The now familiar taste of cinnamon mixed with that exquisite sweet honey filled her mouth. She cried into his mouth as her orgasm intensified and engulfed her. Drawing his tongue in deeper, she sucked greedily as her body convulsed completely out of her control.
When he raised his mouth from hers, she let out a whimper, then reached up to grasp his head and drag it back down.
“You have to get out now, Diana,” he said between clenched teeth. “Now.”
Her eyes flew open. “Sebastian—”
“Please, Diana. I’ve already brought us further than I should.”
“But—”
“Diana, go!”
Diana turned and stared into his eyes. Rising up on her toes, she kissed him and slid her tongue between his lips.
Sebastian pulled away. “Out!”
After wrapping herself in a robe, Diana went to her father’s room and retrieved his robe. She returned to the bathroom and, resisting the urge to peek, hung it on the hook behind the door. Grabbing Sebastian’s clothes, she turned to leave.
A long, deep groan stopped her. She chastised herself as she glanced through the gap in the shower curtain. When she saw his hands clutch the knob and spin it as far toward cold as it would go, she grinned. Leaning forward, she drank in the sight of his muscles flexing over his broad back and firm buttocks. His hair clung to his broad shoulders. Water raced down his spine, his thighs, calves. She clenched her hands in the clothes to stop herself from reaching out and sliding her fingers down his slick skin.
Standing there with his hands flattened against the mirrored wall, he looked too perfect, too beautiful to be real. She reached out for one touch, just to prove that this night had not been just another dream.
“You’re not helping, Diana.” Sebastian tipped his face up and arched his back.
Diana flicked a glance at the mirror in front of him and felt the floor drop beneath her feet. Telling herself she’d seen more than was there, that the water swirling down the mirror had distorted his size, she swallowed the lump in her throat and swiftly left him alone.
When he entered the living room a short time later, she had two steaming mugs of coffee ready and the image of his cock imprinted permanently onto her mind.
Sebastian joined her on the couch. After taking a mug, he draped his arm around her shoulders and drew her against his chest. “What you do to me, woman, could wipe out an army.”
Diana smiled. “Cold shower help?”
He kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t think it would.”
Snuggling closer, Diana brought her lips to his Adams apple.
Sleep.
* * * * *
The doorbell rang. Thinking her father had returned, Diana sat up and gasped when she realized that somehow she had ended up in her bed. Alone.
Sunlight stabbed at her eyes but didn’t blind her to the dozens of roses filling her bedroom. Vases of every shape and style covered her dresser, desk and shelves. More were scattered over her floor.
A card propped against a vase on her nightstand caught her eye. She smiled as she read it aloud. “Tonight.”
The doorbell rang again. Grabbing her robe, Diana ran to her window. The twins, Mary and Cindy, stood on the path leading to her porch. Cindy dabbed her eyes with a tissue as Mary glanced up. When Diana waved, Mary’s mouth dropped. Instead of waving back, she grabbed Cindy’s arm and practically dragged her to their car. Diana frowned as she watched the car screech away from the curb and speed down the street. “What the hell was that all about?”
All concern about Mary and Cindy’s behavior fled when she turned around.
“No,” she whispered.
She moved from vase to vase, shaking her head in amazement.
Sebastian had removed every thorn.
Chapter Seven
When Sebastian’s teeth clamped down on one of her pebbled nipples, Diana whimpered from the sudden stab of pain even as she thrust her breast up and silently begged for more. He complied, biting down, piercing the sensitive skin. Suddenly, a painfully bright light obliterated her view of the top of his head. She blinked until her eyes adjusted, then glanced down. “No!”
A loop from the lace edging of her sheet, not Sebastian’s teeth, held her nipple captive. After slipping off the lace, she squinted into the glaring rays streaming in through her window and cursed the sunlight for intruding upon her dream.
Glancing at her clock, she groaned. She’d climbed back into bed only an hour ago. She rolled over, covered her face with her pillow and tried to slip back into her dream, but the heat of the sun beat on her back, snatching her away from Sebastian’s waiting arms.
