“Hold me.” I was practically crying from the need for it.

He sat back on his knees and tugged me up off the bed, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against him. He wasn’t warm, but he seemed to absorb the frantic heat of my body, taking on my temperature as his own. I clung to him like a piece of flotsam in the midst of a stormy sea, the last thing floating when everything else was going down with the ship.

Holden stroked my hair with slow, soothing motions, whispering nonsense words into my ears. “Hush, hush, baby, nothing to fear, no worries, shhh.” He couldn’t know what there was to fear. I had everything to fear.

And the worst part was, I’d still go after Sutherland.

What I’d felt hadn’t been my own emotion, it had been my father’s, and I’d experienced it through the buffer of a dream. Whatever he was going through in real life, the volume of his pain, would be amplified a million times over.

I didn’t care about what the council was missing anymore. My sole mission was to find my father and bring him back from whatever was doing this to him.

I looped my arms around Holden’s back, trying to grab handfuls of his skin so I could bring him closer. If I could have climbed inside him like a sleeping bag, I would have. I wanted to wear his comfort like a jacket, wrapping myself in it.

The next best thing would be to have him in me.

“Holden…”

I wasn’t sure how my voice sounded to him, but to me it had never been so coarse with need before. The way I spoke his name was wanton and a little insane.

He pulled his head back to look at me, and his eyes were charcoal black, blotting out the beautiful brown. I couldn’t stare into the blackness, it was too stark. I closed my eyes and kissed him, dragging my nails roughly through his hair, anchoring his mouth to mine. He gave me no resistance, opening his lips for me, stroking my tongue with fevered, electric attention that sent sparks through my veins.

He cupped the back of my head in one hand while the other delved beneath the hem of my shirt, seeking out my bare skin. With each flick of his tongue and brush of his fingertips, I felt myself awakening, pulling free from the claws of the nightmare. The taste of him in my mouth was salty, almost coppery, a vibrant hint of the blood he’d taken the evening before.

“I need you,” I croaked, when he released my mouth to let me gasp for air. He didn’t need to breathe, so he could have consumed me with kisses. What a fine death that would have been.

“Are you sure?” He cupped my breasts, teasing my nipples into rigid points and torturing them by abrading the sensitive tips with his cool skin.

I sucked a breath through my teeth, as if I’d be able to refuse him when he was playing me like a sonata. What I needed from him tonight wasn’t about making choices or building relationships. I needed him to keep me from exploding into tiny fragments of fear and vanishing. I had to feel something real, and good, and he could give me what I craved.

“I’m sure.”

He stripped the Yankees shirt off me, throwing it to the floor and leaving me in nothing but the stupid thong he’d packed for me. I might as well have been naked for all the good it did in covering me.

His gaze caressed the front of my body like a third hand, appreciation for what he saw written across his face. “God, you’re beautiful.”

Coming from him the statement was ridiculous. He was the most gorgeous creature to have ever once lived, and for him to think of me as beautiful seemed outrageous.

“You too,” I mumbled, lowering my mouth to his exposed neck. My fangs were out, but I didn’t want to bite him, not yet. Biting was for later, when I wouldn’t associate fresh blood with fear. He’d need to go slow to get me there.

I raked my teeth delicately over his skin, and his whole body shuddered, his big hands clutching my waist tightly. He cupped my buttocks and lifted me onto his lap, seating me over his erection. The pressure of his hardness along my inner thigh felt glorious, even through the layer of his silk pajama pants. Why had I insisted he wear pants to bed? What false flourish of modesty had made me think that was a good idea?

I wrapped my fingers around his length, stroking him up and down, the silk slipping smoothly against his shaft. He tipped my head backwards with a tug on my hair and ran his tongue down the line of my throat until his face was nuzzled between my breasts. Each tightened nipple was lavished with his attention as he teased and licked, making sure they were painfully sensitive before he grazed them with his fangs.

The wicked sensation of it, dangerous but controlled, made me lose my grip on his cock, my hands flying to the back of his neck to keep his mouth in place. I moaned, but the sound was so feral I didn’t recognize myself.

With my attention focused on the ministrations of his mouth, I didn’t feel him move his hands until his fingers were inside the thin material of my underwear, stroking me in equal rhythm with his tongue. I was so taut from the feel of it, frantic with desire, I bit down on the top of his head, unable to think of what else to do.

