Bound Guardian Angel (53 page)

She sucked in her breath and eagerly nodded.
Okay, yes, that was his. It was so his.

“And it means that this”—he ran his tongue
along her neck, right over her vein—“this is mine, too. Your blood
is my blood.” He nipped her flesh. “You will never feed from anyone
other than me again, Cordray. Do you understand?”

No other. Her blood, his blood. Got it. She
just didn’t want him to stop.

Two weeks ago, she and Trace had been
magnets that repelled each other, but that was only because they’d
been facing each other with their north poles. But
now . . . flip! North, meet South. They snapped
together the way nature had always intended.

He pulled back and groaned lustfully as his
eyes ranged her face.

“Hit. Me.” The words rose like steam from
his throat, his gaze sending all kinds of
I’m-going-to-fuck-you-so-hard signals. “Please.”

Well, since he’d said please.

* * *

Her hand shot out, blistering his cheek with the
delicious sting of pain.

Trace’s head spun to the side, and lightning
bolted down his spine to his dick. Five-alarm arousal burst to life
inside his balls, and he suddenly wanted her more than he’d ever
wanted anything, and not because his inner beast had been beaten
into submission.

When he pivoted back around, she was staring
at her hand as if she couldn’t believe it was attached to her body
but liked that it was.

“Again.” Heat poured through him. He was
panting hard, needing more. “Hit me again.”

And God love her, she did. The hardest yet.
He might melt he was so hot, and it was all because of her.

He closed his eyes and moaned, relishing the
biting pain as it resonated briefly then faded.

He closed the short distance between them,
hard as steel, aroused in a way he’d never been. The curves of her
body welcomed his. Her heavy breasts rose and fell against his
chest. Her hips cradled his as she locked her eyes to his and
proudly lifted her chin.

She was as turned on as he was. Even more.
He could smell her arousal. It smelled like orange blossoms at
midnight.

He drew in a long, deep breath and let that
tropically infused scent filter into his lungs and spread into his
limbs.

“You’re mine, Cordray. You belong to me now.
Your body. Your heart. Your very breath. And tonight I’m going to
claim what is rightfully mine.” He didn’t know where the words came
from, but he felt the truth of them flowing through his blood.
Blood that was hers now, as much as hers was his.

She started to resist, but he thrust his
entire body against hers, snatching her hands in an instant and
pinning her arms against the wall, extending them over her
head.

Her staccato inhale and the drawn-out moan
that followed were music in the silence of the house. A lusty
serenade meant only for his ears.

Her eyelids drifted down, hooding her eyes.
Her body undulated against his.

“Hit me again.” He eased his hold on her
hands, letting his palms slide down her arms to her breasts, where
they paused before easing lower, to her flat stomach.

God, she felt good. Feminine yet strong.
Like a female was supposed to feel. He dropped his nose to the side
of her neck, where he dragged in another long, consuming inhale of
her scent, musky and sweet. Sexy as hell.

“Trace . . .”

“Hit me, Cordray.” He spoke against the
expanse of skin at the base of her neck.

A wanton groan broke from her throat as she
shuddered and tipped her head back. Her hands curled into fists
against his chest.

“Trace . . .
please . . .”

“Hit me.” He pulled his face away from her
neck and stared deep into her eyes. “One more time, and I’ll give
you what you want. What we both want.” He licked his lips and gazed
at her luscious mouth. “What we’ve both wanted since the moment we
met but were too stubborn to see.”

God, he needed the pain. Needed it to be
free.

And then he could take what was his.

* * *

She took several quick breaths, fighting a final
resurgence of resistance.

For one intense moment, she was trapped
between fight or flight, acceptance or denial. Between consent and
refusal. Her body ached for him in all the right places. For days,
she had fought her attraction to him, struggling to keep him away
when all she wanted was to draw him closer. And now he had forced
the issue by announcing that she was his mate.

His mate!

Trace was the reason why Gideon had never
mated her. Because she’d been meant for another. And nature had
chosen well. Trace was perfect for her in every way, but remnants
of fear still echoed in her heart. She couldn’t expect them to
cease altogether when she’d made fear a way of life for so long.
After all, old habits were hard to break.

