating through the canvas overhead. As she gathered her hair in a fist and slipped it over her shoulder, he knew he’d met his match in the battlefield and the bedchamber. The sight of his fang marks in her neck nearly unraveled him. He’d put those there. Him. He did that. And they’d be there forever.