But Synjon growled against her wet nipple. “No.”

She whimpered. “Syn . . .”

“No,” he said again, more firmly. “You will wait, love.”

Fine, she muttered to herself. But if she couldn’t touch herself, she was going to fill her hand with him.

As he continued to drive her to madness with his tongue and fingers, she fumbled with the metal that kept his jeans resting on his sexy hipbones. It didn’t take her long to get in, get down, find him. After all, he had already busted out of his boxers and was so rock hard that he pressed against the skin of his belly.

Petra wrapped her hand around his thick length and squeezed. Syn’s teeth came down on her nipple, and they both sucked in air.

“Oh, bloody hell, yes,” he muttered, switching to her other breast and nuzzling her nipple with his nose.

Petra loved the feeling of him in her hand as she stroked him. So hard, so smooth except for the pulsing veins beneath his skin. Her mouth watered, but not for his blood this time, and she released his cock and tried to maneuver him onto the bed. It was like trying to move a brick wall. He was completely absorbed by her top half.

That is, until she whispered, “I want you in my mouth, Syn. I want to taste you.”

His head came up, and his eyes went hooded and dark. “Crikey, veana. I may just come from your words alone.”

She grinned. “Lie down.”

“Fuck me. Anything you say, love.” He tore off his jeans and rocketed onto the bed before she even made it to the edge of the mattress.

Her gaze moved over him. Feet, to powerful thighs, to thick, blood-heavy cock, to waves of muscle, to a chest that begged for a female’s sweaty cheek. Petra licked her lips. He was lying on his back, his hands behind his head. He looked like the ultimate bad boy. He looked exactly like what she wanted.

She eased her silk pajama bottoms down to her ankles, then stepped out of them. She knew he was watching her and she liked it that he was. She felt no shame in her body, in the swell of her belly. They’d created this, together, and it felt so right to be with him.

The glow from the skylight above, the dancing snowflakes, was a beautiful, moving spotlight on his body, and as Petra climbed onto the bed and cat-crawled toward him, she saw the glistening wetness of precome on the hard planes of his abdomen. Her mouth watered in anticipation. Just the thought of him inside her mouth, pumping, filling her, made her insides pulse and hum.

She was at his side in seconds, her hand wrapping around the base of his cock, her head lowered to take him into her mouth.

But first she had to taste him. Lick the wetness, the sensual tears, off the head. They were for her, after all.

With a moan of excitement, she swiped her tongue across him. Syn cursed blackly, and his hips jacked up. Salty. Creamy. Perfect. She growled and took him in her mouth, slowly, letting him slide himself in. He was thick and so hard, she wasn’t sure she could accommodate him. But, gods, she wanted to try. She loved his taste, loved the way his hand now moved up and down her back, mimicking her rhythm as she sucked him.

“You feel so bloody good, veana,” he muttered, his free hand fisting the sheets. “Too good. Your mouth is like liquid fire, and your tongue . . . fuck, the way it’s pressing against my shaft, I want to come right now. But fucking Christ, it’s got to be in your pussy.”

The insides of Petra’s thighs were soaking wet as she worked him, as she moaned and squeezed and suckled.

Synjon cursed again, his back arching. “I’ve been dreaming about your tight, hot pussy for months.”

Her sex clenched with his erotic words, and she squeezed him tighter, took him deeper, wanted him at the back of her throat when he came.

But Syn had other plans. He thrust into her; then when he pulled his ass back into the mattress, he managed to free his cock from her mouth. And once he was free, he moved so fast she didn’t know where he’d gone at first.

Suddenly his mouth was by her ear, his wet cock was on her back, and she was on her hands and knees. “I want you to be comfortable, veana,” he whispered, lapping at her sensitive lobe.

He spread the cheeks of her ass, and she gasped.

He made a sound of approval, and she felt his fingers at the opening to her sex. “Because I’m going to take you so deep, you won’t know where I begin and you end.”

Oh, gods. “Syn—”

It was all she managed to squeak out before he drove into her cunt and lightning flickered on the backs of her eyelids. For one moment he just held there, and Petra panted and groaned and smiled and thought that she’d never been so happy in her entire life. He was claiming her. Maybe not with words, but with actions, and for now—for right that minute—it was all she needed to let go and come.

The climax rippled through her and she heard Syn curse. He gripped her hips tightly and remained deep inside her as she trembled and saw stars and creamed against his steely cock.

“Move,” she whispered, her head shifting from side to side as she tried to get her bearings. “Fuck me, Syn. Hard. Deep. Fast. It feels so good. You feel so good.”

