by Nina Bangs
Enough soul-searching, though. Right now he wanted to touch her again. His sexual need, like his other craving, was a surging compulsion that couldn’t be allowed to run loose. But he had no problem with taking it out on a leash.
“You know, Asima mentioned that you had layers of power. What did she mean?” Donna took another bite from her peach, but this time she quickly licked her lips free of juice.
Too bad. He could get used to her peach-flavored lips. “It depends on what kind of powers Asima had in mind.” He deliberately let her see the flare of sexual hunger in his eyes.
The truth? Members of his clan accumulated power as they aged. Eric had chosen to make himself invulnerable to attack. He had superhuman strength, preternatural speed, the ability to become invisible, power to call the elements to himself, and if pressed, he could shape-shift. And he could mess with human minds with the best of them.
Eric shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I won’t be giving Spiderman competition anytime soon.” Oh, and his power to lie straight-faced was legendary.
“Okay, what about weaknesses? Come on, tell.” She smiled as she dropped the peach stone onto her tray and wiped her sticky fingers on her napkin.
Great. A question he could answer. “Candy. I love sweets.” When he’d grown powerful enough to feel safe from enemies—human or otherwise—he’d decided to indulge himself. He’d used his accumulated power to change his system enough to allow him to enjoy candy. No other food, just candy. From the first time he’d smelled the rich sweet scent of chocolate, he’d known that candy would be his one human weakness.
“That’s it? Candy?” Donna made a face at him. “What a disappointment. You don’t look like a man who only has one weakness. You look like a man who has lots of weaknesses for the dark and dangerous side of life.” She cocked her head to get a better perspective on him. “But then, maybe you’re lying. Who knows?”
“Maybe.” He was lying. Eric had just realized he had a second weakness—Donna Nolan. Over the centuries he’d had sex with lots of women and enjoyed all of them. But he’d never spent the night with a woman twice, because it made him vulnerable.
He could defeat challenges by other powerful entities as long he remained focused, without distractions. Once he began thinking more about the woman in his bed than the dangers that lurked without, he opened himself to destruction. His body might be able to regenerate and repair mortal wounds, but it was pretty tough to regenerate a head.
And yet, Eric sensed he could be in danger of losing his head over Donna, figuratively and literally. No, he was smarter than that. He’d enjoy her, give her pleasure, and wave goodbye when she left on Saturday.
He watched as Donna climbed from the bed. She went into the bathroom and came out a few seconds later with a glass of water that she poured into Sweetie Pie’s pot. She repeated the process for Jessica.
She knelt down to study the plants. “Do you think they need plant food? When they saw you naked they perked up a little, but I don’t see any new leaf growth. And the bottom leaves are starting to droop again. I don’t think the water I gave them has many nutrients. Should I get them bottled water?”
Eric grinned. She was making it way too easy for him. He rose from the bed and knelt down beside her. “You know what they need.” From force of habit, he started to touch her mind with an image of what they would share together, and then stopped. No image. No compulsion. When it happened, he wanted to know it came completely from her. “I want to make love with you, Donna.”
Eric winced. He sounded like Brynn, a lot blunter than his normal approach. Usually he crept up on what he wanted with slow seduction and light sexy banter to convince the object of his interest that he wasn’t dangerous. He smiled. A lie, but all in a good cause. Today, slow seduction would take too much time, and he was too eager.
There was a little self-disgust mixed into his wince. The phrase make love wasn’t what he meant at all. He wanted to have sex with her. Love wasn’t part of the equation. Throughout the centuries he’d always told women he wanted to make love with them because that’s what they wanted to hear, but the lie had never bothered him until now.
She turned her attention from Sweetie Pie to him. Her expression gave nothing away, but he expected the usual reaction. First shock, then an admission that maybe she could be interested, followed closely by an unspoken challenge to convince her.
