“What have you done to me?” She didn’t even recognize herself. He could take her right there, in the midst of her fear with her heart breaking and she would enjoy it. “This isn’t love, Rafael. No matter what you think, it isn’t love.”
“It is love to me.” His hands smoothed over her bare skin, shaping her curves, feeling her response to him. “You have my body and my soul. You have all of me. I want all of you. I will not take less.”
“What have you done?” she repeated, refusing to give in to hysteria.
“To bring a human lifemate wholly into our world it requires three blood exchanges. The woman must be psychic, which you are.”
She stared up at him in horror. “You exchanged blood with me?”
“Of course. You are my lifemate. It is natural. You become the very blood in my veins as I am in yours.”
She closed her eyes briefly to block him out. “You gave me your blood?” It was a whisper, maybe even a plea. She didn’t want it to be true, yet her eyes had burned in the sunlight and her skin had blistered. Her mind needed the touch of his mind and still did. “Damn you, Rafael, you had no right to give me your blood. You know I have a ranch to run. You don’t have the right to arbitrarily make decisions for me. I don’t care what you are, I have rights and you just stepped way over them. How many times? How many times did you do that?”
“Do not judge me by your human standards, Colby.”
She shoved at the wall of his chest. “Get the hell off of me. Get off me or I’ll scream until someone hears and comes running.” She was furious, more furious than afraid of him.
“Do you think I will allow anyone to take you from me? I am more animal than man. More monster than guardian. I am capable of things you cannot conceive of.”
“And you think telling me this furthers your cause how?” She shoved again. “Get off of me!”
His hand pinned her wrists together and he pulled her arms above her head. “Kiss me, Colby.”
“Go to hell, Rafael. I don’t care what you do to me. It won’t make a difference. I decide my fate, not you.”
He bent his head toward her mouth. Colby turned her head away and bit at his shoulder hard. At once heat flared between them. Fire raced through her body. It was maddening and perverse and she didn’t want to give in to it. He kissed his way down her throat to her breast. His mouth was tight and hot and he scraped his teeth along her tender skin, lending an edge of pain to the pleasure. Her body reacted with more heat. More fire. With urgent demands. The pressure built fast and sharp deep within her, needing release.
Rafael refused to give it to her, tending her breasts with his hot mouth, massaging with his hands, taking small nips with his teeth and laving with his tongue. He held her down easily while she clawed at his back, her hips frantically trying to align with his body for relief. Deliberately he fed the sexual frenzy in her mind, heightening her pleasure, sharing his own. The way it felt to have her skin against his skin, moving beneath him like satin and silk. The way it felt to take her breast in his mouth, to stroke her body until she cried out for him. He shared the feeling of holding her beneath him, doing as he willed with her body, a body that belonged to him. He shared what it did to him to feel her fingernails in his skin, her hands bunching in his hair, wanting him, wanting more.
He kissed his way down her belly, his hands massaging her breasts, his thigh holding her in place. She sobbed as he plunged his fingers deep into her wet core. She moved against his hand, but he refused to allow her release. She swore at him, tugged at him, but he shook his head, wanting her to know what it was like, the terrible hunger inside of him every time he looked at her. The needs, dark and intense, that bordered on insanity when he grew hard and thick and needed her body under his. He didn’t want her to come to him unaware of his demanding nature. He would try to learn tenderness for her, but he knew exactly what he was like and what he would insist on from her.
“Give yourself to me,” he whispered, dragging her legs around his shoulders. His eyes glittered like black obsidian as they met hers. Then he lowered his head to her hot, waiting core.
She screamed, clawed at his back, tugged at his hair. “I did. I have,” she pleaded when he stopped time after time, keeping her teetering on the edge of release.
“I am taking what is mine,” he replied. “There is a difference.”
“You’re being a bastard,” she pointed out and screamed again when he deliberately renewed his attack.