His strong hands held her hips against the
wall, but even now their hold softened, his palms sliding higher
and leaving a wake of sizzling fire.

His body pressed against hers, and she could
feel how hard he was. Hard for her. His body heat churned the air
around them into a feverish cauldron. All it would take to feel his
hands on her bare skin, his lips against hers, his hardness inside
her, and all that heat to wrap around them both, was one more slap.
All she had to do was hit him, and fate would do the rest.

She had to decide. The time was now.

His face drew closer, consuming her field of
vision with his hooded eyes. His pale-green, so-goddamn-sexy
eyes.

“Hit. Me.” He whispered the command against
her mouth, so close that his breath washed over her lips.

She wanted that mouth on her. Everywhere.
All over her body. Her lips, her breasts, her stomach, her sex.

Her hand whipped out.

SMACK!

Her palm connected with his cheek. Hard.

His eyes shut briefly then snapped opened as
he let go of her and hastily shed his shirt.

“Again,” he said urgently, gripping the
sides of her body, slamming himself against her.

It didn’t matter that he’d promised only
once more. She would hit him as many times as he wanted. Whatever
he asked, she would do. That’s how far she’d fallen out of her own
control in the last sixty seconds. It was as if something greater
than herself controlled her actions, pouring through her blood,
making her let go and embrace her instincts for the first time in
her life.

She slapped him again, feeding the building
frenzy spiraling around them.

“More.” His hands drove under her shirt.

The moment his palms found bare skin, she
nearly blacked out. She hadn’t felt a male’s intimate touch for so
long she almost wept as his palms shot up her stomach to her
breasts.

“No.” But her mind screamed
yes
as
she struck him twice more then clutched his shoulders. She tugged
then pushed, both pulling him closer and pushing him away in a
constant battle to resist and take all at once.

“Yes.” Trace lifted her shirt, struggled
against her uncooperative arms, and then fisted the material as he
growled. He pulled, hoisting her away from the wall. The angry
sound of ripping fabric was followed by the rush of cool air on her
exposed skin.

“Stop,” she said, but the single syllable
sounded more like damp cheesecloth than the snap of a wet
towel.

The only part of her that wanted Trace to
stop was her fear. Fear that was dwindling and slipping toward
surrender with each passing second.

Her body was in heaven. A torturous heaven
that assaulted her senses and flooded her ability to cope. Every
breath pulled more of Trace’s earthy scent into her lungs and
compelled her to touch him, to fall into the moment, to give him
what he wanted and hit him again.

Trace shook his head, his gaze locked to
hers as his fingers dove under her bra and grazed her nipples.

She sucked in a blast of air and gripped his
shoulders to keep from falling as her knees buckled.

“You don’t want me to stop.” Trace was all
male, virile and demanding, a tightly coiled bundle of need that
commanded every cell in her body as he flicked his fingertips back
and forth over her puckered skin. “I can feel how badly you want
me. I can see it. You can’t lie to me, anymore, Cordray. You can’t
lie to your mate.”

“Bastard.” She gasped the word then bit back
a moan of approval as he nipped the side of her neck. Her knees
quivered, and she clung to him for fear of tumbling to the
floor.

He pulled back and grinned. “Sticks and
stones, baby.”

Flames erupted between them, and the air
shifted as her fear vaporized. She would have Trace, and she would
have him now.

With an aggressive surge, she shoved him
against the opposite wall and drove her hands up his stomach to his
chest. He willingly lifted his arms, exposing himself to her hungry
gaze, staring at her with eager, fascinated eyes.

Then his hands found her skin once more as
she shrugged out of what was left of her top. With the flick of his
index finger, he snapped the tender lace in the center of her bra,
and her breasts spilled into his palms. She let her head fall back,
wound her fingers through the belt loops of his pants, and tugged
him forward as she backed into the wall again. They were like two
pinballs, magnetically connected, spinning and bouncing back and
forth in the hallway.