“I want that, too.” Her smile was self-deprecating. “My sister Trish could tell you that instant lust is way out of character for me, but she’d be applauding wildly.”
Her answer surprised Eric, and his response amazed him even more. His senses engulfed him, washing away the control that had allowed him to survive for eight hundred years. The scent of peach clung to her body, and he could imagine the smooth slide of her skin beneath his fingers, his mouth. His enhanced hearing noted the soft sound of her breathing, the subtle flow of her life force, and he fought back his need to change.
The sexual beast that lived in all vampires howled its demands. His desire hit him, hot and insistent, along with his dark hunger. A hunger he’d better control if he didn’t want her on the first plane out of Hobby Airport.
Tell her the truth. Maybe she’ll accept you. Nope, it wasn’t happening. Even if she was okay with him as vampire, she wouldn’t want his body or his teeth. Been there, done that.
So much for inner discourse. If he didn’t touch her right now, his fingers would fall off along with a very important body part. Still kneeling in front of the plants, he pulled her into his embrace.
“I can’t make it to the bed, so don’t even suggest it.” Lowering his head, he traced her lower lip with his tongue. “You taste of buttered toast and peach juice.” He’d never had buttered toast in his life, but maybe when he’d accumulated enough power, he’d add it to his short list of human weaknesses.
Leaning into him, she tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer. “Someone I know suggested I do this. It works for me.”
The first time he’d taken her mouth, he’d surprised her. This time she was armed and dangerous. Donna met his kiss with all the fervor she’d been storing up for this moment. The mind-blowing part? She hadn’t realized until now that she’d been storing up anything.
Parting her lips, she invited him in. But as his tongue touched hers, she gleefully sprang her trap. She stroked and teased his tongue, tasting her toothpaste and his passion.
“You’re a wicked woman, talk-show lady.” His soft laughter did shivery things to her as he broke their kiss and trailed a path of pleasure with his lips over her jaw and down her neck.
“I try. I really try.” She knew she sounded breathless.
He’d paused at her throat to trace a circular pattern of yummy heat with his tongue right where her pulse pounded out her excitement.
A shudder rippled through him as he leaned away from her. He looked . . . different. His eyes had darkened, his mouth looked fuller, more tempting. If she had to describe him, she’d say he looked untamed and barely under control. She clenched her thighs around the visual of what would happen if his control snapped.
She’d just bet that her own eyes were darkening, too, as she reached out to stroke the warm skin of his chest. “You have a beautiful chest. I’ve lusted after it since last night.” She ran her fingertip across each of his nipples. “Smooth warm skin over hard muscle. Very erotic.” She glided her hand across his sculpted pecs and then over his ridged stomach. “With so many interesting topographical features.”
“And you haven’t even reached the mountain region.” Some of his intensity of a few moments ago seemed to have eased. “And I know your chest intimately even though I haven’t seen it yet. I do great creative imaging.” His banter sounded light and careless, but his gaze said he was working hard to control his growl-and-pounce instinct.
Which gave her an immediate shot of adrenaline. She was teasing the beast, and one wrong word would loose it. Donna searched her database of wrong
words. Once she found it, she’d use it, because her body’s mob mentality was clamoring for a sexual experience short on foreplay and long on orgasmic ecstasy. You didn’t mess with a mob.
She reached for his jeans. Surprised, she realized her hand was shaking as she fumbled with the buttons. “Clothes just ruin the artistic flow of the body’s symmetry for me.” And they made it a lot harder for her to jump his bones. She managed to work his jeans partway down his hips before shortness of breath due to a sudden hormonal surge forced her to hand the rest of the job over to him.
His smile was hot and needy. “I guess my reasoning is a lot more basic. Clothes get in the way when I want to touch all the spots that’ll make you scream with pleasure.” Clasping the edges of her nightshirt, he slid it over her head. And then he stared at her, his gaze sliding the length of her body, leaving a path of molten possession. “You’re beautiful and you’re mine until our pleasure ends.” His smile was more a baring of teeth to reinforce the word mine.
