“Happy birthday, Johnny.” She opened her towel and reached for his. He grabbed her hand and held it, his eyes tightly shut, his heart thundering in his chest. “Not yet.”
“Yes, Johnny,” she said softly, drawing his hand between her legs. “Now.”
Her curls were as soft and wet as her shimmering eyes. She wanted him, wanted this as much as he did. A surge of raw, male possessiveness shot through him. He went up on his knees, gripped her hips and drove into her. She wrapped her legs around him, lifting her hips and drawing him deeper. He felt her stretch to enfold him, drew back and drove again, twice, hard.
She made a noise, soft and breathy in her throat. He opened his eyes; saw her head and throat arched on the pillow, the wordless “Ohh,” parting her lips. He went still, unsure if she was pained or pleasured, until she looked up at him and smiled, raised her right hand and made a clockwise circle with her palm against her breast. “Please.”
What little control he had shattered. He took her, hard and fast. Not only did she let him, she encouraged him, inflamed him with her hands on his chest and his hips until a cataclysmic orgasm ripped through him.
When it faded he realized he was crying, sobbing into the curve of his wife’s neck. Her arms were around him, her fingers stroking his hair. He was still inside her, pulsing. Shame and, unbelievably, fresh desire washed through him.
“Johnny?” She whispered his name, her voice shaking.
“Oh, Willie, forgive me.” He pressed his face into her throat, praying she wouldn’t hate him. “I swear I’ll never hurt you again.”
“Hurt me? Oh, Johnny.” She laughed, tightening around him, kissed his temple and rubbed her nose in his hair. “I was just going to ask how soon you thought you might be able to hurt me like that again.”
He sprang up and blinked at her. Her face was flushed; her eyes were shining, “You enjoyed having me rut like a beast on top of you?”
“Actually—yes.” She stretched her mouth up to his and murmured, “Wanna do it again?”
He pushed into her and let her feel how much. Her soft sigh thrummed in his bones. She made him feel like a god, but he was only a man, a man completely besotted with his wife. He cupped her left breast and felt her sigh, so he circled the peak with his thumb, then his tongue, and felt her shiver.
The mirror had been exquisite; this was divine. Such glory in her curves and softness, the fullness of her breast in his hand, the rough pebble of her nipple swelling in his mouth when he suckled.
She whimpered when he withdrew, until he rolled her on top of him and cupped a breast in each hand. She clutched his wrists, scarcely breathing as he kissed one and then the other, suckling the tiny pink peaks until they swelled, full and red and quivering for his touch, the graze of his lips, the fan of his breath.
The tears in her lashes spilled when she bowed her head and pressed her mouth over his. She was quivering when he laid her gently on her back, cupped the satin smoothness of her buttocks in his hands and stroked into her—slowly and tenderly, pausing to savor her liquid heat and sweet mouth. When she sobbed against him, he let her go, let her arch and buck and thrust against him, until she cried out with release.
He caught her in his arms, whispered, “Don’t move,” and held her still until he could no longer feel himself pumping inside her. Then he raised himself on one elbow and smiled at his wife. “Was that painful enough, my love?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.” She took his face in her hands, placed a searing kiss on his mouth, then pressed her forehead against his chin and began to cry. “I love you so much it hurts. But it hurts so good.”
“Can I kiss it and make it better?”
“Yes,” she whimpered, her eyes flooded with tears.
“Where?”
“Here.” She pointed to her mouth. He kissed her lips. “Here.” The hollow of her throat. “Here.” She turned her head and swept her hair out of the way, baring her throat and the curve of her neck.
The jugular vein beat there. He knew it well. He pressed his lips to it, felt it pulse and throb. She smelled like sex and sweat, both his. His nostrils flared, his teeth scraped her skin. Deep inside him a faint echo howled, a pale memory of dark need and terrifying lust. He bit her, gently, and the feeling faded. She moaned and shivered. He raised his head and asked, his heart racing, “Anywhere else?”
“Yes.” She flushed vividly again and whispered, “My breasts. Oh, please.”