The sound their bodies made, the slap of his sex thrusting in and out of her wet core, was the ultimate music to Petra. The only thing she wanted to hear. For hours, days, months. Even after the balas . . . She gasped, her mind falling apart as her body took over. She cried out and swung her hips to meet him.

It was carnal.

There was no other word for it.

Hunger drove them, over and over and to the edge of madness and perfection, and when Syn coiled over her, resting his cheek on her back as he took both her breasts in his hands, Petra felt tears behind her eyes. They were one. Maybe it was a strange and immoral thought to have in the middle of a deep, mind-bending fuck, but she and Syn and balas were completely and totally one.

Tears rained down her cheeks, and as Syn pummeled her with deep thrusts and light tugs to her nipples, she came again. Heat and electric currents battered her cunt, and she turned wild, bucking and crying out as Synjon’s thrusts turned manic. Hot seed surged into her sex, making them both so wet her pussy couldn’t contain the onslaught. Seed and cream flooded her legs, and Synjon cursed and pulled out of her.

For a moment Petra wasn’t sure what was happening, where he was going. If he was leaving her. Then he flipped her gently to her back, spread her thighs, and settled between them.

Her blurry gaze widened.

But Syn only grinned and lowered his head. When he touched her, when his hot, thick tongue made contact with her sensitive flesh, a moan of absolute ecstasy tore from her throat, and she fell back on the pillows. He was licking her. Not just her sex, but her lips and her thighs. Cleaning her, tasting her—eating her. Gods, she was going to die from it.

“Drink from me, Syn,” she called out, her head thrashing from side to side against the pillow.

“I am, love,” he whispered, his breath tickling her skin. “Your pussy just keeps quenching my unending thirst.”

Her legs shook. “No. Not that,” she muttered as she felt his teeth nibble at the lips of her sex.

“How about this, then, m’dear, m’darling?” He plunged his tongue deep inside her cunt, then retreated.

“Oh, fuck,” she gasped. “No, Syn. Gods, I love it, but no. My blood. Christ. Drink my blood.”

He stilled, his body, his mouth, and his breath, coming quick against the entrance to her sex. “Petra . . .”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I promise you. I swear. I know it.” She came up on her elbows, locked eyes with him. “I think this is how it’s supposed to be, Syn. With . . . a couple.”

His eyes darkened, and though he kept his gaze on her, he ran his tongue up her slit.

She cried out.

“Mates, Petra?”

Yes. Yes. “Bite me,” she commanded. “Drink from me.”

He growled, his fangs dropping.

“Do you want to feed from anyone else?” she said with almost sexual menace.

“Fuck, no, love. You know that.”

“Then do it.”

She saw the struggle in his eyes, but the hunger was there too, and thank the gods it was the stronger of the two. He pulled back from her sex but remained between her legs. His hands rested on her hot core, while his head turned and his tongue flicked out to lap at the skin of her inner thigh. Petra watched him, her breath tightly caught in her lungs. She remembered how it felt to be bitten by him, but this time was so different—this time hunger was caged in a haze of erotic compulsion.

She felt his fingers part her sex, felt the pad of his thumb move impossibly lightly down her lips.

“Please, Syn,” she begged.

He nuzzled her skin, then scraped his fangs over the spot he wanted to bite.

Best. Feeling. Ever.

Her eyes slammed shut.

Except for maybe this feeling.

She fell back on the pillows, her mouth forming a small O as Syn’s fangs pressed deeper and deeper into her flesh. And then he was drinking. Her blood. Taking it in big gulps as he followed the seam of her pussy with his thumb, all the way to the opening of her sex, clearly determined to make her come again. The most perfect shared ecstasy.

• • •

Alex watched his mate very closely as Dillon paced the floor of the library in his house in SoHo. The entire family was gathered: Romans, mutore, Impure Resistance, Celestine, and Wen. And Alex was worried that Sara’s concern about Petra and the shifters was wearing on her. She was growing so close to her time, which made Alex all the more protective.

“Are you all right, my love?” he whispered in her ear while Dillon went on about the heavy search of the Rain Forest and how there had been absolutely no sign of Cruen.

Sara turned to him, her blue eyes beautiful as always, but tired. “I’m fine.” She touched his face. “You worry too much.”

He growled lovingly at her. “It’s never too much when it comes to you and our balas.”

She leaned in and kissed him. “Wait until after it’s born. There’ll be plenty to worry about then.”