When she was sobbing, certain she couldn’t take it anymore, he lifted her legs even higher, holding firmly to her ankles as he thrust hard into her. A deep long stroke of possession. He buried himself deep inside of her, deeper than he’d ever been, forcing her to take all of him. He filled her, pushing through soft, swollen folds, slick with welcome, hot with need. She couldn’t move in the position he held her, could only lift her hips to try to meet the hard, deep thrusts of his. Fire raged in his blood, burned in his belly. Thunder roared in his head. She was so hot and tight he thought he would explode. His body was no longer his own, but a part of hers and he shook with the pleasure and pain of their forceful joining.
“I claim you as my lifemate.” He bit the words out, gasped them aloud, as he surged into her tight channel, again and again, over and over, never wanting to stop. The fierce conflagration was burning out of control, spreading like a firestorm through him. “I belong to you. I offer my life for you. I give to you my protection, my allegiance, my heart, my soul and my body. I take into my keeping the same that is yours.”
He was killing her with pleasure. Waves of it crashed over her, through her. She climaxed so many times, so hard; she shook as the sensations ripped through her. As he spoke she felt a curious wrenching in her heart. Her soul. As if something was weaving them together inside of her. As if his ferocious lovemaking and his words combined together to weld them into one complete person. “Stop!” Panic welled up. He held her ankles tightly, keeping her open to him, shattering her, taking her apart and remaking her so completely there would never be any way to go back to what she had been.
Mercilessly he thrust into her, over and over, ruthless hot hard strokes, each designed to take him deeper, to tie her to him in every way possible. “Your life, happiness, and welfare will be cherished and placed above my own for all time. You are my lifemate, bound to me for all eternity and always in my care.”
She saw his face, the sensual lines etched deeply, the conviction and implacable resolve, and knew he had done something terrible. She felt it. She knew it. She saw it in the glittering black of his eyes, in the harshness of his expression even as he drove her out of her mind with sheer pleasure. She felt his body hardening and thickening deep inside of her. He threw back his head and she caught the glint of his white fangs as he cried out hoarsely, pumping into her, filling her, sending her body into a wild orgasm that blasted her entire body into a million fragments.
After a while she became aware of lying in the grass with her legs spread, up in the air, his fingers circling her ankles like vises. She tugged to get free. His breathing was ragged, matching hers. He slowly loosened his hold on her and lowered her legs to the ground before slumping over the top of her.
Colby lay beneath Rafael. Her heart slammed so hard she feared it would break through her chest. Her body continued to ripple with aftershocks, pleasure shattering her so that she couldn’t move, but lay sprawled out in the grass afraid of the terrible craving his sexual needs had set up in her. She could never find anyone who would do this to her body and soul. How could she lie awake at night and not feel his hands on her body? Not feel him driving into her over and over again until they were both screaming for mercy? Tears burned, but she didn’t know if it was from sheer ecstasy or from a bone deep hunger that only Rafael could assuage.
“Did I hurt you?” He didn’t think he could ever find the strength to stand up again. His fingers brushed gently at her tears.
“I don’t know. I won’t know for a few hours.” She was dazzled by the colors in the sky, the stars and the moon and the variations she’d never noticed. Her body sang, still gripped in the aftermath of their frenzied joining.
He lifted his head from her breast and looked into her eyes. “You are a very stubborn woman.”
“You are a very pig-headed man.” She pushed the silky black strands of hair from around his face. “You don’t like anyone saying no to you, do you?”
A small smile curved his mouth. “There is no reason to say no to me. And I especially do not want you saying no to me. You are my woman. My lifemate.”
“But that doesn’t mean ownership,” she told him. Her fingertips were gentle on his face. “You can’t
force
me to love you, Rafael. I need to know more about you. I see into your mind and there are things that don’t make sense to me.”
“What you see in my mind should not make any difference,
querida.
”
Colby stirred, pushed at his body, annoyed with his arrogance. “You’re heavy, Rafael. Move.” His fangs had not retracted and she was becoming nervous again.
He kissed her throat and pushed away from her to sit up. “It is only because you are so small. You need to eat more.”
She looked at him from under her lashes. “I can’t eat anything lately. Do you have anything to do with that?”
“Yes.” One did not lie to one’s lifemate.
