He groaned as she covered him and he tried to slip inside her, but she would not be rushed tonight. She wanted more, so much more, she thought and didn’t realize she had said it aloud.
“More, Eliza? Tell me what you want,” John whispered as he continued suckling her breasts.
She thought of Adrian then. Thought of all she had seen him do in the past few months. All that she had imagined doing with him—and guilt settled in, chilling her like a cold bucket of water.
“Eliza?” John asked, as if sensing her sudden distance, but she threw herself back into the moment, running her hands down his arms to his chest. Raking her fingernails playfully along the hard points of his nipples, dragging a groan from him.
“Love me, John,” she pleaded.
He slipped his hands to her back and urged her close. Feasted on her breasts until she was writhing against him, needing completion. Gently he urged her down to the sofa and kicked away the coffee table, sending it flying away in his eagerness to please.
He quickly shimmied out of his jeans and briefs, then settled on his knees before her spread-eagled legs, his gaze on the darker red curls at her center. He bent and kissed the inside of her ankle. Slowly he worked his way up, trailing a line of love bites and kisses until he was at her center, but he delayed there, his thumb barely skimming the swollen nub of her clit. His gaze locked on her breasts.
“You have beautiful tits, Eliza,” he said a second before raising one hand to grab hold of hers. Urging it upward to her breast. “Touch yourself for me,” he said, a hint of command in his voice that she had not ever heard before.
“Touch myself?” she asked, and a moment of pique flitted across his normally placid face.
“You said you wanted more, love. I want more, too,” he finally admitted.
Answering his plea, she cupped her breasts with her hands. Tweaked the nipples and watched his pupils dilate at her actions.
“Don’t stop,” he said and leaned forward, let his mouth and tongue join the game while he finally applied more pressure to her clit, dragging a moan from her.
He kept at it, sucking and biting her nipples and fingers while he played with her. She was wet and pressing against his hand, urging him onward. Exhorting him with the soft cries that spilled from her lips until he finally slipped one finger inside of her, stroking the walls of her vagina.
“That feels good, John. So good,” she whispered and arched her back, deepening the push of his finger.
“I know what might feel even better,” he teased and worked his way down her body until his mouth and lips were at her center.
He stroked his tongue along her lips and clit, dragging a cry of satisfaction from her.
With a pleased male chuckle, he sucked at her clit and drove two fingers into her, pulling another long keening moan from her. Stroking in and out with his fingers, biting at the swollen nub, he dragged her to a sharp, fast release.
He licked at her, savoring her climax. Feeding from it. Eliza was not going to complain, as his actions pulled her up again, closer and closer to greater satisfaction. As he surged up on his knees, the thick tip of him grazed along the length of her lips and he groaned.
“You’re so wet. So hot,” John said even as he was fitting the head of his cock at the entrance to her vagina.
With a subtle shift of her hips, she took him in farther, slowly. Allowing her body to accommodate the wide girth of him, as large as the rest of him.
He sucked in a rough breath and his big body shuddered above her. “So tight. So fucking tight,” he breathed, bracing his arms on either side of her. Meeting her gaze as if to gauge if he was hurting her.
Eliza smiled, reached up and cradled his cheek. “You’re so beautiful, John,” she said and she meant it.
He was beautiful inside and out and she didn’t deserve him because she wasn’t sure she could ever fully love him.
But she would satisfy him tonight and accept the release he brought her. If only for this last night. Slowly she moved her hips, accepting the slide of his last few inches deep into her womb. Urging him on with the slip of her hands along his buttocks and up to his broad shoulders. Raising upward to nip his nipples as he loved. Biting gently and watching his eyes close as passion became too much for him to bear.
He surged forward, more powerfully than before. Driving her up along the sofa cushions as he pushed and retreated, moving both of them toward release.
Eliza closed her eyes and accepted his loving. She wrapped her legs around his body, deepening his possession. Pleasuring him with the roll of her hips that matched his thrusts and her hands and mouth in those places she knew pleased him.
His body trembled as he reached the peak and she was there with him, her own body on fire from the pleasure he had stoked in her. But even as she perched on that peak ready to go over with him, she rose on one elbow and covered his hard nipple with her lips. Bit down on the tip as he liked, and he moaned like a man in pain and slipped over the edge with her.
With a final few pumps of his hips, he shot his seed into her and then dropped down on her for only a moment before using his muscled strength to reverse their positions until she was draped along the length of his body. His cock, still hard but ebbing by degrees, filled her body as she lay there, accepting the slow pass of his rough palms along her back. Gentling caresses.
She ran her hand across the thick, deep muscles of his chest before settling it directly over his heart. It was still pumping a mad rhythm in his chest, but slowly calmed.
For long moments there was nothing but their rough breaths returning to normal and then he covered her hand with his and said, “I’m not the one, am I?”
She knew what he meant and yet was loathe to start this discussion, because there was only one place it could end.
“I care for you a lot, John. “It was no lie. She cared for John as much as she could care for anyone other than Adrian.
He surprised her then with silence, saying nothing else the entire time they lay there and then dressed. They set the coffee table back to rights, walked out of her quarters and to the front door to end the night.
