by Sharon Page
Phillips staggered to his feet. “I’ve never touched Megan.”
“And you’d better keep it that way, Phillips.”
With a snarl, Phillips backed away, watching her with respect. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to look tough. He sneered, turned, and headed back toward his car. His weaving gait straightened before he reached it.
She flipped open her cell phone and called her office.
“Kennedy Investigations,” Jessica trilled.
“Hi, Jessica, it’s Erin. I’m just calling to let you know I’ve had something come up.” She winced at her own words. Normally she could pretext—lie—much better than this. But normally she was not in the process of discovering that vampires existed. Succinctly she explained what had happened with Phillips—leaving out Michael’s part.
“Are you all right?” Jessica squeaked.
“I’m fine, and Phillips just hightailed it out of here. I’m going to call Megan Phillips, check that she’s okay, and see if she’d like to have Matt watch her for a while. I’m just a little shook up, and there’s something I need to do before I come in. Nothing major, just a personal thing.”
Erin hung up and dialed Megan Phillips as she started her car. By the time she was out of the garage, she knew Megan was okay and aware of her husband’s anger. Megan insisted Dave would never hit her. How Megan could have that much faith in a man who slammed his fists into drywall and shouted obscenities, Erin didn’t know.
“I’ll go to my sister’s,” Megan promised.
Erin sighed. She felt Megan was doing it to humor her. “I’m sending an investigator to watch over you while you pack and to escort you there. His name is Matt Black.”
Megan agreed and hung up.
More relieved about her client’s safety, Erin concentrated on driving strictly at the speed limit. What if she got pulled over by the cops and they decided to open her trunk?
Not going to happen. Just drive carefully. Her knuckles were white against the steering wheel, her leg almost cramped with tension as she kept her foot light on the gas.
She remembered her reassurance to Jessica. Nothing major.
She had an undead man in her trunk, and she was about to bring him home.
This was the most bizarre thing she’d ever done. Possibly the craziest. Could she really trust Michael? Believe him? Take him on faith?
Or should she pick up a stake, a cross, and a garlic bulb on the way?
“What can I do for your arms? And your face? Do you want ice?”
Michael watched as Erin raced from window to window, yanking down her roll-down shades and blinds. Her concern for his welfare was endearing.
“Lukewarm water is better for a burn, I think,” she muttered, more to herself than to him.
“Relax, love,” he soothed, following her. “I’ve already healed.”
Erin spun around at his statement and stared in astonishment, her gaze darting from his face to his bare forearms. “Already?”
He displayed his arms to her to show they were now smooth and unmarked, the regenerated skin the same golden color as the rest of his forearms—the exact color his skin had been the morning he had become undead.
The relief on her face touched his heart.
She looked so damned sexy standing there, dressed in a beige suit with a slim skirt that brushed her knees and a white blouse that displayed just a hint of the deep valley between her breasts. There was something naughty about fucking a woman who was all dressed up.
Michael clasped her right hand, drew Erin into his embrace to nuzzle her neck. The feel of her skin against his mouth, the thump of her heart against his chest, did not call forth the predator in him; instead, they summoned the man within him, the man who yearned to love.
“Michael?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you for coming to my rescue.”
His lips skimmed up to her ear, breathing in her tempting vanilla scent. His fingertips trailed down her stomach to touch her hot center through her linen skirt. She must feel his hard cock jutting against her. “Let me show you how much I love you, Erin.”
Erin reached up to his shoulders. “You know, if you were any other guy, I’d tell you off for a tacky statement like that. I’m just making allowances for your advanced age.”
He laughed, pleased she was teasing him now, touching him, not afraid of him.
But her voice sobered. “How could you know I’m your soul mate, Michael?”
“A million reasons, Erin,” he told her honestly. “But only one that truly matters.”
“And that one is—?”
“That you are with me now. You trust me. Even knowing what I am, you care, love.”