Take her. Make her yours so we can leave this place and go home.
Nicolas was hunting prey. His voice whispered in Rafael’s mind. It was obvious he didn’t understand why his brother was not simply forcing the woman to do his bidding.
It is complicated.
Nicolas sighed.
You forget who and what you are. Do you want the vampire to kill her? To destroy the people on this ranch? If you allow this rebellion to continue, she will be the death of us all. We will be without honor.
Colby managed to find her blouse, although she had no idea where her bra was. “Is he talking to you?”
“My brother? Yes.”
She slipped her arms into the shirt, wincing a little. She was sore from the strength of his fingers. Her body still held the stamp of his possession. “What did you say to me? What were those words you said? They sounded suspiciously like a ritual of some kind.” She cast him a wary glance as she crawled toward her carelessly discarded jeans. “What
exactly
did you do?” The buttons were gone from her blouse, so she knotted the tails together under her breasts.
“I bound us together in the way of my people.”
He sounded smug. Arrogant even. Colby bunched her panties in her hand and threw them at him. “You ripped these.”
“You do not need them.” His arms wrapped around her and he pulled her back against his chest as she tried to wiggle into her jeans. Teeth nipped and scraped at her neck. “You should never wear clothes.”
“That will go over big with the rest of the world. What ritual?” She leaned against him for leverage as she pulled the jeans over her bottom. She was sensually sore everywhere, inside and out. And of course, his hands had gone straight to her breasts, cupping the weight in his palms through the gap in the edges of her blouse. “Is it ever enough with you?”
“Apparently not. Maybe you should not get dressed just yet.”
She turned her face up to his throat and lay against him, savoring being in his arms. In another few hours she would have to work nonstop, but she had the night with him. All she had to do was convince him not to bite her anymore. “As it is, I’m not certain I can walk.” She stood up, using his shoulder as an anchor while she tested her legs. It was strange to look at him, to know the things he’d done to her, with her, to know she’d screamed his name, begged him for more, pleaded with him to consume her, and yet not feel in the least embarrassed.
Rafael stood up in one smooth motion, clothing himself in the way of his people. She gave a small gasp and stepped back. “How did you do that? Even your hair looks clean and combed.” She lifted a hand to her own hair with a small frown. “I’m afraid I look a bit on the used side. I need a shower and a hairdresser.”
“You look beautiful, Colby. You are always beautiful, especially when you are screaming beneath me.” There was a wealth of satisfaction in his voice. He held out his arm in front of her, his gaze on her face. His skin rippled, and feathers erupted as a wing developed, a huge expanse of wing much like that of a harpy eagle.
Colby sucked in her breath. “It was you. I let you into my house.”
“Into your bedroom.” The feathers disappeared, leaving behind muscle and sinew. He leaned close to her, his fangs very much in evidence. “Into your body. I am stealing your heart.”
Because he already had her soul.
She knew it now with a strange certainty, in the way she knew things, He owned her body and her soul. He wasn’t finished or satisfied. He wanted her heart and he wanted her mind. Colby shook her head. “You aren’t thinking straight, Rafael. Think with your brain, not overactive portions of your anatomy. Realistically, how do you think this is going to end?” She swept her arm to encompass the ranch and the high mountain peaks. “You love Brazil and the rain forest. You and your brother want to go back. You
need
to go back. This is my home. It’s all I’ve ever known. I have to hold it in trust for Paul and Ginny. I’ve fought a good part of my life to keep this ranch running. Do you really think I’m going to walk away from it and run off with a man I barely know because we have great sex together? I may be a ranch girl, but I have brains in my head.”
He stepped closer to her, his body posture suddenly aggressive. “You think realistically, Colby. Do you really think I am going to walk away from the
only
thing in this world standing between me and the loss of my soul? Standing between me and utter darkness? The monster roars at me every rising. Whispers to me in the middle of the night, calls to me when I hunt, and when I take blood from my prey. I will
never
give you up. I am taking you with me when I return to my homeland. You will come with me as my lifemate whether you agree or not.”