Dead and Loving It

by MaryJanice Alongi

  She had meant to keep playing with him as long as she could draw it out, but he suddenly jerked away from her and kneed her thighs apart. He was terse, silent, but oh, how his hands were shaking. “Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first? Again, I mea—eeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!” He entered her with one brutal thrust, all the way, all at once. She was slick and more than ready for him, but it was startling—a little frightening, even—all the same.

  He started to drive himself into her.

  She squirmed beneath him, felt her eyes roll back in her head…ah, Jesus, this was almost too much! Almost. “Alec.”

  His hips were shoving against hers, his eyes were tightly closed; his mouth was a narrow line.

  “Alec.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “M’sorry. Wait. I’ll be—nice again. In a minute.”

  “Alec.”

  “I can’t—stop. Just yet. S-Sorry. So sorry.” His hands were on her shoulders, pinning her down, keeping her in place for him. His sex was rearing between her legs, into her, out of her. Digging, shoving, filling her.

  “Alec. If you do it a little faster, I’ll be able to come again.”

  That got his attention; his eyes opened wide. And then he smiled, a grin of pure male satisfaction. And he obliged. She heard the headboard start slamming against the wall and didn’t give a tin shit. She wriggled for a moment until he let go of her shoulders and then brought her arms around him and her legs up. She started doing a little pumping of her own. Their bellies clapped together, a lustful, urgent beat.

  His eyes rolled back. “Ah, Jesus!” His mouth found hers, and he kissed her savagely, biting her mouth, her lips. Then he abruptly pulled back, as if aware he was nearing a line he wasn’t ready to cross with her—absurd, given what they were engaged in. His head dropped, and she could feel his face pressing against the hollow between her neck and shoulder. There was a sharp pain as he bit her.

  He’s marking me, she thought. She heard a purring tear as he tore the sheets. He’s making me his own. That thought—so complicated, so strange, and so completely marvelous—spun her into orgasm.

  He stiffened over her as she cried out and his grip tightened—painful for a split second—and then he relaxed. “Do that again,” he growled in her ear and then bit her earlobe.

  “I can’t,” she gasped, almost groaned. And still he was busy, still he was fucking her with long, fast strokes.

  “Yes.”

  “I—can’t!” Pump, pump, pump, and her neck stung where he had bitten her. As if sensing her thought, he bent to her and licked the bite and then kissed her mouth.

  “I need to feel your sweet little cave tightening around me again,” he said into her mouth. “I must insist.”

  “I’m done. Please, I can’t anymore. Please, Alec—” Oh, but her body was betraying her. She was arching her back to better meet his thrusts, and she could feel that now-familiar tightening between her thighs, the feeling that told her she would do it again, thank you very much. “Alec, please stop, please, I can’t. Stop! St—” Then it was singing through her, tearing through her, and this one made the other two seem like mild tickling in comparison. This one was the biggest thing to ever happen to her.

  She felt him stiffen above her again, but, oh, Christ, he wasn’t done, he was still thrusting. He seized her knees and pushed them wide, spreading her, making her wider for him. She screamed in pleasure and despair; more of this was sure to kill her. It’d be the best death ever, but it’d still be death.

  “More,” he muttered in her ear.

  “…can’t.”

  “Can. Will.”

  She reached down, stroked his ass, felt, groped…and then shoved her finger inside him, right up his ass, as far as she could. At the same time, she clenched around him

  (thank you, Kegel exercise) and was gratified to hear his hoarse shout. Then he was pulsing inside her and throwing his head back and roaring at the ceiling. The headboard gave one more loud THUMP! and was quiet.

  She sobbed for breath, and he soothed her with gentle strokes and small kisses. “Shhhh, sweetie, you’re all right. I just don’t think I am. Shhhh.”

  “That was—that—”

  “Easy. Shush, now. Get your breath back.”

  As the ripples from her last, titanic orgasm faded, she realized she was still throbbing. She still wanted him. She was a bookworm cursed with the body of a slut.

