He had to drag his hand from her breast. Pull himself away from wanting to remove the shift she wore. He wanted to explore the rest of her. Savor the warmth and life pulsing beneath her skin. Plunge into the hot, wet depths of her femininity and hear her cry his name as he drove into her.
“I see that I’m not the only one who doesn’t want this,” she said, her gaze dropping below his waist for a moment before locking with his.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“So what does that make us, Hadrian?” she asked and her name on his lips tightened his gut, swelling an already painful arousal.
“Crazy,” he admitted, yanking a bemused chuckle from her.
He turned away from her and faced the table once again, where he cleared away their dirty plates and prepared for the next course. Reaching for another of the platters George had brought, he spooned delicate strands of cappellini in an almond pesto cream sauce onto their dishes. When he was done, he gestured to the pasta with his hand and said, “Eat.”
She did. Hesitantly at first, but after a few sips of her wine, she attacked the meal with gusto until the plate before her was clean.
“That was good,” she said and he nodded in agreement.
“George’s wife is quite a good cook.”
“George has a family?” she asked and snared another piece of bread from the basket.
“He lives on the lower three floors with them in exchange for his care of me.”
Connie was about to say that it was some gig to have a ritzy East Side brownstone in exchange for being a caretaker until she thought about what else a caretaker might need to do—like dispose of Hadrian’s leftovers. Except he had said he didn’t ever have guests here.
“Am I the only…dinner you’ve brought home with you?”
He chuckled. “Now that’s the spirit that intrigued me.”
As he cleared away the plates once again, she pressed her point. “Am I or does George get to take out your trash as part of his responsibilities?”
He paused in the act of setting the plate before her. “You’re the only human who I’ve brought into my home.”
The plate thunked onto the table before her and with jerky motions, he spooned out yet another course—chunks of tender veal swimming in a brown sauce.
“You’ve yet to really tell me anything about yourself,” he said.
With a shrug, she reminded him, “Like I said before, I’m rather ordinary.”
He trained his gaze on her, dark and demanding. When he spoke, the tones of his voice were low, like a lover’s in the middle of the night. “You’re anything but ordinary, Connie. But I suspect you already know how beautiful you are.”
She didn’t, actually. She had never been the kind to put much faith in her looks, choosing instead to rely on her intelligence and other abilities to get ahead. It occurred to her in that moment that if he found her beautiful seduction could accomplish what intelligence hadn’t so far.
“Maybe it’s not something all the men in my life make a point of telling me,” she said, which wasn’t far from the truth. Well, maybe a bit of a stretch since she could count the men who had been in her life on one hand. Okay, maybe not even her whole hand, just three fingers, she thought.
A wry smile quirked the edges of his lips. “You’re not a very good liar.”
“Why do you say that?” She ate a bit of the veal and found the flavor rich. The gravy had bits of mushroom, intensifying the richness of the dish.
“I suspect you haven’t had many men in your life. But I won’t be put off if you try and prove me wrong.”
She dropped her fork onto her plate, where it clattered against the expensive bone china and sent a bit of gravy flying onto the white linen tablecloth. “Excuse me? Prove you wrong?”
He placed his own fork down more carefully and turned in his chair to face her.
“Yes, prove me wrong. Seduce me.”
Chapter 10
S educe him.
With him in his human state, it wouldn’t be such a hard task. He was more than attractive. He was drop-dead gorgeous. With his being a vampire, however, those words took on whole new meaning.
Not to mention that her experience with men was limited. She had never played the role of the seductress. Never thought of herself that way, but if that was what it would take to earn her freedom…
She drove away the concern about what she would do if along the way she came to feel something for him.
First step, touch him, she told herself.
He had an unruly lock of hair that sometimes drifted down over his forehead. She reached out and swept it back, saying as she did so, “You’d like me to seduce you.”
He laid his hand on her upper arm and lazily stroked her skin. “It’s been a long time since a woman as intriguing as you has enticed me.”
Her gaze locked with his and she found no deception about his feelings. He desired her, but before she took this little game further, she wanted to make some things clear.
“No thrall or other vampire tricks. I want you one hundred percent human.”
A frown marred his lips and she swept her hand down, passed her thumb across them. “I want that because…it needs to be real for me. I want what I feel to be real.”
Hadrian thought about the many women he had lured with the vampire’s pheromones over nearly two millennia. He had controlled them for one reason only—to feed. Whatever physical passion had come along for the ride had failed to move him.
But Connie moved him.
He wanted to experience more of that with her and so he nodded and shifted his hand to the fine line of her collarbone.
“One hundred percent human.” Beneath his hand, the tension rushed from her body.
She dropped her hand from his face to his shoulder, where she brushed aside the shift he wore to stroke the skin beneath. He knew it would be cold to the touch and normally he summoned the vampire a bit because the transformation brought heat. But he had made a promise and he meant to keep it.
Connie stroked the muscles of his shoulder tentatively before fingering the edge of the shift.