A little “ooh” escaped her lips as he splayed his fingers across her firm, slender back, lifting her into his kiss. At the touch of her lips, plump, soft, and yielding, he almost lost control. Almost yanked up her skirt, pulled aside her panties, and slid his prick home.
All their ultrahot e-mails raced through his head, sparking a dozen wild sexual fantasies at once, taking him to the brink of his restraint. Damn, he was ready to take his beautiful Erin up against the wall, but he wanted their first time to be more sensual than speedy.
Slanting his lips, he parted hers with his tongue. Carefully keeping his fangs covered, he teased her tongue with his. Erin melted against him.
He slid his hands down, following the tempting curve of Erin’s back to her incredibly scrumptious ass. The best he’d ever grasped. Slowly drawing away from her mouth, he cupped both cheeks, smiled down into her sparkling green eyes, and squeezed. “Gorgeous.”
Erin rained kisses along his jaw, her wavy auburn tresses shivering as she traced its ridge. His cock throbbed as her fingers explored his neck, his shoulders, his chest, caressing him with a hunger as intense as his. He pulled her tight against him, clamping her heat to his insistent prick.
She stroked down his shoulders, massaged his biceps, let her hands run delicately down to his healed forearms. She paused.
“Sorry.”
“Not to worry. They don’t hurt,” he reassured.
His muscles tightened as he tugged her blouse out of her skirt, fumbling in his haste, and she gave an appreciative murmur as she ran her fingertips over his taut veins.
Michael groaned as he slid his hands under her soft blouse and tailored jacket. “Baby, your skin is like hot silk.”
“So is yours.” She tugged at his T-shirt, but once she’d freed it, she didn’t stroke his back as he’d thought. She dipped the fingers of one hand down into his pants to touch his ass.
He’d never desired a woman so much. Erin was a tempting combination of sensuality and restraint. No virgin, of course—this was the twenty-first century, after all—and she had a damned sexy appreciation of his body, but he understood how she protected her heart. She’d had to know him well before revealing her father had cheated on her mother. She’d admitted she was too cynical after years of catching adulterers to believe in happily ever after.
Despite what he’d said in his e-mail, he’d never believed in happily ever after either. Now he had to, or die. He had to find happily ever after with Erin, even though she’d told him she wasn’t looking for love and didn’t want to risk her heart.
“God,” she moaned, fingers delving between the cheeks of his arse. “You’ve got a beautiful ass.”
He had to grin. He’d never been called God before, though he’d often been referred to as the devil.
“And you don’t wear underwear,” she noted in surprise.
While she fought to slide her hands between his tight pants and his skin, he drew up her blouse. He unveiled generous breasts cupped by a lacy push-up bra. He sucked his breath in hard. The filmy white cups gave a teasing glimpse of her pale skin and her hardening amber nipples.
Michael opened his mouth wide to take in the whole round nipple of her left breast.
“Wait! Watch the teeth.”
“Of course.” He gently
put his mouth to her bra, sucking in soft lace and skin. While lovingly licking her nipple through the web of cotton, he pinched its twin.
Her back arched, pushing her breasts against him.
He shifted his leg forward and lifted Erin until she straddled the tightened muscles of his thigh. Her skirt rode up as her legs parted, leaving only a white cotton thong between his butter-soft leather pants and her wet pussy. Her rich scent brought out his fangs, made him growl. He slid one hand under her skirt to tug on the thin strap of her panties nestled between her ass cheeks and tightened the fabric until it sawed between her lips, rubbed her engorged clit, and the room filled with her lush sexual smell.
Her hands, fingers wide, clamped tight around his ass, completely captured between his flesh and his pants.
“I must be crazy, Michael. This feels so … natural. So right. Or maybe it’s just because I feel like if I don’t make love with you, I’m going to burst into flames.”
He buried his face between her full breasts, knowing that he had to tell her he was literally going to go up in flames if they didn’t make love. In two damned days.
But, right now, he hungered to please her.
“Where’s your bedroom, love? Because in one minute I’m going to lose control and make love to you, and I’d like it to be in your bed.”