Usually, she’d verbally carve out the heart of any alpha male foolish enough to claim possession, but right now, with this man, it felt kind of right. “I don’t scream.” The truth. She wasn’t a screamer. Donna enjoyed sex, but she enjoyed it quietly, with a few murmurs of appreciation for her partner. Funny thing was, she felt a strange need to whimper. Whimper? How stupid was that?
“Maybe you never had anything to scream about.” He was all arrogant male.
She sort of liked that about him. Her New York lovers had all been sensitive caring men. They’d let her lead. Maybe it was time for someone who challenged her. Donna smiled at the possibilities. Maybe she’d make him scream.
While she was busy considering the power structure of their sexual play, Eric took action. In one smooth powerful motion, he rocked back until he lay flat on the floor and at the same time grasped her hips to lift her on top of him. It took her a moment to shift her thoughts from amazement at his strength to a realization that her knees straddled his hips, and her bare bottom was planted firmly on his power center.
“A lesson on tops and bottoms. And who’s really in control.” His smile was a wicked promise that his lesson would be accompanied by plenty of hands-on opportunities.
“I wasn’t thinking about control.” She was thinking about control. And she was honest enough to admit those thoughts shouldn’t have any part in her enjoyment of sex with Eric. But how did she shut down the habit of a lifetime, get rid of thoughts that were second nature to her?
“I’ll get rid of the thoughts for you.” He reached up to touch her nipples with the tips of his fingers and then rolled them between his thumbs and index fingers.
Ignoring her gasp at the shock of sensation, he lifted his hips to press his erection hard between her legs. “Being on top doesn’t automatically mean you’re in charge, talk-show lady. Right now the pleasure starts on the bottom.” His voice was cool certainty. “And I’ll be in charge of the pleasure-giving today. Screaming is encouraged.”
Widening her eyes, Donna revved up her vocal cords to let him have it. Of all the arrogant . . . “First off, stay out of my mind.” As soon as she could think straight, she’d have to find out how he did that. “And second, don’t tell me . . .”
His smile was superior, smug, and beautiful. He didn’t say anything, but simply put his finger over her lips. She tried on her own superior smile as she parted her lips and closed them over his finger. His gaze darkened.
She bit his finger.
“Well, well.” His eyes turned predatory. Something dangerous moved in the dark blue depths.
She released his finger. There. She’d stated her opinion. Donna could see the imprint of her teeth on his finger. She hoped she hadn’t overstated it.
“No woman has ever bitten me.” His soft laughter suggested it had been a brave though foolish gesture. “It excites me.”
Suddenly he sat up and lifted her off his lap. Damn, she wished he didn’t make all this lifting and moving seem so effortless. Before she could voice her objection, he placed her flat on her stomach. “Hey, what’re you doing?” The rug tickling her nose didn’t have an answer.
“Relax.” His voice mesmerized her and promised that relaxing would be a good thing. Had she ever heard a voice like his? Deep, reaching inside her and soothing her from the inside out. “Let your senses live.” He nudged her legs apart and knelt between them. Then he began a slow deep massage starting at her shoulders. “Open yourself to my touch and to the touch of all that surrounds you.” His voice was a seductive whisper, a brush of warmth next to her ear.
His magic fingers moved lower on her back, kneading the tightness from her muscles even as her lower body parts anticipated his arrival with drunken revelry.
Touch. Suddenly she was aware on a level she’d never experienced before. She could feel every strand of fiber in the rug beneath her cheek, every nuance of his fingers as they touched her body, even the slide of air over her bare body.
“Close your eyes. Listen, smell, taste.” He smoothed his fingers over the base of her spine and she felt the message in her brain as an instant flash of pure hot red. “Open yourself to what I offer, to the seduction of your senses.” His voice seemed merely a murmur in her mind, but she couldn’t focus her attention long enough to think about that possibility.
