At that, he had to lift his head and grin down at her. Her gaze was glazed with passion as she blinked up at him. “No, baby,” he said gently, rocking his hips to begin moving in her. “That wasn’t what I meant. I meant, you’re so hot.”

Her eyebrows quirked, and dimples appeared in her cheeks as she suppressed a grin. “Yeah, I knew that.”

He grinned back briefly, then they both lost their smiles.

They were dirty. The cell was abysmal, and the thin mattress from the cot was terrible. They hadn’t even gotten fully undressed, but what drove them to couple overrode all of that.

She gripped him at the back of his head. He pinned her down, flexing to get deeper into her, moving faster and harder until he was pistoning into her. The pleasure was exquisite, the buildup of pressure intolerable.

She cried out something breathlessly as she dug her fingers into his bicep.

He needed to take all of her. Covering her mouth with his again, he mimicked the penetration of his penis with his tongue, thrusting into her with the same rhythm he used with his hips. She lifted up for each thrust, flexing as he flexed, matching his rhythm.

As he did so, belatedly, his mind caught up with what she had said.

That bitch better not blow her goddamn whistle.

A sharp convulsive wave of laughter shook through him again and was lost in a storm of sensation. His awareness splintered into fragments, each piece impossibly vivid and compelling.

The lean line of her thighs hugging his hips. The grit of dirt underneath the heel of his hand as he propped himself on one arm to stare down at her. The moisture glistening on her full lower lip. She was wet from his kisses, her mouth swollen.

The way she tightened on his cock as he slid back and forth in her passage. Holy shit, it was magnificent. She was his full partner in every way.

In a classic feline move, she clawed his back and ground against him. For a moment he held utterly still as he remembered another deeply intimate detail of their lovemaking from before.

Most of her climaxes came from her clitoris. They had laughed about it together whenever Julian went “deep sea diving” in the hopes of trying to coax her into a vaginal orgasm, or even more rare, an orgasm that blended both.

The memory jolted him out of his preoccupation with his own needs. Sliding one hand between their joined bodies, he located her stiff, delicate little bud and massaged it with the ball of his thumb.

“Come on, baby,” he whispered, watching her face as he rocked into her.

Moving restlessly underneath him, she shook her head and gasped, “I — I don’t know if I can. I need to, but…” She made a quick, frustrated gesture.

“Of course you can,” he told her.

He was never above doing whatever it took to achieve his objective, including breaking his own rules.

As her wandering hand came back to grip his shoulder, he brought down his fangs to bite her neck again — not to drink any more of her blood, but to let her feel the pleasure that came from his bite.

They both stilled. Her heartbeat pulsed against his mouth. He had never felt so close to anyone before. Then a shaking moan escaped her lips on a puff of air that tickled his ear. Like a sexy ghost, the needy little sound shivered over his skin.

Oh my God, I love to fuck you, he said in her head.

That was her tipping point. Arching her back, her knees clamped on his hips. He could feel the ripples of her pleasure when they began. He never wanted to leave them. Rocking gently against her, he drew them out as long as he could. When he was sure she had finished, he withdrew his fangs and lifted his head again to look at her.

She looked dazed, broken wide open. It was the most honest expression he could ever remember seeing, from anyone.

Staring down at her shimmering gaze, he pumped hard into her, once, twice. His own climax, when it came, punched him like a sledgehammer, rolling up from the base of his spine. Swearing under his breath, his body arched from the savage strength of it.

She took his chin in slender fingers and turned his face down to her.

“That’s my climax,” she breathed. “I want to see every moment of it.”

Even in the midst of the waves of convulsive pleasure that pulsed out of him, he found room to be surprised. Twenty years ago, she would never have done such a thing. She had grown. Meeting her gaze, he gave her everything he had.

When his climax finally began to ease, he stroked her hair off her face and pressed his lips to her forehead as he thought, It doesn’t matter if I try to hold on to my old anger or not. I’ll never be able to fully leave her.

As his lips pressed against her skin, Melly closed her eyes and thought, I’ll never understand him. Never in a million years.

He has been so bitter and cold to me for so long. How can he show me such warmth and gentleness now? What happened to change his attitude — and when might it change back again?

When I open my eyes again, who will I be looking at — the bastard Julian, or the nice Julian?

But she already knew the answer to that. She could not look at one without the other, because they were both the same man. It was just that the bastard Julian was so much easier to live with when he wasn’t so furious with her.

She felt exposed, euphoric. She felt disturbed at how easily she had given in to her desire for him, when just a short while ago, she had been so determined to never let him near her again.

And circumstances and surroundings be damned. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck, pull him down to her and make love to him all over again. She wanted to tear off the rest of her clothes just to feel his calloused hands running over her bare skin.

When he lifted his mouth from her forehead, she said, “We shouldn’t take any more time. We need to go.”

A softer, more modern man might have frowned at her for being so abrupt, but Julian had spent his formative years owning nothing but his wits and his ability to kill, and he had lived too many centuries as a fighter.

“You’re right,” he said. Pulling away, he rolled off her and came to his feet. Matter-of-factly tucking himself inside of his boxers, he held out a broad, scarred hand to her.

She put her hand in his, and he lifted her effortlessly to her feet. While she found another rag from his shredded T-shirt and cleaned her inner thighs, he buttoned and zipped his jeans and collected her trousers and underwear.

She watched as he frowned down at the wadded-up feminine clothing in his hands, puzzling how to turn it right side out again for her. The slanted light from the heavy flashlight made flecks of silver in his salt-and-pepper hair shine.

He had an undeniably Roman profile with a nose that had been broken more than once, blunt, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw that more often than not revealed the determination of the man. Somehow he never managed to look quite civilized when he dressed in formal black tie. Now, standing shirtless in his battered jeans, he was the epitome of raw, lethal masculinity.

If his sire Carling hadn’t seen his potential and turned him, he would have died almost two thousand years ago. Melly was under three hundred years old, and she would never have met him.

If she would have heard anything about him — highly doubtful — anything she might have learned would have been from human history books. And while she was well versed in the history of all the Elder Races, she hadn’t studied much human history.

Chances are, she would have known nothing about his existence, nothing about his struggles or triumphs.

Or how he would have died.

Finding the thought deeply disturbing, she took her clothes from his outstretched hand without meeting his gaze. Quickly she pulled on her underwear and trousers, and slipped her feet into her ballet shoes.