After the Kiss

by Michele Hauf

  He was in the office going over paperwork for the sanctuary. He’d never miss me.

  “Bella?”

  Or maybe he wasn’t in the office.

  I spun to find him leaning in the arsenal doorway, a platinum SIG Sauer pistol in one hand and a cleaning cloth in the other. The smell of mineral oil flared my nostrils.

  “I was going to…” I pointed toward the garage, feeling strangely caught out. He knew what I was up to when I left around midnight. “You cleaning guns?” Duh.

  “It’s raining. You shouldn’t go out. You’ll get all wet.”

  “I thought you liked me wet.”

  The werewolf’s suggestive waggle of brow stirred me.

  I walked up to him and he kissed the curve of my jaw. The tickle of his beard sent wanting shivers through me. The hard gun barrel skimmed my elbow. I didn’t like weapons—though I had once fired at attacking vampires—and killed them. I stepped back from him.

  “Are you teasing or promising?” he asked with a glint to his dark eyes.

  “Promise. As soon as I get back.”

  He tugged me against his brawn and overwhelming strength. Clinging to him, I always felt safe and yet teasingly vulnerable.

  “Stay,” he whispered. A kiss to my mouth stole my breath. He could have it. All of me. Whenever he desired. “Take from me. Please?”

  I couldn’t have heard him right.

  Pressing my palms to his chest, I sought his eyes. Always the truth there, and his most vulnerable secrets. I saw nothing beyond the calm entreaty to love him, cherish him.

  I shook my head. “I won’t ask it of you anymore. I’ve had a change of heart—”

  “So have I. There is no one I trust more than you. I want to be a part of you, Bella. I want to live inside you, to be marked by you.” His gaze was steady, focused. “I ask it of you willingly.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “You know.”

  The trip to Olivia’s.

  “Sitting out in the forest with you,” he said. “Just…being. Confirming the ghosts of my past do not exist on this earthly plane. They have moved on. And so should I.”

  “Still, it’s a lot to ask.”

  “Stop refusing me.” He tightened his grip across my back. When Severo wants something, he takes it. And usually that means I am going to love giving it to him. “Get out of this silly plastic slicker and into my bed, sweet. I’m going to put this weapon away.”

  To refuse again would be arguing well beyond the point. I’d won. But it didn’t feel like a win, it felt like a precious gift.

  I am very cool with my wife biting me.

  I am.

  Seriously.

  It wasn’t nerves that had me pacing the floor before the bed, waiting for Bella to get out of the shower. It was anticipation. I wanted to rush into the bathroom, step in the shower and lick the water from her body. I could drown in her.

  The slightest apprehension was stopping me from doing so.

  I was once the Northern pack’s principal. For four decades I led the pack, monitored them, protected them and kept them family. Eventually I tired of pack politics, of its members’ need to move closer to the cities. Twenty-first-century werewolves were becoming domesticated prisoners of the modern world.

  Nothing wrong with that. I simply prefer the country wildness, the freedom of being a lone wolf. I answer to no one and willingly stand alone. And I abhor the blood sport the packs participate in nowadays.

  I have secluded myself from most of the population, save my gorgeous wife. She is all I need.

  I am ready to be all she needs.

  There is a sure promise I will develop a hunger for blood such as my wife has. If Bella can do it, I can, too.

  The water stopped. I tugged off my shirt and unbuttoned the loose jeans but didn’t ease them down my hips. Already my erection demanded its place inside Bella.

  She strode out of the bathroom, steam from the shower misting off her bare skin. She was long and lithe, and her muscles were concentrated in arms and torso from dancing. High breasts dripped water droplets. I went to her and bent to suckle at a hard, wet nipple.

  “You know what you like,” she purred, running her fingers through my hair.

  “You like it, too. You always moan so sweetly for me when I lick you. Here.” Full and hot, her breast served as a treat. I bent and fell to my knees, licking her wet stomach to the peak of her mons where she shaved a landing strip because that’s the way I preferred her to be. “And here.”

  I tasted her deeply. There were various ways to make Bella come. I had become a master of most, though I looked forward to endless discovery of all the many keys to unlocking her pleasure.

  “On the bed,” she gasped. “I can’t stand upright when you kiss me there. Makes me weak.”

  The soft bamboo sheets caught our bodies. Clasping one of Bella’s hands, I brought it down to her hip and kissed it quickly before resuming my attentions at the apex of her thighs. Her body tensed and I knew she would come soon. It is as pleasurable to give as to receive when the two of us make love. I could honestly pleasure Bella all day without demanding any return.

  Bella cried out, her voice hoarse with climax. She shivered and preened like a satisfied cat for a while afterward. Holding her sent matching shivers through my muscles and focused my cock.

  I moved alongside her and kissed each breast. “I love you,” were the easiest words to say to her.

  Her fingers curled about my cock. I didn’t need her to get me off, but I am a man; I wouldn’t argue the point.

  “You know how to touch me, sweet.” Kisses to my chest, my throat and jaw felt like faery footsteps. A squeeze to my cock was all Bella. She stroked me slowly, knowing the rhythmic pressure was just the thing for me. “Do you think we’ll ever tire of one another? I mean, we’ve centuries before us.”

