Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9

by Mary Hughes

  “Of course I have a reason.” My gaze snapped back to his. “What do you think I am, some irrational bimbette? I always have a good reason for what I do.”

  “Of course you do.”

  His doubting tone should’ve irritated me, which was rational, but instead I was hit by a flood of uncertainty. As if his opinion mattered, not like a colleague’s, but as Lizelle’s did, in ways that could hurt me. It made me blurt, “Forty stories.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Marrone’s building has forty stories, but there were only thirty-nine on the directory and in the elevator.” I pressed fingers to my lips, not understanding this rash rush of feelings I got around him but knowing I didn’t like it at all.

  “Curious.” He sauntered nearer, but I could detect the underlying tension in the brittle spring of his muscles. “You can’t go back.”

  Like hell. But I didn’t automatically rise to the bait. “Why not?”

  “It’s obvious.” A growl buzzed his words. “We don’t know what Marrone wants from you, but whatever it is, it isn’t good.”

  “On the contrary, I do know what he wants—my research. He has it now, so unless that job offer of his was real, I doubt he’ll be contacting me again.” I’d gone because I needed the cash, but more, I’d needed to figure out Marrone’s game. I hadn’t gotten any money, but knowing his goal was worth the bit of scrubbed research I’d given up. Unless he figured out it was scrubbed and came after me harder. Shivering, I turned back to my test tubes, pretending I couldn’t feel the heat of Luke’s strong body beating into me, but I was grateful for it.

  “Good.” The growl was gone, leaving his voice smoothly beguiling. “You’re going to Thor and Serendipity’s wedding shower?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “At Emerson’s?”

  “Yes, I guess that’s where…crap.” I remembered Luke pulling Julian away from me, the lawyer darned touchy around the topic of those townhouses. I didn’t want to provoke that reaction again—at least, not until after I’d earned the down payment—but I’d be right there, and more, invited. How could I miss this opportunity?

  “Don’t,” Luke said, reading my mind, or at least my face. “Emerson has enough to cope with right now. Don’t harangue him about Old Man Crahn’s properties.”

  I drew my spine straight. “I don’t harangue. I offer well-reasoned, persuasive arguments. Besides, I need those townhouses as much as he does.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re every bit as important to me, and besides, I got there first…huh? You’re not disagreeing with me?”

  His lips quirked in another almost-smile, his mouth sexy enough to make me want to nibble. “I’ve only just met you, Alexis, but I can tell you don’t do drama for the sake of drama. You wouldn’t throw a fit over a minor inconvenience. Whatever reason you have for wanting those townhouses, it’s a good one, and probably not even for your own benefit, but for someone else’s.”

  My face heated. He thought I was that noble, that selfless? “It’s sort of for my benefit. I have a friend who needs a safe place to live.”

  He looked toward the door where Lizelle had disappeared. “And what’s safer than next door to a master vampire?”

  He understands. My embarrassment faded, to be replaced by a far more compelling heat.

  “By the way.” His gaze came back to me. “When you’re at the shower…maybe don’t mention to the others you know about my kind. They might get rattled and try to compel you to forget.”

  “I won’t.” I mulled that over. “Why haven’t you? Tried to make me forget, that is.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’m tired of all the secrecy. It’s nice that I don’t have to pretend with you.” Color rose on his high cheekbones.

  “I think that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

  “Really?” His color returned to normal. “I would think men paid you compliments all the time.”

  “Are you kidding? Most of the compliments I get are along the lines of, ‘That didn’t hurt too much.’”

  That breath-taking almost-smile curved his lips. I smiled back, into eyes that were more gold than hazel. His smile faded, gaze roving over my face.

  Then he groaned. “Why do you have to be so beautiful?”

  It surprised me. Me, beautiful? He was the gorgeous one, his gilt eyes framed by golden lashes, straight nose, dark lips shaping syllables as I wanted them to shape me.

  “I’m not beautiful. Striking, maybe.”

  “You’re wrong.” He took my face in his hands. “Your beauty shines clear through.” Then, almost as if the words were forced from his throat, he said, “Is there somewhere we can be private?”

  I remembered Lizelle telling me about Dolly’s “Untouchable Steel” comment, and his own comment after this morning’s orgasm, and dared to say, “I thought you only take multiple partners.”

  He gave me a confused, irritated shrug. “That was just a rumor I encouraged. Not with you, though, not anymore. Any empty patient rooms where we can be alone?”

  I searched his eyes, trying to figure out what was happening in his head. He wanted me, that was clear. But from his irritated shrug, he obviously didn’t want to want me, or at least didn’t understand the desire that was driving us together.

  Which was fine; I didn’t understand it either.

  “Let me get this straight. You want to be alone with me—after what happened last time?”

  “Because of what happened last time.” He bent until our mouths almost touched. “Because I want to see if it happens again.”

  What had happened last time was an explosive orgasm, the best of my life—at least for me. He’d gotten zilch. So if nothing else, I did owe him.

  Yet as I searched his eyes, I got a strange feeling he meant something other than a nice physical release.

  He meant something lurking in the stew of his psyche.

