by Mary Hughes
It didn’t relieve the deepest aching.
With a sigh, I spun the water to cold and shivered through shampooing and conditioning and soaping a second time. That took care of any arousal. When I had washed away the worst of the wear from Nosferatu’s compound, I turned the water back to hot to chase the bumps from my now unhappy skin. The heat sluiced through, near burning, shivers chasing down my flesh, raising my nipples to tight nubs.
Like Aiden’s fingers raising them, pinching…
I cranked the water off entirely.
Otto’s stocked plenty of fluffy towels. I poked a hand past the shower curtain, venting as little heat as possible to the March chill, and grabbed three. I wrapped one around my waist, and a second around my breasts.
Scrubbing my hair dry with the third, I emerged from the shower.
Aiden stood there. Staring. Nostrils flared, chest pumping bushels of oxygen, but immobile in every other way.
I gaped. The hair towel dropped from my hand.
My heart leaped but he didn’t grab me or whisper words of love. Aside from his clenched hands and the large bulge raising his fly, he didn’t move at all, like an unfeeling statue.
But I knew him better now. I knew the attraction that drove him to claim me, and the past pain that kept him from that claiming.
I understood then. He wasn’t a static shadow. He never had been. He was a contained explosion, caught between two unbearable forces.
Up to me to break the stalemate.
I grabbed the knot between my breasts and tugged. The top towel fell, exposing my breasts to him.
He made a small, strangled noise. A pair of very sharp fangs emerged from between his lips. Yearned.
I jumped at him.
My movement tore him loose. He caught me. We met in a blast of lust. Our mouths tangled.
“Sunny.” My name was a groan.
I groaned his in return. I twined my arms around his neck, arching into him, pulling him to me.
He wrapped arms around me and cinched me to his chest.
“Please don’t stop.” I kissed everything I could reach, cheeks, jaw, mouth.
“I can’t. I tried, but I couldn’t stay away.”
I was fiercely glad. I clutched him harder, like I’d fuse skin. Kissed his mouth like I’d merge breath. As if I let go now, I’d have to tear my own skin and shred my own lungs and heart to break away.
He kissed me as if he meant it just as much.
Mouth still on mine, he lifted me. Air flowed around us. He eased me onto my back on the bed, his arms tight around me. We lay entwined in the scent of fresh linens.
He nipped my naked shoulder. The tips of his fangs scraped me to shivering desire. I arched my neck, yearning for orgasmic bites.
His tongue eased over the scrapes, soothing.
I didn’t want soothing. I ached for the sting of those sharp teeth. “Bite me.”
“I don’t dare.” He kissed down my collarbone. “Thirsty.”
His need whispered fiercely against my skin, prickling it into bumps. “So? You bit me before.”
“It’s different. I gave Ric blood. More than I should have…and I didn’t stop to replenish. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone in my life. I’d bite you everywhere.”
It sang along every nerve, jangling desire throughout my entire body like a town full of pealing bells. “Good.”
He raised his head. His black gaze drilled me. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Maybe not. I haven’t experienced it. But I can imagine it. It sounds totally out of control. I want that.” I wanted him, unbridled, wild with passion. I grabbed his T-shirt in both hands, reached for that deep need and used it to fuel tearing the shirt. It ripped from neck to waist, revealing acres of smooth, powerful flesh. “I want you trembling so hard for me that you not only won’t leave, you can’t.” I licked the exposed skin, the deep notch between collarbones, down the valley, sliding up muscle to a taut dark nipple.
He sucked in a breath. His hands fisted in the duvet next to me. Starting to lose it but not there yet. Struggling to hang on to his self-control.
I raised my head and sucked at his neck.
He stiffened. His hands bit into me…and then he groaned and rolled off me.
Fuck that. I rolled with him. It brought me up on top. Straddling his hips I continued to lick and suck at his neck while I fumbled with his belt.
