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.“You should let go and embrace it.”Swallowing hard, Maddox looked into the depths of her dark gaze.Little sparks of fire seemed to dance in her eyes, wicked and enticing.“I wish I could.”Nayia gave him a long, sly look, enjoying her power over him.She smiled again.Her straight white teeth appeared to be growing longer—deliciously sharper.Maddox smiled at the familiar sight.Nayia wasn’t human—she hadn’t been for centuries.Like Serafina, her heritage was a mixed one, that of Spaniard and Native American.As near as he could figure, she was about four centuries old.Like most of the older Consanguines, spreading out in the world to stake out their own claim on the human race, she was allowed to move independent of the core collective.Humans, particularly men, also enjoyed her, for she provided a service that many flocked to experience.Nayia didn’t sell her body.She sold her bite.She reached for his shirt, expertly plucking open the buttons and spreading the material away from his chest.Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the imprint of bites on his neck and scratches across his chest.“I see another has been here before me.” She traced one of the scratches with a single finger.“I sense the clumsiness of a youngling.”Nerves drawn taut, Maddox shook his head.“It was a mistake to try and satisfy my need with another.” Having sex with Jesse, taking her, had been good—better than good.While inexperienced, she was responsive to his touch and eager to please.And even though they’d shared an explosive climax, she just wasn’t able to deliver the final jolt he needed to go over the edge.She’d bitten, but she didn’t penetrate.He needed penetration, damn it.He hungered for it the way a starving man craved a full and satisfying meal.He’d thought he could give up the desire by giving up sex.But it hadn’t worked.With every day that passed, his longing grew stronger, almost unbearable in its intensity.It shamed him to think he’d taken advantage of Jesse’s trust, attempting to use her to satisfy the twists in his sexual desires.Just this once, he told himself.To take the edge off.Sex.Pain.Blood.It was definitely an acquired taste.Not that he was the only one.Scores of men and women entranced with the vampire mystique also sought out the exquisite pleasure of the bite.Nayia’s tapered fingers moved to his bruised, bitten neck.“I knew you’d come back to me, Maddox.”Oh, heaven above.Her touch was wonderful.A shiver of delight closed around his spine and squeezed hard.His nerves were on edge, peaking toward the ultimate sensitivity.“I can’t break the damn habit,” he grated.Nayia’s gaze caught his.He saw the unholy fire in her eyes, the reddish orange glow flickering behind her gaze.“It is a shame you were born to be a sentinel,” she mused.“You would have enjoyed the rising as one of us.”“Being an undead, soulless shell?” He shook his head.“I already have eternity, and my soul is my own.What I crave—” His words broke off in a harsh, mirthless laugh.He was an addict, a slave to the pleasurable aspects to pain.His craving would most likely be the death of him, but he didn’t care.He hadn’t cared in a long time.Her eyes sparkled wickedly, and her full scarlet lips curved into a semblance of a smile.“I know, my love.I know.”“Just do it.” His need—his desperation—was reflected in the timber of his voice.“Feed your beast.”Tangling her fingers in his hair, Nayia wrenched his head to one side.“You can still join us.For your loyalty you would be well”—she lovingly nuzzled the hollow between his head and shoulders, her warm tongue tracing a moist trail along his jugular—“rewarded.” Her hot breath scorched his bruised skin.Maddox tightly clenched the fingers of one hand.“You tempt me.” There was a bitter, coppery taste in his mouth, the lingering taste of his own blood mingling with the kisses he and Jesse had shared.But instead of breaking the embrace of this hell-spawned creature, he remained frozen in place.After a year of denying his craving, he needed his fix.Bad.Burying her face in his neck, Nayia used her sharp canines to tear through the flesh right above his jugular, her ardent bite unmerciful in its penetration.Maddox gasped, almost whimpered, shocked by the pain so searing that it seemed to brand itself on the walls of his skull as it ricocheted through his senses.The prickle of some kind of primitive fear ran up his spine.He was paralyzed, body and mind [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]