His smile was a predatory lifting of his lips. “I thought you’d never ask.” He arched his hips so she could skim the swimsuit from his body. Then he reached up to hook his finger in her bikini top. “Take it off.”
“Wow. Pretty direct, aren’t you?” Kristin kind of liked that about him. She looked down. Mmm. The hard length of him went way beyond like.
He sat up, his eyes a blaze of hunger that made her nipples pebble without him even touching her. “I’ve spent a week in hell, wanting to rip the clothes from your beautiful body and bury myself deep inside you every freakin’ minute I’ve been near you.”
Kristin knew her smile bordered on feral. “Whoa. Intense. Very sexy.” She dropped her hand to his erection and wrapped her fingers around him. She squeezed gently, instant messaging a “Me, too.”
He pulled her close so he could untie her top. She was short on control right now. His fault, all his fault. Jeez, how long did it take to untie a stupid bikini top? To keep from attacking him, she clamped her teeth onto his neck and hung on. She reveled in the warmth and taste of his skin. Would he accept her teeth’s imprints in the spirit they were given? She hoped so. Who knew this vampire stuff would be so easy?
Even before her top hit the sand, he was working on her bikini bottom. He must’ve used his preternatural speed or something because one minute it was there and then it was lying yards away. Was he hot for her or what? She smiled at the delicious thought.
Kristin glanced around to make sure they were completely private before relaxing back onto the blanket. Lifting her arms above her head, she stretched, arching her back and savoring the sensual joy of the cool gulf breeze and Taurin’s heated gaze drifting across her bare breasts. She glanced at his strong hands with fingers able to drift over a woman’s body in many different ways. Who needed a breeze?
Leaning close, he traced her lips with his tongue and then deepened the kiss into a promise of things to come. Kristin thought whatever was to come better come damn fast, because no way did she intend to give Banan or Saffron time to interrupt this.
Taurin grinned at her, his fangs proof of his own state of arousal. “Don’t worry, if they interrupt tonight I’ll kill them. No one will find the bodies. What happens in Galveston stays in Galveston.”
She thought he was only half kidding. “Were you in my head? I didn’t feel you.”
Still holding her gaze, he moved to kneel between her legs. “Nope. I recognized that mess-with-my-orgasm-and-die look in your eyes.” He slid his hands over her feet, gently massaging her heels before smoothing his palms over her calves and inner thighs. He paused there. “I want to make long, slow love to you. I want to show you every single thing I’ve learned in six hundred years about bringing a woman pleasure.”
He leaned over to whisper in her ear. “But not tonight. I want you too much. I want to take you fast and hard with lots of thrashing around and screams for more.”
She tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him down to her. “Do it. But we’d better delete the screams. Unless we want an audience who’ll break into spontaneous applause with shouts for an encore.” Kristin trailed her fingers down the long length of his back before massaging the cheeks of his perfect ass.
“Hey, that’s not a bad fantasy. Maybe we should—”
Kristin slapped that perfect ass. “No audience.”
“I love it when you act tough, woman.” His sexy murmur was pure seduction by sound waves.
He splayed his fingers over her stomach, and she felt her stomach muscles quiver in response to his touch. Jeez, if her stomach muscles got this excited, what would happen when he touched parts of her body given to nervous fits? She found out fast.
Taurin put both hands over her breasts, and she let the sensation of weight and heat seep through her. Then he did what she’d expected. He put his mouth on her breast. Not that she’d mark him down for lack of creativity. After all, there were just so many things a guy could do to a woman that would . . .
Oh. My. God! He nipped, he flicked with his tongue—who knew the tongue could do so many things—and he used just enough suction to drive her berserk. “That’s . . . That’s . . .” Her body was on the launchpad, and the countdown had begun.
And somewhere, what remained of her analytical mind understood that because she loved him, her body automatically super-sized the pleasure every time he touched her.
At some point she realized he was no longer touching her breasts. Her nipples were still warm and wet from his mouth, and the breeze felt almost chilly moving over them. But the breeze sure wasn’t cooling down her other parts.
