by Nina Bangs
She reached out to run her finger down the center of his chest and sighed at the layers of cloth separating her fingers from his skin.
His eyes lit with laughter at the same time as Blythe sensed his worry changing to something else entirely. Something that widened her eyes and quickened her heartbeat.
"Varin pillaged. 'Twas the way of all Northmen. He didna rape." Darach grasped her hand where it still rested against his chest. "Would ye like to know what happened when Varin met with an unwilling lass from a village he had just raided?"
Blythe shook her head no. Her brain applauded her strength of character, but the rest of her body thought she was a big fat wuss.
The glitter in his blue eyes had nothing to do with remembered sadness and everything to do with sexual excitement. She'd been down the path of sensual temptation once, and look what she had reaped. Textron.
He moved close, and suddenly his playfulness was gone. He slid his hands across her shoulders and down her arms, a light skimming that made her shiver with anticipation. But when he tried to slide her shawl from her shoulders, she clung to it with the tenacity of a Voviar leech.
His soft chuckle mocked her. "The turtle thinks itself safe within its shell. The fox could tell it differently."
Blythe had no trouble identifying the fox and turtle in his little fable. But she had no time to search for the moral as he pulled her to him and lowered his head.
The unexpected explosion of need she felt as his warm lips touched hers shattered Blythe's belief in her own self-control. She was a ravenous beast intent only on his body and her desire. She opened her mouth to him, tangled her tongue with his, tasted everything that was elemental male in him, and whimpered at the clenching hunger thrumming through her.
In a tiny corner of her mind where reason had taken refuge, she knew this wasn't her, could never be her. She didn't feel like this, need like this. Passion was pleasure. This was want so strong it was almost pain. He must be manipulating her, but she couldn't stop him. Blythe suspected that if she moved away from him she'd die of sexual deprivation.
Darach abandoned her mouth to kiss a path down her neck. He paused with his mouth on the pulse-point at the base of her throat. The slow, heated slide of his tongue against her throat weakened her knees. She clung to his shoulders as she searched every hiding place in her soul where mortal fear could be lurking. Where was it? The fear should be there front and center. A vampire had his mouth on her neck. Could a bite be far behind?
"Do ye know how much ye tempt me, woman from another time?" The heat of his words touched her with a promise of carnal bliss. "Ye need beg me stop before ye learn what I truly am."
"Please." She wasn't begging him to stop. Where was the fear? She needed it. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Nope, no fear.
"Ye should not tempt the darkness."
Before she could consider what tempting the darkness entailed, he pulled her into the shadow of a massive boulder. Sitting down with his back propped against the rock, he urged her down to kneel between his spread legs.
"What are you—"
He placed a finger against her parted lips. "Shush. Ye talk too much, woman."
"I certainly do not talk too much."
His soft expulsion of breath was pure male impatience. Without answering her, he reached beneath her shawl to unbutton her dress.
"No." She wanted to say yes, but yes wasn't an option with Darach. Not with her job on the line. Even as she knelt here, Textron was probably skulking around hoping to catch her using a sensual solution.
Luckily, she'd worn a dress that buttoned right up to her throat. Logically, any man who had to unbutton buttons to the power of ten would be so tired by the time he finished that he wouldn't remember why he'd started. Okay, so Darach would remember.
He didn't have any buttons. Ecstasy Inc. had a very specific "naked" policy. It only demanded that employees keep their clothes on. Blythe felt absolutely righteous as she unbuckled his belt, then pushed his plaid aside. Darach paused to help her by pulling his shirt over his head.
There were few things in life that could take Blythe's breath away. Darach's bared body was one.
She hardly noticed when her buttons exploded from her dress. She didn't care that the tiny buttons flew in every direction like a miniature fireworks display. She wasn't tuned in to his angry exclamation.
"Ye must have a thousand fastenings. 'Tis enough to drive a man mad."
Ms body. Blythe didn't think of herself as someone who was only into the physical aspect of sex, but great superheated stars, this man's body was incredible.