She paused there, her hand on the jamb of the door as John faced her.
“Will I see you on Saturday?” she asked, recognizing how unfair it was even as the words left her mouth.
He smiled and a bit of a dimple emerged on the side of his face. Cupping her cheek, he said, “I’ll be here if you want me, but only if you truly want me.”
Without waiting for her reply, he pivoted on his heel and nearly skipped down the stairs to street level. Eliza closed the door and recognized that as she did so, she was also closing it on this in her life.
She might want John physically, might want him to fill the lonely hours in her life, but she didn’t want him the way he should be wanted; sadly, he knew it as well.
But she wasn’t selfish enough to bind him to such a relationship even if he was willing to linger in that way.
Acknowledging that, however, bound her to a world of loneliness and servitude. Maybe even a world of regret, contrary to what she had told Adrian just the night before.
Two hundred years earlier she had chosen life as his consort rather than death. She had been too young to die back then, but now it was hard to imagine an eternal life of servitude without love.
Because of that, Eliza realized that it was time to explore her options.
Chapter Five
Eliza paced back and forth in the foyer. Nearly 3:00 a.m. with no sign of or word from either Adrian or Jamie.
After John had left, she had tidied her room and prepped a meal for Adrian. An hour had gone by, chased by a second. She had phoned his cell, but got no answer. A text message had likewise been ignored. She had then resorted to trying Jamie with equally dismal results.
Had something happened? she wondered, wringing her hands and continuing her march across the Aubusson rug in the foyer. Unable to just wait any longer, she raced back up the stairs to grab her bag s
o she could go in search of them, making sure she had her can of mace to chase away unwanted humans and an atomized garlic spray and small wooden stake for any unwelcome undead.
She jogged back down the steps and was halfway across the foyer when the door flew open and rebounded against the wall with enough force to knock off a picture frame.
“Jaysus, Jamie. You’ll wake the dead,” Adrian said with a grimace as Jamie half-dragged half-carried him into the mansion.
The stench of whiskey carried across the distance to her, turning concern to anger.
“Do ya know what time it is?” she said, striding straight up to the obviously inebriated pair of vampires and jamming her hands on her hips.
“Time for bed,” Jamie said with a wink as he proceeded to lug a stumbling Adrian up the stairs to his bedroom.
Eliza closed the door behind them and chased the pair, thankful for Jamie’s size and his apparent lack of total drunkenness. She didn’t know how she would have hauled Adrian up the stairs by herself in the state he was in.
Jamie brought Adrian to the edge of the bed and then released him. “Timber,” he said with glee as his friend toppled onto the bed and groaned when he hit the mattress.
“You’re not my friend,” Adrian mumbled into the mattress where he had just done a face plant. Jamie chuckled, but as Eliza shot him a glare, his mirth dimmed. A little.
Eliza moved to the edge of the bed and grabbed hold of Adrian’s arm, trying to pull him onto his back so she could remove the clothes that reeked of whiskey. His undead weight was too great for her, so she stared at his friend, who lingered by the bed, clearly finding the situation humorous.
Anger flared through her, but she tamped it down because she needed Jamie’s assistance. “Would you please help me?”
Jamie chuckled again, but did as she asked, maneuvering a nearly unconscious Adrian onto his back in the center of the bed where she could tend to him.
“Thank you,” she replied demurely, earning yet another round of laughter from Jamie.
“I know that cost you, Eliza. I’d be mad as all hell if it were me who had to hold his head and watch him puke,” he said, before quickly adding, “At least he hasn’t fed. Should make it not quite as foul.”
“I should say ‘thanks’ for that at least, but it would have been nice if either of you had answered the phone so I wouldn’t have been half out of my mind with worry,” she admitted as she unbuttoned Adrian’s shirt, exposing the leanly muscled lines of his chest and midsection.
“We were fine. He’ll be fine, although he’ll have a hell of a hangover,” Jamie said, bending once more to help raise his friend so she could yank off the shirt.
Considering how much alcohol it took for a vamp to get liquored up, she supposed he would, which was the least Adrian deserved for worrying her. She thanked Jamie again and shot a quick look at her watch.
“It’s late. You have time to get home before dawn, but if you’d like, you can bed down here tonight,” she offered, thankful for all that Jamie had done despite getting Adrian shit-faced.
Jamie surprised her then by glancing from Adrian to her and back. “While I appreciate the offer, I think it’s best if I left the two of you to sort this out by yourselves.”
Eliza wanted to ask what there was to sort out, but Jamie didn’t give her a chance. With a blast of vamp speed, he raced out of the bedroom and only a few seconds later came the sound of the front door opening and closing.
Adrian groaned again, probably lost in some drunken dream, she thought as his muscles twitched beneath his skin. She undid the button on his jeans, carefully shifted the zipper downward past his very obvious erection.
Her hands trembled and she licked her suddenly dry lips as she yanked away the rest of his clothes to reveal the perfection of his masculinity.