He sounded unsure as he looked down at her. “Will you trust me to enter your mind, Kristin?” Something in his gaze said her trust was important to him.
Did she trust him? Love and trust went together as far as she was concerned. If she invited him into her body, couldn’t she also invite him into her mind this once? “Yes.”
She played her fingers over his sweat-sheened stomach and watched his muscles contract. She was doing this to him, and she hadn’t even gotten started yet. Kristin figured she’d need at least a few centuries to exhaust all the ways she wanted to touch him.
“I want to join my mind with yours as we make love.” He didn’t smile, his gaze searing her with his need. “I won’t tell you what to expect because that would spoil the fun.” Then he did smile, slow and provocative. If a smile could trigger an orgasm, his would.
Kristin would’ve worried about what was going to happen, but he didn’t give her a chance. He licked his way down her body, and as heat pooled low in her belly, she felt a surge of emotion—overwhelming pleasure and intense arousal. Not hers. Theirs. She growled low in her throat. She didn’t growl. Ever.
She spread her thighs wide to accept him. And just in case he missed his stop, Kristin had a virtual “You have reached your destination” sign planted in the driveway. Bending her knees, she lifted her hips to meet his imagined thrust. Then she reached down and touched herself, sensually and with lots of special effects. “I’m waiting for you, vampire.” Was that low sexy voice hers? Wow.
Taurin raised his head to stare at her. “I love you, Kristin. I’m telling you now so you can’t accuse me of saying it in a postorgasmic haze. I’ve never shared a woman’s mind while making love, never wanted to. You’re the first, the last.”
Kristin’s breath caught in her throat. He’d just said he loved her in her mind. She opened her mouth to tell him she loved him, too, but he shook his head. “Shh.”
“Later, Kristin. When you have time to think, to understand that you’ll grow old and I won’t, that you’ll still walk in daylight, but I won’t.” His smile hung somewhere between hopeful and sad. “But there would be lots of perks, like this.”
He knelt up, clasped her bottom, and lifted her to meet his mouth. She wrapped her legs around him as he slid the tip of his tongue back and forth across that spot. She swallowed her screams and almost choked on them. Added to her own unbearable sensations was his spiraling pleasure filling and overflowing her mind.
And when he slid his tongue into her and then out, in and out, in and out, she couldn’t keep a whimper from escaping. Her body shuddered under the force of their combined physical and emotional arousals.
Enough! “Nownownow.” She grabbed his hair, forcing him to slide up her body. The friction was so hot she expected to see smoke rising from between them.
He took ten years, er, seconds to do the protection thing. Way too long.
She was mindless, nothing more than a pounding heart, ragged breathing, and senses that were stripped to bare-wire essentials. As he rose over her, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and waited for the nudge of his shaft.
Taurin spread her, easing into her, pushing deeper and deeper, claiming her. His emotions were silent moans in her head. Deeper, and still deeper. Her body clenched around all that hard length, and she joined his mental shouts of pleasure with her own.
Then he started
to move. He slid out until only the head of his shaft remained inside her before plunging into her over and over again. She experienced right along with him the almost unbearable friction driving him to thrust faster and faster, felt her own orgasm gathering power, and teetered on the edge.
But when she felt the slide of his fangs against her throat she stilled. He waited silently for her decision. Riding her sensual high, Kristin didn’t have to do any deep thinking. She trusted him. “Do it, vampire.”
If there was pain, she didn’t feel it, because the instant surge in erotic sensation was a sexual body slam.
“We have liftoff.” Kristin didn’t know if she’d said it out loud, didn’t care, because her orgasm grabbed her and shook her until she dug her fingers into his back and hung on. Taurin’s release went on, and on, and on in her head. She only hoped her shouts were also in her head.
Her last thought before mindless ecstasy took over was that she didn’t know if she could live through this two-orgasms-at-once thing.
