Page 35 of Caretaker

I licked my way up his abdomen, stopping at two old scars that slashed over his ribs.

“Wolf,” he murmured.

I straightened and spread my fingers over his chest, where scars, faded and thin, lay like silver tattoos on his flesh.

“Vampires, mostly.”

“So many scars,” I said. Maybe I was hoping to prepare him for the scars that decorated my own body.

“We’re hunters. It comes with the job.” He began to unbutton my shirt, trying for gentle though his jaw was clenched and sweat beaded on his forehead. Finally, he gave up on the buttons and ripped my shirt open. Buttons flew, clattering upon the hardwood floor when they fell.

“You’re not used to taking it slow,” I realized. “Making love is—”

“I’ve never made love,” he interrupted, almost angrily. “I’ve had sex. A lot of sex. Hard, uncontrollable, meaningless fucking. That’s what I do, baby hunter.”

“Like what we did on the dead vampires in the woods.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

My chest tightened. “That will change tonight.”

“Will it?” His throat jerked as he swallowed.

Truthfully, I wasn’t sure. Lust burned a wide path through my body, urging me to fling myself at him, to demand he bend me over the nearest table and shove himself inside me. If I let that lust gain control, then no, things probably would not change that night.

I kept my control. Barely.

I rose on tiptoe to kiss him, lingering, taking my time to taste him.

He groaned against my lips, then unfastened my bra and tossed it away before picking me up, wrapping his arms around my waist, and taking control.

He dropped me on the bed, and I rose up on my elbows to watch as he stripped off his underwear. His cock sprang free and I couldn’t resist sitting up and reaching for it. I wrapped my hand around it, squeezing, craving it, needing it.

I pulled him to me and slid him into my mouth, tasting him, scraping my teeth over the tip, licking, nipping, forcing myself not to be too rough. Too impatient.

That night would be different. I would make sure of it. I wanted to be the one to give him what he’d never had.

He buried his fingers in my hair. “Trinity, Trinity.”

He tasted like sex. Like sex and heat and darkness. He tasted like violence and pain. Like blood and hunger. He tasted like those things because he was those things.

But beneath it all, almost unreachable, was something softer. Something sweeter. I was nothing if not stubborn. I would get my teeth into that sweetness, and I would rip it from the shadows and into the light.

I would do that, because he’d given himself to me. I would do that, because I needed him. All of him. Not just the dark crunchy bits. I needed it all.

Finally, with a groan, he pulled himself from my mouth. “You have to stop for a minute,” he said, his voice strained. He pulled off my shoes, then I lifted my hips so he could slide my jeans over my legs.

He dragged my underwear off me, then straightened to stare silently down at me. The look in his eyes was so hot I squirmed on the sheets, clenching my thighs against the throbbing need between them.

The bed dipped when he climbed up beside me, and when he ran his fingers over my chest, my entire body trembled. Gooseflesh pebbled almost painfully, and I shivered. “Shane,” I whispered. “God.”

I pulled his face to my breasts, arching my back as he flicked his tongue over a stiff nipple. He ran his tongue over first one, then the other, his hands tightening on my throat when I cried out.

He bit down, very, very gently, but the threat was there.

Or the promise.

Restrained violence swirled around him—it was his nature to take what he wanted, and to take it hard.