Chapter 25
Willie couldn’t believe she’d said it. She couldn’t believe she’d said any of the things that made her throat scald remembering. Fortunately, she was neck deep in the hot tub and her eyes were closed, so she couldn’t see Johnny’s face.
She couldn’t remember how many of her body parts she’d listed. He’d kissed every one of them until she couldn’t breathe, and winced just a little as he’d slipped inside her again.
“Brute,” he’d muttered savagely at himself, and carried her out here into the tab.
The warm, pulsing water eased the soreness in her breasts, the ache between her legs; but he was doing it again, playing with her toes, rubbing them against his chest, letting her curl them into the hair that grew there, lush and crisp. She’d be a blithering idiot in a minute if he didn’t stop. Why had she told him about her feet? What had she told him?
“You said,” Johnny told her, his voice as deep and languid as the water, “that foot rubs turn you on.”
Willie groaned and sank lower.
“Don’t be shy.” He chuckled. “I’m your husband. You’re supposed to tell me things like that.”
Husband. The word still shot chills through Willie. So did the realization that he’d read her mind.
“I read your face.” He smiled when she opened a wary eye. “I know it well. I watched you grow up. It’s all coming back to me.”
Johnny lowered his head and gave her toes a seductive tug. She melted and arched her neck against the rim of the tub.
“You’re a beast,” she said breathlessly.
“I know. My poor Willow.” He raised his head and smiled, his gray-eyed gaze about ten degrees hotter than the water. “You had no idea you were marrying a satyr.”
“I thought I was marrying a pirate.” She laughed when his eyebrows shot up. “I used to see you on the beach, when Whit and I played buried treasure. Sometimes when the sun hit the water just right, I’d see this wonderfully tall man with long dark hair and knee-high boots.”
“Once or twice,” he said, his smile and the stroke of his fingers on her ankles softening, “I thought you did.”
“I always felt safe on the beach, ‘cause I knew you were there. You were my special friend. Especially when I hit puberty and started wondering about—”
Oh, no. He’d sucked her toes and she was babbling again.
“What did you wonder about?” Johnny asked, running a deliriously slow finger up the sole of her left foot.
“Foul!” She snatched her leg away so suddenly she slipped off the seat. She went under with a yelp and a splash and came up straddling his lap, her breasts pressed against his chest. Her sensitized nipples began to throb, so did the ache between her legs when she felt him harden against her.
“What did you wonder about?” He cupped her bottom. Sunlight slanted through the vine-covered lattice roof and shadows flickered across his face.
“What it was like to be with a man.” Willie trembled at the avid gleam in his eyes. “Girls have fantasies, too. I had some very sexy dreams about my long-haired pirate.”
“Did I make love to you?”
“All night,” she murmured against his mouth, water swirling around her shoulders. “Every night.”
“Oh, God.” His eyes closed and he leaned his head back, the pulse in his throat wet and gleaming as he gripped her hips and rolled her against him. “Like this?”
“Even better.” Willie caught his earlobe in her teeth. The hitch in his breath gave her a rush and a thrill of power. “You loved me on the beach, i
n the moonlight on the dunes, the sand still warm from the sun. I could feel it on my back. The surf crashed and boomed and you—”
“Enough.” He forced his eyes open and took a deep, ragged breath. His gaze locked on her breasts, full and buoyant in the water. He touched them lightly with his tongue, bursting the tiny bubbles that were swirling around her nipples. “Still sore?”
“No.” Willie arched her head back, reveling in the feel of him, wet and strong in her arms, in the pull she felt deep in her soul when he drew on her nipple. “Go slow,” she murmured.
She thought she could, until she slid on top of him. She didn’t have breath enough to tell him how much she loved him, so she told him with her body. He watched her, his head against the side of the tub, a soft, wondrous smile on his oh-so-sexy mouth.
When he groaned and gripped her, she wrapped her arms around him and held him to her breast, with her cheek pressed to his hair. His breathing was still quick and shallow against her neck; it sent shivers everywhere. Especially when he tipped his head back, gently cupped her breasts and asked, “Do you want children, Willie?”