She lived. Barely. Her breathing slowed, her heartbeat returned to normal, she stopped shaking, and her thighs stopped feeling like rubber.
Sometime during the moments when she was still floating in her own personal nirvana, Taurin rolled onto his back. He was slick, relaxed, and so gorgeous it made her teeth hurt.
He’d said he loved her. That memory came crashing back. And with it the things he’d told her to think about. She turned her head to look at him. “I love you. I don’t mind the dark. And if you make me a vampire, I won’t have to watch you stay all young and buff while I shrivel up like a prune. Sure the liquid diet might get a little old, but I bet we could spice it up with a little flavoring. Of course, the idea of drinking blood is a total ick right now, but I suppose once you—”
“No.” His voice sounded suddenly tired.
“Excuse me?”
“I won’t turn you now. You have to think about it. For a long time. Think about your family. Think about what you’ll be giving up.” He rubbed his hand across his forehead. “I shouldn’t have told you I loved you. I just went with my emotions instead of thinking about you.”
She sighed. “I like you big, bad, and bold. Mr. Sensitive doesn’t fit you. Let me decide what’s best for me.” Kristin pulled her swimsuit back on and then stood up. “I knocked over my iced tea. Would you go get me some more?” She needed a few minutes of alone time to get her head together. Her heart was already together, so she wasn’t worried about that.
He nodded, stood, dressed, and then disappeared around the dune. She stared out at the waves. They looked so cool, and she was so hot and sweaty. She walked down to the water’s edge and waded in. This time there was no rip current, and the slap of the waves against her body soothed and excited at the same time.
She was still into her sexual feel-good afterglow, so when the fin sliced the water nearby she almost laughed. Banan must’ve seen Taurin leave and decided that while the vamp was away the shark would play.
Kristin glanced toward the shore. Banan was standing on the beach peering out at her. He waved.
Oh shit. Swallowing hard, she frantically searched the dark water. There, there, and there. Three fins. Something slid past her leg and she screeched. Show her a nose and she’d punch it. Ack, no nose.
She saw Taurin slicing through the water at the same time she heard him in her mind.
“Hold on. Coming. Love you. Kill, kill, kill. Mine!”
Every civilized cell in her body shivered at his in-your-face primitive savagery. And mine? What was that about?
But beneath her surface layer of independent butt-kicking modern woman, something much more primal, more elemental wakened.
Her man, er, vampire was racing to her rescue. Lips drawn back to expose deadly fangs, eyes black with bloodlust, Taurin was one scary dude. But he was her scary dude.
She barely had time to mutter a “holy cow” before he reached her side. He crouched over her, his eyes actually glowing. Glowing, for crying out loud.
Suddenly something grabbed her bikini bottom and swiftly dragged her out into deeper water. Her bikini bottom? Why not her leg? She didn’t question as she tried to wiggle out of the piece of material the shark wanted so badly.
Taurin roared his rage and dived underwater. The sea became a foaming cauldron of thrashing bodies. Whatever was holding her bikini let go. She should swim for shore, but no way was she leaving Taurin.
The sound of a motor overhead caught her attention. Glancing up, she saw a huge man balanced on what looked like a flying surfboard. Huh? His shaved head gleamed in the moonlight.
He waved strange-looking weapons in both large hands. Shouting at her, he soared above the water. “Don’t be afraid, ma’am, Surfer Guy is on his way.” At the last moment, he seemed to lose control of the surfboard. It wobbled and then nosedived into the Gulf.
Kristin would think about how bizarre that was later. Right now, she had a vampire to help. Turning her attention back to the battle raging beneath the surface, she gasped as a thin stream of blood floated to the surface. Oh, God, no!
Just then Taurin broke the surface.
She wrapped herself around him and hung on. “That’s it. If we make it to shore alive, you’re turning me. Don’t try to argue. I’ve made up my mind. Nothing you say will—”
“Yes.” He swam toward shore with her still wrapped around him.