  Which made me uncomfortable. First, there was no logical way I could really know what he meant. Second, well, “lurking” says it all. Why stick a hand in the snake pit?

  But as the moment stretched, his chiseled face near mine, his hazel eyes burnishing gold, something tapped me on the shoulder and said, Don’t be a coward. He needs this. Ask.

  For him? Okay. I opened my mouth to ask the question, What happened last time? but never got beyond “Wh—”

  He leaned in and touched his mouth to mine.

  His lips slid over me like the whisper of satin sheets. He teased with his tongue until I forgot what I was going to ask, until I forgot language altogether, except the language of skin to skin, breath to breath.

  The warmth of his body enveloped me. The sweetness of his breath filled me, rising and expanding like heated air. My limbs rose with it, arms floating until I wrapped them around his neck in a vain attempt to keep earthbound, fingers twining in his sleek, tightly bound hair.

  Working quickly, he unbuttoned my lab coat. His hands settled on my waist and slid up along my ribs, raising the silk summer-weight knit shell I’d worn underneath as cool and professional. Both cool and professional hopelessly lost out to the fire of his palms riding my skin.

  I pressed against him, rubbing my bared midriff over fine open-weave wool.

  With a groan, his tongue thrust inside my mouth, searing me with heat, and his arms came around me, his embrace crushing me to the hardest body in the world.

  My rubbing became more frantic as my temperature rose, until I was scrubbing against him and he against me, our bodies meeting like crashing waves.

  His fangs grew against my lips. I touched one with the tip of my tongue.

  He made a soft, broken sound. “I want you so badly. Empty room?”

  I wanted to know what happened last time. But I wanted him more. In reply, I licked one long canine.

&n
bsp; He groaned like a man dying. “Alexis…don’t do that. It’s like a live wire to…I can’t…I won’t…just don’t do it.”

  I freed a hand to put against his fly. Whatever he couldn’t or wouldn’t, I could guess where the live wire led, by the zipper-ripping bulge twitching there. The tension in his big body shouted louder than words how painfully constricted he was.

  “I won’t.” At least, not until that monster was free.

  “Thank you.” With a sigh he released his crushing hold on me and slid my coat off my shoulders.

  He scooped me into his arms. “We’ll be sweet and gentle this time.”

  “Sweet and gentle.” I tried not to be disappointed. The desire churning in my pelvis wasn’t sweet or gentle in the least. It was hot and wet and primitive and threatened to consume me. “There’s a patient room upstairs not in use right now.” I gave the number of a single bed on the third floor.

  Luke swept me upstairs in his strong arms, somehow managing not to run into a single soul. It was darker here, cooler. Quieter, the sounds from the busier wards muffled. More than the room was unoccupied. The whole area was, lights off, the only sounds the gentle purr of the air conditioning.

  Apparently this ward was closed and I hadn’t been aware. We don’t have to be completely quiet. An arrow of pleasure zinged through me.

  He spun into the room, shut the door and set me on my feet. A quick tug of my top over my head left me clad only in my bra and pants.

  I sucked in my gut and stood straighter, but he’d already gone to draw the heavy blackout curtains. The only light was a dim glow from under the door.

  “It’s dark here.” I felt my eyes bug out, trying to see…anything, really. This wasn’t the soft dark that buffed out a body’s flaws. This was the hard dark of blindness.

  My heart beat harder, my breath came faster. Having just been carried in Luke’s powerful arms, viscerally aware the dark was his domain, I remembered he was as dangerous in his own way as Marrone. I didn’t know if that scared me or turned me on. Maybe both.

  He must’ve heard the apprehension in my voice or seen me stiffen, because instead of reminding me I’d wanted it dark last time, he said, “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it.”

  I almost laughed in relief. He might almost have said I’m sorry I’m a deadly predator.

  There was a click, and light flooded the room, revealing a bed with a bare mattress, and me in all my nearly forty glory. Automatically I shielded my eyes with the back of my hand, and my body with an arm.

  “Too much light?”

  “Too much reality.”

  He laughed softly and flicked the switch down, plunging the room into darkness. A moment, a rustle of curtains, and a sliver of gold shimmered into the room. “Better?”

  I smiled and nodded. “Lovely.”

  “Why are you so self-conscious?” He led me to sit on the bed, not seductively but genuinely caring. “You’re beautiful.”

  “Maybe my face, made up, but me, naked?”

  “Especially you, naked.” His voice roughened with a growl.

  I shook my head, mostly to myself. “You say it, but how can you mean it? You must have beautiful young women hounding you. I’m in good shape, but I’m forty, or as near to it as makes any difference. Things aren’t…” I hefted my breasts, “where they used to be.”

  He reached out with two hands, slowly, so I could have stopped him at any time, to cup my breasts, his heat penetrating the bra. “I’m not bedding a generic female body. These are your breasts.” He gently cradled them. “Yours, do you understand? They belong to you. They are exactly where they’re supposed to be—for you. Perfect, you understand? It’s…Kintsugi.”

  “What?”

  “A Japanese philosophy that treats age as part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise. It’s also the art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with precious metal like gold, making the broken object, not whole, but even more beautiful. Understand now?”

  When I shook my head no, he made a small unhappy sound.

