Dark Guardian by Christine Feehan

feel of her skin beneath his. "I must bind us together, Jaxon, I have no other choice. It would be dangerous to wait. I am sorry that I cannot give you more time."
    "I don't understand." She looked up into his black eyes and should have felt fear at what she saw there. He was looking at her possessively, something no man had ever dared to do. Jaxon didn't encourage such feelings in men. Yet for some strange reason, this dangerous stranger made her feel cared for. Wanted.
    "I know you do not understand at this moment, Jaxon, but you will in time." Lucian caught her chin in firm fingers so that his dark eyes captured her gaze.
    It was like falling into a black, bottomless pool. Endless. Timeless.
    Lucian murmured her name softly and bent his head to the softness of her throat. He inhaled her scent. There was nowhere she could go that he could not find her. His arms tightened possessively until he reminded himself that she was very fragile. She felt incredibly small and light in his arms but also warm and enticing. She was stirring things in him best left alone. The sudden, urgent demands were shocking to him. She was young and vulnerable, and at that moment he should want only to protect her.
    His mouth touched her skin gently, tenderly, a small caress. At once need slammed into him, hard and imperative. He could hear her heart beating to the rhythm of his. He could hear her blood run in her veins, an enticing heat that beckoned to him, that triggered a tremendous physical hunger for her body. Closing his eyes, he savored his ability to feel, no matter that it was terribly uncomfortable and his body was screaming for relief. His tongue found her pulse, bathed the area once, twice. His teeth scraped gently over the vein, then sank deeply into it.
    At once she moved restlessly in his arms and moaned, a soft whisper of intimacy that tightened his body even more. She was sweet and spicy, a taste indescribable and one he had never before encountered. She was addicting, as if she had been designed precisely to please his every need. He would never get enough of her. Discipline overcame his hunger for the ecstasy her body promised. With a sweep of his tongue, he closed the tiny pinpricks his teeth had made, leaving no signs for a doctor to discover.
    Careful to keep her deep within his enthrallment, Lucian opened his shirt and shifted her in his arms so that he could palm the back of her head. His body was raging with need, and her natural sensuality was emerging under his sorcerery. One of his fingernails lengthened into a razor-sharp talon. He sliced a line over his heart and pressed her mouth to his chest that he might continue the ritual of binding her to him.
    At the first touch of her lips, fire raged through him, a need so intense, so deep, Lucian, who was noted for his rigid control, nearly gave in to the temptation to take what was rightfully his. He found he was trembling, his body covered with a fine sheen of sweat. Bending close to her ear, he breathed the words into the night, into her mind, that no one could ever separate them again, that she could not be apart from him for more than a few scant hours. "I claim you as my lifemate. I belong to you. I offer my life for you. I give you my protection, my allegiance, my heart, my soul, and my body. I take into my keeping the same that is yours. Your life, happiness, and welfare will be cherished and placed above my own for all time. You are my lifemate, bound to me for all eternity and always in my care."
    The relief he experienced was tremendous and occurred despite the fact that his body had not merged with hers. His heart and hers were one, bound together, two halves of the same whole. Their souls merged so that her feminine light shone brightly within him, alleviating the terrible darkness that had threatened him for centuries. At that moment he realized that when one had lived in darkness nearly all of his life, in a bleak, ugly hell of an existence, finding a lifemate