  “That was—mmbelievable. ’Mazing.” Oh, great, she was babbling like a cheerleader after her fifth beer. She tried again. “Unbelievable. Amazing. I’m sure you hear this all the time, but that was the best ever. I don’t mean for me. I mean in the history of lovemaking.”

  He was kissing her forehead, her mouth, her cheeks. “For me, also. And I don’t hear it all the time. I haven’t been with a lady in almost a year.”

  She nearly fell off the bed. “What? Why? You’re so—I mean, the overall package is just—and then what you can do in the bedroom—what the hell have you been waiting for? Did you lose a bet?”

  “I did not. Who,” he said. “Who the hell have I been waiting for. That’s the question.” He bent and nuzzled her cleavage. “God, I could get lost in you. So easily. Which means I have to kill you or marry you.”

  “Har, har. And get your nose out of there, it tickles.” She could feel his cock on her thigh, very warm, and reached out. “Jesus! You’re hard again!”

  “Sorry,” he said dryly. “I can’t much help it if you’ve got the sweetest cunt. Not to mention some very talented fingers.”

  “No, I mean…uh. I don’t know what I mean.” Their gaze met. Her eyes had long ago adjusted to the dark; she could see him quite well. “Do you want to keep going?”

  He smiled slowly; it was like an extra spoonful of sugar being stirred into really good coffee. “Do you?”

  “That’s not really relevant,” she said tartly. His eyebrows arched. “A promise is a promise, remember?”

  “What I like about you—one of the things—is that you’re not done. With me.” His hand slid down the soft mound of her belly and cupped her between her legs. Then he gently parted her, and his fingers slid up inside her. She sucked in breath and moved with his hand. “You haven’t closed off,” he murmured into her mouth, “the way a lady will when she’s had enough.” She could hear herself whimpering softly as his fingers slid in and out and around, as he got slick with their juices. “Of course, you have other qualities, very fine ones.” His voice held a teasing note. “But I wouldn’t have guessed at this one while I was wooing you over lunch.”

  “Wooing me?” she gasped. “Is that what you were doing?”

  “What I was doing was concentrating on not bending you over the nearest table and taking you until my knees gave out. I’m amazed I was able to talk to you at all—ah, God, that’s sweet, Giselle. Those sounds you make in the back of your throat make me forget everything. Come down here.”

  He pulled her until she was kneeling before the bed. She could feel him behind her, holding her around the waist, then stroking her buttocks and kneading the plump flush. “I could bite you here about a hundred times,” he muttered.

  “Better not if you want to save room for breakfast.” She yelped as his kneading inched toward pinching. “Easy, Alec. I have to sit on that later.”

  He swallowed a laugh. “Sorry. But Giselle sweetie, you do have the most luscious ass.” Then his hands moved lower until he was holding her open with his fingers. She could feel herself—everything in her—straining toward him, silently begging for him.

  “Oh, God, Alec…”

  “I like that, Giselle. I like hearing you groan my name.” He eased into her, inch by delicious inch. She leaned forward and braced her arms on the bed. “Now, if y’don’t mind, I’d like to hear you scream it.” He thrust, hard.

  He stroked, and his hands were everywhere…running up and down her back, cupping her breasts, stroking her nipples…and then roughly pulling them between his fingers, as if he instinctively knew when she wante
d him to be sweet and when she wanted—needed—him to be rough. She screamed his name, begged him to stop screwing around and do her, dammit. He laughed in pure delight, laughed while she writhed and groaned and shoved back at him. Then his strokes pushed her into orgasm, and he abruptly quit laughing and gasped instead.

  She realized the sun had come up a while ago. Well, who gave a rat’s ass? She couldn’t believe the man’s stamina. She couldn’t believe her stamina.

  “Getting tired?” he panted in her ear. He was still crouched behind her, still filling her the way no man ever had. When he braced himself and thrust, she swore she could feel his cock in her throat. “Giselle? All right?”

  “Yes, I’m tired, I’m exhausted, you big dolt, and don’t you dare stop.”