He drove his hands between us to stop me. I grabbed my final towel before he could seize my hands, tore it off and tossed it away.
He froze, gaze on my exposed hips, his pupils dilating until his eyes were infinite pools. I tilted my hips so he could see everything, including how much I wanted him.
While he was distracted, I flipped the tail of his belt and scissored the pin out.
That galvanized him into grabbing my wrists, vampire-fast, faster than I could evade.
I countered by squeezing my upper arms, giving him an eye load of cleavage. Underneath me, his zipper rose calamitously, and his fangs lengthened even more. But he only clutched my wrists harder.
So I scrubbed my sex against his jeans. My every inch opened to him. I did it again, slippery wet against him. Joy sparkled in the wake. It was scary and thrilling how fast I’d become aroused. I did it again, starting to pant. And again.
His eyes closed in pained bliss. “That scent…” His chest pumped like bellows beneath his torn shirt. “Sunny, you have to stop. My control…I’m near the edge.”
“Good.” I scooted up his body, capturing our joined hands under me, my shoulders dropping to his chest, my face in front of his. “I’m past it. Do you feel that?” I rubbed myself against him, against the fists knotted around my wrists, making him feel all the heat and wet and need. “That’s me wanting you. That’s me wanting you for days.”
His eyes opened, directly on mine. He was listening with every fiber.
“I’m so damned ready for you, Aiden. Past ready. I want to feel you, all of you, plunging inside me.”
“Don’t you understand?” His gaze was pleading. “You and I…we could make a baby. I can’t be a father. I won’t do that to a child.”
“You care. That makes me want you even more. Don’t worry. It’s the wrong time of the month to make a baby.” I eased down, kissing his chest while I fumbled with his snap and zipper. His hands were still tight around my wrists but he was seemingly unaware of what I was doing because he didn’t stop me. Or maybe his control was closer to the edge than he knew.
I opened his fly and got my hand on him. One tug freed his thick erection. I shimmied my hips into position, my sex sliding along his cock in a wet kiss.
It tore my name from his throat. “Sunny. Don’t.”
“Why not?”
His answer was unexpected. He released my wrists to frame my face. “Because I’m not sure you’re doing this for the right reasons. I’m not sure this will lead to your happiness.”
I looked into his black eyes. He was concerned for me.
How did I explain? Yes, I was afraid. I was afraid this amazing thing we had together wasn’t real. But I had to find out.
Days of kisses, touches, suckling, biting… They were all steps along a path leading here. Leading past here. Leading, maybe, to more disappointment—all the powerful grace that was him couldn’t want bumbling me—and my disappointment would be a burning crater.
But maybe, just maybe, this was leading to something better. Something lasting.
Fuck fear. Here, now, I wanted Aiden Blackthorne more than I wanted to avoid being a Ruffles.
So I said it straight. “I’m not sure either. But how will we know if we don’t try? Maybe I’ll be happier.”
When that still didn’t move him, I said, “Please, Aiden? Maybe both you and I will be happier as an us.”
“
Us?” The world whirled around me. My back slammed into mattress, air huffing from my lungs as my arms were flung up and back.
Aiden knelt above me, between my legs, his fingers threaded through mine and pressing our joined hands into the mattress, his gaze nailing me motionless except for my pounding heart and shallow panting breaths. My thighs were spread and my sex exposed but the heat of his body kept me warm.
His eyes closed. He was trembling.
“Us.” The head of his naked cock touched my pussy. Brushed it ever so lightly. Almost tentatively, unheard of for the assured, deadly assassin.
“Yes,” I said. “You and me together. Us.” Excitement buzzed like live wires inside me. I swallowed, trying to keep still, trying not to bumble this moment…I realized what I was doing, still anxious to avoid being a Ruffles, and boldly undulated my hips, slotting the head of his penis in me.
But he shook his head. “Sunny, if we’re mates, ‘us’ won’t be just you and me.” He blew out a great gust of air, and another. Still grasping at his slipping control. I couldn’t imagine all the training he’d done to amass that degree of self-discipline and restraint. I was ready to burst.
