Fully erect he was a sight to behold, far bigger than she would have guessed. For a second she wondered if she’d made a mistake. But he settled back beside her. The futon gave beneath their weight as he pressed her back into the softness of the blankets and pillows. Black curtains surrounded them, giving the room a dark, exotic mood. And in the center of it all, Dante glowed like a golden icon.
He leaned over her, covering her body with his bigger one. Usually, she hated this part. Though she enjoyed the pleasure a man and woman could give each other, she abhorred that feeling of submission. Usually this was the point where she took control, demanded to be on top. But Dante rolled slightly to the side, allowing her the chance to flee if she chose.
She chose to stay.
Xandra reached up to cup his chin. The stubble of his beard scratched against her hand. A wholly male feeling. She rubbed her cheek against him and he murmured something unintelligible. She heard the rumble through his entire chest. Leaning closer, she kissed him, hot and demanding. And he responded in kind. His tongue teased her lips open, then slipped inside to give her a preview of what he intended to do to her body. This time she didn’t object when he ran his lips down over her throat to settle on the sensitive spot between neck and shoulder. She hadn’t known that part of her body was so full of nerve endings. Every move of his soft mouth sent answering waves of sensation down her spine. But he pulled himself away and continued his exploration, dipping below her shoulders to tease her breasts. Again, he laved each peak in turn until she arched helplessly against him.
She returned the favor, raining kisses and tiny nips over his shoulders and across his pectorals. Then she turned her attention to his flat, hard-muscled stomach. Dante groaned low in his throat and pulled her farther up to give himself greater access to her stomach.
He mirrored her actions, painting her tender skin with soft kisses. His tongue traced her navel, then moved lower. Guessing his intentions, she gasped.
His head shot up. “No?”
“No one’s ever—” She struggled for the words that wouldn’t make her sound like a blushing virgin.
“Never?” He seemed surprised.
She shook her head, wondering what he meant to imply. “There haven’t been that many,” she said, a little insulted.
“I didn’t mean…” Now it was his turn to be embarrassed.
But before she could say anything further, he bent his head. She felt the brief kiss of his lips above her most sensitive part, then the hot slide of his tongue.
Flames of pleasure spread through her at each suggestive lick. She arched against him, helpless to do anything but revel in this surprising turn their lovemaking had taken.
His blond curls fanned out over her thighs. With each move of his head, they teased her sensitive skin like silk. She found the sight of his head at the juncture of her thighs entirely erotic. She’d been fighting her attraction to him forever, it seemed. If she allowed herself to admit it, she’d wanted Dante almost since she’d laid eyes on him. How could she have denied herself this, she wondered. And surrendered completely.
Each stroke of his tongue ramped the pleasure higher. Her entire body clenched, lusting after that final release. It hit with blinding intensity, making her cry out.
She reached for him, pulling his hard body tight against her, no longer worried about feeling vulnerable. Dante raised himself on his elbows. Nestling himself between her thighs he teased her moist opening. She tilted her hips, taking the tip of his erection inside.
Inside, he felt far larger than she anticipated. He eased back out again and then slid in farther. Her body stretched to accommodate him.
Gently he pushed inside until he possessed her fully. She moaned at the feeling of him deep inside her. Remembering her earlier passion, her body craved more. She arched to meet each of his thrusts. His hands slid beneath her bottom to cup her, pulling her tighter against him. He quickened his thrusts, pushing deeper still. Desire coiled tighter.
Then the nature of her pleasure shifted. She became aware of a deeper hunger—a powerful craving to sample his life force.
Lost in passion, her teeth found his shoulder. She nibbled the skin there, tasting the saltiness of his sweat. Dante moaned incoherently and drove deeper into her. His movement only served to intensify her need. Her teeth pierced his skin.
He reared back, eyes glazed with pleasure and glowing golden in the dim light. His lip curled back from his teeth, revealing his fangs. But she hung on to his shoulder, her teeth lodged in his skin. His blood seeped into her mouth, hot, salty and coppery. Shocked at her actions, she tried to pull away from him, but he held her close.
His mouth found the spot between her neck and shoulder, the same tender place he’d teased earlier. A prequel to what was to come. She felt the hot caress of his tongue, then the pressure of his teeth. Pain pierced the haze of her desire. She screamed. Orgasm chased the pain, as her body finally gave in to the inevitable.
Dante spasmed on top of her, his own body answering her release. She convulsively swallowed more of his blood. Pleasure flowed over her in dizzying waves. He held her close as her body rode the waves of her fulfillment. Then she heard him take one last swallow of her blood. He pulled him mouth away and looked down at her.
The sight of her blood smeared across his lips and the glazed look of pleasure in his eyes brought her back to her senses with a start. With horror, she imagined she must look the same way, with his blood on her mouth and her teeth marks in his shoulder.
With a cry, she scrambled out from under him.
“Xandra.”
He reached for her, but she evaded him. Flailing, she stumbled backward. Her hand caught the curtain as she fell. Her weight tore the sheer fabric from the rod. It covered her like a shroud.
