She nodded. His fingers took his crown in his hand. He stroked lightly.

“Yes, Antony. I want your hand moving over your cock while I tend to you. Will that make you happy?”

He smiled then he sighed. “Just having you here, with me, and very naked, makes me happy. But if this is what you want, I’m in.”

He took his thick stalk in his fist and worked himself up and down, caressing the crown with his thumb on each upward pass.

She turned her head into his leg and shifted forward to get closer. Her tongue touched his inner thigh, and he groaned. She licked him over and over, first on the inside of one thigh, then the other. She kept moving forward and inward with each pass, until her tongue played with the rippled skin of his sac. She sucked the skin in and he groaned. Her tongue found the testicles, and she rolled and played with them. The sound of his hand working over his flesh filled the short distance between her head and his hand.

His breathing grew rough.

Parisa, he sent. Take my mind right now.

She drew back and looked at him. “You want me to enter your mind?” The thought troubled her. Whatever sex was, however intimate it was to be enjoying his naked body, somehow the thought of being in his mind changed things.

He sat up. “Are you afraid?”

“Won’t that mean going one more mile down this road toward the breh-hedden?”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Remember, with the breh-hedden all three things have to happen at once.” He smiled and waggled his fingers over his cock. “This isn’t even close to the kind of sex we’d need to be having to take the ritual all the way.”

She smiled and nodded. Then her body betrayed her because somehow the thought of being inside Antony’s mind made her clench. “Oh,” she whispered.

He leaned close to her, his cock barely a kiss away, as he cupped her face with his hand. “I know you haven’t done mind-penetration before but it’s fantastic during sex. I want to do it to you as well, just not right now. What do you say?”

She wanted to. “I really want to.”

He nodded then leaned back on his left elbow and once more touched himself, deft fingers that knew what they were doing.

She let her head rest on his thigh and wiggled to get as close as she needed to be, to do what she wanted to do to him. She drew the sac and one of his testicles into her mouth and tongued him gently. At the same time, she closed her eyes and concentrated.

She pushed against his mind. She could feel his shields, so powerful, protecting his mind. Even in your shields you’re so well muscled. Do I push, or do you let them fall?

Try pushing.

She felt the seductive intent behind those words. He wanted her to push against him. She did, and he groaned aloud. So damn sexy.

She could hear the swift strokes now, the perfect rhythm of his hand, and she realized this was going to bring him off, which in turn set all the nerves of her body on fire. Moisture dampened the well of her body. She slung a leg over his, her hips rocking against him.

Ready? she asked.

God, yes.

She pushed until the shields crashed around her. She had barely dipped into his mind when the upper half of his body bowed and lifted off the tile.

Lift up and look at me, he sent. He was breathing hard when she left the cradle of his body, releasing his sac and testicles so that she could look at him.

On a quick downward stroke of his hand, while her mind was falling farther inside his head, she leaned forward and licked a combination of his fingers and cock.

“Oh, God,” he shouted. She watched him erupt, his come spurting all over his chest, his face twisted in ecstasy.

His pleasure exploded over her mind. She had thought she might take some time to explore his memories, but all that sensation brought her body into a tight state of readiness. Need filled her, his body on her, in her, any way she could get him. She hadn’t expected this. She rolled on her back then her side.

She was in agony. Antony, help me. Oh, God.

Her body knotted up in about a hundred different ways.

Help me, she sent, but he was already in her mind, she could feel him, which only further drew her into knot after knot.

I’m here. Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me. She felt hands on her arms. He was pulling her up his body.

“Parisa,” he said aloud.

She opened her eyes. She was on top of him, face-to-face, but she was inside his head as well.

“I’m here. I know what you need.” He turned his head.

Her eyes bulged. He was offering his neck, and she knew this was exactly what she needed. Oh, God, she really was a vampire now, wasn’t she? Her heart pounded in her chest. Her fangs emerged. Saliva dripped in her mouth. All the knots relaxed.

She was panting and she was instantly addicted to being within his mind. She never wanted to be anywhere else, but her body was on fire.

She knew other things she should do first—like lick the vein and urge it forth—but she was too far gone. Some kind of cavewoman need had taken her over.

Yes, that’s it, he sent. Take me. Take me hard.

She struck quick, like lightning, and began sucking at his neck as though she’d been dying of thirst for about a decade. She pulled in deep draws, savoring the sage taste of him.

