“I only intend to feed you, cara, nothing more, although I will admit the temptation is almost more than I can bear. Merge your mind with mine.” This time his voice dropped an octave, became mesmerizing, hypnotic, a low, lazy, seductive lure.

She struggled against the hard strength in his arms. Her mind echoed the words feed you. Her stomach somersaulted. Her heart pounded. Instead of revulsion, there was hot anticipation, the sexual tension between them rising even higher. She stifled a low sob. This wasn’t her. None of it. She didn’t want a man so badly that her entire mind and body ached and burned with need. She would never consider biting into someone, yet at the thought of her mouth against his chest, his neck, her body clenched and throbbed in reaction. Liquid heat pooled deep inside, a steamy sensuality she had never known.

“Merge your mind with mine,” he whispered again, the words like a seduction against her skin. His tongue caressed her pulse, and her body tightened in anticipation.

In desperation she did as he wished. His mind was a haze of hunger—physical hunger, urgent, demanding. Erotic pictures danced in his head. His tongue stroked again, lower this time, as his fingers slowly threaded through the pearl buttons on her sweater. She was bathed in heat, need, hunger. Her skin was ultrasensitive. She heard herself moan, felt the cool air blow tantalizingly across her breasts.

He touched her, his hand sliding up her narrow rib cage to close possessively over the satin skin below her breasts. His teeth nipped her neck, her throat. He murmured something inarticulate. I want you, Alexandria. You belong to me. You are mine. His teeth skimmed down to one breast, lingered, scraped erotically. His velvet tongue stroked the hard peak, once, twice. I am your lifemate. You will take from me what you need. Feed, cara mia. Take from me what only I can give you. She felt his mouth close over her softness, the heated pull erotic and strange.

Her eyes closed. She was in a dream world. Her body felt heavy, was unfamiliar with yearnings she had never experienced and her entire being raged for a release she needed as desperately as she hungered. His hand opened his shirt, and they were skin to skin. For a moment he held her there, savoring the feel of her creamy flesh against his hard muscles. Aidan’s hand came up, and he brought her head to his chest, simply holding her there in an unbreakable grip.

His mind reflected back her need to feed, amplified it until the red haze in him was in her. Her cheek nuzzled his taut muscles, felt the roped sinews beneath the skin, breathed in the surge of his life’s blood. She felt his body harden even more, hot and full with need. A slow, feminine smile of satisfaction curved her mouth. Her tongue tasted his skin, the flavor of him, masculine and spicy. Addicting. Her lips brushed his pulse.

Aidan’s muscles contracted, clenched. His teeth came together, and he closed his eyes against the demands of his body. She was like hot silk and white lightning. Fire skimming over his chest. It spread across his flat belly, lower still, to torment him with a painful, unfulfilled promise of release. Her tongue teased, dancing over his skin until he thought he might go mad.

Alexandria possessed a natural sensuality, heightened by the Carpathian blood now flowing strongly in her veins. Aidan was her lifemate, and despite the fact that she refused to acknowledge what was happening, her body craved his, needed and hungered for him. Her natural inhibitions were being pushed aside, her humanity swept away on a tide of rising passion. Her blood, raging with fire, cried out to his. Her body moved against his, seeking a closer bond, skin to skin without the confines of their clothing. Her mind was meshed with his, woven together beyond all solitary thought. What he wanted, she wanted. What she needed, he needed.

Her tongue caressed his pulse, swirled lightly over his muscles, stroked a brown, flat nipple. He threw back his head and groaned aloud. A fine sheen of sweat coated his skin, and his body swelled in urgent demand, his jeans far too tight, his body straining to break free. Her teeth scraped lightly, insistently. A trembling started somewhere in his legs and took over his body. His very blood pulsated with waves of urgency, a molten volcano ready to explode. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in all the long centuries of his existence. His arms tightened possessively. He bent his head to brush his mouth over her silky hair, her closed eyelids, her temples.

And then he was gasping for breath, a strangled sound somewhere between a moan and a hoarse cry escaping. His muscles and sinews clenched as white-hot pain coursed through his body, as unbelievable pleasure flooded his every cell. Her teeth had pierced deep, and his blood flowed into her, her mouth moving in a sensuous feeding frenzy. Erotic. Hot.

Her hand slid over his chest, stroked his flat belly, followed the trail of golden hair until her fingertips were brushing the waistband of his trousers. Aidan shifted his weight, tried to ease the tightly-stretched cloth covering his throbbing body. He needed relief, was desperate for it.

His incisors were sharp against his tongue, his mouth filled with hot need. He nuzzled the nape of her neck as she fed. The act was more erotic than all the times, faded now, in his memory of sexual encounters over the earlier centuries, before his emotions, urges, and feelings had disappeared. His teeth clamped down of their own accord on her shoulder, pinning her in place in the age-old Carpathian display of dominance, an instinct he hadn’t known he possessed until this moment. His body clenched, drenched itself in sweat, pulsed with need, and burned with fire.

Her hand moved over the constriction of cloth. Her mind, so deeply merged with his, was lost in fiery need. She could see the images in his head of the two of them tangled together in ecstasy. She knew exactly what he so urgently wanted, what his body demanded. His need was hers. Her hand freed him from the confines of his tight trousers. She felt him shudder as her fingers wrapped around the thick length of him, as she stroked and caressed the hard shaft.

His teeth came together, his body arching. There was thunder in his ears and a haze of red desire before his eyes. Jackhammers were beating at his skull. His hands pushed at her sweater, rough and insistent, wild and dominant. His teeth bit down when she would have moved.

Some small sense of self-preservation surfaced, and Alexandria became aware of what she was doing. It had been like some erotic dream, but now she was conscious of the cool night, the heat of his body, the demands of his hands, her own uninhibited behavior, her mouth feeding so sensually at his chest.

“Oh, God!” She let go of him as if burned and tried to move away. His hand held her head to him, and she felt the trickle of blood making its way down in his chest “Close the wound with your tongue. Your saliva carries a healing agent. There is no mark unless we wish it.” His voice was like a caress, soft and husky yet gravelly with need. His hand forced her compliance.

She did as she was told because she was terrified to defy him. He was in such a state of arousal, with one wrong move he would sweep her resistance aside. And he could. She knew it. He knew it. They were locked together with one mind. She held her breath as he struggled for control. His body was as hard as a rock, taut with leashed aggression, and so hot they both were burning up in the flames. A low growl rumbled in his throat. He was more beast than man, and she realized she had no concept of what kind of being she was dealing with.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She chanted it like a litany, humiliated that she could have been so bold, so wanton. “Please tell me that you hypnotized me and made me do those things. You did, didn’t you?”