"Please," she murmured again, an enticement he could not resist.
Hunter put his mouth onto her neck and carefully bit down, penetrating the soft flesh with the razor-sharp points of his fangs. She gasped at the invasion, her body tensing through the momentary pain he'd inflicted. And then she was melting against him, her muscles going lax and pliant as he drew the first sip of her blood into his mouth.
Ah, God ... she was so much more than he could ever have imagined.
Her warm blood coursed over his tongue like a balm. He felt it absorbing into his body, into his cells. Into every particle of his being.
She was sweet and warm against his tongue, her blood scent filling his nostrils with the delicate fragrance of dark bergamot and tender violets. He breathed her in, drenching his senses with the delicious taste of her, a taste that would be stamped into every fiber of his being for as long as he was alive to draw breath.
Although this was an act of compassion, of necessity, not a true blood-bonding between himself and his mate, everything Breed in him - everything hot-blooded and male - responded to the warm, sweet taste of Corinne as though she belonged to him in every way. Arousal roared up on him swiftly, a desire that pounded through his veins and into his hardening c**k like wildfire. He clutched her close as he drank still more. He felt a heat ignite deep within him and knew instinctively that the bond was taking shape regardless of intention, lashing her to him inexorably. She was his now, and the logic that had shaped him all his empty life seemed to abandon him as he tried to tell himself that allowing this visceral link - for any reason - had been a mistake.
All he knew was the heat of her blood as it filled him, the pleasure of holding her in his arms ... the need that made him groan with desire as he lifted her and carried her with him to the bed.
He laid her down, his mouth still fixed to the pulse that beat like a tiny drum against his tongue. He wanted to make love to her all over again, wanted to strip her na**d and bury himself as deep as possible within the comfort of her body.
His senses were flooded with need, his body on fire, electric and rigid with the force of his passion for her.
At first, he didn't notice the sudden flickers of darkness that jolted his mind. He tried to push them away, lost to the pleasure of everything that was Corinne. But the abrupt images kept coming, kept battering at the back of his consciousness.
Flashes of a dark prison cell.
Minions dressed in white lab uniforms, coming in to wheel Corinne away. The screams of a female in agony ... followed by the blustering wail of a newborn infant. Hunter drew back from Corinne's neck, stunned, stricken.
"What is it?" she asked him, her eyes wide, fearful. "Are you okay?"
"Fuck," he gasped, amazed that his talent was responding, yet horrified for what she'd been through. More images slammed into his brain, sounds of torture and madness. The hopelessness of what had surrounded her all those years. "Corinne ... my God. What they did to you, and for so long. I'm seeing it all ... everything you were forced to endure."
She reached up and cupped her hand around his nape. Pain glittered in her eyes, though not as fiercely as the determination written on her lovely face. "Don't stop. Not until we find him."
He couldn't deny her, even if he'd wanted to. If Corinne had survived the awfulness in reality, then he could sift through it psychically and retrieve whatever she thought might lead them closer to her child.
Hunter drank some more, letting the terrible anguish and torture wash over him like an oily tide. He waited for something irrefutable, some solid clue that would anchor him, provide some bearings in the wasteland of agony that had been Corinne's existence in Dragos's laboratory prison.
But there was no line to grab hold of. Nothing but a brackish riptide that Corinne had somehow managed to weather on her own.
Because of the love of her child, she'd said. All because of him.
Because of the hope she held that she would reunite with her son one day. Nathan had become her lifeline.
How would she survive if the time came - as Mira's vision had predicted - when Hunter would deny Corinne's pleas for mercy and deliver the blow that would finally take her hope away from her forever?
It was an eventuality that ate at him like poison, all the worse when he was feeding at Corinne's open vein, bonding himself to her inextricably, despite the knowledge that he was destined to break her heart.
The thought shamed him. With a self-loathing growl, he ceased drinking and gently lapped at the punctures he'd made in her throat, knowing he should seal them and release her. This hadn't been about pleasure or bonding; she'd come to him for help and he'd gleaned all he could from her memories. There was no need to continue, no matter how pleasurable it felt to be holding this female.
His female.
The declaration came from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere out of his control. He reasoned that it was only the bond speaking. His body, his senses, everything Breed within him, was attuned to Corinne now that her blood had fed him. It was merely a biological response, his primal nature staking a claim he had no right to hold.
And yet there was another part of him that recognized his feelings for Corinne were intensifying, and had been even before he'd taken the first drop from her vein. He cared for her. He wanted her to be safe, to be happy. He wanted her suffering to finally be at an end. All things he could not promise her, so long as Mira's vision lurked like a specter in the back of his mind.
He drew away from Corinne's delicate throat and started to sweep his tongue across the punctures his fangs had left in her skin. Before he could seal the tiny wounds closed, Corinne moaned a soft protest. Her body arched into him more fevered now, hot and arousing, her slender limbs clinging to him and preventing his retreat.