She leaned away from him and laced her fingers behind his head. “Do you think we can?”
“You mean, do you think I can,” he corrected her, but he was smiling. “I don’t know. Time will tell.” He drew soft circles on her breasts until they peaked and tingled. “I’d give almost anything to watch my son suckle here, to suckle after him, like this—” he drew her left nipple into his mouth, pulled on it tenderly, twice, released it and looked up at her, his face flushed “—and taste your milk on my lips.”
The glow in his eyes caused tears to well in Willie’s and a misty image to rise up in her head, of her bedroom at Beaches—their bedroom now, hers and Johnny’s—and a lace-draped bassinet. She could feel the tiny, soft head cradled against her, the silky dark hair. She couldn’t see a face, she could only see the glow in Johnny’s eyes as he stretched on the bed beside her, elbow bent to support his head, while he watched her nurse their baby. A little girl, but she didn’t think he’d mind.
“Oh, Johnny.” Willie held his wrists in her hands, melting inside until she stroked his knuckles and felt the wet, cold scrape of the moonstone ring on her fingertips. “What would you give to have a child?”
“Everything I own,” he said, his voice deep with feeling. “Except you, of course.”
Willie let that one slide, tightened her grip and looked down at him. “Would you give the moonstone back to Nekhat?”
His eyes went as hard and cold as the stone, his dark lashes sparkling with drops of water in the light dancing through the vines. “Bertie put you up to this, didn’t he?”
“He said if you remembered you’d want to keep it.”
“I intend to keep it.”
“You don’t need it anymore.”
“The stone is Nekhat’s trophy case, where he keeps and tortures the Shades of those he’s killed. I was barely able to free Johnny when I took the stone from Nekhat. It damn near destroyed both of us. And now you think I should give the others back to Nekhat and his eternal torment?”
“If you keep the moonstone,” Willie said, slipping away from him into the water, “you’re no better than Nekhat.”
“I intend,” he snapped, “to set them free.”
“How? You’re not a vampire anymore, Johnny. You’re a man. A mere mortal. Your powers are gone.”
“I will not return it!” He shouted at her. Rather, he roared it at her, his eyes blazing as he shot to his feet, streaming water and fury. “That’s the end of it. Now leave me be.”
Willie watched him vault one-handed out of the tub and stalk into the room. He gave the right hand door such a shove it cracked against the wall, hard enough to shatter a pane and make Willie jump. She sank lower in the tub, suddenly cold and shivering in the warm water.
He came back almost instantly, sprang into the tub and into her arms, burying his face in the curve of her neck. He was shaking almost as much as she was.
“I’m sorry, Willie. Forgive me.” He kissed her collarbone fervently. “I’ll never shout at you again, I promise.”
“Apology accepted.” She kissed his wet, tangled hair and tried not to cry. “I love you.”
So much it scared her, even more than it scared her to think what Nekhat might do to get the moonstone back. Especially now that she knew what it was.
She tried twice more to wheedle Johnny into giving it back. She rubbed her toes on the inside of his knee under the table while they ate lunch, but she only made his gray eyes smolder. When they went for a walk on the beach, she backed him against a wet, dark rock in a shallow, shady pool and unbuttoned his shirt. While the surf lapped at their ankles, she teased his nipples with her fingernails and bit them lightly. All that got her was a hard, quick joining and a spectacular climax in wet, warm sand.
It wasn’t what she wanted. Neither was the shower he tried to coax her into as the sun started setting, gilding the white sand beyond the lanai.
“Take off the moonstone,” she told him, “and I’m yours.”
He did and laid it on the vanity. It wasn’t what Willie wanted, but it was a step in the right direction. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with her husband. She sighed while he soaped her breasts. When he slid his fingers inside her and nipped her earlobe, she cried out and came in his hands.
He was exhausted after that, every muscle in his body shuddering from the strength it took to pin her against the shower wall with her legs wrapped around him and drive into her until he gritted his teeth to muffle the bull-elephant bellow that rang in her ears. He tumbled, half-dry and yawning, into bed, his face flushed and his eyes over-bright as he pulled her after him and pillowed his head on her breast.