Normally, Donna would’ve analyzed each of his directions for motive and do-ability. But she was into the moment. She closed her eyes.
The window of Donna’s mind looked out on a land she’d never seen, and the clarity and brilliance of what she saw drew a gasp from her—hills, a lake, and an ancient castle that crouched on a small island in the lake. Only a stone footbridge connected the island to the mainland. The shades of green, purple, and blue almost hurt her eyes. Where was she?
She forgot to worry about her location as all her other senses came alive. The scents of damp earth, green growing things, water, and the essence of life itself. Sounds of ripples flowing onto the shore, the wind sighing through branches, the scurry of small animals, and someone talking deep within the castle. And taste was a part of the whole. She wrinkled her nose at the brown bitterness of the argument taking place in the castle. How could anger have a color and taste? She felt as though she’d experienced her whole life through a fogged-up window, and now she’d rubbed a clear spot to look through. What she saw was a reality no longer fuzzy but sharply focused. Donna wanted to keep rubbing more and more of the window clear until there was nothing between her and what was.
“Very good.” Eric had moved down to her buttocks. He kneaded and stroked them.
With her enhanced senses she could hear the slide of his fingers over her skin, taste his sexual arousal, and feel the sensual energy surrounding them spreading out in waves.
And when he kissed a path down her spine and then traced a heart on one cheek with his tongue, her senses celebrated the event as a never-ending river of deep, smooth, rich chocolate. Her eyes popped open. Chocolate?
His husky laughter was pure Godiva. “We have something in common. There are few things on earth as erotically symbolic as chocolate. That’s why I chose . . .” He’d evidently thought better of what he’d been about to say.
She didn’t have time to think about things left unsaid, because Eric suddenly eased her onto her back. Whoa. She was not a lump of bread dough to be rolled and kneaded to just the right consistency. She’d discuss this arbitrary repositioning of her body without her prior consent later. Right now he still knelt between her open thighs and demanded all her attention.
“Look at me, Donna.” His dark tangle of hair framed his face and lay across his bare shoulders. His strong muscular body blocked out what had been and what might be, leaving only him. His sex rose thick and hard. While he’d been encouraging her to relax, he’d been going in the opposite direction.
She lifted her gaze to his face and saw things she hadn’t noticed before. The gleaming intensity in his eyes with their layers of thoughts and emotions she imagined led b
ack to his very soul. An old soul, her instinct whispered. The smooth perfection of his face. No age lines, no laugh lines, nothing. His face was a contradiction.
“Don’t look that closely.” His smile focused her attention on his mouth, his lips, his teeth.
His teeth. There was something different about his teeth. But before she had a chance to investigate that thought, he covered her mouth with his.
It was a long drugging kiss, so powerful because of her enhanced senses that she almost wanted to cry. The rich erotic taste of him added to the moist heat of his mouth awakened something primitive in her.
As he kissed her neck, her breasts, and then closed his lips around each nipple and teased it to a hard nub with his tongue, she raked her fingers through his hair and gripped his shoulders with clawed fingers.
Arching her back, she moaned her pleasure as he gripped her bottom and slid his tongue over her stomach. She lifted her hips and spread her legs wider, inviting him in even as something important tried to make itself heard over the drumroll of spiraling sexual excitement.
Eric had evidently reached his own threshold of endurance, because with a muttered oath he lifted her hips, and she felt the nudge of his sex between her legs. She was open, moist, and her body was clenching in delicious anticipation.
Protection. The important word had fought its way into shouting distance. Nooooo! “You don’t have—”
“Where’s the damn cookie jar?”
“Closet.” If he didn’t get it fast, she’d implode.
Donna blinked. She must be hallucinating, because no man could’ve gotten to the closet and back that fast. In fact, she didn’t even remember seeing him move. But he must’ve, because he was rolling the condom over his erection.