She screamed, desperate to untangle herself from the black material. Dante added his own efforts in an attempt to unravel her. But she clawed her way out of the puddle of sheers and scrambled for the back door.
Behind her, Dante’s bare feet slapped against the wood. “Xandra, no!”
Her fingers found the lock and turned. She stumbled naked into blinding light.
It hit her senses like a blast furnace, seeming to sear into her retinas. A shriek erupted from her mouth.
Dante’s hands gripped her waist, hauling her back into the soothing darkness.
“It’s okay.” Clutching her against him, he maneuvered her back toward the washbasin on the dresser. She heard the tinkle of water being poured, but every time she tried to open her eyes, she saw only the burning sun.
A cold compress covered her eyes. He laid her back against the bed. Cool water seeped beneath her eyelids. “Shh,” he whispered. “You’ll be all right in a minute.”
True to his word, in a few minutes the burning stopped. She became aware of the pounding of her heart and Dante’s body naked against her. Cautiously, she sat up and removed the cloth from her eyes.
Around the curtains covering the windows, the light dimmed as another bank of clouds moved inland. In the dimness of the cabin, the light was bearable. She looked around. A heap of torn cloth lay beside the bed. Some of it trailed off into the hallway, evidence of the path she’d taken toward the back door. She wrenched her eyes back to Dante.
His tousled hair and hint of a beard gave him a wild look. He’d wiped (or licked) her blood from his lips. On his shoulder was a purple bruise in the outline of her teeth. Her fingers traced the wicked-looking wound. He winced almost imperceptibly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll mend.”
And as she watched, the bruising faded to the barest of pinks. The red indents of her teeth lightened until they disappeared. In a few more seconds the wound had healed itself.
She felt her mouth and found his blood still wet on her lips. Reflexively her tongue shot out and cleaned away the evidence. Horrified, she caught herself mid lick. “What have you done to me, Dante?”
He gazed down at her, all disheveled and sexy-looking. “Nothing.”
“Nothing!” Her voice rose. She winced inwardly at the hysteria in her tone. She was a vampire hunter, or had been until very recently. This couldn’t be real.
His hands massaged her back lightly, trying to calm her. But she pulled out of his reach.
“Twice now you’ve fed me your blood. Supposedly to save my life. But you lied! You’ve been trying to change me!”
“I haven’t changed you.” He pitched his voice lower to sound calm and reasonable. “You’ve just become what you always were.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She scrambled backward until her back hit the wall. “I bit you.” Her voice shook. “I drank your blood.”
Dante reached for her hand. “And it felt really good, didn’t it?”
God help her, it had. It felt beyond good. Making love with Dante went beyond description. She snatched her hand away without answering him.
“I’m not a vampire,” she whispered in denial of the blatant facts.
He watched carefully in case she decided to bolt again. Visibly choosing his words with care, he said, “Not exactly.”
Her eyes darted to his. In his amber gaze, she saw concern…and pain. “How can someone be not exactly a vampire?”
“Trust me, it is possible.”
Trust him? She could still taste his coppery blood on her lips. Once glimpse of the sun had burned her eyes. She was trapped in a remote cottage with a vampire. And she’d drunk his blood. And now she was going to have to depend on him for knowledge. And survival.
“If I’m not a vampire, then what am I?”
“A hybrid.”
“A what?” She couldn’t make his proclamation make sense. The words echoed through her head while she rejected it.
And yet his words had the odd ring of truth to them. Xandra Wheeler had always been a bit different. Her mother’s work forced them to live a reclusive lifestyle. She thought that’s where her preference for late nights and even later mornings came from. She’d always preferred darkness to the glaring light of day.
Not to mention that Dante’s had blood cured her, when the reconstituted vampire blood from the hospital had always made her ill.
So, she had an unusual metabolism, her mind countered. That didn’t mean she was a—
“No,” she whispered. “That can’t be true.”
He sat on the side of the bed, careful not to crowd her. “It is true, Xandra. Think about it. Think about all the things that just don’t add up.”
Those very things flooded back into her mind against her conscious wishes. Her preference for red meat and the night hours. That she’d always been a little different.
“Whatever the truth is,” Dante said, “your boss Jeremy knows about it. I’m certain of it.”
She stared at him, content to let him talk while she said nothing. And yet, she couldn’t deny that Jeremy hadn’t been acting like himself lately. “But Jeremy took me in,” she protested. “Trained me, gave me a job when everyone else would have left me in the gutter.”
“Did you ever wonder how you came to be in the gutter, Xandra?” He let her ponder that thought for a moment.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “What are you saying?”
Dante dragged in a long breath. For a moment he studied her, debating whether to press the matter further.
“Something clearly doesn’t add up here, Xandra,” he said finally. “Jeremy puts you in danger time after time. He promises backup that doesn’t arrive and insists on treatments that make you ill when you’ve been injured. You have to wonder why that is.”
Why indeed? She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer. “Why do you think it is?”
“I believe he’s testing you.”
“Testing me, why? Because I’m some kind of weird vampire hybrid? And Jeremy knows this, but I don’t?”
“Okay, I admit, it’s a little farfetched.”
“It’s insane.”
“You can’t deny what happened between us.”
