Blink.

Blinding white hot light engulfed everything, decimating the city, every building, every car, every paving slab, every blade of grass. It raged, like some great mythical beast that sought to burn everything to cinder and reduce the whole world to ashes.

Blink.

I opened my eyes wide and replaced the searing glare with fairy lights, thousands of fairy lights stretching out across London, draped over the iron landscape.

Blink.

As soon as I closed my eyes again, the fairy lights became swinging amber orbs. Swinging amber orbs became venomous amber stares. And then it was all gone again, engulfed in that awful, blazing light that had been imprisoned inside for so long that its hunger felt untameable.

I saw flashes of them all, of Brandon, of Drachmann, every single one of them knocked out cold from the blinding light. But mostly I saw Philippe. Poor Philippe Charmonde. My friend. My enemy. Even though he was gone, I could still feel his anguish like it had latched onto my soul, a stain that would take an eternity of scrubbing to weaken its presence. A tear slipped down my face as my vision blurred by the many that waited to follow in its path and I wiped it away bitterly and covered my eyelids with cool hands, wishing that I could banish the heat that lingered under my skin as easily as I could banish the heat that pooled in my eyes.

Perched on the high wall that bordered the school grounds, my legs dangled over the side as I watched the city sparkle in the distance. It was cold, probably too cold to be sitting outside at this time of year, but the chill of the night air soothed me and the inside of the school building had just seemed too confining, too oppressive. I needed to be away from the others, even from Lucius who had studied me with more than the usual amount of solemnity in his expression when I'd returned two nights before. Being around him had become something of a comfort, a need even, but as soon as I saw him, I'd felt like I was back to square one, fearing his company, only now it wasn't his abilities that terrified me. It was my own.

The anger I'd felt. The rage. The endless burning. The knowledge that whatever I'd done – whatever had happened – was something so uncontrollable that I now didn't trust myself around the ones I trusted and cared for the most. Those powers had exploded without warning and I'd unleashed them, so consumed by my own fury that all control had been lost to me. It had felt like watching a volcano erupt and being unable to stop the lava as it devoured everything, except of course, I was the volcano. I was the lava. I was destruction and mayhem and retribution.

The problem was, at the time, in that very moment, I hadn't even wanted to control it. I'd enjoyed the feeling of power as it flowed through my veins and burst out of me in great reams of light and fire. In fact, I had revelled in every awful terrifying second of what I had done. Revelled. And what's more, now that those powers had been released, I could feel them still burning below the surface, as if the only thing that would quench the fire would be for me to release them again. They wanted out. They wanted me to use them. To become what I had in that barn. The desire to unleash them was frightening. Intoxicating. 

I stretched, uncomfortably arching my spine and rolling my shoulders to try to ease the tension that seemed to have taken root since my wings had burst free from my back. They were gone again, of course, but the after-effects seemed enduring this time, the puckered ridges of scar tissue throbbing painfully almost as if to remind me: we are still here, we are still here.

The creak of the door wrenched my gaze reluctantly away from the city lights and with a slight turn of my head, detecting his scent as it was captured on the gentle night breeze, I smiled wryly at the inevitability of Fenton's appearance. Since we'd got back, he'd been one of the only ones who seemed unabashed to intrude on my self-imposed alone-time. Everyone else kept their distance, but not Fenton. Never Fenton. He approached the wall where I sat, his face more gentle than the hard lines and blasé expression that I was used to from the aloof vampire. He'd been looking at me that way since we'd returned and it was starting to bug the shit out of me, although it was easier to cope with than the slack-jawed, stunned look of awe that he'd worn when he'd appeared, having witnessed the blinding white light shining through every crack or gap in the wooden slats of the barn. He'd entered, fearing the worst and instead found me alive and on my knees surrounded by the unconscious bodies of Drachmann, Brandon and the rest of the Varúlfur. His jaw had dropped. His eyes had widened with questions he didn't dare to ask. And then with the military precision he was famed for, he'd switched to rescue mode, managing to release Harper from his binds and getting us out of there, before our captors could regain consciousness. The questions came later of course, ones that I was still struggling to know how to answer.