  “I won’t,” she whispered. “But will you tire of me?”

  “Never.”

  Eyes closed, she moved her lips across mine, touching lightly, tasting but not committing. “Do you know I can hear the blood rush through your veins? It was the weirdest thing the first few weeks after I became vampire, but now I realize it’s like a person’s fingerprints. Unique.”

  I wasn’t the slightest disturbed by such talk. “And what does my blood say to you?”

  “Taste me. Take me. I am yours. I believe you want this.”

  “I do.” I cradled the back of her head as she bent to lick my neck. The tip of her firm tongue traced the vein. Her hand increased its strokes. “Now,” I said, “make me yours.”

  “I will, just as you come,” she said. “I want to know I can give you immense pleasure, and maybe distraction.”

  “I don’t need to be…” Words failed me. I was too close to getting off, closer yet with each stroke of Bella’s expert hand. “Maybe—”

  The intrusion of Bella’s fangs into my flesh matched the exact moment my body tensed with orgasm. The pain, exquisite and bold, branded me. Gripping her shoulders, I arched my back as she sank more deeply in.

  The mind-twisting joy of release as my hips bucked and I came at her direction blended with a new and exotic trill of sensation at my neck. In my veins. Moving through my entire system.

  Aware of her breasts dusting my chest, a leg snaking along my torso and rubbing my erection, I growled lowly at the rightness of this moment. Her fingers clutched at my hair and scalp while the other hand continued to stroke my aching cock. I could come again if she wanted me to. All the while she sucked at my vein.

  I could not juxtapose the rhythm of her hand on my erection to the sweet sensation of her mouth at my neck. It was both deliriously invigorating and strangely numbing. I thought she might take too much, and then it didn’t matter.

  Take it all. I belong to you now. We are one.

  Orgasm again attacked me with amazing vigor. My body was racked with shudders and she clung tighter, riding my pleasure with wicked intent. Never have I reached such heights.


  Falling into an oblivion rarely visited, I closed my eyes and sighed.

  A kiss at my neck. Another kiss to my mouth. She tasted like blood, not offensive, just different. Bella moved on top of me and took me inside her. She rocked upon me slowly, taking what she wanted and feeding the surrender that held me firmly in her grasp.

  I had been marked by a vampire. The wound would not heal as my other wounds had. Yes, the wound bearing memories of my tragic past had begun to heal. Yet Bella’s bite would scar and proclaim to the world I had succumbed.

  I am a happy werewolf for it.

  Night had fallen and the air was warm with the promise of sunny days. I stood upon the rise of hill that looks over a valley behind our home. Spring smelled sweet.

  Adjusting the long leather duster coat I’d held over my left arm, I smiled at the oncoming dark shape. He loped happily across the field. Already I felt the pace of his rapid heartbeats in my veins. Synched, and bonded.

  Gorgeous dark brown-and-black fur shimmered on the wolf’s body from the half moonlight. As he closed the distance between us, his gait changed to to a scamper.

  He stopped before me and dropped the rabbit at my feet. A good-size male that must have just come out from its cozy winter warren.

  “I see Crowel will be making rabbit stew tonight,” I said.

  The wolf yipped and rolled onto its back, allowing its body to succumb to the gyrations of shape-shifting. I gazed across the horizon because I’d seen the change and it still made me wonder how painful it must be—though I’d been promised it was not.

  After a minute I felt him standing next to me, his shoulders jerking a few times to adjust to the final changes. Strong male arms embraced me from the side and Severo kissed the corner of my mouth as he navigated for his coat. He slipped his arms into it and then pulled me to his bare, naked chest.

  My fingers slid over his chest and down his tight abs. I pulled his hips to mine. Nuzzling my head against his shoulder in the darkness, I stroked a finger along his neck, noting the raised scars from two small punctures.

  “Any regrets?”

  “Not at all. I like being claimed by you. Now everyone will know how madly in love I am with a vampire, my wife, my lover.”

  Read more about Belladonna and Severo in MOON KISSED by Michele Hauf, available now from Silhouette Nocturne.

  If you liked this story, check out more of Michele Hauf’s books always available in eBook format from www.ebooks.eharlequin and wherever eBooks are sold:

  Silhouette Nocturne:

  Moon Kissed (the prequel to After the Kiss)

  The Highwayman

  The Devil to Pay

  Winter Kissed

  His Forgotten Forever

  Kiss Me Deadly

  From the Dark

  Silhouette Nocturne Bites:

  Racing the Moon

  Midnight Cravings (anthology containing Racing the Moon)

  Silhouette Bombshell:

  Flawless

  Once a Thief

  Getaway Girl

  Luna Books:

  Seraphim

  Gossamyr

  Rhiana

  Don’t miss the other spooky and sensual NOCTURNE BITES, available at www.ebooks.eharlequin.com and wherever eBooks are sold.

  Looking for more paranormal romance? The sizzling and spine-chilling books of Silhouette Nocturne are available at www.eHarlequin.com or your local bookstore.

  Interested in writing for Nocturne Bites? Send your submission to NocturneBites@Harlequin.ca

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-3986-3

  After the Kiss

  Copyright © 2009 by Michele Hauf

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