But he grappled with it, trembled with it—not simply because he didn’t want to be a father. Not only because he didn’t want to do that to a child.
But because he was thinking about me, and even more, about an us beyond him and me.
Our future family.
That moment told me it wasn’t simply lust. “Aiden,” I whispered. His eyes on mine were the deepest black. “It’s okay. It’s good if ‘us’ is more than you and me.” I hesitated. My life would never be the same. Could I live with that?
Yes.
I threw away the last of my fear. “Because I’m falling in love with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Fierce joy lit his eyes, a sheen of moisture over the black. He roared and filled me in one powerful thrust.
I gasped.
That massive control had been holding back a force of nature. Released, he plunged into me, pounding us into the mattress in seismic waves. He rode me so hard it felt like he was trying to merge bodies. Each rhythmic smack juddered through me, ramping my excitement.
“More. Deeper.” I wasn’t sure who said it but he responded by seizing my ankles and lifting my legs over his shoulders.
He plunged deeper. His chest rose and fell over me, muscles mounded with tension, nipples pinprick hard. The sight ratcheted my arousal sky-high.
I curled my legs off his shoulders to clamp around his waist. He grabbed my mouth in a kiss. He rolled into me, driving harder and flatter. I spun arms around his neck and my heart around us both. We pumped together like a well-oiled machine, his purr rumbling through us as we raced toward fulfillment.
He took my mouth with a kiss that claimed me. I kissed him back with the same urgency.
His plunging slowed. His cock swelled inside me. He stroked once, long and deep. His mouth moved to my neck, his breath rolling hot against the skin. I shivered with it.
He stroked again, even deeper. I arched with a gasp. He pressed fang tips to my throat.
“Please.” I mewled it. My panting chest fluttered against him, sharp anticipation ripping through me. “Bite me. Now!”
His fangs forked lightning into my veins. He drove himself into me to the hilt.
Complete implosion, soundless.
Explosion. Light, color. Screaming in my ears, mine.
He roared, his cock jerking in my pussy as it erupted hot desire. Buried as deep as he was, the contraction of his balls tugged on me, pulling more out of me, a ricochet of continuous after-explosions.
His arms collapsed. He fell onto me, heavy, but I rejoiced in the weight. I wrapped him tight in my arms.
It crushed the air from my lungs. My ears were ringing but I must have made some sort of noise because he licked the bite closed then managed to heft himself off me, none too gracefully, landing with a whump at my side.
I fell asleep to his gentle, regular breath.
Several times that night and through the morning and afternoon he woke me with what, just a day ago, I would have called inventive sex. Now, I was starting to feel it was lovemaking.
I woke up as evening approached. I turned to look at him. His eyes were closed. The thick black lashes made crescents against his honed cheekbones. He really was quite stunning.
The lashes swept up, revealing warm dark eyes, crinkled with good humor, filled with tender emotion. “Falling in love, hmm?”
Damn it, of course he remembered that. “Maybe.” I blew air. “Okay, yes. Probably.” I glared. “You can still fuck it up, though.”
He yawned and rolled onto his side. “I probably will. That should scare the shit out of me, but for some reason it doesn’t. Maybe because you’re such a teeny mouse.”
I swatted his biceps. “This is where you’re supposed to tell me you’re falling in love with me too.”
His head turned to me. His eyes were scary, blacker than the river Styx, deeper and darker than the pits of hell.
I abruptly chilled. Shivered.
He pulled me into his arms. Breathed a sigh into my hair. “It’s not that simple.”
“Blackthorne, if you want out, just say so.” I struggled to get free but he didn’t let go. “I’m a big girl, I can take the truth.”
“The truth.” He only hugged me harder to him. “I don’t know whether I can ever love you as you deserve. But I do know I can’t seem to stop wanting you. And lately…lately I haven’t even wanted to try to stop.”
