by Linda Barlow
"Where's the damn house?"
"Sorry, it's a long driveway. More of a private road, really. But we're almost there," he promised while pulling her along, forcing her to keep walking what felt like miles.
"And it's uphill," she complained, wishing they'd stayed at her place. She jumped as a dead branch hit the roadway just ahead of them, but Daniel had already leapt protectively in front of her. He cursed softly, then bent and pressed his warm mouth against hers. "We're fine. Don't fade on me now."
"I'm not fading," she insisted even as she burrowed closer against him.
He pushed her away gently, keeping one arm around her waist. "Let's move faster. We'll be safe inside."
"Graham warned me not to travel tonight. I should have listened to him." She couldn't see a thing, but she kept walking, clinging to him as the wind buffeted her. She was seriously relieved when they rounded a curve and she saw the house before them—a huge silhouette with one light gleaming like a beacon.
"Thank God the power’s still on," said Daniel, and with a renewed burst of energy, he hoisted her up into his arms and carried her the rest of the way. "I was a little worried about that."
She put her face against his neck and murmured, "So heroic! I'm perfectly capable of walking, Blaze."
He laughed. "Think of it as a romantic abduction: He lifts her high in his arms and strides forcefully down the hall to the master bedroom."
"I always wonder why the guy doesn't get a hernia. Put me down. You'll hurt yourself. I may look thin, but that's on a five-foot eight-inch frame. Do you know how much I weigh?"
"I know I'll never send you chocolates again. There. Whew." He dumped her unceremoniously to her feet on the bottom step of his front porch and bounded up to unlock the door.
She was about to follow when a flash of lighting skewered the sky above the treetops. For no reason she could fathom, her mood changed, and she smiled. She liked storms. Now that warmth was guaranteed, the rain didn't feel so chilly. She spread her arms out wide and twirled, tilting her face back so the rain hit it full on. It felt sharp and fresh and curiously sweet.
"What are you doing?" Daniel growled.
"Dancing in the rain," she laughed. "Come join me."
"I thought you were freezing and desperate to get inside."
"I was. But the sky, the trees, your house, the storm—what a magical night."
"Has anyone ever told you," he said, bounding back down the steps and sweeping her into his arms for several more twirls on the soggy lawn, "that you're completely and delightfully unpredictable?"
She laughed and hugged him. "Nope. It's the way you affect me, Blaze. You make me a little dizzy. A little crazy."
"What I want," he whispered, his lips against her cheek, "is to make you happy."
He did make her happy, she realized. For the first time in ages, she felt brim-full of happiness.
"But don't call me Blaze."
She danced away from him and ran up the stairs to the porch. "Blaze, Blaze, Blazity-Blaze," she teased, shaking rain off herself like a puppy. Daniel joined her, grinning and looking pretty damn happy himself.
Inside the house, she couldn't help a few expressions of delight as he led her through a large, airy front hall lit by a crystal chandelier to the curved staircase, which rose elegantly to the second floor. "Wow, the place is a mansion," she said, noting the quality of the art on the wall. "Are you rich?" She abruptly remembered the hundred-dollar bill he'd so casually donated to the National Foundation for the Blind. "TV must pay an awful lot better than theater."
"You don't care much about money, do you?"
She could honestly say she didn't. "I wouldn't turn my nose up at it, but, no, it's not something I waste much time thinking about."
"My father cared about little else," he said as they mounted the stairs after shedding their coats at the bottom. "He literally worked himself into the ground making it, lots of it. He died a long time ago. My mother, too. I was their only child. All the fruits of his labors came to me, including this house."
"You sound kinda bitter."
"The house is beautiful, as are many of the things in it. But I'd rather have had my parents."
She squeezed his hand. He moved her heart in ways she wouldn't allow herself to put a name to. How could she care so much, so soon?