“Do you normally wear this to bed?”
He glanced down at the garment before meeting her gaze again and shooting her a smile. “Not usually.”
“Oh.”
“Would you like some dessert?” he asked at the same time that she said, “Would you like to get comfortable?”
“Comfortable?” he said and she motioned to the silken shift he wore.
“Oh,” he said, but decided that before she changed her mind, he would take advantage of her offer. He whipped the garment off and tossed it to the side, exposing himself.
Connie sucked in a shaky breath as she beheld all of him. Lean and powerfully built, with muscles that were nicely defined but not bulky. He had little hair on his chest, just a smattering of dark softness above his heart with a happy trail down the center of his body, past ridged abs and to…
An uncircumcised penis that had grown remarkably erect with her perusal. His foreskin hid all but the tip of his penis from her. As her gaze lingered there, he glanced down as well and with a shrug said, “It was the norm when I was born.”
“Right.” She jerked her attention back to the table and his earlier question. “Dessert would be lovely.”
With shaky hands, he cleared the dinner plates and placed dessert before them—a mound of small deep-fried balls of dough glistening with something sweet and dotted with colored sprinkles. He picked off a few of the balls and offered them to her.
“You really have got to eat these with your fingers.”
He brought them to her lips and she opened her mouth, ate them. The dough balls were crunchy and the syrup turned out to be some kind of honey glaze.
“Good,” she said and watched as he licked the honey from his fingers. The motion tightened something inside of her and as he reached for more of the sweets, she stopped him. Instead, she picked up several of them and raised them to
his mouth.
He glanced at them and then at her with some hesitation, but then he grasped her wrist, held her hand steady as he opened his mouth and ate the sweets. He swallowed quickly and then applied gentle pressure to bring her hand to his lips.
Opening his mouth, he licked her index finger to remove what remained of the syrup. Then he moved on to each of her other fingers, licking and sucking each one into his mouth.
When he released her hand she ripped it back quickly and rubbed it on her shift, but it was impossible to wipe away the feel of his mouth and tongue. It was impossible to keep from imagining how they might feel on other parts of her body and that imagining brought a very obvious response that he was quick to embrace.
“I can end the wondering, cara.”
Nervously she rubbed her hands back and forth on the shift, feeling the silken slide of it against her skin. Imagining instead the slide of his mouth and lips.
She nodded, unable to voice her request, but he surprised her by dropping to his knees before her.
“Hadrian,” she said and laid a hand on his shoulder.
His muscles rippled beneath her hand before he asked, “Say my name again, cara.”
A simple request. Say his name.
The way she would see him as a human by just saying his name.
“Hadrian.”
The muscles of his shoulder tightened for a moment and then relief washed over him.
But relief was the last thing she felt as he slipped his hand around her calf and gently raised her leg, bringing her foot to his mouth. As he had done with her fingers, he licked each toe. Each pull of his mouth created a tug between her legs.
He moved upward, to the inside of her ankle, where he dropped a kiss and gave a lick.
She shivered, anticipating where he was headed next as he kissed her kneecap and rubbed his cheek against the inside skin there.
“I thought I was supposed to be doing the seducing?” she asked as he inched the shift upward, exposing her thighs.
He eased his body between the vee of her legs and laid his hands on her thighs, rubbing back and forth in a gentle caress. A wry smile came to his face as he asked, “Do you want me to stop?”
She was throbbing, damp between her legs. The last thing she wanted him to do was to stop, so she shook her head.
His smile broadened, but he didn’t press forward. Instead, he traced an idle pattern on her thigh with his fingers. “I didn’t hear you. I need to hear you say it. Say my name, cara.”
“Not cara, Hadrian. Connie. My name is Connie.”
A strangled laugh escaped him. “Connie. Do you want me to stop, Connie?”
“No, Hadrian. I don’t want you to stop.”
With gentle hands, he grasped her thighs and urged her to the edge of the chair. Tardily he dropped a series of kisses up the inside of one thigh, skipped the place she wanted him most before kissing his way back down the inside of the other thigh.
She gripped his body with her thighs and shifted restlessly on the edge of the chair, wanting his touch. Needing his hands and mouth on her. His human hands and mouth, driving home the reality that the demon had not emerged. That, as he promised, all that she was feeling was real.
Which almost made her stop. Reality would only make it more difficult to…
All thoughts fled her brain as he finally brought his mouth to the center of her, expertly finding her clitoris and kissing it, licking at it and then nibbling the nub, creating an undeniable wave of desire throughout her body.
He didn’t stop there, moving to kiss and gently bite her lips until he got to the core of her. Slowly he slipped his tongue inside her.
She gasped and throbbed around him. She nearly came right then and there, but in hushed tones, he said, “Not yet, Connie. There’s still much more to savor.”
He bent his head to her center and once again teased the swollen nub first with his tongue and then his teeth. His mouth dragged a moan from her and her body trembled as he eased one finger inside and then a second.
