“A commitment.”

There was a fluttering panic in her stomach. “What kind of commitment?”

“Something beyond being a joystick you like to ride when the mood strikes you.”

“Whatever.” Vash tried to refocus after feeling Elijah’s “joystick” flex inside her when referenced to. “You’re one to talk. I know you’re just into me for my tits.”

“So we’l deal. I’l grant you exclusive and convenient access to what I’ve got in return for the same from you.”

“That’s it?” she asked suspiciously. Exclusivity and convenience tied in a lot of different things, she knew, but she stil had to ask.

His gaze was steady, al human, and infinitely patient. “What more can you live with?”

“Wel …” She ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t live with the cold shoulder. Made me crazy. You were such an ass yesterday.”

“I was the ass?”

She sighed and knew she had to lay it al out there or risk losing him. The beast might be infatuated, but the man wasn’t the type to be strung along. “I want you. Not just for the sex, but for you. I respect you. I respect how you are with your people. But that’s exactly why I can’t keep you. And I’m afraid to want you more. I’m afraid to get hurt again.”

He reached up with both hands and brushed her hair back from her face. “You’re thinking about my responsibilities as an Alpha.”

“Tel me you’re not,” she shot back. “And if you aren’t, you should be.”

“At this point, I’m wondering if there hasn’t been a big fucking mistake. This makes twice now I’ve lost it over you.”

Vash frowned. “When was the other time?”

“Doesn’t matter when. It happened.” His firm, beautiful y shaped mouth brushed across hers. “The hunt began the moment I first saw you. It won’t end until you admit you’re mine or I stop breathing. That’s what the beast wants and what I want it to have. As for the man, I admire your strength and your courage. I’m grateful for your advice and that you’ve always been wil ing to share it with me. I’m addicted to your body, but I also enjoy just being with you. You’re the perfect amount of crazy for me. There’s never a dul moment with you, sweetheart.”

She leaned into him, something inside her cracking open at what he was saying. Her body tightened around him, hugging him from the inside.

He growled softly. “I could come again just like this. Just holding you and being held by you. Even if I go on as the Alpha, I couldn’t pretend to take on a mate now. The thought of being intimate with another woman repulses me.”

Her eyes closed as relief and tenderness flooded her. “There was only Char. Then you. I want this to work. I want to make it work.”

“So commit to this, Vashti—sleeping together, working together, staying together. None of which is anyone else’s business. We just have to talk to each other and make each other a priority.”

“There isn’t a lycan alive who doesn’t want to kil me, including you sometimes.”

“And there are very few vamps who wouldn’t put me down if they thought they could get away with it. Every relationship has its problems and hostile in-laws.”

“Ha! You’re a riot.”

“And I’m stubborn and arrogant.” He nipped her lower lip between even, white teeth. “You’re mine, Vash. I dare anyone to chal enge me otherwise. Even you.”

“You suck.” Her mouth tingled deliciously; the flavor of him spread richly across her tongue. “You knew what you were doing to me yesterday and last night. You knew it would break me down to lose you, that I wouldn’t be able to take it.”

“I hoped,” he corrected. “And kicked myself with doubts about drawing a line I wasn’t sure you’d cross. When I offered my room last night and you didn’t take it, I could’ve strangled you. You tore into a hotel room in a territorial rage, but you wouldn’t take that one step I needed you to take. I started to think there was no way to have you the way I need you. Then you came to me at breakfast and I was too damn close to tel ing you I’d take whatever I could get.”

“I was too damn close to begging you to stop punishing me.” Her vision blurred and she turned her head. “You shut me out. It…hurt. I hate hurting.

It makes me crazy. Crazier.”

He exhaled and leaned into her. “You’re damned stubborn.”

Stung by the truth, she said, “And you’re rol ing over and exposing your bel y without much of a fight, puppy.”

“You’ve been here before, with Charron. Of course you’d be wary of putting yourself out there again and making yourself vulnerable. This is new to me. I’ve never had this, and I want it. I can’t imagine not having it. Not having you.”