A few days ago that would have been enough. But now…no. His past was getting in the way. “Tell me about your father.”
Silence. Then he released me to sit up, frowning.
My damp skin was cold without him. I sat up too, suppressing a shiver.
He saw it anyway, sighed and wrapped the ends of the duvet around my shoulders. “Why my father?”
“Ric said Nosferatu caused your mistrust of authorities. But I think there’s more to it.”
“Because I’m such a mess?”
“Because you’re afraid of hurting your child. Which means pain, for you, equals father.”
“I almost wish you weren’t so perceptive.” He gave me a wry, heartbreaking smile. “Nosferatu wasn’t the best role model but I’d had an even worse one before that.”
“I’m so sorry.” I drew comforting circles on his chest. “Tell me?”
He looked away. “You were right. It’s the past. Over and done. What good will it do?”
“You were right too. It may be buried, but it’s not over.” I willed him to meet my eyes. “It’s coming between us.” When he still didn’t look at me I added, “I want to know its name.”
He swallowed hard. “If I’d tell anyone, it’d be you. But I’ve tried for so long to forget…I don’t know if I can.”
“Okay.” I rubbed his arm. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.” I hurt for him, for the sheen of pain in his eyes, the stark tension on his face. “Tell me one thing. Was your entire childhood miserable?”
He frowned slightly, his gaze going distant. “No. Before…” He shook his head as if in surprise. “I was happy. When I lived with my mother.”
“Maybe you can tell me about her?”
His frown deepened. Then his expression cleared and he finally looked at me, his mouth quirked in amusement. “You’re tricky, Ruffles.”
He’d relived part of the horror in his mind and had come through the other side. My relief effervesced into teasing. “Tricky? Naw. I’m a cop. Honest and trustworthy.”
“Strange how honest and trustworthy looks a lot like wily and crafty.” He folded me into his arms. “All right, I’ll tell you so we can both see what we’re up against. When I was young and still human, I lived with my mother’s clan. She was Native
American and my father was white, so I was a halfbreed.”
“Halfbr… When was this?”
“About eighteen hundred, more or less.”
I sucked back my surprise. “So yours was a matriarchal clan?”
“Yes, but even so I would have lived with my mother. My father…at first he didn’t want me.”
“Jerk. Who wouldn’t want you?” I snaked my arms around his waist and hugged as hard as I could.
His belly muscles were like banded iron but he laughed. “You’re right, it wasn’t just me. He didn’t want much of anything but to trap animals and to drink. Anyway, for the first seven or eight years of my life I lived with her. Golden times, or so they seemed to me. Every day was a new adventure with my friends. They’d say, ‘What are we doing today, First Friend?’ and I’d say fishing or canoeing or lying on our backs watching clouds and the clan elders would say, ‘There goes Young Chief and his pack’. But then…”
He was silent long enough that I let go to peek at him. His expression was pensive. “When she died he snatched me away—he was a lousy trapper and apparently she’d boasted to him of my hunting abilities. I kept waiting for my clan to find me but…I don’t know. He took me too far away. Or maybe they would have found me eventually, but Nosferatu found me first.”
“I’m sorry.” I wrapped arms around his shoulders. The duvet fell, unnoticed.
He leaned his head against mine. “Pa got mean when he was drunk—which was most of the time. He also hit me when he disapproved of what I did—and since I’d grown up learning my mother’s ways, he disapproved most of the time.”
I clutched him harder. He’d been beaten by the very man who should have protected him. “The bastard.”
“Whuppin’s weren’t uncommon in those days. Spare the rod, spoil the child.”
“Still. I’d like to introduce him to Mr. Taser.”
That surprised a laugh from him. “Yeah.”
Then he fell silent. I waited. I knew from the way his muscles quivered that he was holding back. The longer he was silent, the more his nerves buzzed, and the more certain I was that it was horrible.
