Page 139 of Eternal Ruin

“Please.”

He didn’t know who said it. It hardly mattered. Their lips met and they were off the cliff, plummeting together. Her hands were in his hair, around his neck, holding on tightly. It wasn’t the kiss that broke him as much as the feel of her tongue. It swept him into delirious waves of pleasure every time it touched his, devastated him whenever it brushed past his fangs. He must have made a noise because she repeated the movement, a dizzying circular dance against his left fang, then his right.

Stars exploded above a night desert, and the ocean drowned him from underneath, and he was lost.

At the mercy of his unending, maddening hunger for her.

“I need you,” he whispered in a rushed gasp. “I’ve fought this for so long but it’s no use. I need you today. I—”

His fangs elongated and pierced her tongue before he could finish. Kidan hissed, a sound he swallowed along with the small trickle of blood. It quenched his parched throat and pooled in his stomach like gold, a divine liquid.

Then he delved into her mind. Her memories of pleasure.

Everything that ever intoxicated her five senses crashed on him at once—slipping under his silk shirt to find a hard stomach, the sultry whisper of his nicknames, private and sinful, the sharp pain of his fang breaking skin, the wielding of his silver blades, covered in enemy blood, night eyes catching golden fire.

It was all… him.

He was all over her body and mind, possessed every inch of her pleasure.

God.

Kidan moaned with him, lost too. He knew she must see herself in his thoughts, must finally know how much he craved her.

His fangs snagged on a rope, a tap to more euphoric blood. He cut it free and swallowed greedily. He was in the clouds, among the stars. They spun into a different universe, and nothing mattered except this, them, together.

But far too soon, something was trying to anchor them to the earth. He resisted, ignoring the familiar voices—Taj and Iniko.

Leave us alone, he growled inside his spinning thoughts.

A powerful yank snapped him free from Kidan’s mouth. From heaven. Iniko and Taj held him back at the shoulders. Susenyos fought to get that high again.

“Yos!” Taj shouted, eyes panicked. “Enough!”

Reality slammed down.

Kidan’s image came into focus. She was slumped backward against the tree, her mouth bloody and blood running down her chin, pooling at her cleavage.

Her eyes were shut, and a delirious smile played on her ruined lips. The previous loud beat of her heartbeat had quieted down to a faint pulse.

It beat once.

Twice.

Then it disappeared entirely.

She slid down the tree.

“Kidan!” he shouted, panic removing all traces of pleasure. Taj restrained him.

Iniko caught her instead, laying her on the ground. She pressed her ear close to her chest, and straightened quickly, alarm stark on her face.

“Her heart has stopped. You must have severed one of her lingual arteries.”

Taj had finally let him go, but Susenyos couldn’t move.

No…

He had only been drinking from her for a few seconds. It was nothing.Nothing.But that didn’t appear to be true. She could only have lost so much blood if it had been several minutes.