I strode over to her and grabbed her wet hand. “Stop avoiding me. Us.”

“There is no us.”

“Stop avoiding the fact there is an ‘us.’ Neither of us planned this or even wanted it, but here we are. A vampire and a werewolf. I don’t care about those facts. I care about you. The woman who has my heart for all of time.”

She stopped glaring at me with displeasure and her face softened. I tangled my fingers with her and led her toward the tree. Our tree. The one I’d tended to her wounds under. Where she’d first tasted my blood. This was our special place. A tree that held our first memories in the arms of its branches.

Once under the fall of its branches, I lifted my other hand and brushed a hand through her hair. The silky strands drifted through my fingers with ease. Her lips parted and her eyes widened as I lowered my head and kissed her with the love I held in my heart for her. A soft kiss. An emotional kiss. Every bit of love I possessed for her poured into this one moment. I wanted her to sense it too, but even if she didn’t, she’d still have my love and heart. What she did with them was up to her.

A soft sigh floated from her lips, and I captured it with my tongue. Her lips parted even further and encouraged me to kiss her more deeply. More passionately. Her hands refocused on the buttons on my shirt and flicked them open. A second later her cool palms met my eager flesh. Her touch drove me wild, so much so that I grabbed her hands and pinned them behind her back. Her lips spread into a grin against mine.

“The werewolf has finally accepted his animal,” she said.

“I have.”

I placed both her hands in one of mine and undid the buttons on the front of her dress with the other hand, brushing the fabric aside so her breasts spilled free under the moonlight filtering through the branches.

“So beautiful,” I said.

I lowered my head and kissed the top swell of her breasts, taking my time to learn every curve of the soft mounds with my mouth, finding the spots that made her gasp or wriggle with desire. Eventually, I closed my lips around the tight peaks of her nipples. Her hands flexedin my hold as though she wanted to break free. She probably could with her vampire strength, but she liked this dominant side of me. I did too.

My free hand drifted to the length of her skirt and drew the fabric up to her waist until I could slip my hand under and urge the heel of my palm against her mound. She rocked into the pressure. I applied more, shifting my fingers lower to the damp spot on her panties. She moaned loudly. I slid my fingers under the edge of the fabric and touched the silken folds coated in her arousal. All for me. I longed to taste her again, but more than that I wanted to bury myself inside her.

I spun her around and pinned her body to the tree with mine. She tilted her head back and looked at me over her shoulder with desire blazing in her eyes. I kissed her parted lips again while gathering her dress to her waist, then wrenched her underwear down her legs. Her skin was so soft beneath my hasty hands. I bent while I tugged her underwear free from her feet and kissed and licked my way up the back of her legs unable to stop myself from nibbling on the juicy globes of her butt cheeks. She wriggled back into me as though she loved my teeth on her flesh. I cupped her swollen flesh with my fingers and slid a digit inside her. Her hips rolled back into my touch.

I rose and placed my mouth at her ear. “Tell me you don’t sense our connection.”

She kept her mouth clamped shut, so I caressed her inner muscles until her g-spot became so engorged, it clamped on my finger.

“Tell me you don’t want me,” I whispered, placing a kiss on her neck. “I’ll stop if you do.”

“Don’t you dare stop,” she said.

Her body tightened around my finger to the point she was about to explode. I slid it out of her and unbuckledmy pants, then coated my rock-hard cock with her wetness.

“Dante, don’t stop,” she whined.

Holding my cock, I rubbed it over her slick entrance. “Do you want me?”

“Yes. Yes.” She thrust back trying to force me inside her.

I grabbed her hips and held her still while I thrust the flared head of my cock into her tight entrance. Her body quivered as though the pleasure was too much for her to handle, but she was a vampire and she’d handle anything. This woman would handle me at my best and worst. In any form I shifted into.

“More,” she demanded.

Yes, she was the woman for me, for my beast, the animal lurking inside.

I thrust into her body and seated my cock deep inside. I held us still letting us both sense the connection deep in our souls for a moment. Our moment under our tree. When I couldn’t stand the pressure of being inside her and not giving her pleasure, I thrust my hips in long movements in and out of her slick wetness. Each slide transported me closer to my animal. Closer to wanting to mark her.

“You’re mine,” I said, my teeth lengthened, and I lowered my head to the back of her neck.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.

I sunk my teeth into the tender flesh where her shoulder and neck met. A burst of her blood filled my mouth. Power coated my tongue. But it was my teeth in her neck that drove me wild. My hips picked up the pace as I drove into her flesh with a desperation of desire to claim my mate. Mark her inside and out.

Her inner muscles clamped harder around my cock. I swelled to epic proportions until each stroke of her flesh against mine sent bolts of lightning down the backsof my thighs and made my balls draw up tight. The pleasure was too good. I kept my mouth pinned to her neck as I sensed the first inner spasm of her impending orgasm. The first warning of the epic release. I growled, setting her off on an explosion that clenched my cock so hard I thought I might pass out, but I buried myself to the hilt and let her quivering muscles send me into the blissful oblivion of orgasm with her. My cock marked her inside with jets and jets of hot cum. I released my bite and licked her wound until no sign of my marks was discernable to the naked eye.

Except the alpha werewolf was right. Under the light of the moon, my teeth marks glowed a luminous quality that would tell everyone she was mine.