Page 53 of Taken By the Lycanthrope

The one time I do let it slip, he growls in a way that tells mehe’sin charge here, and I lay back and let him ravish me.

The stars twinkle overhead, and his scent envelops me. Incense and red wine. I’m suddenly thirsty—parched, in fact—and when he leans in to kiss me, I catch his lower lip between my teeth. I taste copper as he pulls away with a growl, the two of us little more than animals.

If God wanted this, it’s not the God I grew up with. It’s something more primal—the God that gave us pieces that feel pleasure and placed us in a garden filled with temptation.

I need more. Ineedmy mate.

I lick my lips and taste Reyes’ blood, sweet as port wine. In a beautiful subversion of ritual, surrounded by his incense scent, I eat and drink of his body and blood. Ifeaston my mate as I kiss him again, as I trail my lips down his neck, to his pulse. And with these strange new sharp fangs, an idea floats to the surface.

It only seems fair, doesn’t it?

To bite him, as he bit me?

Reyes bares his throat for me, and we pull away just enough to lock eyes. I can almosthearthe steady thrum of his pulse, pounding with the thrust of his hips. He slows, his breath catches, and he nods his head.

“Do it.”

I sink my teeth into his flesh.

Red wine, complex and musky and fluid. A bouquet of flavor, my tongue lapping at the new wound. My teeth aren’t quite as sharp as his, but they’re shockingly sharp enough to leave a mark—just two little punctures where my canines have somehow elongated. Reyes groans and rolls his hips against me as I tend to the wound, never letting his knot sink inside me no matter how badly I want it to.

I don’t think this is a one time thing. I can feel that as I lick him.

We’re tied to each other now.

Our gasps mingle as he keeps fucking me hard, my dress pooled around my waist, him still fully dressed. Reyes groans and ducks his head against my chest, and I gasp when something cool slips out of his collar and falls on my breastbone: the silver cross he wears around his neck.

The shock is enough to tip me over the edge, and we come together in the humid Texas night. I reach for the metal music stand and grip it tightly as I come around him, the whole thing shaking.

A slip of paper drifts from the music stand, falling on top of us as we breathe and Reyes finally slides out of me. He reaches for the paper and frowns as he gazes at it, then shows it to me.

I can’t quite make it out at first, but I realize after a moment that it’s his homily from Sunday morning. Most of the ink has been washed away in the rain earlier today, black blotches covering the weather-worn page, but one sentence remains.

What God has put together, let no man put asunder.

I let out a laugh and stare up at the sky, shaking my head. “Okay, God,” I say. “I get it.”

Reyes laughs with me, then gets to his knees to right his clothes and zip up his pants. The silver cross gleams in the starlight on his chest as he extends his hand and pulls me up, helping me straighten my dress.

“I told you,” he says. “Call it what you want, but I think that counts as a blessing.”

For the first time in a long time, ‘blessing’ doesn’t sound like a bad word.

CHAPTER TWENTY

?

REYES

I’m inwaytoo deep.

Tonight, I didn’t just break my vows of celibacy.

Ishatteredthem, all on an altar to God. Yet I still feel that I did the right thing, and that God is giving me a sign this was meant to be.

Against the odds, Tilda is here with me. My mate is in my bed. And if that note drifting from the pulpit meant anything, the message is clear: I can’t send her back to Homestead.

Whatever happens next, Tilda has to stay.

---