SAWYER BLINKED OPEN his eyes. The room had minimal lighting, and he didn’t recognize it.
He tried to sit up. “Oh, fuck.” That made him dizzy, so he lay back down.
Suddenly, Kenzie was standing over him. “Shh...no need to rush getting up.”
“What the hell happened?”
Kenzie snorted. “Apparently, the guy Dante tied up had a friend. Saxon thought he probably snuck out the window and then waited for you guys outside. This friend was pretty pissed about you tying up his pal, so he took a two-by-four to the back of your head. Your poor noggin. It keeps getting hit.” All humor left her face, and worry flashed across her eyes. “Oh, no...you didn’t lose your memory again, did you?”
He did a quick scan of everything and was pretty sure he was fine. He remembered being at the abandoned house and all the events leading up to when his head must have been bashed in. He was surprised his head didn’t hurt more. It was just a dull ache at the moment. “No.”
“Whew.”
He looked around the room again. “Where am I? This is not the shifter infirmary.”
Kenzie chuckled nervously. “No, they have you at the vampire clinic. Dante and you were both injured, and Saxon didn’t have time to take you two to separate places. Since Dante’s injury was worse, Saxon came here.”
Sawyer nodded slightly. “That makes sense.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No. Why would I be?”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “Because you’re Sawyer. You like to do everything by the book.”
He knew she was right, but at the moment, he just didn’t care. He shrugged. “Oh well.”
“I’m a little worried, but I’m just going to go with it.”
He picked up her hand from where it rested on his bed. “How did you get here? How did you know?”
She chuckled again. “Saxon called me.”
He linked their fingers together. “That was nice of him.”
Kenzie swallowed. “Uh...maybe I should go get someone.”
Sawyer brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Why?”
“You’re not yourself.”
Sawyer drew her down until she was leaning over him. “I thought we had already established that.”
“I don’t think we should be doing this.” Kenzie’s breathing was shallow, and her face was flushed.
“Liar,” he said. Then, he put his hands in her hair to pull her in for a kiss.
Phoenix watched everyone leave the room, and then she turned back to Dante with raised brows.
Dante sighed. “Look, I can’t feed from any of the other Guardians. I need to keep some boundaries with them since I’m their leader, and I’m not calling anyone else to come and feed me because—”
Phoenix held up her hand. She didn’t want him to say anything about the females he was intimate with. She would never admit it to anyone, but the green-eyed monster was starting to rear its ugly head. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t deny that sinking feeling in her stomach as she pictured Dante feeding from some beautiful female vampire. “I’ll do it.”
He blew out a breath of relief. “Thank you.”
She shrugged, pretending like feeding this male was no big deal when the first and only time it had happened was almost life-changing. “No problem.”
Dante scooted over to the far side of the bed and patted the open spot he’d made for her. “Come and sit. I’d promise not to bite, but that’d be a lie.”
Phoenix snickered and moved closer.
“Bad joke. Sorry. Just trying to lighten the mood.”
Phoenix sat on the bed. “There’s no need. I’m fine.”
Dante lifted an eyebrow. “Phoenix, you might be able to cover your smell, but I can still read your body language. If you’re unsure, you don’t have to do this. I can wait.”
At his words, she did notice how stiff she was, and she let her posture sag a little. One thing she did know was that she didn’t want him to change his mind. She reassuringly put her hand on his arm. “Seriously, I’m fine. I want to do this.”
“Okay. If you say so.” He looked down at her hand. “Lift your sleeve, and give me your wrist.”
An image of Dante with a beautiful female flashed through her mind again. Only this time, the female’s head was thrown back in ecstasy.
Phoenix wanted to stab the fictional woman’s eyes out.
Without saying a word, Phoenix removed her sweatshirt, leaving her in her V-neck T-shirt. Her messy knot of hair on the top of her head had been knocked loose by the removal of her sweatshirt, so she pulled her ponytail out and moved all her hair to the side and over her shoulder to leave the skin exposed for Dante. She looked him in the eyes. “I want you to take my neck.”
Dante fidgeted in his seat. “Phoenix”—he swallowed—“you don’t know what you’re saying.”
She raised her chin. “Yes, I do.”
He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, and she was afraid he was going to say no.
He opened his eyes, and in a low voice, he said, “Come closer.”
Without any hesitation, she moved closer to him.
Dante wrapped his arm around her waist and rubbed his nose over her neck. “You don’t know the beast that you tempt, Red,” he whispered.
She tilted her head away to give him more room.
He growled and struck.