Climbing the broken wall, where the bricks had formed into steps of sorts, he sat beside me, looking out at the city and intermittently examining his fingernails to ensure no dirt lurked there. A vampire's work was always pretty gruesome, but I was constantly amazed at how Fenton always managed to look so immaculately neat and clean.

"Clayton said you relieved him of day watch." His voice was soft, but there was no mistaking the wariness in his tone, as if he was preparing himself for another battle.

I shrugged. "I figured he needed a break."

"You need a break. You haven't slept since...."

The tension returned, spiking across my shoulder blades, as I cut him off. "I'm fine," I said tersely.

"Listen, you might be able to...you know...." He waggled his fingers on the air, alluding to whatever abilities I possessed, as if I could somehow shoot them from my hands like lasers. "But you're not all powerful. You still need to sleep or you'll burn out."

"Ironic choice of phrase," I remarked dryly.

Dropping his hands into his lap, he studied my face; that damned intrusive stare searching for something in my expression.

"Look," he said and I could feel a Fenton lecture coming on. His penchant for a stern scolding was almost as predictable as his penchant for irritating the crap out of me. "I still don't really know what the fuck happened in there the other night and I hope that at some point you'll tell me and sooner rather than later so I know what we're dealing with, but I do know you've looked as scared as hell since I found you. You're distant and you're jittery and you're making everyone else feel jittery too, because they can sense something is going on with you. So do me a favour and sort it out, okay? Besides, it's fucking freezing out here and I don't particularly want to keep coming and finding you."

"Then don't bother. I'd hate for you to get frostbite in all the wrong places."

He grinned, shaking his head. "Well personally, I'd rather leave you to freeze, but I have my orders."

"Don't tell me: Harper?" I couldn't help but smile back when he rolled his eyes in exasperation. "How is the patient?" I asked.

"Well, put it this way," he said, raising a perfectly arched brow. "He complained that the clothes I gave to him didn't fit and then told me to get my scrawny arse outside to look for you before he gouged out my throat with a rusty spoon."

"Oh," I remarked. "Much better then."

I took one final look out at the city, marvelling at how beautiful it looked from afar, how perfect it seemed from up here, a crystalline oasis sparkling with such effervescent life.

"I guess I should go and check on him. I'd hate to see him open you up like dessert."

******

"You took your time," Harper said, irritation wrinkling his brow. "Did the puppy get lost along the way?" He sniffed. "Doesn't surprise me, the fact he can tie his own bootlaces still astounds me, I was clearly expecting too much that he might be able to follow a simple instruction."

I leant against the door frame of the headmaster's office, where Harper sat, his legs sprawled out on a mess of blankets on the floor. My gaze briefly touched on the bruises and cuts visible on his forearms, neck and head, my heart sinking with the knowledge of how each one must have been inflicted. Every one made me cringe but it wasn't any of those wounds that made my stomach twists into knots or make me want to wrench my eyes away. It wasn't any of those marks that had made me avoid him as much as I possibly could since we'd returned.

It was the ones that I had made. The ones I had inflicted.

I hadn't remembered how or why the fire had stopped burning. One minute I had been in the air, levitated above them all. The light had burned brighter until there had been nothing but the light. And then there had been nothing at all. Nothing but the unconscious bodies of my enemies all around me and Harper, still suspended upside down, knocked out cold just as they were. Everywhere I looked I saw the angry burns afflicting their faces, I saw how the skin around their eye sockets blazed an alarming pink and I knew instinctively that I had done that to them. To all of them. Even Harper.

