by T. S. Joyce
“Mmmmm,” he rumbled as he tasted her, and all the while, he rolled his hips against hers.
He was so. Damn. Sexy.
His fingertips drifted down her arm, and then he gripped her hip. He kissed down her throat to her breasts and sucked the tight bud into her mouth. His tongue, God, his tongue!
She moaned and arched her back against the mattress, gripped his hair. He pushed her knees farther apart and settled deeper into the cradle she allowed. Felt amazing. Better than anything she’d ever felt before. Every inch of her skin was buzzing like she was standing too close to an electric fence. The fine hairs on her body rose with her gooseflesh, and she writhed under him. His hands were everywhere, memorizing her, memorizing her, gripping her curves. Soft then strong. Soft then strong. Graceful predator moving against her like this.
He kissed and sucked his way down her stomach, barely grazing the points of his teeth to touch her sensitive skin. Kiss, kiss, suck, lick, kiss, kiss.
Down, down, he kissed until he reached her sex, and then he ran his tongue up her folds excruciatingly slowly. She cried out the second he reached her clit. Suck…suck…kiss.
Nicole reached over her head and gripped the comforter with one hand, gripped the back of his hair tighter with the other. His tongue plunged deep inside her, and she was gone, high as a kite, body tingling and responding to his every touch, just on the cusp of release.
He set a slower pace. Deep lick. Deep lick. His hands were strong on her outer thighs, fingers digging into her flesh, and the rumbling sound in his throat was growing louder. When she looked down at him, he lifted his gaze to hers. He looked so hungry. So hungry. God…damn…she’d never been a part of anything this intimate. This sexy.
She stayed trapped in his gaze, and happy to be so. She cried out with every stroke now, so close to splitting apart completely. “Evan,” she gasped as the waves of pressure intensified. “Evan!” she cried, throwing her head back and arching against the covers.
Her body exploded in the most consuming orgasm she’d ever known. And then he eased back and kissed her inner thigh. Kiss…kiss…suck…lick…bite.
She inhaled at the soft sting, but as he started lapping at her, the orgasm she’d been drowning in intensified again. What was happening? This wasn’t possible, right? Her body was rolling on the waves of ecstasy as he drank from her. It wasn’t long. Fifteen seconds, perhaps, as the pulsing of her body slowly faded. Fifteen seconds, and then he licked the puncture wounds closed. They didn’t sting at all anymore. They didn’t feel like anything.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered drunkenly as he covered her body with his.
Black eyes and a devilish smile. She only caught a glimpse of his face before he buried his lips against her neck. He pushed his sweats down his hips and then slid his thick, swollen cock into her. The first stroke that filled her felt intensely good, better than his tongue even, and she was back in it. He eased out of her and then pushed back into her slick entrance. She was writhing again, meeting his thrusts. How could anything feel this good?
Evan cupped the back of her neck while gripping her hip with his other hand. And then there it was again, the little prick of pain as his canines pierced the skin at her neck. She rolled her eyes closed as a moan left her lips. He rocked into her deeper and, fuck, this was perfect. He was the perfect fit. Big, thick, hard as stone, and the soft grunts of pleasure that uttered from his lips as he lapped blood from her neck said he was close, too.
He pumped into her faster, and his grip dug into her hip, holding her steady as he fucked her. No…fucked was the wrong word. This was so, so much more.
Faster now, faster, and she was there again. She yelled out as he slammed his cock inside her deep and released into her in throbbing bursts. He gasped out and arched back, and she loved the look of sheer satisfaction on his face.
She felt the trickle of warmth from her neck just as her own orgasm rocked her entire system. She didn’t know what she was saying or doing or what noises came from her. All she knew was nothing had ever felt like this. Nothing in all her life.
What a beautiful addiction she was building.
His dick throbbed softer and slower in her, matching her own waning release, as he lapped at her neck gently. The sting went away, just as it had on her inner thigh.