Vash pressed her palm over his strongly beating heart. “Has it occurred to you that I might be seducing you and making you care so you won’t be able to kil me?”

He covered her hand with his. “What kind of asshole do you take me for? Think I could nail you six ways from Sunday, then nail you again with a stake? I let that go before we went at each other in the warehouse. Micah’s dead. What you did to him was wrong, because your assumptions about me were wrong. But I can’t say I would’ve acted differently. If I kil you on his behalf, I’d just be doing exactly what you did to him for Nikki’s sake. It’s a vicious cycle that won’t bring either of them back, but would destroy both of us.”

She nuzzled into his neck, breathing him in. “Some wil ask that question and ascribe that motive to me. More wil think about it.”

“Fuck ’em.”

“Nooo…” she crooned, nibbling behind his ear. “We have a deal: exclusivity and convenience. You fuck no one but me.”

Elijah’s hands cupped her shoulder blades, keeping her close. He tilted his head to the side, giving her total access to the thick artery in his neck that carried his life’s blood. Such a submissive gesture by so dominant a male—one that came at great cost, she knew—stirred her blood. The hunter in her stretched in anticipation, while the woman in her melted.

With perfectly gauged strokes of her tongue, Vash expertly plumped his vein. She felt him swal ow hard and she smiled. “Did you know a vampire’s bite can give the sweetest sexual ecstasy?”

“Why do you think I won’t let you feed off anyone else?”

“I was too far gone to see to your pleasure in Vegas. I’m sorry for that. I want to please you, Elijah. I want to make you happy.”

“Trust me. I got mine in Vegas.” His hands, those warm and wonderful hands, slid down her back and cupped her buttocks, rocking her onto his raging erection. “And you please me al the time, in so many ways. But if you want to make it up to me anyway, I won’t mind.”

“Don’t you?” As she dragged her fangs delicately across his throat, she couldn’t fail to feel the fine tremors rippling through him. “You’re an apex predator, and you’re about to be another predator’s snack.”

“I’m a man,” he retorted gruffly, “who’s about to lie back, relax, and enjoy his woman riding him to a mind-blowing orgasm.”

“Why, you chauvinist,” she scolded with laughter in her voice. But her smile faded when she pul ed back to look at him. His face was etched into tense lines and his eyes, those jeweled eyes that saw right through her, were aglow. The man could tease, but the beast inside him was struggling with being food for another being. She gentled him with soothing strokes of her hands through his hair. “You don’t have to do this, Elijah. I can take a wrist from someone else. Quick and clean.”

“No.”

“A woman, if you prefer. We could go to a den. You could fuck me while I feed. It might turn you on to watch—”

“No, damn you.” His voice was deep and rumbling, nearly a snarl. He caught her by the back of the neck and yanked her to his throat. “I’l be the one who gives you what you need. Do it.”

Closing her eyes, she sucked in a deep, shaky breath and found her focus. His pleasure was more paramount than her need to eat, because she understood the gift he was giving her and how much it violated the very core of the predator he was. Taking pleasure from penetration took time for an Alpha male to adjust to. Some never did. She couldn’t bear for Elijah to regret feeding her. And if she was honest, she would admit she hoped he’d enjoy it enough to want to do it again. To ask her to do it to him.

Vash licked her dry lips and parted them, her tongue stroking along the vein in a lover’s caress. Twining her arms around his torso, she distracted him with the press of her breasts into his chest. Then she struck, sliding her fangs into the wildly pumping surge of rich, intoxicating blood.

He cursed and stiffened, then groaned as the rhythmic pul of her mouth was echoed by her sex around his cock. Holding his head motionless with one arm wrapped around his nape, she ran her other hand up and down his rigid back. She withdrew her fangs and licked the wound closed, sucking softly on his skin. Her mouth brushed along his throat, nibbling and kissing. When he relaxed, she struck again in a different place, sinking her fangs deep. Her cheeks hol owed on a long, drawing pul as he began to come.