Fortunately for him, there had been no seven days of darkness as had happened to Josiah when he'd dared to offend the angels, but it sickened me to know that I'd done that to Harper, albeit unwittingly. He'd been caught in the crossfire, a casualty of the fury that had been directed at everyone else but him, yet knowing I hadn't meant to do it didn't make me feel any better. I'd still done it. I'd still blinded him.

Blinking the memory away that haunted me, I stepped inside the room, closing the door behind me. "You're too hard on him," I said, crossing over to where he was and sitting down, pulling my knees up into my chest and wrapping my arms around them. "That puppy dragged you and me out of the viper's nest. We'd be dead without him."

"We'd be dead without you."

I shifted uncomfortably and looked away, only for Harper to grasp my chin and turn my face back towards him.

"Megan, it's okay, you know."

Frowning, I reached out and gingerly touched a fingertip to the tender skin around his eye. "How can it be okay? Look at what I did to you."

He shrugged. "So I got a little sunburn, big deal. I'm still here, aren't I?" His hand drifted to my neck, his thumb brushing my throat. "You think I don't know you by now, angel? You think I don't know that you're on the edge, treading that fine line between control and panic and doing anything you can not to face up to the truth?"

"Do you blame me? You saw the truth. You were there. What I did....."

"Was terrifying and awe-inspiring and everything that it was meant to be. So what?"

I balked at his words. "So what? So what? Harper, I lost it. I completely fucking lost it. I could have killed everyone in that barn, you included. How do you think that makes me feel? Knowing that I have that kind of power and I can't control it."

"What makes you think you couldn't control it?"

"B-because I just couldn't. I could feel it, Harper. It was....." I thought back to that moment, remembering the fire, the endless raging fire that had poured out of me. "Wild. Untameable. And it wouldn't stop."

"But it did, Megan. It did. And you were the one who made it stop, whether you think you did or not. Listen to me, I won't lie to you, okay? I saw what happened, I saw what you became and yes, it was....well, like nothing I've ever experienced in my whole miserable damn life. It was like being in the presence of something....fuck, I don't know. I've never given too much credence to religion, you know that. Watching my father destroy himself over and over again, all because he put so much faith in trying to be a good man, a selfless man, all because his religion told him that forgiveness was everything, I knew way back then that no God would ever run my life. No God would ever govern my every thought or action. In fact, I think I spent much of my life doing whatever the fuck I wanted, in spite of God – maybe to spite Him. Or to spite my father and in my world, that was kind of one and the same thing. God, Lucifer, archangels and higher powers? What does someone like me care for any of that?" His grip on the back of my neck tightened. "But the other night, I cared, Megan. Maybe for the first time in my life, I even understood my father a little bit more, I understood why. And do you know what else I know?"

I shook my head.

"I know that you could have killed every single person there. Hell, I'd wager you could have wiped out everyone in a ten mile radius if you'd wanted to."

"And that's meant to make me feel better how exactly?"

"Because you didn't. That's control, Megan. That's real fucking control right there. To have that kind of power, to be able to destroy and decimate in the blink of an eye, is one thing. To have that kind of power and know instinctively when to stop, well that's something else entirely." He leaned forward, smiling. "Although of course, I would have preferred it if you'd fried every single last one of them, but considering I quite like being alive, I'm glad you didn't decide to turn the place into a giant fireball."

"Hmmm," I said. "For someone who likes being alive, you did a pretty stupid thing running off like that. I'm starting to think you're a real masochist at heart." I rubbed my palm along his arm patterned with the temporary scars of his torture.

"Your husband really did a number on me, huh?" He flashed a grin. "Still, I suppose I can't really blame him, after all, I did fuck his wife. And enjoyed it immensely, I have to say."

I frowned. "It's not funny, Harper. You could have died."

Propping himself up a little straighter against the wall, he ran the back of his knuckles softly down my cheek. "Yes, but I didn't. I was saved by an angel of all things. Even you have to see the irony in that?" He chuckled, low and deep. "Heinous vampire assassin, murderer of many, jubilant committer of sin, gets saved by an angel. I reckon your boss might be wanting a word with you when He sees you next because I'm not sure you got the memo about saving men like me. You might need to spend some time familiarising yourself with the company handbook again."