Vampire. Not a man's body. Remember. Her little sticky-note reminders to her brain weren't working.
It looked like a man's body… broad, muscular shoulders, smoothly muscled chest tapering down to flat, ridged stomach, hard thighs and long, strong-looking legs. She slid the tip of her tongue across her lower lip to moisten it. Okay, she'd saved the best for last. Call her shallow, but she'd wanted to see this since… She looked between his spread thighs and forgot to breathe. The men in her past disappeared in a poof of inadequacy. She could spout sanctimonious litanies about how size didn't matter, but when faced with Darach's overwhelming maleness, she could only gasp and gape.
"Your fastenings are devices of the devil. What are these metal teeth?"
"A zipper." She'd forgotten that the zipper took over where the buttons ended. And she hadn't checked to see when zippers were invented. Zippers had been used in her time for hundreds of years, so she'd figured they were pretty ancient. He yanked at the dress, once again reminding her of Ecstasy Inc.'s naked policy. "No." It was tough to get the word out when her throat was clogged with so many unspoken yeses.
Blythe glided her fingers over his upper arm and felt his muscles bunch as he reached behind her to attack her bra clasp. She smiled. The Hands Off bra was living up to its name. Made of steel tensile fabric with a locking device guaranteed to frustrate even the most excited male, it was a novelty item she'd purchased to make sure no sexual relationship would rear its hot head while she was on this job.
He growled deep in his throat as he gripped the bra clasp. The material fell away from her. Blythe hoped she'd saved her receipt so she could return the flawed item.
Why wasn't she horrified at what was happening? But her entire being was into the moment, and it was all Darach's fault. He had to be messing with her mind, because she would never jeopardize her career for this.
This… body. This beautiful body. She explored the smooth planes of his chest, paused to touch his nipples with the tips of her fingers, marveled that her light touch could make him groan.
"Tell me who makes your clothing so that I may turn their evil bodies to dust," he said.
Her job. She paused in her tactile exploration long enough to fasten her shawl with fumbling fingers so that it took over where her dress gaped open.
Undeterred, Darach slid his hand beneath her dress and was now working on her panties, the ones guaranteed to increase their clinging power in direct relation to any increase in the wearer's body heat. She must be heating up to supernova level, because her skin felt as if it had absorbed her panties. She'd have to sit in a tub of ice to remove the darned things.
But for right now, she was glad that he was occupied trying to peel off her panties. It gave her more time to assure herself that Darach did indeed feel like a man.
Sliding her palms beneath his pectorals, she paused with her fingers over the same spot he often covered, and gloried in the heat of his skin and the hard beating of his heart. The beating of his heart? Vampires didn't have hearts. Or at least that's what she thought legends said.
She'd think about his heart later. All she cared about now was that his pounding heart signaled sexual excitement. Even though she intended to stop him… soon… she wanted him to be totally involved.
Sliding her fingers over his stomach, she paused only long enough to admit the incredible truth. She was deep in lust with a vampir
e. She was kneeling on the ground with her hands all over him while she tried to remember why she had to keep essential pieces of clothing on.
She remembered. Her job. Hmm. She was in danger of losing her panties. She'd guess they were on Ecstasy Inc.'s list of clothing essentials.
Even though she couldn't feel him, he must be messing with her mind. That was the only thing that made sense. "Get out of my mind, Darach."
" 'Tis not your mind I'm busy with, woman. This accursed piece of cloth dares to defy me." With a hiss of triumph, he eliminated her panties.
She felt pieces of them slide to her knees. He clasped the pieces and flung them away. Horrified, she watched them ignite into a small, intense blaze. Ashes. Her panties were just a tiny pile of ashes.
Darach needed to work on his anger management. "Why did you even bother trying to take off my clothes the normal way? If you could incinerate my panties, I bet you could will all my clothes off my body." Blythe didn't much care about his answer because she was at the most fascinating point in her feels-like-a-man exploration. She skimmed the length of his erection with the tip of her index finger. It was a long, hard journey.
