Her Deep Desire

“And what does your wolf think of me?” he asked, his accent growing more husky with each word. He leaned towards me, reaching up and brushing a strand of my auburn hair behind my ear.

My pulse quickened. His proximity made my senses go haywire all of a sudden. “S-she recognized who you were immediately.”

Cassius’s amber eyes captivated me as they shifted to ice-blue. He brushed the backs of his fingers gently down my cheek. “That’s not what I asked, little one. What does your wolf think of me? Does she like what she sees in her God-given mate?”

Hell yes she did, without a doubt, but I couldn’t help thinking he was referring to me more so than my Wolf. Though we were technically one and the same, my Wolf trusted the vampire in front of me without question. I was not so sure yet. This was all so new, this matehood thing.

“She may like you, but I have yet to pass judgment.”

Cassius’s smug look told me I had said the right thing to both compliment and challenge him. He leaned in closer, and my breath hitched as anticipation swept through me and settled as an ache between my legs. But he fucking stopped just before our lips met. Him hovering so close, yet not touching me, was maddening. I wanted to close the small distance and kiss him, but that was exactly what he wanted me to do. My Wolf was howling in the back of my mind, all but demanding we eliminate the space between us, while I stubbornly refused.

“I know you want to kiss me,” he stated matter-of-factly. “The gold hunger in your eyes tells me your wolf wants this.” He traced my bottom lip with his calloused thumb. “It’s your elevated heartbeat, the blood rushing in your veins, and the scent of your arousal that tells me you want this as well.”

He grasped my chin and gently tilted my head to the side. Leaning down, he placed his cool lips on the column of my throat and shuddered. His lips quickly heated against my flushed skin as he began pressing kisses up my neck. His tongue gently laved the pulse point under my jaw as if he couldn’t resist, yet I could tell he was holding back. He wanted to do much more than lick my pulse, the vampire in him seeking my blood despite his previous words about his feeding being nothing but medicine . . . and that it wouldn’t affect me. His very proximity, where my Wolf could sense the predator hiding within him—the bloodthirsty one—was already having an effect on me.

Fear and arousal simultaneously surged through me as Cassius left a tingling trail down my neck this time. It was a heady experience being both scared and turned on by what the male before me could do to me.