"I don't think I read it the first time around."

"Ah, a rogue agent, huh? Rebellious. I like that." His fingertips found my wrist and he lightly brushed the pad of his thumb over my pulse. The sensation was immediate, like flicking a switch that sent a crackle of electricity surging over my skin.

"You should be resting," I scolded.

"I'm done resting." He nodded down to his crotch where the hardness straining against his jeans was unmistakable. "Can't you see?"

I afforded him a ghost of a grin, narrowing my eyes. "I should think they could see that from space."

"Like the eighth wonder of the world," he mused.

Typical Cain, always so bloody arrogant. "Oh I wouldn't go that far...."

"No?" He grabbed my hand and placed it between his legs, those damn hypnotic eyes locking with mine. "You think it's wonderful."

I squeezed playfully, smiling when he gasped a whisper of breath. His lips parted as I massaged him there gently and I thought about all the places on my body where those lips had been, where I wanted them to go. He shifted under my hand, but didn't attempt to touch me, instead he just sat with his back against the wall, his stare full of challenge.

"Actually, I think you think it's more wonderful than I do." I removed my hand, watching with wicked glee as his face fell, a flicker of uncertainty causing his cocky veneer to waver. "You really should rest, you know."

I moved to sit beside him, picking up a dog-eared and slightly damp copy of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men from a stacked of discarded books that were piled up nearby and flicked through the pages with a mocking nonchalance. His hot stare burned into me for a few seconds but I held firm, enjoying his frustration way more than I should have.

"Right," he finally said, climbing to his feet and sounding far less irked than I'd hoped, even though I heard his faint groan of effort as he did so. "In that case, I'm going for a shower."

"What? Didn't you have one earlier?"

He grinned, waggling his eyebrows. "Yeah, but that one was to get rid of all the blood and shit. Now I need to go cool off." Grabbing at the hem of his t-shirt, he pulled it up over his head and threw it down at my feet. I swallowed hard as my eyes raked over the broad hard muscles of his chest, his taut stomach and that wicked dragon tattoo that seemed to taunt me as it curled tantalisingly around his hip bone.

"You're going to walk naked from here to the shower block? Someone will see you!"

Harper unzipped his flies, the open-V revealing a smattering of dark hair. "Well, then they'll get to see what all the fuss is about, won't they?"

I watched, slack-jawed, as he proceeded to push his jeans down over his toned thighs, letting them drop down to his ankles, where he tugged them off each leg and kicked them playfully towards me. My mouth went dry as he slipped his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and removed them as well. I caught a glimpse of just how hard he was, before he turned and headed towards the door.

With a gasp, I scrambled to my feet and rushed in front of him, barring his way. "There is no way you are going to walk the corridors naked."

"Oh really?" He folded his arms across his chest, raising a mocking brow at me. "And why not?"

"W-well," I stammered. I wasn't sure my mouth had ever felt this dry. "Y-you'll catch a cold, for a start."

He leaned forward slightly, an arrogant smile adorning his stupid handsome face. "We don't catch colds. And besides..." He took a step towards me. My back hit the closed door harder than I'd expected it to, making it judder in the frame. "I'm feeling pretty warm right now. I'm sure I'll be okay."

I gritted my teeth. "You're not going out there, Cain. I mean it."

Placing one hand on the door just beside my head, he moved in closer, until I could feel his breath tickle my face. "Then it looks like we might have a problem. A big problem," he added with a wink.

"Oh really? What's that?" I was aware my voice was taking on a tight, squeaky tone.

"Well, thanks to you, I really need a cold shower and if I don't get one, then it looks as if I'm going to have to take matters into my own hands."

My breath left me in one fell swoop as he did just that, taking himself in his hand and running his palm smoothly up and down his length.

