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Oh God. My lungs labored, drawing in the coppery scent of blood.

I darted around the corner and slammed to a stop.

Michio leaned over one of the sinks, and his stony eyes locked on mine in the mirror. No surprise on his face at my presence. Instead, his mouth was lined in pain and regret and…blood.

It trickled down his neck, smeared his bare chest, and splattered fat red dots on the sink. In his fist was a rusted pair of pliers, the steel-tipped jaw clamped around a pulled tooth.

A fang.

My throat constricted, and heart-wrenching horror cracked my voice. “Michio, what have you done?”

“Have you forgotten I bit you?” Venomous anger punched through Michio’s voice, his eyes hard and pinned on mine in the mirror. “My bite made you infertile!”

“It saved me.” My heart raced, and what wasn’t trembling with worry was twisting with the need to console him. “You saved me.”

Since I probably wouldn’t live long enough to have more children, my infertility didn’t matter. My concern lay only with my child. Would she be sterile? Aiman had been confident in the viability of future reproduction, though he didn’t have proof.

Shaken but determined, I crossed the bathroom. Michio kept his back to me, the ridges of his shoulders tightening with each soft clap of my bare feet.

He dropped the fang and the pliers in the sink and gripped the basin with both hands.

God, how could he pull his teeth out like that? I met his eyes in the mirror.

Guilt. Bloody rivers of it ran from his clamped lips and dripped over his chin.

“If you hadn’t bitten me, you wouldn’t have broken Aiman’s control and grabbed that rope.” Three feet away, two feet, one…I touched his lower back, causing his skin to ripple over his spine. “If you hadn’t given me that piercing kiss, you and I and our child would be splattered at the bottom of the dam.”

He hung his head and spat a glob of blood in the sink. I grabbed a towel off a nearby shelf, my attention fastening on the number of fangs on the drain. How were there three?

I wedged in front of his stiff frame, forcing his hands to release the edge of the sink. With gentle fingers, I tilted his chin up. My touch seemed to chase away some of the shadows in his eyes, and a glimmer of the man I knew appeared, staring down at me with a thoughtful, analytical mien.

His gaze swept my face, his expression tightening. “You smell like them.”

Yeah, I could feel their come trickling down my inner thighs.

“I love them, Michio. And they love you.” I wiped the towel over the crimson edging his mouth. “I love you.”

He closed his eyes. “I’m trying…” His eyes opened, deep, exotically shaped, and fringed black lashes. “I’m trying to be a better man. A man worthy of love.”

By pulling out his teeth? I flipped the towel, using a clean section to clear away the remaining blood from his chin and chest. “Can I make a suggestion?”

His eyes stayed with me while his hands remained stubbornly at his sides.

“Stop trying and just be yourself.” I dropped the towel and lifted a finger to his lips, coaxing them apart to expose a full row of teeth, two of which protruded longer and sharper than the rest. “Where did…how…I thought you removed these?”

His soft lips moved against my touch. “I did. They keep growing back.”

I knew he had inhuman healing, but to regrow his teeth that fast? I couldn’t believe it. Hell, I couldn’t fathom him pulling them out in the first place.

“You were afraid you’d bite me again?”

“I will bite you again.” He leaned around me and rinsed his mouth out with water from the tap. “I won’t be able to stop myself.”

I shivered against that promise. Delighted in it. “When you bit me on the cliff, I wanted you to do it.”

Chewing on the edge of my lip, I recalled the moment he’d sunk his teeth in me. He’d been aroused as much as I had been, and any damage the bite might’ve caused was already done. What was the risk in doing it again?

He dried his face and returned to his imposing stance, looming over me and watching me from beneath dark brows.

“It didn’t hurt.” I dragged a fingertip over his needle-tipped fang and lowered my palm to his chest. “There was a sting then an incredible amount of pleasure. I’d love to feel that again, while we’re not hanging from a cliff.”

His fingers followed the curve of my neck, tracing the puncture marks. He leaned closer, his sweat pants rubbing against the hem of my shorts. I felt his desire as sharp as my own. In the swell of his cock. In the heat of his exhales warming my face.

His eyes, like dark brown caverns, stared down at me. Calmer now, but still filled with remorse. “When a nymph bites a cured woman, a healing agent is released and the wound quickly closes. When a spider bites, the damage festers, bruises, and can become infected. Why do you think the nymph heals while the spider harms?”