His tongue and fingers stilled for a moment as if he wasn’t sure whether I’d bitten him out of passion or as a warning for him to stop. “Don’t stop,” I said. “Don’t ever stop.”

He chuckled, his laughter rumbling against my breast. “So you want to play rough, do you?”

I hadn’t bitten him hard. He’d need to wash his hair to get the blood out later, but it was barely a scratch. He’d heal in less than a minute.

“It was an accident,” I protested.

He pushed me down firmly into the soft nest of blankets and pillows. “I thought you said you didn’t want me to stop.”

“I don’t.”

“Good. Tell me what you want.”

He kept me pinned with one hand, his fingers loosely circling my neck while his other hand remained cupped over my sex, stroking in lazy, cruel, teasing gestures.

“That,” I gasped. “More.” I could barely remember how to speak, let alone form commands, and he hadn’t yet begun to really touch me.

He picked up the pace, alternating quick flicks with long strokes, never setting a rhythm I could follow and occasionally stealing my breath by inserting his finger inside me before resuming his campaign of driving me mad.

“Tell me what you want.”

I wanted him. I wanted the weight of him on top of me while he filled me inside, but I no longer knew how to form those desires into words.

“You,” I said at last, able to come up with something resembling a response to his request.

“You want me?”

I nodded furiously while he continued to toy with me, the intensity of his touch creating a ball of heat in my belly that fanned out through my whole body, making me feel light and hazy.

“But what do you want me to do?” Now I knew he was tormenting me on purpose, the evil prick. I clawed at his arms, and his fingers tightened around my throat, choking me, but in a purposeful, nonviolent way. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have crushed my windpipe with the same ease as another man could snap his fingers. This was a game, a twisted, wonderful game. “Tell me,” he insisted.

“I want you inside me,” I said, my words barely a whisper, using what air he allowed me to have.

He moved to withdraw his hand, but I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, holding him in place. “Oh you do want to play dirty with me, don’t you, my naughty girl?” I’d never heard him sound so…British before. His UK accent had long since slipped away once he’d adjusted to life in America, but his old life was there, sneaking into his vowels and coy consonants. He didn’t sound posh, not the way his American persona would lead people to believe. The accent sneaking through was all Northern, gritty and mean. I got a little wetter just to hear it.

“Keep talking,” I muttered, digging my nails into his wrist so he wouldn’t dream of releasing my throat. His grip didn’t clench farther—any more would border on risky—but he didn’t let up either. A pulse of his fingertips was warning enough he could clamp down harder at any moment, and my heart throbbed, with matching pulses hammering in my ears and groin.

“You like it when I talk this way?” he growled. I didn’t know how to reconcile this version of Holden with the one I knew. My Holden was sleek and manicured, everything in its right place, the pinnacle of handsome respectability.

This Holden was as much an animal as the beast living inside me. He was undone, and I loved him all the more for it. His usually slicked-back hair had fallen forward, sweeping over his forehead and half-hiding his wild eyes from me. When he grinned, the flash of fang was as much a sign of his arousal as it was a gesture from a predator used to mock its prey. He was telling me—in no uncertain terms—he meant to keep me, and I wouldn’t get away.

I arched my hips up to meet him, craving contact with something more than his fingers. His hand crept higher on my neck until he cradled my chin. Needing to taste some part of him but unable to rise up and go after what I wanted, I licked his thumb. He slipped the digit into my mouth, and I sucked hard, my fang nicking the skin, his blood pooling to the surface.

It wasn’t a real bite, just a scratch of teeth, but the taste of his blood in my mouth was like getting a hit off the most addictive drug possible. I didn’t want to believe I was as much a vampire as I was, but the way his blood drove me wild left little room to pretend. I sucked harder, trying to get as much from him as I could, but he pulled his hand back, locking it around my throat again.

“Bad girl.”

“Stop teasing and do something about it, then.”

His brow arched. “Was that a challenge, darling? I do love a challenge.”

God, his voice. When he went back to speaking normally after this was all through, I would miss this new voice. How had I known him so long and only heard it now? It hardly seemed fair he’d been denying me that part of himself.

“I’ll let you bite when I’m good and ready. Understood?” He gave my head a little shake. “Understood?”