Page 21 of Bite Bonded Bride

I drop its body unceremoniously and drag Cybele through an archway I remember by instinct alone. The sealed chamber beyond holds a stone table and a narrow cot, hidden and intact.

I slam the door shut and turn on her. The careful restraint I maintain around her is gone. “That is exactly why you should not be down here alone. If I hadn’t been there—” The careful restraint I maintain around her is gone completely.

"But you were."

"What if I hadn't been?"

The question lands between us.

Cybele sets her jaw, eyes burning, chest still rising and falling too fast.

"Why do you care if I die anyway?" Her voice is deliberately tight. "I'm just some human. Disposable. That's what your council thinks. That's what you thought four days ago. So why does it matter?"

I cross to her in two steps, and she tilts her chin up to hold my gaze, refusing to be the one to look away.

"You are not disposable." Each word drops separately. "And if you say that again I will⁠—"

"You'll what?" She dares.

I know I should step back. She is human and she is warm and the bond is pulling so hard right now that I can feel her heartbeat like it is mine, and if I do not put distance between us I am going to⁠—

Her hand closes around my wrist.

"Don't pull back." Her voice has changed, raw and terrifyingly honest. Her thumb presses against my pulse point. "I don't fear you. I haven't feared you in days and I've been—I've been trying to talk myself out of this, whatever this is, because it makes no sense and it is catastrophically stupid. But…"

Her voice drops, a confession. "I don't care. I want it. I want you. All of it. Whatever this pull is between us, I want it, Zareth. With everything I have. I want it do bad and I'm done pretending I don’t⁠—"

My restraint breaks. I kiss her.

I take her mouth the way I have been fighting not to for days, and when the taste of her bursts across my tongue, warm, copper-edged, and alive, she responds. Fusing her mouth with mine like she needs it as much as I do.

I make a sound against her lips that I do not recognize as my own. My hands find her waist, her back, drag her against me, and she is soft, unbearably so, the generous curve of her pressed flush to every hard angle of me, her breasts against my chest and I pull her closer because closer will never be enough.

My fang catches her lower lip. The bloom of her blood on my tongue is a detonation.

The slits of my pupils stretch, pulse, the world sharpening to nothing but her taste, her scent, the tiny sharp gasp she makes before she comes back for more. I suck at her bottom lip, her tongue meeting mine, and her fingers curl into my shirt.

She breaks the kiss to breathe. "You bit me," she says, breathless, half-laughing. "You actually bit me."

"Mmmm." I mumble into the corner of her mouth, kiss and suck down her throat, breathing in the thick, heady rush of her blood just beneath the skin, the heat of her neck against my lips. I move lower. I look up at her when my mouth reaches the swell of her chest, her face flushed and dark-eyed above me, and I take the collar of her top between my teeth and tear.

She lets out a breathy moan that should be illegal.

We end up on the cot in a tangle of buckles and urgency, her fingers working my armor clasps while I drag her leather gear off her shoulders, and we kiss in between, hands finding bare skin the moment it's exposed, the bond flaring hot every time we connect. Her palms flat against my chest. My mouth at her collarbone. The silk beneath her is cool; she is not.

She gets my tunic off and makes a sound that does nothing good for my restraint, wrestles with the laces of my breeches with admirable determination and absolutely no success. I watch her jaw set with concentration.

I laugh, and she blushes a deep scarlet.

"You're welcome." I reach down and deal with the laces myself, shove the breeches off, and settle over her, one arm braced by her head, the other roaming over her skin.

I take my time with her breasts. Draw one peaked nipple into my mouth, then the other, sucking at the plump, pebbled skin until she is pulling at my hair with both fists. Then I slide my palm down her stomach, over the soft curve of her hip, lower between her legs⁠—

She parts for me like she was waiting.

Hot and silken and already drenched, wet coating my fingers the moment I find her.

The groan that leaves me is not something I choose to make. "Cybele."