There was so much pleasure, Jaxon allowed it to wash over her, to consume her. His pulse was fascinating. She heard his husky cry, felt his mind merge solidly with hers, so she felt the white-hot lance of lightning whipping through him as her teeth sank deep and the essence of his power, his ancient lifeblood, flowed into her. She felt what her body was doing to his, the hot fire surrounding him, gripping him tightly. She felt the intensity of his pleasure, so deep, so real, his desire for it to last for all time.
Her tongue stroked across his chest, closing the tiny pinpricks, just as the muscles in his body tensed beneath her hands and her own body was fragmenting, taking his with hers. She heard her own voice, a sound in her throat, soft and husky. She tasted him, the terrible hunger in her sated as her body throbbed and burned, exploding into the night to become part of time and space.
Jaxon found herself looking up at him, her dark eyes wide with shock. She couldn’t believe the things her body was capable of. She couldn’t believe what she had just done so willingly. She wanted her body to reject the nourishment, but it savored it, the taste of him in her mouth, on her lips, like an addictive nectar. She pushed at the wall of his chest, determined to get away from him so she could think. His gaze smoldered, black velvet, dark and dangerous, moving slowly over her face. There was stark possessiveness in his eyes. Hunger. Dark desire. He bent his head to trace the soft column of her neck with his tongue. “I am not certain this rising will be long enough to sate my hunger. Again. I want you again.”
“You can’t possibly!” she gasped, but he was already stroking her body, keeping her restless and aching for his.
“We are not bound by any limitations,” he whispered softly, seeking the creamy hollow of her throat. “I have much to teach you.”
Hours later, Jaxon settled into a chair in Lucian’s den. Her body was deliciously sore, still sensitive from his endless possession. He had been in turns gentle and tender and wild and untamed. Always looking at her with hungry eyes. Only when he realized she was exhausted did he carry her upstairs to the shower, where he washed her with far too caressing hands. Right now she wasn’t certain she would ever be able to look at him again. Trying to be nonchalant, she shook out the newspaper and glanced rather idly at the different headlines. Her eyes widened in surprise. “Samuel Barnes died yesterday.”
Lucian paused in the act of working on the computer. He had been doing his best to give her some space, accurately reading her mind. His Jaxon was shy with him even after the erotic hours they had spent together. One eyebrow shot up as he looked at her over his shoulder. “The banker?” His voice was strictly neutral.
“Yes, the banker, Mr. International Grab-all-the-Headlines Banker. He just died in his house. An employee found him and tried CPR but wasn’t successful. I suspected he was a major player in the drug trafficking going on in our city, but I could never get anything solid on him.”
“And he died how?”
Jaxon’s enormous eyes regarded him steadily over the top of the newspaper. “They don’t suspect foul play. There’s no evidence of that.” All at once her voice was suspicious. “You didn’t know Barnes, did you?”
“Jaxon.” He said her name softly, intimately, his voice wrapping her up in satin sheets, effectively stopping her heart. “You are not accusing me of anything, are you?”
She found herself blushing for no reason at all except the way he was looking at her. Lucian was synonymous with control. He might be deadly, but he was quiet about it. He never seemed to allow anything to affect him. Until he looked at her. She could see his terrible hunger smoldering just beneath the surface every time his dark gaze rested on her. He was so sexy, merely looking at him stole her breath. Right now wasn’t the time to dwell too deeply on everything that had transpired between them. She felt she was doing fairly well, holding on to her sanity by her fingertips. She was effectively putting off facing the truth about what Lucian had done with his “conversion” and what she had done since then with him. Carpathian women must be sex maniacs, because the real Jaxon was definitely not. She shook her head, determined to stay on track. Would Lucian have known Barnes’s connection with her? What was she thinking, anyway? How could Lucian possibly know about Barnes? She couldn’t accuse him of anything. “No, of course not.”