He led her down a cherry-wood-paneled hallway to the bedroom at the far end. It was cozily masculine, papered in autumn tones, a large, old-fashioned room with an antique bureau, a roll-top desk, and a couple of easy chairs in front of a mammoth fireplace. But it was the huge four-poster bed that really caught Kate's attention. It was covered with a flame-colored spread, which seemed so appropriate to Daniel's nature that she laughed out loud.
"The sizzling setting for your seduction," he whispered just behind her, his breath hot against her ear. His hands rested lightly on her shoulders, then moved down slowly, deliberately, to cup her breasts. "Still chilly?"
"A little."
"We should have stayed at your place, cat or no cat. I'm sorry, babe. I had no idea the driving would be so bad." His fingers slipped lower to the waistband of her jeans. "These'll have to come off. They're wet."
Her pants were soaked from her thighs down. Daniel's hands hovered at her waist, awaiting her signal. She smiled at him and nodded. She could feel his tension as he somewhat awkwardly unfastened them. He hesitated a moment before he pushed them over her hips and off, leaving the lower half of her body bare except for a pair of bikini panties. The touch of his hands electrified her. Her skin felt sensitized, alive.
"Come on," he said, taking her hand. He walked her across the room to a door on the left and into the bathroom, which was as large as a bedroom in any normal house and as thoroughly modern as the house itself was antique. It was equipped with a large stall shower and a separate sunken bathtub that was unquestionably the biggest she had ever seen.
"You could keep a whale in there."
Daniel skirted the tub and led her to a door on the other side of the double marble sinks. "A sauna," he said, fiddling with a dial on the door. "This should take the chill off."
"A sauna? Good grief, you live like a king."
'Take off the rest of your clothes."
She slowly unbuttoned her top, and he followed suit by unfastening his own shirt. She paused to watch, transfixed at the rapidly emerging sight of his well-defined chest muscles lightly dusted with wiry black hairs. She remembered thinking on the night they'd met that he must hit the gym regularly. His firm, sculpted muscles proved it. His body was taut, strong and beautiful. The flannel shirt came off, and then he unbuckled the leather belt at his waist.
"Don't stop." His tone had roughened.
"I'm just taking it slowly while enjoying the view."
He whipped off the belt and leaned closer to kiss her firmly on the mouth. "Nothing will happen too fast. Are you going to strip the rest of those clothes off, or do I have to do it for you?"
She hesitated for a moment. No one had seen her naked since the accident. She had several scars on her torso from her injuries. They weren’t horribly disfiguring, but neither were they pretty to look upon. She had had one scar on her back covered with a tattoo, but the tattoo artist had told her that the skin was too damaged in the other spots for tattooing to make much of a difference. When she swam, she always wore a one-piece bathing suit now. No more bikinis for her. What if Daniel was put off by her scars?
Coward, she told herself impatiently. It’s a little late to fret about that now.
She slipped off her top and added it to the pile. She was left in a matching bra and panties of sheer material, and she knew without even meeting his eyes that Daniel was watching her, his gaze licking over her, kindling sparks everywhere it touched.
She heard him suck in his breath and take a step closer. He had seen the scars–one curving down her ribcage towards her navel, and the other on her right hip. He was near now; she could feel the heat he was radiating. Her heartbeat slammed in
to high gear.
Daniel touched one hand to her ribs, his thumb sliding slowly along the scar there. "Are you embarrassed about these marks? To me they are beautiful. They testify to an ordeal you endured and survived." He stroked the other scar on her hip. "Your entire body is beautiful. And I am very glad you survived."
She melted. It was all good; everything was going to be fine.
One of his hands slid up to the curve of her breast. In response, her nipples peaked against the silken cups of her bra. "Ah," he breathed. "So lovely. I can hardly believe you're here, finally, in my keeping."
As he drew her against his naked chest, she thought what an odd, old-fashioned word that was: his keeping. It made her feel special, cherished. Their coming together in the parking garage had been raw sexual passion, unalloyed with gentler emotions, but it felt as if there was something more between them now.
His hands moved around behind her back, seeking the clasp of her bra. In a whisper of sound, the flimsy garment slipped down her arms and off. He cupped her breasts in the palms of his hands and rubbed them up and down against his chest.