All she could do was lay there and stroke the back of his head as he healed the damage he’d done. She knew he was healing it. Fixing the small puncture wounds. She could feel him mending the skin there as he lapped his tongue over her it. And when he was finished, he slid out of her and eased to the bed beside her. His eyes were still black, and his face tauter and more predatory than it had been before, but there was a reverence in his eyes. An awe.
“Beauty,” he whispered. And even though the word tapered into a chilling hiss, she reveled in the compliment.
He ran a finger down her scar and said it again, “Beauty.”
She didn’t know why, but tears pricked at her eyes. They burned a little, and she swallowed a thickness in her throat as she made a decision that would alter the way she viewed herself from this day forward.
“Evan?”
He brushed her hair from her face. “Mmm?”
“I don’t want you to fix the scar.”
Chapter Five
“Spill the beans,” Sadey demanded.
Dragging her attention from the memories of last night, Nicole stopped touching the side of her neck like a weirdo and asked, “Huh?”
Dawn was pushing the cart full of Halloween decorations and announced loudly, “It’s real freakin’ obvious you and Evan at least got to second base. You’ve been smiling to yourself all morning.”
“Plus, you have a bruise on your neck,” Sadey mumbled as she studied a package of fake spiderwebs in her hands. “You definitely fed him last night.”
“What’s second base?” Nicole asked.
“Uh, I think its grabbing boobs?” Dawn said, but her face was all scrunched up in confusion. Her blond hair, all piled in a messy bun, flopped forward as she shook her head. “Wait, no, I think it’s touching panties. Right? I’m Googling this.” She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth as she poked at her phone.
“Second base is fingering,” Sadey said.
“Nope, I was right,” Dawn enlightened them. “Titty touching. The internet says, and the internet never lies.”
Sadey rolled her eyes heavenward.
Heat crept into Nicole’s cheeks. “I can’t believe I slept so long today.” It was three in the afternoon, and she’d just rolled out of Evan’s bed an hour ago.
“You needed that sleep,” Sadey assured her, throwing a pack of pumpkin light strands into the cart.
“What are we doing again?” Nicole asked.
“You said the police told you to find normalcy as fast as you can so you can cope.”
“I feel pretty good.”
“And normalcy is decorating for holidays and drinking goblin punch with your new besties on a random Thursday evening.”
Nicole laughed and muttered, “Sounds normal enough to me. When do the boys wake up?”
She’d left Evan sleeping soundly in his bed but already missed him. When vampires slept, they slept hard. She’d had to wait for a full minute to see if he was even breathing.
“As soon as the sun goes down, they’ll start stirring. You won’t get to work on your bases tonight, though, ya little badass,” Dawn told her. “They’re going hunting.”
Nicole followed them to the next aisle of Halloween decorations. “Hunting how?”
“Well, the easiest way would be to plop you out on the edge of town and wait for Creepy Creeperton to find you and then stake his pasty ass, but in the meeting before dawn this morning, Evan declared that you aren’t to be used as bait anymore. And then he asked us to be your bodyguards when he’s not around you. So”—Sadey did a little butt-wiggle dance—“you get to hang out with us.”
“There’s only four bases, right?” Nicole asked quiet
ly as she kept busy studying a pack of spider pencils.
“Haaaaa!” Dawn crowed. “I knew it. You got a homerun.” She danced with a spanking motion and sang a song that went something like, “Nicole got sticked and she felt a little prick, riding vampire di—”
“Okay!” Nicole interrupted in mortification. “Let’s put that song deep in the vault.”
“Deep,” Dawn said. “Deeeep in the vault.” She poked her finger through a hole she’d made with fingers on her other hand and waggled her blond brows while Sadey was doubled over, cracking up.
“Yep, we’re good here.” Nicole did an about-face and walked away from them.
“We will just catch up to you,” Dawn enlightened her, running behind her with the clattering shopping cart with the one wonky wheel. “For we are shifters and faster than you.”