“Change my mind. When I thought I might lose you, I realized a measly seventy or eighty years together would never be enough. I . . .” She frowned as they reached shore, and she finally stood on solid ground. “Did you say yes?”
He pulled her into his embrace. “Saffron and Banan are on their way, so I’ll say this fast. I thought I wouldn’t be in time to save you, and I knew if that happened I’d want to meet the dawn. Huge revelation. I’m a weak man where you’re concerned. I don’t have the courage to walk away from you. And I’d never survive watching you grow old and die. So that only leaves one option. But first we get married.”
Married? “What a guy. Love the romantic proposal. But the time, the place, and the man are right, so I guess I’ll say yes. Besides, I love you too much to quibble over details.” Kristin knew her eyes were shiny with tears. “Let’s get back to my room so we can celebrate.”
She glanced over her shoulder to watch Surfer Guy emerge from the water dragging his surfboard behind him. He wore a triumphant grin as Banan stopped to slap him on the back. Saffron waited impatiently for the backslapping to be over. Good. Surfer Guy had sidetracked them.
Taurin turned to follow her gaze. “That’s Deimos. He’s the castle’s resident action hero.”
“Is he . . . ?”
“Don’t ask.” He led her to their blanket where he picked up her shirt and handed it to her, and then he pulled his T-shirt over his head. Finally he scooped up the blanket.
Just before she left the beach, she rescued his second foil packet from the sand.
She waved it at him. “One more for the celebration.”
They stood beside his car for a moment taking a last look at the moon and the waves. He smoothed her hair away from her face. “I love you, Kristin-soon-to-be-Veris. A hundred years from now, I still want to be able to kiss you under a full moon with the sound of waves breaking on the shore.”
She stood on tiptoe to brush her lips lightly across his. “I deleted both my articles. Maybe I’ll start a hot love story.”
Once on their way back to the castle, Kristin thought of something. “What happened to the sharks?”
He shrugged. “I’d like to say I drove them away, but I think Deimos freaked them out.”
“Oh.”
He smiled at her in the darkness. “And they weren’t sharks, sweetheart.”
Sparkle drove back to her candy store with three naked weresharks squeezed into the backseat of her car and Deimos filling up the passenger seat next to her.
“You never told us we’d be fighting a pissed-off vampire and the crazy dude sitting
next to you.” The complaining wereshark looked at his friends and they both nodded their agreement. “The damn vampire took a chunk outta me.” His tone turned aggrieved.
Sparkle did a few mental eye-rolls. What a bunch of wusses. “I’ll pay you more money, okay?” She parked in back of her store, got out, and handed the weresharks their clothes and extra cash. Then she watched them dress before melting into the darkness.
Deimos stood waiting anxiously beside her. “Did I pass, huh?”
She studied him and then smiled. “You passed. I’m proud of you.”
Deimos seemed to swell with pride right in front of her eyes. “That was neat how you hired those weresharks so I’d get a chance to show you my action-hero powers.”
“That’s what you really want, isn’t it?” Time for her to face a truth she’d known for a while.
He nodded eagerly.
“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll find a cosmic troublemaker to mentor you who’ll give you a little more excitement.” Not that she truly believed anything could be more exciting than creating sexual chaos, but a troublemaker who didn’t enjoy his work would be a pain in the butt forever. She held up her hand to stop what promised to be an extended string of thank-yous. “Later. Go practice your action-hero moves.”
And as she watched him hurry away, she smiled. She wouldn’t spoil his joy by telling him that she saved the day for him. Taurin and Kristin needed a close encounter of the deadly kind to shock them into that final commitment.
Damn, she was good. She hummed “Nobody Does It Better” as she let herself into her store.
Turn the page for a preview of
DOUBLE PLAY
By Jill Shalvis
Available July 2009 from Berkley Sensation!
You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.
—JIMBOUTON
If he had to choose between sex and a nap, he’d have to take the nap, and that was pretty damn pathetic. But Pace Martin’s shoulder hurt like a mother and so did his damn pride. The first wasn’t new but the second was.
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