"Stop," I whispered.

"Can't."

And he didn't and I couldn't drag my eyes away. I watched, knowing that my cheeks were flushed, knowing that his heavy gaze was fixed intently on my face as he pleasured himself. Watching me, watching him. He was close, too close now and I ached for him, torn between wanting those hands on me and half-hypnotised by what he was doing and not wanting him to stop. He gripped himself firmer, increasing the pace and I was losing it, really fucking losing it as the heat rushed between my thighs, radiating out into the base of my stomach.

"I knew this girl once," he said and my eyes flickered to his, suddenly irrationally filled with jealousy for whoever this girl was. Intense emerald drenched my skin, hungrily coveting my mouth. "She looked like you. Smelt a bit like you. Dressed a bit differently, you know, not that I ever cared much for her clothes apart from this one dress she once wore."

His breath hitched for a moment and then grew calm again, controlled and steady even though his hand was still caressing.

"The first time I saw her was in a photograph. Expensive coat, nice shoes, on her way to work with a takeaway coffee in one hand, cellphone in the other. I remember looking at the picture of this girl and thinking 'you have everything you could possibly want' – because I knew things, you see, I knew things I shouldn't have known because I'd made it my business to know these things – 'you have everything and yet why do you look so dead behind the eyes?' The second time I saw her, when I actually saw her, everything changed. Everything. Because as I watched her from across the bar and she looked straight at me, I realised I'd been wrong. She wasn't dead inside at all, she was alive. So fucking alive that it took my breath away. So fucking alive that I knew right then that I had to have her, I had to know what it was like to be with her, to be inside her, to feel that alive just for one night. From then onwards, from the first moment our eyes met, she consumed me. My thoughts, my feelings, my dreams, my every waking moment, she consumed me." He tongued the tip of one elongated incisor. "She still consumes me."

His lips brushed mine, burning me with the lightest of touches. His hand was still moving, his breath becoming more ragged with every stroke.

"What happened to her? This girl of yours?"

Drawing back slightly, he looked into my eyes, seeing so much more than I'd ever wanted him to see. He always had seen too much, right from that very first moment when my eyes had met his across that bar, deafened by the pounding bass of the music, exhausted from running the gauntlet of the crowded club, running the gauntlet of my marriage, my life.

"I killed her," he said, that familiar darkness creeping across his features. There he was, that demon who had intoxicated me from the first time we'd met, that demon that still intoxicated me.

"Don't tell me," I murmured, tracing my fingers over some of the small hand-inked tattoos on his neck and chest. "Best thing you ever did, right?"

"Mmmm," he agreed. Miniscule beads of perspiration peppered his brow. "Killing her, loving her, fucking her...all pretty much on par with each other."

"You've added to the list. Impressive." My hands wandered lower, slowly, languidly, appreciating every hard line, every smooth expanse of muscle, like I'd mapped them a hundred times with my fingertips.

"Well I just live to impress you...." He smiled lazily, his eyes glinting with mischief. "Are you impressed, angel?"

Leaning forward, I ran my tongue slowly down his ear lobe. "Not yet, demon. So why don't you try......." I nipped at the soft flesh. "Go on. Impress me."

Chuckling against my neck, he deftly unbuttoned my shirt, tugging it quickly over my shoulders and pulling it down my arms where the sleeves bunched at my wrists. Gathering the fabric in his fist, he wound it round his hand, forcing my arms behind my back so I couldn't touch him and I so badly wanted to touch him then. The need was maddening, frustrating. My whole body burned for him. With his other hand, he trailed his fingertips down my throat, tracing over the soft curve of my breast, toying with the edge of the cup of my bra. Toying with me. My nipples stiffened with an aching anticipation of what was to come and when his mouth covered one, his hot breath sending goosebumps over my skin, I couldn't stop the whispered plea from escaping my lips.

"Please," I moaned.

