Tension pulled my eyes open when her fingers traced a trail down my neck. Sensation blossomed, and I threw my head back and sucked in the air. Her arm slipped around my waist, catching me before I fell.

“Rachel, I … God you smell good,” she said, and a torrent of heat flowed through me as her lips brushed against me with her words. The smoothness of her teeth across my skin sent my pulse pounding as I fought for breath. “You won’t leave?” she asked. “Promise you won’t.”

She wasn’t asking me to be her scion; she was only asking me not to leave. “I won’t leave.”

“You give this to me?”

Shaking inside, I whispered, “Yes.”

Ivy exhaled, sounding as if she had been freed. My blood rose, mixing with my lingering fear of the unknown to drive her to a fever pitch. Her lips touched my lower neck and vertigo spun the room, burning tracings of desire to settle deep and low in me. I exhaled into the promise of more to come, calling it to me. I breathed it in like smoke, the rising passion starting a feeling of abandonment inside. I didn’t care anymore if it was right or wrong. It just was.

Her grip on my shoulder tightened, and slowly there was a gentle pressure upon my skin, and her teeth slid into me without preamble.

I groaned at the rush of fear and desire. My knees gave way, and Ivy shifted her hold. Her touch was light—keeping me upright while I went flaccid, my body struck into overload—but her mouth on my neck was savage with a fierce need. And then she pulled on me.

My air came in a rush. Gasping, I stiffened, my hands springing up to clutch at her, clenching when she threatened to pull away in fear that she had hurt me. “No,” I moaned, fire running through me. “Don’t stop. Oh … God …”

My words hit her, and she dug her teeth into me, harder. My breath exploded. For an instant I hung, unable to think. It felt that good. My entire body was alive and aching. A sexual high flowed through me, a torrent of promise.

Somehow I took a breath, then another. They were fast, stumbling over each other. I clutched at her, wanting her to continue but unable to say it. Her lips pulled away from me, and in a rush of sensation, the world spun back into something I could recognize.

We had moved from the wall of the van and stood against the closed door. Ivy was holding me upright against her with the fierce demand of possession. Though she had taken her lips from me, her breath came and went on my broken skin, almost an exquisite torture. There was no fear. “Ivy,” I said, hearing it come from me as almost a sob.