CHAPTER 18
He should have let her go tonight. He should have walked away from Michael’s house alone and either left her there or drove her to the Order in Lake Tahoe himself so he could deal with Slater and Cain and anyone else who might pose a threat to Naomi’s wellbeing.
Anything would have been better for her than what he’d just done.
But it was too late for second guesses or regrets.
The intoxicating taste of Naomi’s blood was still the sweetest fire on his tongue—feeding every cell in his body—and there was no taking that back. Bastard that he was, he didn’t want to take it back.
Asher carried her into the house past a befuddled Sam and down the hall to the bedroom. He kicked the door closed behind them and placed her on the bed. “I’m not sharing you with anyone tonight. You’re mine.”
She smiled up at him, her face slack with desire. “I like the sound of that.”
Tonight she did.
Tonight he was still a man she thought she knew, one she believed she could trust. He would rather die than shatter her faith in him, but he’d already done that by withholding the truth about where he’d come from . . . and all the sins he’d committed.
Naomi’s dread for a killer like Cain would be tenfold for Asher if she ever knew.
And she would know, if he were ever careless enough to let her drink his blood.
She would see it all and know that she was mated to a monster.
But for now, she loved him.
With her blood roaring through his veins and the bond twined from his soul to hers, he felt her essence alive and shimmering inside him. He knew the goodness and empathy that was Naomi. Her pleasure, her pain . . . it was all his now too.
Her affection wrapped around him like a warm embrace, igniting his blood while kindling an unbearable yearning in his heart.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured as he slowly undressed her, kissing every inch of exposed skin as he lifted away her shirt and unfastened her lacy bra. He stripped off her jeans and panties, pausing to enjoy the sweetness of her sex.
He was ravenous for her, and the power of her blood inside him intensified both his hunger and his need to give her pleasure.
“Please, Asher,” she whispered heatedly as he undressed. “Don’t make me wait.”
He wanted to take his time, savor the gift of her body even though she had already given him more than enough of her. But through the bond he felt her gnawing need in combination with his own and it was too much even for him to endure.
As he came back onto the bed, she trailed her fingers over his shoulder and down his arm to take his hand. She placed it between her legs and moved against him, no inhibitions in her movements or in the fevered look she locked on him as he stroked her and plumbed her tight channel with his fingers.
She sighed and moaned, her slim little body twisting in pleasured agony.
He gazed at her in raw hunger. To think that she was his—even when he knew in the pit of his soul that he would never be worthy of her—made him feel like a king. Like a god, especially when her eyes were locked on his with a yearning that staggered him.
“So beautiful,” he uttered, his throat constricted with the depth of his feelings.
Her tight, tawny nipples made his mouth water and he could not resist dropping low and closing his teeth over one of them, his fangs scoring her skin for just another taste of her blood. She gasped his name, her spine bowing into his embrace.
“You taste like heaven,” he rasped against her as he licked at the tiny rivulet that flowed over his tongue, the scent of her skin and the sweeter scent of her Breedmate blood driving him to the brink of a need that bordered on madness.
“Asher. . .”
Her expression was beyond pleasure, beyond desire, as he stroked her sex and tugged at her breast with his teeth and tongue. Her arousal was a tightening coil inside him too. The bond would give him all of her most intense emotions—her deepest joys and ecstasies, her coldest fears and sharpest pains.
As staggering as it was to feel her desire for him, and her uninhibited response to his body and his touch, the thought of experiencing Naomi’s distress or discomfort was torture all on its own. If he had anything to do about it, she would never know anything but happiness. And if that meant keeping her in his bed for the rest of their days and nights, he couldn’t think of anything he’d enjoy more.
A snarl tore out of him on the heels of that silent pledge. Sealing the small flow of blood that trickled onto his tongue, he rose over her and moved into position between her parted thighs. She was wet and ready for him, her hips rising to meet the full measure of his thrust.
They both moaned at the intensity of their joining. Asher shook as he rocked into her, every cell in his body on fire with the need to claim her, to keep her . . . to love her forever as his mate.
When he was moving inside her, it was easy to deny all the other things he was feeling. The dread of losing her to someone like Slater or his men. The uncertainty of their future even if he were to neutralize that threat, and the pain he would be forced to endure if Naomi were to learn she had given herself to a monster.
He had never thought himself a coward until this moment. But as he coaxed her body to a release that left her clawing at his shoulders and screaming his name in ecstasy, he understood just how weak he truly was. Because this woman owned him with every sharp breath and pleasured sigh, with every powerful beat of her heart.
Asher watched her surrender everything to him. He felt it in his marrow, through the bond he had no right to take from her.
God help him, but it was easy to pretend he was a better man when Naomi was writhing and coming apart in his arms.
It was easy to deny his deep dishonor at having given in to his own selfish needs and desires with her . . . and the guilt of being unable to regret it.