  He chuckled, and she could feel his fingers dancing along the length of her spine. Then his hand came around and found her clit. He stroked the throbbing bud with his thumb and said, “I wish my mouth was there right now. Later, it will be,” and that was enough, that tipped her into another orgasm.

  She felt his grip tighten on her. “Oh, God, that’s so sweet,” he groaned. “Has anyone told you? When you come, your muscles lock.” He shuddered behind her as he at last found his release. “All your muscles.”

  She giggled weakly and rested her head on the bed. Three times…or was that the fourth? The man wasn’t human. Thank God she was on the pill.

  He stood, then picked her up, and cradled her in his arms as if she were a child. “You’ll sleep now,” he said, laying her in the bed and covering her. “And so will I…you’ve worn me out, m’lady.” Then, incongruously, “Do you have a passport?”

  “No,” she said drowsily.

  “Hmm. I’ll have to fix that. Can’t come to Scotland without one of those.”

  “You still want me to come?” She blushed, remembering how they’d spent the last five hours. “To Scotland, I mean?”

  “Of course.” He was arranging the covers over himself, pulling her into his embrace, and wrapping his long legs around hers. She was instantly warm and sinfully comfortable. The throbbing between her thighs had finally quit. It quit because you’re numb, you twit. He’s fucked you numb. And it was just fine. “I said I did, didn’t I?”

  “Well…” She yawned against his shoulder. “That was before I gave up the goods, so to speak.”

  “Giselle, darling.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve never known a woman so smart and so silly at the same time. You’re coming to Scotland. To put it another way, I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Bossy putz,” she muttered. Then she squinched her eyes shut as he turned on the bedside light. “Aggh! I think my retinas just fused!”

  She could hear him swallow a laugh. “Sorry, love. I just wanted to get a good look at your neck.” She felt him push her hair back and gently touch the bite. “A bite’s a serious thing…I’m really sorry if I hurt you. You know that, right, Giselle?”

  “Don’t worry about it. At the risk of making you more arrogant than you already are—though how that’s possible I just can’t imagine—I loved it. Hardly even hurt.”

  “Oh.” She could hear the unmistakable relief in his tone. “I’m glad t’hear it. I don’t have an explanation except…I don’t want you to think I go around biting just anybody. I just…lost myself in you.”

  “That, and you wanted to mark me,” she added drowsily. Ah, even with that obnoxious light on, she was going to be able to get to sleep quite nicely. Take that, bedside lamp! “It’s all right. I don’t mind wearing your mark for a while.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Marked me.”

  “What?”

  “Arked-may E-may! Jesus, for a guy with heightened senses, you’re really slow.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t yell, I’m right here. I forgot werewolves were so touchy.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Steady, pal.” Concerned, she sat up. He looked like he was going to pass out. “Hey, it’s okay. I said it was, right? You marked me so another werewolf won’t take it into his head to jump me. Theoretically, they’ll see your mark and steer clear. Or lose their minds and decide, of all things, to fight for me. Ha! Like that’d happen.”

  She saw him lurch into the chair—sitting down before he fell down. Very wise. “You know? About me?”

  “Sure. Not right away,” she added comfortingly, because he looked so shattered. “Took me a while to figure it out. But come on, you’re a little too quick and too strong for a guy in his—what? Early thirties?”

  “Thirty-one,” he said absently.

  “Plus, your stamina between the sheets was—was really something.” Was she blushing? After what they had just shared? You’re obviously overtired. Go to sleep, Giselle. “I’ve never met one—a werewolf—but my mom used to work for Lucius Wyndham.”

  He was staring at her with the most priceless look of astonishment on his face. “Your mother worked for the former pack leader?”

  “Will you stop with the yelling? Yes, she managed his stables for him. ’Course, he couldn’t come near any of his horses without them going crazy trying to get away from him. He finally had to tell her the truth, because she thought he’d abused them and was getting ready to sic the ASPCA on him.