“Down the hallway,” she whispered throatily. “Last door on the right.”
He lifted her to his waist. “Wrap your legs around me.”
Erin obeyed. Her satin-smooth, shapely legs slid across his hip bones. One of her pumps landed with a clunk on her hardwood floor.
He didn’t race her down the hallway in a heartbeat—her fragile human body might not take it. Instead he cradled her and eased her pussy up and down the leather restraining his swollen prick as he carried her to the bedroom. The deep moans she gave in response sent wave after wave of blood to his hard-on until he sported the thickest, heaviest erection he’d ever had.
“Kiss me hard,” she begged, and he complied. He paused at her bedroom door to give her a long, hot kiss. She tasted of her morning coffee and mint toothpaste, of a unique sweetness. Her tongue met his with a tentative tickle.
Slowly he withdrew his tongue. To his surprise, her tongue filled his mouth, touched, then played with, his fangs. She pressed too hard, and the sharp point lightly pricked her. He tasted a little drop of blood. He knew she was safe from the beast he could be, but the coppery tang in his mouth was unbearably erotic.
Added bonus, Michael thought as he laved his tongue over the wound in hers to heal it.
3
Uh-oh. What would Michael do once he tasted blood?
Erin stiffened in his arms, half expecting he would rear back, bare his teeth like a rogue vampire in a bad movie, and sink them into her jugular.
Instead he broke the kiss, kept his mouth hovering over hers, and whispered, “Did you hurt yourself on my fangs?”
She relaxed at his concern. “It was my fault. I should have expected they would be sharp.”
And that made her tense all over again. They were sharp for the purposes of—
“Don’t think about what I am now, Erin,” he murmured, his voice so deep and sensuous her fearful thoughts skittered away. “I want to become a mortal man again. For you.”
Erin touched the silvery line along his cheek—the line of healing where the sun had burned him. She cupped his jaw, rough with stubble. “I don’t understand how you can become mortal again if you are undead. What does sex have to do with it?”
“Will you trust me enough to let me show you?” He nudged open her bedroom door with his heavy black motorcycle boot and carried her inside. Her blinds were drawn, and the room was plunged in soft gloom.
Erin saw her furniture spin as Michael lifted her over the bed. She glimpsed her burgundy and gold quilt below her and saw herself in the mirror, captured in his arms. Michael had a reflection. Just as she gasped in surprise at that, he lowered her to her bed.
He joined her, stretching his long, magnificent body beside hers. He completely filled her queen-size sleigh bed; his hair brushed her headboard, and his boots clunked against the end.
Yes, she was willing to let him show her. She couldn’t wait to view his unbelievably gorgeous body.
Rolling onto her side, Erin stroked her bare foot along his hard metal-trimmed boot. “Can I see you naked?”
His sexy grin heightened her excitement, sent her heart into palpitations. “Of course, love.”
As he sat up and pulled off his T-shirt, she admitted, “I’ve fantasized about this for months.”
“So have I.” He tossed his shirt to the floor. “And I’ve been hungering for it for so long, I’m afraid I might explode before I strip.” He paused with his hands on his opened waistband. “Something I’ve never done before.”
Erin caught her breath as he unzipped his pants; she put her hand to her rapidly pounding heart. She knew there was nothing underneath his leathers but bare skin. Knew he must be well endowed—he’d felt huge when she’d put her hand on him in Bellissima’s, but …
Holy s—
He peeled his pants down, revealing a generous tangle of black curls and his hard, thick cock standing straight and tall, dead center. His pants slid down his thighs, and she could see his full, lightly furred balls dangling beneath. He possessed the most beautifully perfect, hard cock she’d ever seen—as wide as her wrist, truly as long as her forearm. The base looked even bigger around than she could grasp. And all that rampant beauty tapered to a firm, helmet-shaped head that begged to be kissed.
She could hardly believe this … this … was hers to play with. To enjoy.
