She felt the blunt tip of one finger pressing into her, stretching her.

Madoc groaned. “So fucking tight,” he said against her breast. “But not for long.”

Madoc couldn’t think straight. He stared down at Nika’s naked body and all he could think about was getting inside her. He knew there was something he was supposed to do—something he was forgetting—but compared to taking her, everything else was unimportant.

Her blue eyes were darker than usual, more like twilight than a bright winter sky. Her mouth was swollen and red, her lips parted. A rosy flush spread down her neck and across her chest. Her nipple tightened against his tongue and she let out a soft groan.

She grabbed his head as if she actually had a chance at controlling him.

Something dark and powerful rose up inside him, balking at the challenge. No one was ever going to control him. He’d do what he damn well pleased, when he pleased.

And right now, what he pleased was getting his cock as deep inside Nika as possible. He wanted to feel her virgin-tight body yielding to him as he drove deep and hard.

He shifted his body so they were lined up just right and lifted her head so she could see. “You watch while I take you,” he ordered her.

Her blue eyes fixated on the space between them as the tip of his cock pressed hard, stretching her open. She was slick enough that he could slide in just a bit, but her muscles resisted the invasion.

“Relax,” he growled at her. “Don’t you dare fucking fight me.”

“I’m not,” she whispered.

She was lying. She had to be. She was trying to stop him.

A seething darkness seemed to swirl through him, demanding that he take her hard and fast. She was tempting him on purpose. Testing him.

Madoc wasn’t going to let that challenge go unanswered.

He surged forward, sinking deeper. Nika’s eyes fell shut and a gasp whispered out of her mouth. Her hands clenched around his arms as if she was trying to pull him closer.

He was definitely going to get a hell of a lot closer before they were done.

Madoc ripped his arms out of her grasp and pushed her thighs higher. His hands looked huge against her legs, almost brutal.

A faint flicker of worry made him hesitate for a brief moment before it was washed away by a surge of need.

Her head fell back to the bed. Her tight pussy was quivering around him, so slick and hot he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer before he came. And when he did, he wanted her to feel it—to be so deep inside her she’d never again be able to forget she belonged to him.

Madoc pulled back just enough that he could see her wetness shining on his cock before he slid back in and kept sliding. He felt some resistance, but he wasn’t going to let it stop him. He pushed past, wringing a gasping cry from Nika, and finally, after several rocking thrusts, he was where he belonged.

Her breathing was fast and her heartbeat was so frantic he could see her breast trembling in time with her pulse. The flush of color and the sheen of perspiration covering her chest were proof she was enjoying what he had to give.

Not that it mattered. All he cared about now was finishing what he’d started.

Madoc pulled away and surged back, shaking her body with the power of his stroke. Her fingers reached blindly for him, landing on his chest.

He felt the bare branches of his lifemark reach for her, arching toward her touch as if starved for it.

Too late. It was too late for her to save him, but he didn’t fucking care. Right now, with her supple body beneath him, her tight pussy hugging his cock, and her fingers on his skin, nothing else seemed to matter.

Madoc began to move, setting a hard, fast pace. He wasn’t going to last long the first time he took her, but he wanted to wring as much pleasure as he could from it before he gave in.

Sweat cooled his back. The bed rocked, making the floorboards squeak. From somewhere outside the room, he heard voices, but they meant nothing. The only sound that mattered was the faint sighs lifting from Nika that were growing louder with every move he made.

His body tightened as his climax neared. His movements became more frantic, his pace faster. A brilliant tingling swept over his skin, sinking into the base of his spine. He pushed Nika’s hips higher, buried himself deep enough that she let out a grunt; then he let go.

Mind-numbing pleasure gripped him hard as he spent himself within Nika’s slick body, spurting inside her over and over again. He went weak, collapsing over her, panting.

He felt her squirm beneath him. “I can’t breathe,” she said. She didn’t sound like a satisfied woman, replete with pleasure. In fact, she sounded upset.

Whatever.

Madoc flipped onto his back to give her room, and that was when he saw the stain of blood smearing his cock.

That flicker of worry that had nagged him before came back with a vengeance. He pushed himself up and saw the red spot on the sheets just as the bedroom door burst open.

Logan stood there, staring at them, almost in a panic. “I smell blood.”

“Get out!” yelled Nika, covering her nakedness with her arms.

The Sanguinar’s eyes moved over her body and a killing rage consumed Madoc. He let out a feral growl and leaped from the bed. Logan’s eyes went to his dick and a look of understanding fell over the bloodsucker.

“Madoc, no.” Nika was behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist as if she could actually stop him from killing the leech. “Don’t do this. He was only worried about me. He knows about the ring—about how you’re out of time.”

It was the feel of her hard little nipples against his naked back that stopped him. He wanted to fuck her again more than he wanted to kill Logan, but only by a little.