While both John and Jamie were all big overblown power, Adrian’s lethally lean body had not an ounce of spare flesh or unnecessary muscle, except for his dick. His dick, jaysus but women would remember that gorgeous cock inside them, she thought, fisting her hand to keep from reaching up and running it along the perfection of his erection. Fighting the urge to cup the equally magnificent balls nested in the ebony curls between his legs.
“Cold,” he murmured in his sleep/stupor and Eliza bent to grab a comforter draped over the seaman’s chest at the foot of the bed.
Placing a knee on the bed to reach him, she tossed the comforter over him. He roused and gazed at her through unfocused and slightly bleary eyes. “Cold,” he repeated, and before she could react, he grabbed hold of her wrist and hauled her close.
She fell against the length of him and he released her wrist, but solely to yank away her robe and bring her warm body flush to his.
Closing his eyes, he murmured, “So tired of being cold all the time. You’re so warm.”
He snaked his hand along her side and to the middle of her back, pressing her tight against him. Eliza had few choices—battle him or battle herself. Of course, there was the third choice: become Swiss and remain neutral.
She opted for the last one, allowing herself to burrow close, warming him with her body. Tossing her thigh over his to create the most skin-to-skin contact and transfer of heat.
Or at least that’s what she told herself, denying just how many times she had imagined something like this, but not quite like this, in recent months.
He quieted, the fine tremble and twitch of his skin ebbing along with his desire, bringing an odd mix of disappointment and relief.
With his breath and heartbeat slowing until he would seem almost dead with the advent of dawn, Eliza also gradually relaxed, allowing herself to slip into a half-sleep so that when the time was right she could escape from his bed.
It was in that slumberous state hours later that she experienced the unexpected stirring beneath her thigh as Adrian roused. It was near dawn and she had not expected him to become active again. Yet there was no denying the erection growing ever larger and more insistent against the soft skin of her thigh. No way to ignore the leisurely journey of his hand along the back of her thigh to cup her ass and urge her closer. Or the way Adrian shifted and continued the journey with that hand ever upward to cradle her breast.
“Adrian,” she warned and took hold of his wrist, but even as she did so her heartbeat quickened in anticipation.
He bent his head and whispered along the shell of her ear. “You smell so good. Like fresh laundry in the summer sun,” he said and drew in a long breath. “Feel as soft,” he whispered before strumming his thumb along the tip of her breast, drawing a hesitant sigh from her. “I want to feed,” he said and the rasp of his fangs came along the side of her neck. Her heart skittered in her chest, but he continued his tardy pleasure at her breast, driving away the fear.
He had fed from her before. Had offered her the vampire’s kiss which had kept her alive for so long. But he had never fed from her while touching her like this, and a part of her worried that she’d lose the rest of her soul to him if they continued along this path.
“I’ll get you a bag, Adrian,” she offered, shifting away from him, but he spread his hands across her back to keep her close.
“I want to feed from you, Eliza. Nothing else will do.”
Before she could reply or flee, he rolled over, trapping her beneath him. He eased her thighs apart and gently probed at her center while he bent his head and suckled her breasts. Bit them gently as he slipped the smooth head of his cock into her vagina and paused, almost as if reconsidering.
In that moment of hesitation, far shorter than the fastest heartbeat, she understood that no matter what followed she was damned. Better she be damned for following her heart than for being a coward.
She raised her hips, driving him deeper.
He moaned like a man in pain and dragged his head up to search her features.
The bright neon green of the vampire filled his gaze. Razor-sharp fangs protruded past the lips she had imagined tasting for so long. This was the d
eadly side of Adrian, the side she always found so hard to mesh with the caring and loving man she knew him to be.
“I will not hurt you,” he slurred, the alcohol still running strong through his veins.
“I know,” she replied and as if to reassure him, she cupped his cheek and traced her thumb along the fullness of his lower lip and then up the bright white of his fang.
A low growl, like that of a big jungle cat, rumbled through his body and against hers. He dipped his head once more, ran the sharp point of his fangs along the sensitized tips of her breasts as he finally pushed firmly into her body, filling her with the thick length of his cock.
He fit beautifully within her, stretching her to the point of pleasure, but not beyond. As he retreated his hips before driving home again, the friction built, awakening every nerve ending. Making her throb ever wetter with each powerful stroke of his body.
She raised her hips and met each thrust with welcome. Grasped his head to her as he sucked and teethed at her nipples, dragging her ever closer to her release.
Bracing one hand beside her, he rose up and examined her, a myriad of emotions flitting across his face, confusion amongst them. The combination of alcohol and the vampire had drowned out any common sense likely to warn that what was happening was a big mistake.
“Eliza—” he began, as if finally beginning to grasp some reason.
But she would have none of it. She covered his mouth to silence him because it was too late to turn back. Not now when she was poised on the edge of release, savoring the satisfaction she had craved for so long.
“You know what you need, Adrian,” she reminded, dipping her head to the side and exposing the fragile column of her neck.
That low rumble erupted from him again, stronger than before. The thrust of his body into hers more powerful, bordering on the edge of violent.
“I want you,” he said and reached between their bodies with his hand, finding the swollen nub hidden by the soft curls at her center. Covering it with his thumb and gently pressing to unleash a growing spiral of passion.
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