Channing watched as Talon turned from something resembling a skittish filly nervous around a snorting stallion to a wary wolf ready to rip the said stallion's throat out.
Inwardly, he grinned.
He loved both aspects of her. The sweetness and the wildness.
She was watching his body intently. He probably should be wary now but it wasn't in his nature to be.
However, he it was in his best interest to move slowly, adjusting to draw her eyes to his, he winked at her.
Talon lifted her lips back to show her white teeth. Like that would perturb him.
Concentrating on intensifying his scent, he secreted it through his pores, watching as her nostrils flared and her eyes flicked up and down his body.
"Why do you need to kiss me?"
Channing smiled at the huskiness of her voice.
He lifted a hand and let a tendril curl in his palms, shaping it like one of the ice cream messes Talon loved so much. He wondered whether she would cross out of her forest for one of those?
He could imagine holding it out to her, taking a step back every time she took a step forward.
He let the blackness infiltrate the tendril watching as Talon gazed at the growing blackness. It was a risk in so many ways.
"That is in me?" she growled, narrowing her eyes at him. Her muscles become more defined in her arms as she clenched her fists.
"Yes and no. Not exactly this but... an essence of it. I can sense it even though it is not from me but because it desires to join with its likeness." Channing let the blackness slip away, he didn't want her to become fearful of him because of it.
"Why is it in you?" she whispered.
Channing sighed; he wished she would just let him hold her at before they had to talk about this stuff.
He shrugged hoping to evade the question. Her eyes flickered to his shoulders.
"Why?" she repeated, in a you- better-answer tone.
Okay, no evading then.
"I don't know why, same as these marks... they are because they are. But it means nothing Talon, I will never hurt you. I need to kiss you because you can't bleed yet so I can't pull it out of your blood like I would normally do... that and this way would be so much more pleasurable," he used a soft voice, taming her, seducing her, wrapping her in his scent.
She looked back at the tree, then down to the ground.
After a moment he sent a tendril out to cup her cheek then sent it trailing softly over her bottom lip. She breathed out heavily as he let it slip along her throat and across her collar bone. He changed the feel into a hand that caressed the sensitive skin below her collar bone, fingers that caressed her lip and pulled it slightly down.
Channing couldn't hold it much longer and stepped forward.
The tree snaked a branch around Talon's waist. There was no doubt about what it was communicating. Mine.
Too late wood, I have the very prior claim here.
He snarled feeling his canine's sting as they broke through his gums.
Talon placed a gentle hand on the limb embracing her, she murmured something to it, something he could not understand and after a few seconds it retreated to hover behind her.
Whatever was in that tree, Channing was definitely going to kill after all this.
If Talon wasn't so bloody interested in it he would send in the blackness to suck it dry right now. But even he knew that that would be the last and biggest mistake he ever made. Talon would kill him and because it was Talon he would let her.