Every other shopper in the immediate vicinity was staring. Nicole pursed her lips against a laugh because these wild girls didn’t need any encouragement. “I’m starving.”
“Reappearance of appetite means you are healing from the traumatizing events that have unfolded in your life,” Sadey murmured. She was trailing behind them with a shopping list.
“You probably burned a lot of calories last night,” Dawn said innocently.
“Oh, my gosh,” Nicole muttered.
Recklessly, Sadey scooped a whole row of candy off the shelf into the cart as she walked past. “There’s an all-day waffle place down the street that serves mimosas. It specializes in breakfast for dinner. It’s good to carb up after feeding a vamp.”
Dawn put on a pair of black glittery bat ears and studied herself in the selfie-mode of her phone. “Sadey learned that the hard way. She passed out once from not eating enough after she fed Aric.”
So off they went with their spooky wares. She fielded a few texts from clients with questions and set up four appointments for the next week as they waited to order at the waffle café. She hadn’t expected food, good company, and openness from Sadey and Dawn. The two shifters kept her busy and occupied while, in the back of her mind, Nicole ticked off the minutes and hours until Evan would wake up.
They explained that she was safe to live her life during the day because, no matter how ancient the monster was, no vampires could stand sunlight. It burned their skin and could kill them. So, this was her time—the daylight hours. She could breathe and rest her mind, and at night, she would be safe with Evan again in the Winterset Coven house.
After breakfast, they did some boutique shopping on Main Street and then drove to her apartment to gather a few things for the coven house. Grocery shopping was next, and then she and the girls cooked a comfort food dinner for the three of them. Hamburger Helper, green beans, and hot, buttered rolls before Dawn had to leave for her shift as a bartender at Trager’s Bar.
And as the sun began to set, she and Sadey sat on the porch and watched the horizon together. Only a few more minutes now.
Sadey pulled her blond hair back into a ponytail, then rested her head against the side of the porch railing. She turned to Nicole. “This is my favorite time of day.”
Nicole took a seat on the top stair and leaned on the railing opposite Sadey. “Do you ever think of sleeping at the same time as Aric?”
With a shrug, Sadey told her, “I like the sunlight. I stay up later than I used to and am lucky enough to work an afternoon shift so I can sleep in. I get more time with him that way, but that man would never ask me to give up the sunlight completely. That’s how love works.”
Nicole gave a private smile and watched the sun sink lower…lower…
“Evan wouldn’t ask you to give up the sunlight either.”
“What?” Nicole asked.
“If you dated him, he wouldn’t pressure you to only live at night. He’s not that kind of man. Now if you were dating Shane? That’s a different story.” She frowned at the tree line. “He doesn’t feel as much as the others. He’s colder. More like Arabella, Aric’s maker. But then Shane was under her for a long time, and his personality matches the old coven better. At least that’s what I think from the stories Aric tells me.”
“I don’t want to cause any trouble for your coven,” Nicole murmured. “I don’t want my presence to make Shane leave.”
“He won’t. He doesn’t like humans much, but he’ll get over it.”
But Nicole remembered so clearly how he’d looked at her last night in the hallway. There was such hatred in his eyes. Sometimes men didn’t ever get over feelings that deep.
When the door creaked open behind them, Nicole twisted around. Evan stood there, dark hair messed-up just right, a black T-shirt contrasting against his ivory skin. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and his powerful legs splayed, and that smile…oh, that smile. He could break a hundred hearts at once with that smile.
Sadey stood. “I’m going to find Aric.” She offered Nicole a wink and told her, “I sure enjoyed hanging out with you and Dawn today.”
“Me, too! Thanks for taking me under your wing. Errrr…I mean paw.”
Sadey snorted and made her way past Evan, disappeared inside.
“I could get used to this,” Evan said softly as he came to sit behind her.
With a sigh, Nicole leaned her back against his chest and relaxed completely to watch the soft grays fade from the sky. “I feel like you vampires have magical seduction powers.”