Just like the first time, the sensation of his bite was something she’d never expected. She thought it would hurt, but his sharp fangs went smoothly through her skin, and when he started to pull on her neck with his lips, she moaned and grabbed the back of his head to hold him to her.
Dante shifted them until she was lying on her back, and he was in between her thighs.
“Dante, isn’t this bad for your wound?”
His response was to grunt as he sucked harder. Then, he pushed his pelvis into hers.
He was hard.
Oh God. It felt good. He felt good.
His free hand moved up her leg, over her hip and waist, and up toward her breasts. She held her breath as he bypassed them and moved on to her shoulder where he grabbed her hair and wrapped it around his hand.
It made her remember the last time she’d fed him. He had pushed her up against the door, putting his hardness between her legs. He had cut his thumb with his fang and stuck it in her mouth.
His blood.
His blood had done something to her then, and she wanted it again. She pulled on the arm around her waist, and he complied.
She shifted her jaw enough that her sharp cat teeth emerged. She used her incisor to bite his thumb, and once she broke the skin, she shifted back and sucked.
She closed her eyes at the taste of his blood. Vampire blood was unlike anything she’d ever consumed. It was sweeter than her own and tasted like the cinnamon that he smelled like. Soon, she felt a tingling in her nipples and in her clit. She tilted her pelvis up toward Dante and rubbed.
She had to wonder if she was crazy. She had vowed to herself that she wouldn’t have sex with anyone, and here she was, rubbing herself against a man. She might be the biggest dicktease there ever was.
Dante didn’t seem to mind, and despite the single sheet covering him, he never attempted to move it or to remove her pants. Instead, he slightly pulled on her hair and ground his cock against her pussy. His blood, the friction of them moving together, and perhaps the simple fact that this was Dante were enough to give Phoenix the second orgasm of her life.
Fireworks went off behind her eyes, and her body tightened as she came. If this was what happened when people had sex, it was no surprise they enjoyed it so much. While she had never come close to climaxing during sex, she had come twice now by dry-humping Dante. She hoped he never found out because the whole situation was embarrassing. She was twenty-nine years old and had never had an orgasm until recently.
She was so lost in her head that she hadn’t realized that Dante had removed his thumb and that he had stopped feeding from her neck. He was currently staring down at her face.
“Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse.
More than okay. “Yes.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Uh...”
His brown eyes sparkled. “I can practically see the wheels turning in that head of yours.”
“Uh...” She couldn’t tell him what she’d been thinking about.
“That’s okay. I’m just glad you didn’t run away this time.”
“Uh...” She didn’t know how to respond to that. She had run away the last time he fed from her. The intimacy of the moment and her unexpected orgasm had scared her. Another thing she was too embarrassed to admit.
Dante laughed.
She scowled at him. “What?”
“I was beginning to think ‘uh’ was your new favorite word.”
She pushed at his shoulders. “Get off me.”
He didn’t move, so she pushed harder.
“Phoenix, stop. Please.”
She complied.
“In all seriousness, thank you for feeding me.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “No problem.”
He looked at her like she was a liar—well, she was—but he didn’t say anything. He just simply rolled off of her.
She sat up and noticed he was clutching the sheet in front of him. There was also a wet spot.
As she sat up, she quickly looked away to hide her satisfied smile. She’d been so in her own head and body that she wasn’t sure if Dante had his own orgasm. Knowing she had pleased him helped with the jealous feelings of Dante being with other women.
Phoenix relaxed her expression and turned around to find Dante lying back on the bed with an arm over his face.
She reached for her sweatshirt and pulled it on. “Is everything okay?”
“Something is wrong with me.”
She was confused. “Well, yes. I mean, you were shot.”
“No, not that.” He removed his arm and sat up. “Phoenix...”
She knew what he was going to say. Something about what had just happened between them and how it couldn’t happen again. Never mind that he’d asked her. That was what was wrong with him.
All her previous satisfaction drained from her body. She didn’t need to hear him make up excuses about why he couldn’t feed from her again. She didn’t need to hear about how she wasn’t good enough because, despite his orgasms, they weren’t having sex, and he needed sex.
“Sorry, Dante. I gotta go talk to Saxon.”
He furrowed his brow. “Phoenix.”
She turned around and marched to the door. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said over her shoulder as she pulled the door open and walked out.
She heard Dante yelling her name as she scrambled down the hall.
She hadn’t been lying when she said she needed to talk to Saxon. She was going to tell him that she was moving back to the bunkhouse. Tonight.