  “Let me try again. These lines…” He traced across my forehead and the brackets around my mouth. “They’re because you’ve lived, yes. But what makes them important is they’re part of your life. They’re there because they were along for the ride that made you who you are today. They were made on the ride that made you. You’re perfect. So they’re perfect too.”

  “That’s…lovely.” I blinked itchy eyes. Feelings threatened to swamp me, threatened to make me want things I shouldn’t.

  Still moving slowly, his hands came around to the back of my bra, carefully releasing the hooks. “That’s the truth.”

  Truth, I understood. Sex, I understood. I pushed inexplicable feelings away, not waiting for him to finish, but stripping the bra off to toss it away.

  His eyes went bright gold with desire, feasting on my naked breasts. He’s telling the truth. Plumping one with his hand, he made another sound, low and satisfied. “These are more than lovely.” He bent, sucked the nipple into his hot mouth and tongued it, stimulating the other with his palm.

  I gasped. The words had already aroused me and his clever mouth and rough palm released a surge of wet pleasure between my thighs. I rippled against his hand and mouth, wanting more.

  A rumble came from his chest, that deep purr I’d heard before, like that of a large cat. He glanced up at me, and his eyes were molten rose-gold.

  I wanted to set those eyes on fire.

  I grabbed his face with both hands and tried to stuff my whole breast into his mouth.

  He backed off with a chuffed laugh. “Wait.” With a final swirl of tongue he stood and…went poof. A vaguely Luke-like cloud held his clothes in shape for an instant before they collapsed to the floor. He snapped back.

  Naked.

  My mouth was suddenly wet, my hands and belly and whole body clenching with urgency.

  He thought I was beautiful? The man stood brushed by the golden streak of light into art, like rich Flemish oil on van Eyck’s canvas, perfection in muscle and bone.

  Gilt hair glinted on the mounds of his chest, each muscle highly defined, embossed by light and shadow. Sleek skin covered his strong ribcage, backed by a cobra’s flare of muscle. Hair sparked in a furred line leading to an erection as big as a sword, straining for me.

  The instant he sat next to me, I petted everything I could reach. He was as hard as rocks under bronze skin as smooth as cream, except for the nubs of his puckered nipples. I brushed my thumbs over their heads.

  Groaning my name, he seized my ears and levered my mouth against his nipple. I grabbed his ribs for stability and kissed and tongued and nipped the rosy skin until he was as hard and tight as a snap. His pectoral jerked with each hot flick, and he hissed his pleasure.

  My hunched position started getting awkward. A little pressure eased him onto his back. Continuing to lave his nipple, I rested a hand on his abs, hillocks of male strength.

  New pleasure flooded me at the feel of them rippling under my palm. I licked down his chest, across those hard hillocks, finding the trail of soft hair leading me ever downward. My tongue tripped along, stumbling onto a soft nest, his cock jutting from it, full and thick.

  My sex clenched tight at the sight, and I gave the tip a little kiss.

  He looked down at himself, a confused expression touching his face. It seemed inconceivable he hadn’t noticed that monster before, but he hadn’t and now that he saw it, proud and full, he actually seemed embarrassed. I didn’t know why, but maybe he was as self-conscious about his cock as I was about my body. So I shook my hair around my head to create a veil.

  Then I gave the tip of his erection a little lick. The glans was velvety and warm against my tongue.

  His cock tipped a nod as if in reply.

  Forgetting slow and gentle, I opened my
mouth to do a helluva lot more.

  I’d gotten the glans clamped into my mouth, ridged and hot, and was working on opening my throat to take more, when he made a strangled sound and pulled me off him.

  Really confused now, I let him urge me off the mattress, to my feet. “What?” Was he kicking me out? “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Everything.”

  He turned me away from him and for a second my heart dropped out of my feet.

  Then he pressed himself against my back and quickly worked my snap and zipper. “I’m naked and you’re not.” The moment he opened my pants, he thrust a hand down into my panties.

  Slid a finger onto my clit, already hard and pulsing.

  Just the touch of his hot finger sent shock waves through me. I arched, my head hitting his chest. My mouth throbbed with the need to kiss him so I twisted in his arms until he let me turn, then grabbed his face between my hands.

  His jaw was like a cliff. A stubbled cliff, the rasp waking the skin of my palms, sending ripples echoing along the rest of my flesh. I pulled his head down and kissed him, a little wild, a lot reckless, tongue driving like a jackhammer. And though I said I wouldn’t, and I didn’t plan to, instinct took over.

  I sucked one long fang into my mouth.

  He roared, threw me onto the bed on my back and tore off my pants and panties so fast they rocketed into the far corner of the room. I lay naked and panting as he leaped onto the bed on top of me. His hands landed on either side of my head, his belly against mine, his hips between my spread thighs.

  The tip of his erection slipped into the vestibule of my pussy.

  His cock jerked in recognition. The head nudged my labia, spreading me. Letting out a low moan, I wriggled against him, managing to work an inch of fat cock inside.

  It shocked some sort of awareness into him. Breathing hard, he forced himself still, though the way his hips strained and twitched, his cock wanted to go full-force and bury itself inside me.