“Get out,” he ordered Logan.

“You can’t let the others see you like this,” Logan told him. “They sent Chris to the Slayers only a few hours ago. You’ll be next.”

“Like hell.”

Logan looked over his shoulder as if someone was coming. “Now, Nika. There’s no more time.” And then he shut the door.

Madoc spun around to face her. “What the hell was he talking about?” he asked.

“This,” she said as she reached up and grabbed his luceria in her fist.

The band that had been with him his entire life broke open and slithered away from his neck. Nika lifted her arms to fasten it around her slender throat and pointed to the floor. “On your knees, Madoc,” she said as she handed him his sword.

Instincts embedded in him for centuries drove him to his knees as he scored a cut over his heart and uttered the vow, “My life for yours.” He dipped his finger in the blood flowing down his ribs and pressed it against the luceria, grazing her breasts with his forearm.

The pale band shrank to fit close to her throat. It looked so fucking beautiful there, all he could do was stare.

Nika’s shoulders slumped in relief. “About freakin’ time,” she muttered, then in a louder voice said, “You’re mine, Madoc. If you go out to kill yourself again, you’re taking me with you.”

The weight of her vow—such as it was—crashed down on top of him, crushing the air from his lungs. That seething darkness that had woven its way through his soul seemed to freeze in place, cowering at the power in her words.

In that instant, the little sliver of the man he’d been born to be sparked back to life and he realized what he’d done. Her blood was smeared over her inner thighs. He’d taken her hard, ripping her virginity from her as if it were of no more worth than a discarded tissue.

Shame burned hot in his chest. Every selfish moment seared itself in his mind, ripping a low cry of grief from his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed out, knowing the words would never be enough to make up for what he’d done. He’d ruined something beautiful. Destroyed it. She’d given herself to him and he’d ground that gift beneath his heel.

Madoc reached for her, ready to beg for her forgiveness, but it was too late. His world faded and the vision the luceria wanted him to see descended upon him.

Madoc was flung into Nika’s mind. He saw her life through her eyes, felt it through her skin.

He felt the claws of the sgath that had hurt her the night her family was attacked. They raked over her skin, making her bleed as the burn of poison entered her bloodstream. He felt the sgath’s slimy tongue trail along her flesh, lapping up her blood.

Around her, he sensed a buzzing movement too fast to see. He tried to slow down the passage of time so he could make out what that movement was, but all he could see was the vague shape of a man pressing his hands against her. It wasn’t one of the Sanguinar, but the feel of what he did had that same kind of tingling quality that healing did.

Someone had saved her life that night. That was why she hadn’t died from the sgath poison.

Madoc wished like hell he could see who it was so he could thank the man for giving him a chance to keep Nika safe.

Time resumed its normal flow. Nika was weak and dizzy. She couldn’t move. A lethargic daze had settled over her, but her eyes remained fixed on her baby sister.

Madoc heard the vow she’d given Tori never to leave her—the vow she’d kept to this day.

Nika’s world winked out and when she came to, she was in a hospital. Fever burned inside her as she fought off the remains of the sgath poison. One of the hospital staff hovered around her, poking and prodding her, injecting her with medicine that did no good. Nika’s sole focus was on Tori, and that was what gave her the strength to keep fighting.

It was days after Nika had been sent home that the first attack on her mind came.

Madoc reached for his sword, only to find he had no sword, no body. He was huddled in a corner of Nika’s memories, unable to do more than witness what happened to her.

Rage made him flail at the boundaries of this vision, but in the end, he was helpless. All he could do was suffer through as Nika had, experiencing whatever it was the luceria demanded of him.

Nika was ripped from her body, flung through space, and forced to inhabit the alien mind of the sgath that had taken her blood. Panic exploded inside her. She knew this was no nightmare. It was real.

She tried to stop it—to pull back into her body—but the creature’s hold on her was too strong and her mental defenses too weak to fight it.

That night, Nika was along for the ride, trapped inside a monster, forced to hunt and kill a teenage boy. She felt like it was her fault—that she should have been able to stop the thing from killing. The stain that failure left on her soul still haunted her to this day.

Madoc wanted to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault. The death of that boy wasn’t her sin. She had still been a child herself, only twelve. She wasn’t responsible for the acts of an evil monster.

Even as Madoc reached for her to gather her in his arms and convince her to forgive herself of a crime she did not commit, he knew it was futile in this bodyless existence.

As the Synestryn fed on the boy, one of its fellow sgath attacked it, fighting for the kill. A feeding frenzy started, and the sgath that had taken Nika’s blood was attacked, its flesh eaten by its hungry brothers.

Even as Nika’s mind rebelled at such an appalling display, she had the instinctive knowledge that being inside the sgath when it died could kill her as well.