The feel of his hard muscles against her delicate skin sent spasms through her. She sighed and leaned into the caress. Daniel's thumbs skated deliciously over her nipples, urging them to even greater arousal. They ached and peaked against him. Liquid pulses throbbed between her legs at every touch.
He pushed her back a little, his eyes drinking her in. "Your breasts are beautiful. I knew they would be."
"Somehow I don't think this is very therapeutic," she murmured, gazing up at him through half-closed eyelids.
"Oh, I don't know. We're doing a nice job of staving off hypothermia." His hands eased down her backbone to the base of her spine and pulled her lower body into the cradle of his hips. She had just a hint of his arousal before she wriggled away, exclaiming, "Your jeans are sopping wet and cold!"
He stepped back and began to tug them off. "Last one in is condemned to be the other's slave for the night."
Moments later Kate sprawled nude on a wooden bench inside the sauna, laughing through the door at Daniel's attempts to peel the stiff, waterlogged jeans from his legs. "Oh good. I've always wanted a sexy male slave."
But when he joined her, his body magnificently toned and blatantly aroused, she felt a thrill of apprehension. The intense chill of the trek through the rain was rapidly fading into unreality as that drugged, dizzy feeling she'd experienced in the parking garage took hold of her again. If anybody were going to be enslaved, it would probably be she.
As promised, Daniel didn't allow anything to happen too fast. With tantalizing slowness, he lowered his body to the bench beside her, stretching his legs lazily. He didn't touch her. "This is great, isn't it? Are you warming up?"
"Um-hmm." If he tried to measure her sexual temperature, she thought wryly, the thermometer would explode.
He turned slightly toward her and shifted her until her back was nestled against his chest. Just the light touch of his hands on her arms, moving her, ordering her position, made her tremble with anticipation.
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. Her long hair brushed his chest, and he fondled it, running the wet strands of it through his fingers. Catlike, she arched her back.
One of his hands dropped to her breasts, slowly molding one, then the other. Her skin was beginning to dampen from the heat, and his fingers slipped over it easily, exploring and teasing and probing. "You have the sweetest breasts. They fit my hands so perfectly."
She couldn't speak.
He moved in closer behind her. "Bend forward a little," he instructed her.
She brought her legs up on the bench in front of her and bent from the waist, resting her head on her raised knees. Daniel brushed her long hair forward over one shoulder and kissed the back of her neck. He paused for a moment, and his fingers traced the lines of the tattoo on her back. It was an abstract design with swirls and curves shaped vaguely like a rose. "This is beautiful. I didn't know you had a tattoo."
"I got it to cover one of my scars."
"Well, the artist did a great job, because I can't even see the scar."
"When I had it done, my friends from the game–my friends from college–went with me and got tattoos too, in solidarity."
"Seriously?"
"Yes. It may have been the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me. It was Stephen's idea, I think–he'll do just about anything, but Jeff and Nick decided to do it too. We all went to the tattoo parlor together. Later, I think Max got one too, although I haven't seen his. Can a vampire even get a tattoo?"
"Uh….what?" Daniel was briefly distracted from his ardent caressing of her back and shoulders. "Please don't try to tell me you've got a friend who's a vampire. Ghosts are bad enough."
She laughed. "He likes to tease us. I'd love you to meet my friends, even if they're all a little crazy."
He growled. "Can we talk about your friends later? I've got other priorities at the moment." He pressed her forward a little more, which made her breasts slip fully into his hands. He took merciless advantage of this. After kneading, caressing, and pressing them together, he began to work on the erect nipples, rolling them between his fingers and gently tugging on them until she thought she would die. Every touch reverberated in her sex, flooding her with unbearable heat. Before more than a couple of minutes had passed, she was squirming on the bench, longing for relief.
"I'm hot, Daniel. I need to cool off."
"Mmm." He was kneeling behind her now, and his lips were nudging the nape of her neck. She could feel the slight coarseness of his scruffy whiskers against her tender skin. "That can be arranged."