He sucked hard, much harder than I expected and I cried out, unable to do anything but let him devour the puckered flesh, rolling my nipple over his tongue again and again, scraping his teeth over the sensitive skin. Heat effervesced between my legs, making me jut out my hips, unable to keep still as his mouth found my other breast and tormented me just as he had before. He carried on like that for what seemed like forever, moving from one to the other, teasing me to the point of pain each time until I thought I might cry with frustration and want. I couldn't bear the torment, I couldn't bear the slow, exquisite torture. The dull throb between my legs intensified with every suck, every bite.

With a hunger that made my legs weaken, his lips travelled down my stomach, stopping briefly to flick his tongue over the shallow well of my navel. Dropping to his knees, he pulled the shirt from my wrists before doing the same to my jeans, yanking them roughly down my legs, until I stood in front of him in only my underwear. Grasping my hips, he held me there for a moment, resting back on his heels as his eyes raked over my body. His gaze was ferociously bold as he drank in every inch of me.

"Fuck, Megan, how is it that I can never get enough of you? What the hell did you do to me?"

He pressed his mouth against my thigh and I curled my hand into his hair, feeling the vibration of his moan against my skin. When he pulled away again, I wanted to grab him and hold him there, the thought of him not touching me was agony, but when he looked up and I saw the desire overwhelming him just as much as it was me, a small tinder flame of triumph curled warmly in my belly.

"Say it again," he urged.

"Please," I whispered. "I want you there....now. Please."

With a smirk, he brushed his fingertips over the triangle of silky material, a whisper of a touch that sent a static shock shooting right down to my toes. Slipping his fingers underneath the fabric, he pulled them down over my thighs, leaving a path of kisses along the base of my stomach as he did so. With his palm flat against my pubic bone, he slid his thumb between my legs, grinning as my body reacted and heat pooled at my core. He watched his own hand caress me in slow, maddening circles, looking at me there so intently, slicking a tongue across his lips. When he pushed a finger easily inside me, I gasped out loud with approval, pushing my hips towards him, needing more, demanding more.

"Oh," he said, his eyes sparkling with appreciation. "You really missed me, didn't you? I can feel how much you missed me."

"Yes." I hitched a breath as he removed it, lingering there for a second before replacing it with two fingers instead and curling them slightly as he moved them inside me. "So damn much."

I was already lost from nothing but the delicious movement of his skillful hand as he stroked and caressed me. The first touch of his tongue to my most sensitive area sent my already overloaded sensors into meltdown and I whispered my plea over and over again as he took me into his mouth, tasting me, consuming me.

"Harper, I can't..." I moaned. "I can't hold on."

I felt his lips curl into a smile against my skin. "Then don't. Let go, Megan, I want to feel you let go."

I didn't need telling twice, although by then I was way beyond the point of control. Fisting my hands in his hair, I pulled him against me again, holding him there as great weaves of heat rippled through me, cascading through every vein, every muscle, every nerve-ending. I leant back against the door, relaxing into the hard wood, accepting the blissful throbbing that still radiating between my thighs where he was now planting soft kisses as if to soothe the tender skin.

Rising to his feet, he studied me for a moment, his eyes running over my flushed cheeks, my damp skin, and then he kissed me hard, slipping his tongue into my mouth.

"See how beautiful you taste?" he murmured against my lips, running his hands down the sides of my breasts, following the curve of my hips where he grasped my thighs and lifted me up with a grunt. I felt momentarily guilty for the physical effort when he so clearly still should have been resting, but all that was swept aside when I wrapped legs around him, feeling the warmth of his skin press hard against mine.