"I wished to show ye how Varin would have done it." His voice was rough with barely contained impatience, heated by barely contained need. " 'Twould have been faster my way, but Varin was a savage with a savage's ways."
"I like Varin's method. It allows more time to build anticipation." And to think about what a huge mistake I'm making.
She flung back her head and closed her eyes. The job. Always the damned job. The thought of it was like a gnat. No matter how many times she brushed it aside, it was right back in her face.
"There are many ways to enjoy each other's bodies." Darach's lips touched her stomach, the soft underside of her breast. "Ways that ye would never imagine."
Wait. He couldn't be touching her stomach, because she'd fastened her shawl across it. Opening her eyes, she glanced down. Yep, her shawl was still in place. She gazed at Darach. He'd leaned back against the rock and was looking at her out of those incredible blue eyes that held over five hundred years of sexual knowledge. But she'd felt him touch her. She was way out of her league.
"Ye worry about your job overmuch. Until ye're ready to join with me, there are other ways I might pleasure ye. Let me show ye."
Blythe knew that if she scanned his emotions now, she'd find only sexual hunger. She swallowed hard. "Hah! I knew you were in my mind." She scuttled backwards before all her limbs melted at the thought of how he would "pleasure" her. Scrambling to her feet, she backed against a tree, a woody substitute for her rubbery backbone.
Darach's soft laughter mocked her. "I need not touch your mind to know what ye think. This Ecstasy Incorporated ye work for is a cage with bars made of all the things they say ye must and must not do. I dinna trust people who do not believe in the joy of all that is sensual. Close your eyes, Blythe."
His voice was a sexual compulsion. She fought it. Sort of. Her wiser self argued that no woman should ever shut her eyes when Darach was around. Her impulsive self said, Oh, what the hell, go for it. He can't do much damage while your clothes are mostly on and you're attached to a tree trunk. Her impulsive self was a fool.
"I believe in the joy of sex, just not as a road to long-lasting happiness." She'd learned this from hard experience.
"There is no happiness that lasts overlong. There are only moments of intense pleasure that make all that comes between bearable." He paused as though distracted by the thought, then returned to the hunt.
"Ye're safe with me. I willna move from this spot. Close your eyes."
Blythe knew she should resist, but she didn't want to resist. She was curious. That was it, she was curious. She wanted to know how he could affect her from ten yards away. And she didn't for a minute think he'd leap naked from the ground as soon as her eyes were closed and pounce on her. He wasn't the pouncing kind. Darach was a slide-and-glide kind of guy, and it wouldn't be his feet doing the sliding and gliding.
"Close your eyes. We will speak while we explore what might be. If ye dinna like what I do, ye may open your eyes when ye wish."
Blythe surrendered. She closed her eyes even as she picked over excuses meant to appease her outraged conscience. The best one? It was his voice. It compelled her to obey. It was all his fault, a convenient variation on the old theme: The devil made me do it.
"Did ye enjoy sex with the man who caused ye to be banished to Casperwyoming?"
While Blythe considered how she was going to volley his conversational opener, Darach demonstrated what might be by closing his lips around her nipple and nipping gently.
She sucked in her breath and tried to fight past the heat of his mouth on her nipple, the slide of his tongue across the sensitive flesh, and the way his lips tightened, pulled gently. The sensation was a ribbon of desire that wrapped her in breathless anticipation with a note that said: Open me. Right now. The opening part was already in progress. She moved her knees apart to accommodate the heavy melting sensation in her lower belly, the feeling of everything inside her spreading, moist with her need to be filled.
Blythe never considered opening her eyes to see if he'd moved. She knew he hadn't, and if she opened her eyes, he would stop exploring what might be. But he'd asked her a question. What was it… ? Oh. "We formed a close relationship, and the sex flowed naturally from that. Yes, I enjoyed it, but it wasn't a violent passion, just a warm and comfortable loving." Keep touching me.