  “Well, of course he wasn’t hurting them. It’s just instinctive for horses to stay the hell away from werewolves. So he told her, and proved it to her, and she liked the horses, and liked him, and stayed on. ’Til she married my dad and moved to Boston. But she’d seen a lot by then. My mom,” Giselle added with satisfaction, “tells the best bedtime stories. I figured you out a little while ago. I said so…remember?”

  He was shaking his head, his mouth hanging open. “I just can’t—all night I’ve been trying to figure out if I should just kidnap you t’Scotland and tell you the truth over there—”

  “Typical werewolf courtship,” she sneered. “You guys really need to work on the romance thing.”

  “Or try to explain it to you tomorrow. Later today, I mean. Or wait until we knew each other better—but you knew!”

  “Yup.”

  “And you didn’t say anything!”

  “It didn’t seem polite since you didn’t bring it up.” She blushed harder, like that was possible. “Besides, we…had other things on our minds.”

  He burst into laughter—great, roaring laughs that made her ears ring. “Giselle sweet, you’re for me, and I’m definitely for you. I knew it the moment I smelled you. Ripe peaches in the middle of all those street smells and slush. The only Santa who was ovulating.” He pounced on the bed and pulled her into his arms, kissing her everywhere he could.

  “Jeez, cut it out!” She was laughing and trying to fend him off. “Can’t we do this later? We ordinary humans get tired after making love all night.”

  “There’s nothing ordinary about you, sweetie.”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that on that whole street, where there were probably a couple hundred people, the only one ovulating was me?”

  “No, I can’t tell you that.” He kissed her on the mouth. “What I can tell you is that the only woman for me was ovulating.”

  “Oh. Sleep now?” she added helpful, groping for the bedside lamp.

  He shut off the light for her. “Scotland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forever?”

  “Nope. Sorry, my parents are from here. I have friends here, too. A life I made before I ever laid eyes on you, pretty boy. And, hello? Courtship, anybody? It’d be nice to date a little before we got married.”

  He mock-sighed. “Humans, oh, Lord help me. A house in Boston, then, but at least half the year at my family home. After,” he sighed again, “an appropriately lengthy courtship.”

  “Done.”

  “Naked courtship?” he asked hopefully.

  She laughed. “We’ll work out the details. Doesn’t really matter, though. Wither thou goest, I will go. And all that.”

  “And all
that,” he said, and kissed her smiling mouth.

  Monster Love

  Prologue

  From the private papers of Richard Will, Ten Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts

  Becoming a vampire was the best thing that ever happened to me. The very, very best. Which is why I don’t understand all the literature, how the vampires are usually these moody fellows who rue the day they ever got bitten, who pray for some illiterate European to plant a stake through their ribs. Rue the day? If the mob hadn’t torched my killer the next night, I’d have kissed his feet. I’d even have kissed his behind!

  “After all, what else was there for me? Take over the farm when my father died? No, thank you. Farming is back-breaking work for very little reward and even less respect. And I could hardly endure being in the same room with my father, much less work for him the rest of my life. (Punch first and punch second, that was my dear departed papa’s motto.)

  “Lie about my age to join the army and get my head blown off? (All so sixty years later we can ignore the Holocaust and pretend the Germans are good guys?) But back then, if you didn’t fight you were a coward. Of course, two wars later, the young men were encouraged to go to Canada, to avoid responsibilities to their country. If they fought, and lived, their reward was to be spit upon at the airport. It just goes to prove, nothing changes faster than the mind of an American.

  “No, life wasn’t exactly a bowl of fresh peaches. I was in a box, and each side of the box was equally insurmountable. I wasn’t the only one, but I was the only one who noticed the shape and size of the prison. I was always different from my chums. At least, I think I was…it was a long time ago, and don’t we always think we’re different?

  “So when Darak—that was his name, or at least the name he gave me—bought me a drink, then two, then ten, I didn’t turn him down. What did I care if a stranger wanted to help me forget about the box? I was big—twenty-three years working on a farm made for a big boy—and if he wanted to get inappropriate, I was sure I could handle it.