Carrying me over to his make-shift bed, he put me down onto the blankets and I unashamedly opened my legs for him, feeling the buzz of his eyes greedily coveting my body. All the bruises and cuts in the world couldn't have dulled the sight of him as he knelt between my thighs. Looking at him naked still sent a ripple of pleasure through me, just as it had the first time when I'd been so fired up by the danger and thrill of being with him, of knowing that I'd crossed the line and gone so far that there was no possible way back. And although now the balance had been levelled up between us and I was no longer the innocent angel to his devil, I still basked in that dark, dangerous part of him, I still lived for how he made me feel when we were like this together. I felt wanton and bold. I felt like I'd do just about anything to satiate my lust for him.

As if reading my mind, he laughed softly. "Look at you. So damn brazen now. I think I might have created a monster."

"Yes," I agreed, letting my gaze wander down to his crotch. "A hungry one at that."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh you're always hungry," he said as he took himself in his hand once more, guiding himself to where I waited to devour him. I groaned with irritation as he hesitated there, teasing me. "But that's okay because I'm hungry too. In fact, I'm fucking ravenous."

With one firm stroke, he pushed himself inside me, hard and deep enough to make me suck in a breath and arch my back. Even he gasped as he filled me, relishing the heat as it enveloped him, as it enveloped us both. His eyes widened for a split second, his fingers digging into my hips as he tugged me closer against him and we remained like that for a moment, locked together, before he grinned lasciviously and withdrew slightly, only to thrust into me again. He played that game for a while and I savoured each delicious thrust, sometimes exquisitely slow and torturous, sometimes hard and vigorous.

As his breath became more ragged with each movement of his hips, I could see he was playing dangerously close to the line, his excitement reaching towards the dizzy heights of climax before I was ready to let go again.

Reaching up, I snaked a hand around the back of his neck, forcing his mouth onto mine, where I sucked gently on his lower lip. "Quit playing, Cain," I murmured.

I lay back down, a smile dancing at the corners of my mouth as I raised my hands above my head. The move was provocative, challenging, and I knew instinctively that he wouldn't be able to resist. Gripping my thigh, he raised my leg as he leant over me and held my wrists down with his other hand. I squirmed underneath him, feeling the intense pressure of his groin pressed against mine, the burning heat of his hardness inside me. He locked eyes with me and began to move again, only this time there was nothing slow and torturous about his thrusts. Each one came with a scorching, intense force that made me unable to stop the breathless gasps from escaping my lips.

Again and again he grinded against me, so deep, so hard, so immensely fulfilling that I couldn't even begin to fathom when I ended and he began. We'd always had passion, we'd always had something raw and animalistic but this was different. I never wanted to be without him, without this. It was everything. We were everything and I didn't want it to end but I could feel it building again, I could feel him drawing near yet when it hit, I wasn't prepared for the violence of his climax. Biting down hard on his lip, his final thrust was perhaps the hardest yet as he emptied himself into me, bucking and jerking his hips as he came in great spasms.

I moaned as a spot of blood seeped up from the tiny puncture hole on his lip where his incisor had pierced the skin and I knew exactly what I wanted. As he fell on top of me, releasing my hands and burying his face in my hair, his breath ragged in my ear, I bit down hard on his throat, moaning with wild pleasure as the first hot rush of blood gushed into my mouth. He stiffened against me and I wrapped my legs around his waist and grabbed handfuls of his hair, lapping at the sweet coppery liquid, feeling the warmth of it on my tongue.

"Fuck, Megan," he groaned. "Fuck, yes."

I was still drinking from him when the insistent throbbing intensified at my core, still drinking as the climax overwhelmed me, sending electrified pulses shooting down my thighs and into the base of my stomach. I could have tasted him forever. I wanted to taste him forever.

Finally, when we were both spent, our bodies damp with perspiration and the air was alive with the scent of blood and sex, we lay together, still entwined.

"So?" he said, his voice laced with a deeply satisfying exhaustion.

I turned to look at him, wondering how I ever existed before I laid eyes on that face. How I ever breathed.

"Are you impressed?"

I slicked my tongue over my lips, smiling at the taste of him that still lingered there.

"Oh, always," I whispered. "Endlessly."