Her internal muscles spasmed again and again. She ground her hips against him and found him … hard.

Antony, I need you.

I’m ready. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I’m ready again. Take me, Parisa. Take all of me.

He held her tight around the shoulders, anchoring her against his neck. He groaned as she sucked.

With his other hand, he dipped low and cradled her entire pelvis—yes, he had big hands. He lifted her up, positioned her over his cock, then impaled her in a single hard thrust. She was so wet for him, so tight, so ready.

She screamed around the seal on his neck, but kept her fangs buried and continued to pull. As soon as he’d pushed himself in, though, her hips began to work. Her body felt so strangely powerful—maybe it was Antony’s blood—but she rode him. She rode his cock hard and fast, his arm a vise around her shoulders, his free hand cradling the back of her head and keeping her pinned to his neck.

She drank and drank.

The orgasm began to build, like a huge tidal wave in the distance. She felt the pressure coming, coming. His hips suddenly took over. He moved the hand from the back of her head to her buttocks to hold her in place as he thrust deep, hitting the end of her and it hurt and it felt wonderful and hurt and the sensations got mixed up together until he was driving so fast, so very fast, hitting just that spot and suddenly the orgasm barreled down on her with the force of a tsunami.

She released his neck, arched her back, and screamed. She screamed and screamed as he stretched the orgasm out. Between her screams she heard his low grunting noises, spitting the sounds from behind clenched teeth.

The orgasm receded but it was like wave-sets at the ocean: The next one came and still Antony pumped into her, hard, grunting, animal, vampire.

Parisa. Oh, God, Parisa. I’m coming again and oh … shiiiiit.

A third orgasm pounded on her, rushing through her as he jerked inside her and pumped and jerked and filled her with his seed.

Then she saw stars, dozens of them, spinning and spinning, a full galaxy in motion, then they all winked out.

When she woke up, she was lying on something very soft, a bed, but she couldn’t quite make her eyes open. But she was smiling. Why? She was giggling. Why? Soft little things dotted her nose, her cheeks, her lips, her chin. Ah … kisses.

“Parisa? Parisa?”

She heard Antony’s voice from a great distance.

She giggled again. She was so happy. Was she on some kind of drug?

Oh, yes, Antony’s blood and his cock and his lips and his tongue and his massive pecs and the fine hairs between his pecs, and his muscled thighs and the way he walked like a tremendous thoroughbred stallion, all quivering muscles, and she had been inside his mind when he came and he had been inside hers.

“Parisa, Parisa.”

More soft little moist touches now, just on her lips again and again, then a delicate swipe of something wetter.

She parted her lips and she felt … Antony’s tongue.

She giggled and woke up the rest of the way, her eyes opening. He was over her now, kissing her. She was in his bed in the villa. He’d brought her back.

She was still connected to his mind. She leaned up and kissed him. Did I pass out?

He smiled and nodded.

“It was … unbelievable. We have to do it again only this time … oh, Antony, I didn’t know it could be like that.”

“I’m a little worried.”

She smiled. “You ought to be pleased. You made a woman faint with pleasure.” His neck was bloody and a little torn up from her efforts. “Are you okay?” Well, that was the first time she’d asked him that. He was always asking her if she was okay, but this time she’d asked him.

But he just smiled again and kissed her. “I’ll heal.”

He was a vampire, of course he’d heal, and fast.

She touched his neck. “Well, now there are two things I need to work at.”

***

After getting both of them cleaned up in the shower, Antony took Parisa back to his bed and held her against him, his arm around her shoulders.

He’d come close to asking her to complete the breh-hedden, which required that each of them take blood, during intercourse, with a full exchange of deep-mind engagement.

What had stopped him? The sex had been mind-blowing, but sex was … well, it was just sex except that he’d been inside her mind. He’d picked up this memory, then that one. He’d lived much of her time in captivity, seen her despair, watched her watching him stroke himself morning after morning. He’d felt the depth of her feeling for him. She was in love with him, but how much in love with him? How far gone was she?

He knew that feeling. He’d had that same one thirteen centuries ago. He couldn’t go through it again. He couldn’t. If he completed the breh-hedden, if he went the distance with her, if he fell that far in love with her, what happened if she died … no, not if she died, but when?