Michael’s eyes closed in ecstasy at her touch. His cock pulsated against her closed hand. She gave a long stroke upward, caressing the taut, glistening head. Her hand drew his foreskin up over the ridge.
She moved to keep her hand stroking his length as he pulled off his boots and struggled to slide his pants down his legs. He was moaning at her touch, leaking so much juice into her hand her palm was slick and shiny.
“Now you,” he groaned.
To tease, Erin continued to jerk him as he tried to undress her. His fingers fumbled over the buttons on her blouse.
Finally, with a hiss of irritation, Michael tugged. Buttons scattered, some hitting her floor with a clatter.
“Michael—!”
“I’ll buy you another,” he promised. “I’ll buy you a hundred, if you want.”
She had to admit, she’d never been with a man so eager to see her naked he’d shredded her clothing. She shrugged off her jacket, and the motion pushed her chest ahead as he unsnapped the front closure on her bra.
Suddenly her breasts were in his hands, cradled lovingly as his thumbs strummed both her nipples in unison. His eyes glittered with feral intensity.
She flung her jacket to the floor beside his T-shirt and peeled off her blouse, arching back to again thrust her breasts hard at him. He kneaded them with a touch both rough and loving, turning her into molten lava inside.
Erin tugged at her skirt. Michael’s hands moved under her hips, lifting her, and he stripped her skirt and her thong away in a heartbeat.
His bare chest flexed deliciously as he moved.
How many times had she fantasized this scene? Hundreds. But even her horny little imagination had never envisioned Michael would be so gorgeous, so ready, so … big.
His hot gaze raked her naked body.
“You are beautiful,” he murmured reverentially. He bent his head to her breasts.
Her left nipple disappeared between his firm, full lips, and he nudged her onto her back. He lay along her body to suckle her, supporting himself on his bare flexed arms.
She cried out as he drew her nipple and breast into his mouth between his fangs.
Oh, god, she had a vampire on her breast. And Michael really knew how to pleasure her. His tongue laved and teased, drawing lazy, wet, tingling spirals over her swollen nipple. She arched with
pleasure and threaded her fingers into his hair to capture his head to her chest.
Suddenly he sucked hard, and desire streaked through her.
Erin squealed. Michael glanced up, a naughty smile shining in his eyes. He looked utterly wicked as he flicked his tongue over her nipple. And flicked and flicked and flicked until she struggled for breath and clutched his shoulders as though she were in danger of falling away into space. He licked and sucked and tweaked her breasts, and when he released them, she saw the marking of his attentions in the dark red mottling around her pink areolas.
He was feasting on her, and it frightened her slightly. How closely linked was arousal and hunger for him? In fiction, biting was as erotic as sex, but she wasn’t certain she was quite ready to try—Ooh.
Michael cupped her breasts in his large hands, lifted them to lick in the warm fold beneath each one. She loved the wet, loving caress, loved the way his black hair drifted across her skin as he nuzzled her.
His hands skimmed down, followed her curves, and slid between her thighs. His tongue filled her ticklish navel, and she almost launched off the bed, shrieking and giggling.
Grinning, showing the tips of his fangs, he parted her legs. Erin squirmed beneath him, knowing her honey was leaking onto his hands. His head moved lower….
Yes, she trusted him to be gentle, to be careful with his teeth….
She wrapped her legs around his beautiful, broad, triangular back and massaged his ass with her toes. Such perfect, tight, hard muscles.
He put his face to the curls between her legs. Little moans of pleasure escaped his lips as his tongue slid into her slit. He obviously loved her body.
This was the best ever, but—
Erin broke off with a squeak as his tongue rasped her clit. She realized she’d spoken her thoughts out loud.
Michael blew a hot breath over her wet lips, her hard nub, before he glanced up, eyes gleaming like pure silver disks. “Yes, love?” he asked in a droll voice.
“How can this save your soul?” she asked again.
“How could this not save a man’s soul?”
Michael inhaled Erin’s sweet, rich arousal.