He hissed, grinding her hips onto him, spil ing into her.

Drunk on him, she fel into the memories carried by his blood, selfishly seeking out his thoughts of her—the possessiveness, the pleasure, the pain. In return, she flooded his mind with her own thoughts of him. Making him see how he felt inside her, the fire that burned through her when she looked at him, the deep respect and admiration he inspired in her, and the ache that only his passion could sate.

“Vashti.” He jolted as she milked him into another climax, his big body shuddering as she came along with him, delicate muscles gripping him in the most intimate of embraces. Raw sounds of pleasure vibrated from his throat against her lips, rough groans of desire, a craving that was never ful y appeased.

Her hunger quenched, Vash retracted her fangs and sealed the twin punctures, massaging the vein that hammered with his roaring blood. With her hands on his shoulders, she shoved him back, her mouth curving as he sprawled beneath her. He was panting, his eyes bright and hot. Leaning over him, she raked her nails down his chest and lifted her hips, then lowered again, stroking his length with the slick clasp of her body.

She didn’t have the words this time around. She’d had them with Char. She’d had them as an angel. But she didn’t have them now, with him.

They were bottled up in her throat, burning.

But the beauty of Elijah was that he didn’t need them. He knew. He accepted her and wanted her the way she was. He grasped that her body could say al the things she couldn’t voice aloud. Her vampire body, which so perfectly connected to the primal sexuality of her lycan’s.

“Take what you need,” he said gruffly, understanding. “Whatever you need. And give me everything in return.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, riding him slow and sure, absorbing the powerful shock of pleasure every time she took him to the hilt. “I need you to come again. I need to feel it inside me.”

“I’m a man,” he pointed out, clearly amused. “There’s only so often I can do this without recovery time.”

Her mouth curved in a slow, delighted smile. “You’re stil hard.”

“You’re stil naked and fucking me.” He cupped her breasts, rol ing and tugging her painful y tight nipples with his forefingers and thumbs. “Don’t worry about me. I’m getting mine watching you get yours. Feeling you squeezing me like a fist. A hot, tight, perfect little fist. An orgasm is a just a bonus when the ride is this good.”

Vash straightened and ran her splayed hands down his taut pectorals and rippling abs. Pine needles dug into her knees, but she didn’t care. She had him again, right where she needed him—with her, connected to her, with nothing at al between them. No rank, no roles, no half truths or evasions. They were as bared as they would ever be. Committed. He was hers; she could make that claim now. And she was proud to be his.

“Once more,” she coaxed, rol ing her hips. “For me. I want to come again, Elijah, but I can’t without you.”

Arching up, he wrapped himself around her and rol ed, taking her beneath him. His forearms buffered her shoulders and back from the prickly ground, once again displaying the awareness and consideration that she so admired.

She was pinned yet cushioned as he took over, sliding in and out, his powerful muscles flexing and contracting against her. His eyes stayed on hers, his searching gaze more intimate than even the erotic flux and flow of his body’s possession of hers.

“Mine,” he said. “Say it.”

Her neck arched as her senses overloaded. She couldn’t see, could barely hear beyond the rushing of blood in her ears.

“Say it, Vashti,” he purred darkly with his lips to her throat, his breath gusting hotly over her skin. “Say it and I’l come for you.”

“Mine,” she gasped, wrapping her legs around him. “You’re mine.”

Cleansed and strengthened, Adrian slowly lowered into the backyard with a limp and satiated Lindsay in his arms. For the first time in days, he was thinking clearly, and he was grateful for that when he spotted an unknown car in the driveway. “Someone’s here.”

Lindsay lifted her head from his chest. “Can you do that mind-flashy-thingy and put some real clothes on me?”

He thought of the clothes she’d packed for the trip and wil ed a pair of black pants and an off-the-shoulder T-shirt on her. For himself, he went with slacks and an untucked white dress shirt. He was rol ing up the sleeves as he moved to open the back door for his mate.