No, she couldn’t deny that. Nor could she deny the changes taking his blood had made. She felt stronger, healthier, but she was also more sensitive to light and sound. She didn’t know what to say to that, so she stayed silent.
“It was different than it’s been with anyone else. Something…more. Something better.”
“Oh now, that’s just arrogant!”
She could tell that she’d wounded him by the pained look in his eyes. Did that mean he’d felt it too? She opened her mouth to say something to placate him, but Dante set his chin. “Fine, look me in the eye and deny it.”
She desperately wanted to stare him down and tell him it had been merely an unusual dalliance brought on by stress, danger and too many late nights. But she couldn’t.
“It was different,” she admitted after a moment.
Her confession seemed to mollify him slightly. But his jaw still had that arrogant set to it, like he was armoring himself against her.
“So you think that Jeremy is using me as a human guinea pig? To do what?”
“I don’t know,” Dante said. “I have my suspicions but no proof.”
“Then this is all your own theory?”
He nodded, looking defensive. “Perhaps.”
“And you’ll forgive me if I don’t leap on that bandwagon?”
“I’m trying to help you, Xandra. I’m trying to stop you from being taken advantage of in a particularly brutal way.”
“I’ve looked after myself this long.” She really didn’t want to hear any more of Dante’s theories. Being naked in his bed left her feeling particularly vulnerable. She reached for the pants and T-shirt he’d loaned her. Watching her dress, he said nothing.
She faced him, hands on her hips, clothed in his borrowed sweats.
“Look, Xandra,” he began, “I know your early life was…difficult—”
“You know nothing.” Everyone tried to belittle the terror she’d been through as a child to make it seem less horrific to ease their own discomfort.
“I know more than you think. I’ve done my research.”
So, he’d been researching her, just as she’d studied him. “I’ve never been in trouble with the police. I can’t imagine where you’d get that kind of information.”
Dante studied her for a moment. “I was delving into events in my own past.”
“Are you trying to tell me we’re connected in some way?”
“Xandra, do you remember what happened to your mother?”
His question hit her like a blow to the stomach, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Finally, she got her body under control and forced her muscles to relax. Air rushed into her lungs. “I remember too much. I have nightmares nearly every night about it!”
Now why on earth had she told him that? He reached for her, to comfort her with his touch, but she shied away from him. She reached for her cuffs and torque and snapped them on. They itched even worse before, but she endured the discomfort. The silver put distance between them that her words couldn’t. “Not that it’s any of your business, or that you had any right to ask.”
Memories began to tumble into her mind, but she choked them back. The memories and the dreams seemed more frequent since she’d met Dante Rodriguez, along with a whole host of things she couldn’t readily explain—like dreaming about his seafront house with total accuracy. Like being stronger, more sensitive to light and a strange craving for his blood.
“I think you do remember. But it’s buried in your mind where you can’t access it consciously. It’s understandable really, seeing as you were just a child when it happened, that you might have blocked those memories to protect yourself.”
She took another step toward freedom. “You’re asking too much.” She inched past him. He let her go. “I don’t believe you.”
He turned in her direction but didn’t move toward her. “I’m trying to help you, Xandra.” He spread his hands palms up in the universal gesture of submission. “I know it’s a lot to ask you to take on fa
ith. But you’ve been deceived about some very important matters.”
“And how do I know you’re not the one trying to deceive me?”
“You don’t,” he said simply.
“That faith thing again.”
He nodded. “I’m trying to protect you.”
“I can help myself. I can protect myself.” She moved another step toward the back door, ready to brave the searing sunlight. “And I can do my own research.”
His face hardened, sensing her resolve. “Xandra, listen to me, please—”
Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t hear it, because she snatched the black blanket from the bed and bolted down the hall toward the back door.
“Xandra!” Dante followed her. “You can’t go out there. The sun—”
Throwing the blanket over her head like a shawl, she barreled through the door.
She was aware of the sun as soon as she stumbled down the wooden steps. Even though it had hidden itself behind a bank of thick clouds that any moment threatened another torrential downpour, she felt its burning rays. Only the thick black cloth of the blanket protected her.
Dante stumbled out onto the porch, throwing up his arm to ward off the daylight. Squinting at the hidden sun, he hissed in pain. She had the blanket, leaving him without any protection except for the motorcycle helmet inside.
“Leave me alone!” She all but fell down the steps and onto the sand. She lurched along the beach, keeping the blanket over her head to protect her face and her eyes on the sand beneath her feet.
Dante’s footsteps disappeared back into the house. He’d probably gone back in to find that helmet and put on some more substantial clothes. She doubted he’d let her go, so she quickened her steps.
Water, she thought suddenly. If she stayed down by the seaside, at least the incoming waves would wash away her footprints. She staggered in that direction.
The water was cool against her feet. The skies darkened as more storm clouds blew in. The sea grew rough. Waves soaked her shoes and dampened Dante’s borrowed pants up to the knees. The blanket flapped around her. She risked a glance back at Dante’s cabin and realized she’d disappeared around an outcrop of rock. If he was coming for her down the beach, she had to find cover soon.
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