"The violent passion should always come first. I dinna believe in warm and comfortable loving." Darach leaned back against the stone, felt every sharp angle pressing into his back, and smiled at her expression—a mixture of uncertainty and sensual awakening.
He lowered his lids, gathering his desire for her into something so powerful, so intense that she would know what he felt, feel what he desired. "There is no greater pleasure than what a man and woman can give each other, and there is no such thing as warm passion. Passion is always heat and flame."
Slowly, deliberately, he skimmed the tip of his finger the length of his erection. He moved the image into her mind, and knew her mind's eye followed his finger's path until it reached the head of his arousal where an anticipatory drop of moisture had formed. "This is what merely the thought of your bared body has done to me."
She slid the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip, and her lip's wet sheen loosed a shuddering, explosive need in him to bury himself in her, to feed. Ruthlessly he shoved his physical hunger aside and allowed all that was sexual to take its place.
"How did you do that? I didn't open my eyes, but I saw you. I can't think. I have to think." Arching her head back, she lifted her arms and dragged shaking fingers through her hair. But she didn't open her eyes.
The lift of her bare breasts beneath her shawl as she raised her arms made him growl low in his throat. He needed to cup the smooth warmth of her flesh in his hands, to slide his tongue across her nipple and savor the texture of it, experience the almost painful pleasure she felt as he touched the sensitive nub.
"Dinna think. Feel." For five hundred years his sensual power had grown, and he called on it now. He would slip into her mind and join with her. She would know not only her own sexual release, but experience all that he saw, felt, imagined. "Know what I know. See what I see. Feel what I feel."
"I don't…" Her words died.
"See yourself, Blythe, naked and open to me, so that I might touch ye with my mouth, taste all that excites me." He watched through slitted eyes as she spread her legs farther apart, slid her fingers up the length of her inner thigh, then paused. "Know all through your mind.
Ye need nothing else. Your mind holds power over all sexual pleasure."
"Show me."
Nodding his satisfaction, Darach allowed his own lids to drift shut as he gave himself to the fantasy.
Summoning his power, he drew all that she was to him, became one with her. In his mind, he touched her bare inner thigh with his mouth
, his tongue. She gasped and tangled her fingers in his hair.
His senses, so much more acute than when he was human, drove him now. The taste of her skin, the scent of her need, awakened his hungers, for her body and for her blood.
"I am with ye, Blythe. My power is part of ye now. Imagine all ye would do with my body, and know what I experience."
The scene unfolded in his mind. He laid her naked on the ground, then knelt between her thighs. And while night shadows drew intimate patterns across her body, he lifted her hips and covered all her wondrous heat and slick readiness with his mouth. Slid his tongue over the most sensitive flesh of her woman's body and exulted in her ragged moan.
"What would ye do with me, Blythe?" His mind's voice was unsteady, proof of his own need.
"I…" She paused as if unable to gather her thoughts, as if she still didn't realize that her mind's pictures would touch him.
And then her first tentative thoughts touched his and became real in his mind. Even as he slipped his tongue into her and felt her body clench and shudder around him, felt her pleasure at his tongue's invasion, her thoughts rippled around him.
"I want to put my mouth on you. Everywhere." Her mental voice sounded uncertain, fearful of putting what she desired into thought. "I want to do all the sexual things to your body that I could ever imagine, and I want to lose control."
"Lose control, woman of Ecstasy. I feed on your desire." He slid his tongue further into her, then out again, mimicking the rhythm of sex while he clasped the firm flesh of her buttocks in his hands to pull her closer, if closer were possible.
Suddenly a door seemed to open in her mind, as though all the possibilities for pleasure became real to her for the first time.
Blythe moved out of his grasp, knelt in front of him, then pushed him back on his heels. She clasped his erection and tightened her grip as she leaned into him. "You're mine tonight, vampire. Every glorious naked inch of you." She cupped his sacs in her palms, then slid her tongue across them, leaving a fiery trail of desire. He could feel himself spiraling out of control, fought to maintain the mind connection, fought his need to feed.
