Ben flicked a wary glance across the seats. In the dim glow of the dash, the guy's eyes were throwing off a funky sheen, like his pupils were disappearing, stretching thin in the center of all that glacial blue. A chill entered Ben's bones, instinct kicking into high alert.
Something was off here, way off.
"Did you give him Crimson, you goddamn piece of shit?"
Ben swallowed hard. Gave a wobbly nod of his head. "Yeah. The dude might have bought from me a couple of times."
He heard a vicious growl, saw a flash of sharp white teeth in the dark in the split second before the back of his head smashed against the passenger-side window and the guy launched on top of him in an explosion of hellish fury.
Chapter Twenty-two
She was killing him.
Each swirl of Tess's tongue, every long draw of her tight mouth over his swollen flesh--holy Christ, the teasing rasp of her teeth on him--sent Dante further into a vortex of pleasured torment. Leaning over her as she sucked on him, he clutched the sides of the bathroom vanity in a vise grip, his face twisted, eyes squeezed shut in sweet agony.
His h*ps began pumping, his c**k surging harder, reaching for the back of her throat. Tess took all of him in, moaning softly, the vibration buzzing against his sensitive head.
He didn't want her to see what he looked like now, lost to a lust he could hardly control. His fangs had stretched long in his mouth, nearly impossible to hide behind his tightly clenched lips. Underneath his closed eyelids, his vision burned red with hunger and need.
He could feel Tess's need too. The sweet scent of her arousal perfumed the humid air between them, filling his nostrils like the most potent aphrodisiac. And within that drenching perfume was another need, a curiosity that floored him.
Each tentative graze of her teeth on his skin tonight posed a question, each little nip and bite communicating a hunger she likely didn't understand, let alone have words to express. Would she break his skin and take his blood into her body?
God, to think she actually might...
It stunned him, how badly he wanted her to sink her tiny, blunt human teeth into his flesh. When she withdrew from his sex and nipped his belly, Dante roared, the desire to urge her into drawing his blood and drinking it down nearly overpowering his far saner impulse to protect her from the Breedmate bond, which would tie her to him for as long as they both lived.
"No," he growled, his voice rough, speech obstructed by the presence of his fangs.
With shaking hands, Dante took hold of Tess's hips. He lifted her toward him, cradling her bottom on his arms as he tore away her silk panties and filled the juncture of her thighs with his body. His c**k glistened from the wetness of her mouth and his own need, engorged to the point of pain. He couldn't be gentle; with a hard thrust, he seated himself to the hilt.
Tess's breath rushed against his ear, her spine arching in his hands. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he pistoned between her legs, his rhythm urgent, release coiling in the base of his shaft. He drove her hard, feeling her own cl**ax building swiftly as her channel gripped him like a warm, wet fist.
"Oh, God... Dante."
She broke apart an instant later, contracting around him in delicious ripples. Dante followed her over the edge, his orgasm shooting up his shaft and boiling out of him in a fierce torrent of heat. Wave after wave tore through him as he pumped into her like he never wanted to stop. Dante peeled his eyes open as his body shook with the force of his release. In the mirror over the sink, he caught his feral reflection--the true picture of who, and what, he was.
His pupils were slivers of black in the center of glowing amber, his cheekbones stark, animalistic. His fangs were fully extended, long white points that flashed with every panting breath he hauled into his lungs.
"That was... incredible," Tess murmured, hooking her arms under his shoulders to raise herself closer against him.
She kissed his damp skin, her lips trailing over his collarbone and up to the curve of his neck. Dante held her to him, his body still wedged inside hers. He waited, unmoving, willing the hungered part of him to heel. He flicked a glance back to his face in the mirror, knowing it would be a few minutes before his transformation subsided and he could look at Tess without terrifying her.
He didn't want her afraid of him. God, if she saw him now--if she knew what he had done to her that first night he'd seen her, when she had offered him kindness and he'd repaid her by taking her throat in his teeth--she would hate him. And rightly so.
Part of him wanted to sit her down and tell her all that she had forgotten about him. To lay it all out in the open. Start fresh, if they could.
Yeah, he imagined that little talk would go down about as smoothly as a glass of tacks. And it certainly wasn't a conversation he intended to strike up while she was still impaled on the resurgent length of him.
As he deliberated over the deepening complication he was making with Tess, a growl rumbled in from the open doorway. It was a small noise but unmistakably hostile.
Tess shifted, pivoting her head. "Harvard! What's the matter with you?" She laughed a little, sounding shy now that the intensity of the moment was broken. "Um, I think we may have just traumatized your dog."
She ducked out from the cage of Dante's arms and grabbed a terry bathrobe off a hook near the door. She slipped it on, then bent down to retrieve the terrier. Scooping up the animal, she got an immediate and vigorous chin-washing. Dante watched them from under a hank of his dark hair, relieved to feel his features coming back to normal.
"That dog has certainly made a quick recovery under your care." A dramatic turnaround, Dante was guessing, and one that seemed too quick for normal medicine.