He could smell the sweetness of her arousal, could feel the wet warmth of her bloom even more as he caressed her mound. Unable to resist, he followed his touch with his mouth, bending over her and nuzzling his face against the triangle of pink satin.

Nova gasped, shuddering at the contact. She reached for his head, but instead of pulling him away from her, she held on, her fingers spearing into his hair. Mathias groaned, knowing he was lost now.

He caught her panties between his teeth and drew them down, away from the trimmed patch of tight curls. Then he chuckled, having just discovered something else he hadn’t been expecting about his raven-haired beauty. He arched a brow at her. “Blonde?”

She shrugged, shot him a playful smirk. “You never asked.”

He grinned back at her, but he wasn’t about to let her have the last laugh. As payback, he dived into that tempting little thatch with his lips and tongue, wringing a startled cry out of her as he sought--and found--the bundle of nerves nestled between her folds.

He suckled her, kissing her as passionately and deeply here as he’d kissed her mouth a few moments ago. He didn’t let up until she was writhing under him, her hands twisting in the sheets as her body arched against his lips and tongue.

“Oh, God,” she gasped, panting as he took her even higher. “Oh, fuck...Mathias...”

He glanced up as her orgasm rolled through her. She watched him too, her eyes locked on his as her pleasure crested, overflowed.

Mathias held her gaze, giving her a silent promise that this was only the beginning of what he intended to show her.

He wanted to make up for all of the abuses she had suffered at the hands of another, even if it took the rest of his life to help her forget.

Hell, watching her surrender so openly to him now, there was a part of him ready to give her an eternity.

If he had anything to say about it, this moment was already the start.

“Mathias,” she murmured, breathless from the aftershocks of her climax. “I don’t want this feeling to stop. Not yet...”

“No,” he growled. “Not yet.”

Stripped out of his clothing and boots, he then knelt beside her, growing hungrier, impossibly harder, as she drank in his nakedness with passion-drunk, heavy-lidded eyes.

His pulse hammered in his ears, in his temples, his blood running like molten lava in his veins from the intensity of his need for this woman. His glyphssurged with heat, color flooding their swirling, arcing patterns on his chest and shoulders and biceps.

His fangs pressed against his tongue, razor-sharp tips fully extended, and he knew that Nova was seeing him at his most inhuman--in his savage, predator’s form.

She didn’t flinch.

She didn’t tremble.

She reached for him. “Mathias...”

There was nothing more she needed to do or say.

He kissed her, unhurried, and positioned himself between her parted thighs. Her cleft was slick and hot against his shaft as guided himself to her. He couldn’t stop now. His desire for her swamped all of his senses.

He pulled his hips back until he was seated at the core of her ready body.

Then he drove home, inch by delicious inch, into the sweetest, hottest pleasure he’d ever known.

~ ~ ~

He filled her more deeply than she thought possible, cleaving her core with so much heat and strength and passion that she could hardly draw her breath. The sensation overwhelmed her, stunned her.

Obliterated every thought she’d ever had for what it meant to be at the mercy of a man’s carnal needs.

Nova clung to Mathias as he rocked into her with unbridled force.

Her body was still pliant from its release, nerve endings still thrumming from the pleasure he’d given her with his lips and tongue and touch.

She felt that release winding up again as he crashed against her, the friction of his cock moving inside her swiftly becoming more than she could bear.

On a cry, she shattered. Felt herself splintering apart into tiny pieces.

Without warning, sudden tears filled her eyes. Burned the back of her throat.

Mathias went stock-still above her, halting in mid-thrust. His breath sawed out of him, and the curse he swore was abrupt, dread-filled. “You’re crying.”

She gave a feeble shake of her head, struggling to find her voice. “I just...I thought it would be different,” she choked out. “I thought I could handle it...”

“Ah, shit. God damnit.” Every muscle in his body had ceased moving now. His scowl deepened. He started to withdraw from her. “Nova, I’m sorry--”

“No.” She clutched his shoulders and swallowed back the raw lump that was blocking her voice. When he continued to shift his weight off her, she wrapped her legs around the backs of his thighs to hold him in place. “No, Mathias. That’s not what I mean. I’m not crying because you did anything wrong. It’s because this feels so incredible. Youfeel incredible inside me. I wasn’t prepared for this--for how we’d feel together. I didn’t expect it.”

In his silence, he stared at her, unmoving. His fiery gaze warmed her face with its heat. “You feel all right, then?”

“More than all right,” she assured him. “I feel...alive. With you inside me like this, I feel whole. For the first time, Mathias, I feel like the rest is really behind me. You’ve given me that.”

He swore again, something low and reverent. Then he kissed her with more tenderness, more aching pleasure, than her heart seemed able to contain.

When he finally broke the contact, he was grinning, fangs glinting.

She frowned up at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, giving his hips a meaningful grind against hers. “I just think it could be amusing, doing other things you’ll enjoy but might not expect. Finding ways to keep you guessing, for a change.”

He was still moving within her, still hard. Getting harder, in fact.

Nova caressed his face, his handsome, otherworldly face. She wondered how long it would take for her to tire of looking at him.

Longer than she dared imagine.

A lifetime and then some.

She held on as he found his tempo once more. Sighed with pleasure as his rising rhythm steered her toward the edges of another crest of sensation. Closing her eyes, she let him take her there, rode with him as his large body began to go rigid and tense, his hips pumping harder now, furious and deep.

She cried out his name. Heard him mutter hers on a coarse shout beside her ear in that next instant, as heat exploded within her and he shook with the force of his orgasm.

Nova’s heart was pounding like thunder in her ears.

Then she heard the rumble again--a rapid drumming, urgent and unsteady. Coming from the other room.

Mathias heard it too, no doubt before she had. He reared back abruptly.

“Nova.” Eddie’s voice sounded oddly thin outside the apartment door.

“Something’s wrong.” Mathias said it before she could voice her concern. His face was grim, nostrils flaring. “There is blood.”

“Oh, God.” Alarm jolted her off the bed. She hurried back into her tank and sweat pants and was racing out to the living area in the next instant. She yanked open the door and shock hit her like a punch to the gut. “Eddie...oh, my God!”

The boy was white as a ghost, his eyes dilated with shock. Blood stained the front of his T-shirt and jeans. A lot of blood.

Nova grabbed him and hugged him close. She felt for injuries, but he seemed unharmed. Her hands came away sticky and red. “What happened to you? Where’s Ozzy?”

“In the shop,” he murmured, his voice thready. “I couldn’t do anything, Nova. He told me to hide. I wanted to help him, but he wouldn’t let me.”

Panic seized her. “Ozzy?” she shouted into the silence of the building.

Mathias stood behind her now, bare-chested, dressed only in his black pants. Nova swung her gaze up at him, a raw sob hitching in her throat.