She was conscious of tiny sparks of excitement mixing with the heat of the sauna to make her liquid all over. She could hear the sound of his accelerated breathing, could feel the beating of his heart beneath her shoulder blade.
His fingers slid over her belly to crinkle the down at the apex of her thighs. Then he touched in between her legs, lightly, delicately. "You're beautiful here, too," he told her. She felt him shudder, and he withdrew his hand. His naked body was taut and silky against her. She heard him curse softly. "I'm trying to go slowly, but..."
She twisted in his arms, turning to face him and kneeling up on the sauna bench to brush a lock of damp hair out of his eyes. "It's okay," she reassured him. "I'm not nervous anymore."
He folded her against him, whispering, "I am. I want to make it good for you. I want your first time after three years to be special." He nuzzled her throat, his teeth teasing an earlobe. "Come on, let's get out of here before we faint."
Under the shower, they washed the sweat off each other... ever so carefully. Kate reveled in running her hands all over his firm, aroused body, and his barely restrained passion excited her further. He was as taut as an arched bow and as devastating in his potential power. It awed and amazed her that all this pure masculine energy should be focused on her.
When they stepped out of the shower and she tried to dry him with one of the huge bath towels, he pushed her away and did it himself, motioning her to do the same. He was staring at her with such naked lust that she felt another tiny frisson of apprehension. He was so intense!
When she was dry, he caught her wrist and fairly dragged her out of the bathroom toward the huge bed that loomed on the other side of the bedroom. He jerked the bedclothes out of the way and sat down, pulling her close. "Let's both take a couple of deep breaths."
"Deep breathing? Is that your secret formula for sexual success?"
"Right now it's a last resort against sexual humiliation."
"You don't have to impress me." Having expected smooth sophistication, she was touched by his anxiety. She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "Anything that happens is okay."
He smiled and kissed the soft flesh of her breasts. "You're too good to be true, you know that? Hush now. Don't talk anymore. Lie down."
He pulled her into bed and caressed her slowly from shoulder to thi
gh. She could feel his hands tremble as they explored her, and she knew she was trembling, too. Her palms trailed over his skin, tingling. His muscles rippled beneath her touch, and when she pressed her face to his chest, she heard the driving tempo of his heart.
He rolled her onto her back and threw a heavy thigh across her legs. "You like this?" He kissed her roughly, then tenderly, then roughly again. His hands moved on her pliant flesh, touching, smoothing, stroking, loving her everywhere.
"Mmm, yes." She shifted slightly, enjoying the feel of his weight upon her, his hard sinews against her softer, more yielding flesh. "So much."
"Kate." He kissed her throat and then her breasts, one after the other, sucking the rosy tips into his mouth and sighing with pleasure. "You taste of honey and flowers and wine."
Arching beneath him, she slid her hands down his naked back, kneading the hard muscles that shifted under her fingers. His teeth nipped her breasts, gently at first, harder as her excitement spiraled. First one, then the other, his tongue and teeth worshiped her breasts until she was crying out for his possession. But he paused for a moment to kiss her scars tenderly.
At last his fingers slipped lower, homing in, finding the spot. She tossed her head back and forth on the pillow. He knew how to tease, how to touch, how to tune her to a fever pitch. Even though he was flushed with his own desire, even though his hands were shaking with restraint, he took his time about exciting her and giving her pleasure.
"My turn," she gasped, doing her best to stave off the end for a few more moments. She pushed at his shoulders until he rolled over onto his side. She wanted to please him as much as he was pleasing her. "Hold still."
"I don't think I can."
"You have to. I'm ordering you to, Blaze."
He laughed softly. "Stop calling me Blaze."
"I like it. It's perfect for you, witch-hunter." Reaching out, she found a nipple and rolled it between her finger and thumb. His growl of satisfaction pleased her. It made her feel powerful, and at the same time, very feminine.
"I love you touching me," he admitted as her explorations continued. "Makes me feel wanted."