Her hips lifted off the chair and Hadrian lifted up his head, searching her face for any contradictory signs. Finding none, he eased his fingers from within her and rose, lifting the shift from her body as he did so.
He held his hand out to her, wanting her to rise, but with a husky laugh, she said, “I’m not quite sure my legs will hold me up right now. Besides, I thought I was supposed to seduce you.”
She reached out and laid her hand on his erection, softly stroking it, clearly finding the foreskin of interest. Gently she traced her fingers around it and then to the tip, where the head of his penis peeked out. When she ran her finger across that sensitive tip, he grunted in pleasure.
A smile came to her face. A siren’s smile showing delight at the control he had just given her.
He gave her more, placing his hand over hers, gently guiding her strokes until he was shaking from the caresses.
She surprised him then by leaning forward and placing a kiss at the tip of his penis, licking it and then applying slightly more pressure to pull back his skin and fully expose the head of him. She moistened him with her mouth and then caressed him with her hand, dragging a hoarse cry from him.
“Connie.”
“Touch me, Hadrian. I want your hands on me.” She left him only long enough to urge his hands to her breasts.
Her nipples were hard little points against his palms as he rubbed his hands there. When she took him into her mouth again, he sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, giving himself over to the sensations.
Warm skin against his palms.
Tight little peaks he rotated with his fingers.
Her gasp spilled warm breath against his arousal, wet with her kisses.
He wanted more.
Reluctantly he pulled away from her, but only long enough to scoop her in his arms and take her back to the bed. He fell onto it with her beneath him. Warm, soft woman. Welcoming as she raised her thighs and cradled his hips. She opened her mouth to him as he kissed her, over and over again until he had to take her.
He found the center of her, slowly slid home and then stilled, pleasure nearly overwhelming him.
He gazed down at her. Her eyes—an amazing shade of slate—had darkened. Her pupils were wide as her gaze roamed over his face. Choppy little breaths spilled from her lips as she picked up her hand and cradled his jaw.
“Hadrian,” she said as she passed her thumb across the sharp line of his cheekbone.
His gut clenched at the sound of his name on her lips. It took all of his control not to come. He didn’t want to do that without pleasuring her first. Without experiencing the wonder of her, so different from anything he had allowed himself for so long.
He bent his head and kissed her again, slowly explored the contours of her lips. The warmth of her mouth and sweet slide of her tongue against his. Her taste was fresh and still sweet from the honey of the dessert.
But he knew something that might taste sweeter and left her mouth, kissing his way down to her breasts. Gently he took the tip of one into his mouth and sucked.
It was as sweet as he had thought it would be.
Connie moaned as he surrounded her nipple with his lips and gently tugged on it. She cradled his head with one hand while moving the other to the small of his back, holding him tight.
He was thick and heavy inside of her, creating a fullness that needed more. With a flex of her hips she moved him and he groaned against her breast.
“Connie.”
Dios mios, she had to be insane to be wanting him so much. He was a bloodsucking demon who was going to drain her of life, she tried to remind herself, but it was hard to remember that from the gentle kisses he dropped on her breasts and the way he restrained himself as he finally began to move.
He was controlling himself, she knew. Wanting to satisfy her as he moved his hips and caressed her breasts and dropped down to kiss her every now and then.
Connie’s body was trembling and damp with he
r sweat, warm from the desire he roused in her. He slowly increased the pace of his thrusts until she was digging her heels into the mattress. Gripping his shoulders tightly to deepen his penetration.
His rough breath matched hers as her climax coalesced inside of her, building in intensity until with one last thrust, she came, calling out his name. She tightened her hold on him as her body shook with her release.
Hadrian stilled his motion to savor her climax. She clenched around him, nearly undoing him, but he held on, wanting the sensation of her never to end.
As her climax ebbed, he used his strength to roll onto his back and bring her to straddle him. The position drove him deep and she moaned with pleasure.
“Hadrian?” she asked, placing her hands on his chest to support herself.
“Make love to me, Connie,” he said, running his hands up her arms until he reached her breasts and once again fondled them lovingly.
She jumped at that touch and sucked in a rough breath, but then she moved. Shifting her hips back and forth, drawing him in and out of her. The movement created delicious friction where they were joined.
“That’s it, cara,” he urged and moved his hands to her hips, guiding her until she climaxed again, calling out his name.
He lost it then, as his body jumped from the force of the pleasure that rushed over him.
When she dropped down on his body, he was enveloped in the experience of her. Of her warmth and the slight dampness on her skin. In the musky smells of her arousal and the tastes of her. Earthy. Sweet.
As he held her, her heart beat a frantic pace against his chest from the passion she had just experienced.
The frantic beat stirred the beast within him. The one he had promised to keep in check.
She sensed it, since she stiffened above him and pushed away from him.
Her hurt gaze seared him with condemnation, but the demon within him refused to be restrained.
As he surged forward, reversing their positions and pinning her to the mattress, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Then he sank his fangs into her neck and fed.
Holiday with a Vampire Page 14