Enchanted bewilderment filled Trace’s gaze,
which dropped to her chest. From his expression, it was obvious
he’d never held a woman’s breasts in his hands before. The way he
stared gave her the impression he had never seen nipples, either.
Surely, he had. He’d had plenty of mistresses who had taken
pleasure from him. But never like this. Never when he wasn’t under
submission.

Something in his expression weakened
Cordray’s knees even further. Under his gaze, she felt like a rare
artifact. Precious. A treasure to be admired and beheld with the
utmost reverence. Then he dove down and claimed one of her nipples
with his mouth.

Oh God!

She cried out and slapped one hand against
the wall to support her as she clutched the back of his head with
the other. Heat burned the insides of her thighs, and the muscles
deep inside her clenched.

She was going to come. She couldn’t breathe,
couldn’t find the ability to take in oxygen. Every muscle screamed,
tightened, prepared to celebrate the rediscovery of her sexual
response. For the first time in centuries, she was going to have a
goddamn orgasm. Right here. Now. This . . .
very . . .
second
!

“Holy shit! Trace!” Everything went black as
the power of her long-suppressed sex drive blew her into the
cosmos. A fraction of a second later, she gulped in air like she
had just come up from being sucked into the ocean by a riptide.

On and on, the pleasure ricocheted
throughout her body, rolling through her muscles. She couldn’t
speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t comprehend reality. All she was,
was a mass of sensation, synapses firing, nerve endings reacting to
stimuli. Trace’s stimuli. With Trace, she was alive. Pleasure,
pain, the warm wetness of his mouth. The sensations strangled her
in such a beautiful, captivating way. And when he licked her skin,
cool air washed over the moisture and sent a shiver through her
body.

When her orgasm finally waned, she realized
she was slung backward like a passed-out co-ed. The ends of her
hair brushed the floor, and her arms were like slack rope. Trace’s
arms encircled her waist, and his lips were leaving a trail of tiny
supernovas down the middle of her stomach.

“Oh . . .
my . . . God.”

As Trace continued his downward journey, she
managed to pull herself back up and lean against the wall for
support.

He unfastened her pants, pushed his thumbs
into the waist, and shimmied them down her legs and off her
feet.

When he lifted his gaze back up to hers, it
was with a sense of wonder, as if he didn’t understand what was
happening to him, what drove him to continue, or why he was
reacting to her the way he was.

Cordray could understand the feeling.
Despite her attraction to him and the fact that he’d mated her,
she’d gotten used to them hating one another. Or at least acting
like they hated one another. Yet here he was, his large hands
gripping her hips, the tips of his fingers playing over the elastic
waistband of her panties, his gaze locked to hers, his face inches
from where she wanted him the most. He had just given her the most
incredible orgasm she had ever experienced, and it looked like he
was nowhere near ready to be done with her.

And didn’t that just make her day, because
she wasn’t ready for him to be done, either. Not even close.

She still had at least a dozen orgasms
queueing up now that her libido was back online.

For another delirious moment, as her breath
quickened to shallow pants of anticipation, they stared into each
other’s eyes. Then, as if his hardened will suddenly snapped, Trace
dove his face into the apex of her body, burying his nose and mouth
against the moistened heat of her core. Once more, her knees
threatened to give as she cried out.

He breathed in, drawing cool air through the
material of her panties, and then blew out, suffusing her skin with
heat. When he exhaled again, his mouth opened. She felt it. Felt
his lips part. Felt his tongue press against her through the satin.
She looked down and moaned at the dreamy expression on his face.
His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be savoring the moment, as
if he didn’t want it to end.

He was a slave to his sex drive, taking what
rightfully belonged to him, granted to him through biology.

She writhed against the wall, caressing the
top of his hairless head, wanting the moment to stretch on forever.
Whisker-like stubble scraped her fingertips.

Somehow, she still managed to breathe, but
each shallow inhale caught in her throat, held for a fraction of a
second, and then burst out on a plaintive, staccato moan that made
her sound like she was begging.