“Sweet, blessed sleep at last,” he murmured, burrowing into her. “You don’t know how I’ve missed it.”
He drifted off with one arm and one leg draped over her. Willie waited until he began to snore, then wormed her way, inch by inch, out from under him. He never budged, not even when she rolled off the bed onto the floor.
She crawled around the nearly dark room, groping for her clothes, her shoes and her backpack. She dressed in the bathroom with the light off, then felt carefully on the vanity for the moonstone, tucked it in her pocket and crept into the sitting room, closing the door noiselessly behind her.
With shaking fingers she switched on the desk light, took paper and pen out of the drawer, scrawled a note and propped it against the lamp. She left it on so he wouldn’t miss it. It wouldn’t take her any more than an hour, she figured, to drive to Tharros and back, where she planned to leave the moonstone on the altar, right where she was sure Nekhat wouldn’t miss it. Hopefully, Johnny wouldn’t wake up and miss her while she was gone.
Unfortunately, he did—when a sharp prickle of unease crawled through his senses. His vampire powers were vastly dulled, but still functional. He’d managed to hide that from Willie. There was no point alarming her until he knew whether or not it was permanent, but he knew before he rolled to his feet instantly awake, that she was gone. He knew where, too, before he snatched up the note and read her hurried, backhand scrawl.
Please don’t be angry, but I’m taking the moonstone to Nekhat. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. And I’ll be safe. I have the Sacred Cedar. If he gives me any crap, I’ll just put it through his heart. I love you. Back soon—Willie.
“Oh, dear God.” He crushed the note and ran for the bedroom. “She doesn’t know the stake won’t kill him.”
He should have told her he’d spent 117 years looking for a way to kill Nekhat and hadn’t found one, that the ancients who’d created him hadn’t either, that they’d had to settle for luring him into and sealing him in the tomb.
The void tugged at his heart as he threw on his clothes— not the void that lay in the bottomless, soulless depths of the moonstone, but the void that would fill him, that would be all he had left, if anything happened to Willie.
He
didn’t realize she’d taken the Fiat until he saw the empty parking space. He closed his eyes and thought raven, visualized talons, feathers and a hooked beak just sharp enough to pluck out Nekhat’s eyes. Once again he located his vampire powers, but they were as weak and feeble as his frail, mortal flesh.
He stormed like a madman into the hotel lobby, shouting and demanding a car. He terrified the night clerk into giving him his own, slapped down money—millions of lira—and raced outside, hope springing as he slid behind the wheel of a sporty, two-year-old Peugeot.
He spun the tires as he shot the car onto the highway, reaching ahead with his dulled senses searching for Willie. He’d left his mark on her when he’d healed her wound, which made her easier to find. A sigh of relief sagged his shoulders, until he sensed the deadly, telltale, blood-red trace of a fully functioning vampire.
Chapter 26
If she hadn’t been in such a hurry, Willie might have thought to check the gas gauge before the Fiat hiccupped, bucked and died. Luckily, she was within sight of the beach at Tharros.
She had no idea how she’d get back to the hotel, but she’d worry about that after she got rid of the moonstone. Willie made sure it was still in her pocket, picked up the Sacred Cedar from the passenger seat and got out of the car.
She could just see the beach, a pale, surf-washed gleam against the night sky, and the silvery splash of the full moon on dark water. About where the temple should be on the hillside there was a dull flicker of something she hoped was just a weird reflection of moonlight on marble.
She had a bad feeling it wasn’t—made suddenly worse by the high-speed whine of a big engine rapidly approaching behind her. Willie froze in the bright white sweep of headlights and whirled at the screech of brakes and the bump of tires on the rutted shoulder. Just in time to see Johnny stretch himself out of a low, racy sports job.
How he’d gotten his hands on it she hadn’t a clue, but she winced as he slammed the door hard enough to rock it on its springs and came toward her. Looking as if he wished he had a buggy whip.
Nightwing Page 20