Evan chuckled and played with a strand of her hair. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m comfortable with you. That is supposed to take time, but for us, it took no time at all.”
“That’s how it worked with Sadey and Dawn, too.”
His voice had a faraway tone to it, and she turned just enough to look at his face. “What worked for them?”
With a shake of his head, he said, “Oh, nothing.”
“Last night you promised to put me to sleep with interesting stories of your life, but you boned me to sleep instead.”
“You complaining?”
“Hell no. That was the greatest bedtime story.”
“But you want to know more.”
“Yep!”
“The year was nineteen-thirty-six, and my parents were super horny. I started as a little zygote—”
“Oh, my God, you know what I mean,” she said, swatting him on the knee.
He laughed and hugged her closer. “I died in the Iditarod in 1975.”
“The dog sled race?”
She could feel him nod his head against her cheek. “Alaska was home. I homesteaded with my family, and we raised sled dogs. Alaskan Huskies. We bred them. Made our living off them. And every year when I was growing up, my father would race. It wasn’t called the Iditarod back then. It was less organized, rougher, because it wasn’t official, and the rules weren’t ironclad. It was more about men trying to prove their merit in the Alaskan wilderness. Part of the reason he did it was to market our business. We had the best sled dogs, and he could prove it if he did well with the team at the dog sled races. And when he got too old, I raced. The Iditarod is called the last great race for a reason. It’s hard and lasts for days. You battle fatigue, sub-zero temperatures, hypothermia, food rationing, making sure your dogs are healthy with the workload, predators around every corner. I loved it. I didn’t even pay attention to the women in town. If I wasn’t hunting, growing food, or taking care of livestock, my entire existence revolved around the dogs, sleds, practicing, and preparing for the race each winter. Nineteen seventy-five, and I didn’t make it to day three.”
“What happened to you?”
“Choked on a chicken bone.”
“Really?” she asked.
“No. I stepped in a bear trap when I was feeding my dogs. It was right under this huge tree, completely covered in snow. The race had been in a whiteout, and it was hard to see anything, hard to stay on the trail even. And then in one second, everything changed. I knew the second I stepped on that metal trigger that I was done for. My dogs were barking, howling, trying to get to me
, but I’d made camp and they were still tied to their stakes. I was in so much pain I couldn’t think straight. Was bleeding too much. The snow around me was red, and I was trying to dig the post out of the ground that had the trap anchored, but it was frozen solid. The harder I tried to escape, the faster I bled out. I remember laying back in the snow, freezing, shaking, in shock from the pain, and I looked up at the clouds above me. I was sad that I couldn’t see the stars. I didn’t want to die staring at storm clouds. I don’t know why that mattered to me, but it did. I couldn’t get to my dogs to set them free, and they were going to die with me. Starve or freeze or get eaten by the animal that this trap was intended for. Then I heard something.”
“What was it?” she asked softly, imagining everything he was describing so clearly.
“This screeching sound, and then I saw them. I saw the bats. They covered the clouds. My blood had drawn in a predator, but it wasn’t any predator I’d ever seen.”
“Vampire,” she uttered on a breath. “Did it hurt? Dying?”
“I don’t remember. The dogs were going crazy, and I could see this dark figure walking through my pack. They were lunging at it, gnashing their teeth, trying to protect me. The creature didn’t even pay attention to them. They were nothing. No threat to him. He only had his black eyes trained on me. He disappeared into a plume of smoke and reappeared hovering over me. I remember he said, ‘I’m sorry.’ And then…nothing.”
“You don’t remember him?”
“Oh, I know my origin. His name is Masterson. Still lives in Alaska as a trapper. He Turned me and taught me how to control the bloodlust.”
“What happened to your dogs?”
“Masterson set ’em all free before he took my body back to his cabin. Most of them found their way back to my family.”
“Did you see your family again?” she asked.