His words were lost to the feral groan that ripped out of him. Caging her between his forearms, he drove inside her faster, deeper, untamed in his need. His handsome face contorted with the ferocity of his thrusts, his fangs so enormous they filled his mouth.

Bella’s gaze fixed on those diamond-bright points as he crashed against her. She couldn’t get enough either. She wanted all of him. Not just this moment and the wish that it might last. She wanted forever with Ettore Selvaggio.

After just one time together and ten long years in between, he was still the only man she craved.

In her heart—to the depths of her soul—she knew he was the only man she would ever love.

 

 

Chapter 9

 

Savage didn’t fully understand the depth of his mistake until he was buried within Bella’s velvet, wet heat. She moaned and sighed as he rolled his hips against her. Her hands roamed his back, her fingernails skating down the valley of his spine, scoring him as he pushed her toward the peak of her release.

Damn, she was lovely. Sweetly angelic, yet sexy as hell. She always had been, but now there was a strength in her too.

There was a power inside her, one that had been forged in the fire of what she’d endured the past three years. No longer the sheltered innocent, but a resilient woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to take it.

And, incredibly, what she wanted was him.

Still.

The realization stunned him, humbled him. Made him want to hold her close and never let her go.

One taste of her a decade ago had ruined him for any other woman.

Now, every cell in his body was hammering with the need to make her his alone.

In flesh and vow.

God help him, he wanted to claim her in blood too.

He wanted that with a ferocity he’d never known.

Not true, he corrected. He had wanted Bella as his blood-bonded mate even then. Ten years of absence from her had only solidified that resolve.

He loved her, and blood bond or not, he knew he would destroy any male who thought to take her away from him now.

“You’re mine, Bella.”

He growled the words as he pumped into her, knowing they sounded more like a demand than pledge.

They were both. They were his purpose for breathing, and he couldn’t pretend they were anything less.

Not now.

Not when she was coming apart in his arms, her fingers digging into the muscles of his biceps as she cried his name and shattered with the force of her orgasm. The tight walls of her sex vibrated along his cock, tiny muscles gripping him like a slick fist as wave after wave coursed over her taut body.

He watched her come, trying to slow his own release just so he could revel in the pleasure he was giving her. But his need owned him. This female owned him, and trying to temper what she stirred in him was like trying to cage a wildfire.

He took her mouth in a deep kiss, drinking up her little sighs and moans as her climax began to ebb. When her eyelids slowly lifted, she gave him a blissful smile that he would kill to see on her lips for the rest of his life.

His voice was gruff, raw. “You’re mine.”

“I always have been,” she whispered.

Ah, Christ. That tender admission was more than he could bear.

Pleasure seized him, pushing his hips into a fevered tempo. Each thrust took him deeper, made his hunger for her coil tighter, testing its already razor-thin leash.

Bella moved beneath him, meeting every hard stroke, taking him even deeper as she lifted her hips and wrapped her long legs around him.

Her hands roamed his face and shoulders, caressing him, worshipping him. The knot of his orgasm gathered at the base of his spine, wringing a sharp groan from between his clenched teeth. Blood pounded in his temples, in his cock…in the deadly lengths of his fangs.

“Oh, God,” Bella gasped, tipping her head back as the flush of another release swept over her skin. “Ettore…I can’t hold on. You feel too good.”

He was beyond words now. He was only instinct and need, pure male. Utterly consumed by the remarkable female in his arms. He responded with a triumphant growl as she cried out beneath him. He couldn’t stop his hips from moving, nor his blood from pounding with the overwhelming urge to claim his female in every possible way.

The urge became a mantra as his orgasm sped toward its peak.

He didn’t realize he was staring at her throat until he heard Bella’s soft voice filter through the haze of his blood-tinged thoughts.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Ettore. I want it too.”

When he met her gaze, he found her brown eyes steady and unafraid.

So full of love, it staggered him.

He knew he should turn away, be the stronger one.

He should give her this choice when they both were clear-headed and fully able to process the ramifications of what a bond would mean. One taste of her blood and he would feel her in his veins for as long as either of them lived. He would know her deepest emotions as his own—every joy and sorrow, every pleasure or pain.

And if she should die before him, he would be cursed to feel that too.

The bond was irreversible.

Unbreakable.

Eternal.

Concepts that had never entered his mind with another woman were all he could think of now that he was here with Arabella.

He loved her.

To his soul, he had loved her all this time. And the part of him that was more than mortal wasn’t willing to wait another moment to claim her. That possessive, primal part of him wanted to bind her to him irrevocably.

Forever.

There was no place for logic in it, no room for regret.

There was only need.

Only love.

He roared with the ferocity of everything he felt, and as his release took hold of him, Ettore lowered his mouth to Bella’s neck and sank his fangs into her tender flesh.

 

 

Chapter 10

 

If the bliss of making love with him had nearly wrecked her, it was nothing compared to the pleasure she felt at the sudden, sharp penetration of his fangs into her carotid.

Bella gasped at the piercing pain, feeling his bite all the way to her marrow. But that initial jolt gave way to a pleasure that defied description as his lips fastened over her skin and he drew the first sip of blood from her wound. Heat raced through her veins like rivers of quicksilver, all of her senses—every fiber of her being—drawn toward the pulse point that now flowed beneath Ettore’s mouth.