Page 135 of Blood Mosaic

“You didn’t choose this life,” he continued, “but you can make the most of it if you want. You can dance on mountaintops and pirouette on the seafloor. But you cannot do any of that if you live in regret or wish that you were dead.”

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers. Her clear blue gaze captured him, and the careful words he’d been about to say caught in his throat. A strange, creeping awareness teased the edges of his mind.

Deep behind the cage of his ribs, Oleg’s heart gave a single thump. “Tatyana Vorona, I would see you dance.”

She stood on her toes again, but this time she offered her mouth to him in a slow, velvet kiss that stirred his blood and drenched him in heat.

Careful.

Careful.

She was stronger now; he couldn’t break her.

But can she break you?

Tatyana seduced his mouth, her lips moving with aching tenderness as she learned the curves and lines of his kiss.

She had no elemental control, so when her amnis crawled from her body and slid over his skin, Oleg hissed in pleasure, ignoring the unconscious intrusion of her energy into his.

Her amnis was as eager as her mouth.

His cock roared to life, thrilled by the naive intimacy as her power curled and melded with his own.

Tatyana had no idea how forward and how vulnerable she was being. If Oleg had his way, she would never know. He would bind her to him so thoroughly, she would never want another lover and never know what she’d offered him in innocence.

She opened herself to him, and his amnis slipped along her own, thrilling with the slow, sensual caress of power against power.

Her amnis was fresh and cool, like fog covering a banked fire. He lifted her shirt and pressed his hands to her back. “I want skin.”

His fangs were down when she lifted her arms and he pulled the shirt over her head, leaving her in nothing but a thin satin slip that did nothing to hide her breasts.

Oleg picked her up and walked to the wall where candlelight illuminated the glass and the mirror mosaic, reflecting her bare skin as he drew the satin up and over her head.

She shivered in the cool night air, her nipples coming to hard little points, so he covered them with his mouth and brought the fire to his skin, heating both of them with his body.

Tatyana gasped and arched her back against the wall, pushing her breast into his mouth as he teased one with his tongue and the other with clever fingers that had spent too many months imagining this single act to rush.

“Do you like that?” He scraped his fangs along the rise of her breast. “Tell me what you like.”

“I can’t.”

Her breath was already coming in pants, and Oleg knew she’d never felt pleasure like this because—like all her senses—this sensual storm was heightened. Her nerves were exquisitelytuned to his energy, and he was going to linger, taking full advantage of her newly primed responses.

He lifted his head and licked the top of his tongue along her collarbone. “I’m going to taste you properly now.”

She tried to reach for his cock, but Oleg wasn’t ready to let her out of his control.

“Not yet.” He pressed her wrists to her sides. “Keep them there, or we stop.”

The intimacy was so intense Oleg knew he was going to have trouble controlling his fire. His element was sparking on his skin, and she didn’t have the control yet to counter him should his fire come to life.

But she would. Soon, she would.

Kneeling in front of her, he slipped his thumbs in the waistband of her leggings and pulled them down.

The scent of her arousal, potent before, enveloped him, and he growled low in his throat, lapping his tongue up the inside of her thigh as she trembled.

“Lift.” He patted one leg and she raised it, allowing him to toss the leggings across the room. Oleg looked up, and Tatyana rose above him like a goddess, her gold hair falling over her shoulders and her skin lit with amber glass, mirrors, and candlelight.

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