A gentle breeze flowed through the open window and cooled the sweat covering her body. She wrapped the sheet around her and ran to close the window. Her hand hovered on the window sash. Birds chirped excitedly, heralding the dawn.
A light rain must have fallen sometime during the night. The scent of dew-covered grass and damp soil mingled with the aroma of coffee and bacon coming from her neighbor’s kitchen. But the roses filling her room cast the sweetest scent. Lifting one, she ran her fingers up the smooth stem.
Glancing down at the front lawn, she frowned. Only Mary and Cindy’s odd behavior marred the beauty the morning.
Their early, obscenely early, visit would have been enough to shock her, but what really stumped her was the way Mary had grabbed Cindy and pulled her away. Just before she’d dozed off and entered her delicious dream, Diana had figured the visit had something to do with Cindy crying, but that didn’t explain the twins’ obvious shock at seeing her wave from her bedroom window and it didn’t explain why they would flee as if the devil himself had appeared. Or why neither answered their cell phone when she tried to call a few minutes later.
Shrugging, Diana slid another rose from one of the vases on her floor and held the crimson blooms up to her lips as she crossed the room. The petals felt like satin, like Sebastian’s lips had felt each time they had brushed over hers last night.
Sitting on the window seat facing her backyard, she stared at the pond and pictured her and Sebastian swimming in the sun-dappled water, lying naked on the grass, making love beneath the heat of the sun. Her skin tingled. The reflection she’d seen in the shower flashed before her eyes. Sebastian standing behind her, his mouth on her neck.
Her stomach lurched. She bit her lip and shook her head. She saw his reflection. Even if she hadn’t, she’d lived twenty-five years before discovering a vampire. It would probably be twenty-five more before she encountered another. Her gaze swept over the blood-red roses filling her room.
Every thorn. Hundreds, maybe thousands.
It would take hours.
The stems clenched in her hand bent.
“Stop it, Diana Nostrum,” she muttered, staring down at the ruined flowers. “If your soul mate was a vampire, Nana would have told you.”
Her hand trembled. While Nana had never used the word vampire, she had implied that Diana’s soul mate would not be accepted as Frank Nostrum’s son-in-law. Cradling the bloom, Diana whispered, “Dad hated all my boyfriends.”
Other long forgotten conversations with her grandmother came back to her. One where her grandmother had warned her that it wouldn’t be easy to accept her soul mate for what he was, to accept the life he led.
“No. Sebastian is a man. Nothing but a man!” She stood and, letting the sheet fall from her body, strode to her closet to get dressed for work.
By midmorning Diana clutched her pounding head and prayed the Advil would start working soon. It amazed her that her lack of sleep had left her so sensitive to the blinding sunlight. Donning sunglasses stopped her eyes from tearing, but did little to alleviate her headache. By noon, her strange hunger returned with a vengeance. Two hamburgers and a double order of fries sated it for all of one hour.
Realizing she’d never get rid of whatever bug she’d caught without sleep, she talked Stan into giving up his office for a couple of hours and took a quick
nap. Still, by late afternoon, she could barely find the energy to walk.
The side of her neck pulsed and fluttered, nearly driving her mad. She scratched at it, welcomed one of Stan’s painfully rough massages, gently rubbed her knuckles over it like Sebastian had and scratched it some more, but nothing helped. By the time she clocked out, she had blood crusted beneath her fingernails. The twitch remained.
As she crossed the parking lot, her cell phone rang. Seeing Nana Lina’s number in the display, she flipped the cell phone open and sat on the hood of her car.
“I had another vision,” Nana Lina said before Diana could even say “Hi”.
“About me?” Diana touched her neck. She could feel her vein pulsing beneath her fingers.
“It was so strange, Diana. You were Medusa…you had snakes in your hair.”
“Snakes?”
“I’m not sure. It was all misty. And I kept seeing a loofa.”
Heat flared over Diana’s cheeks. Her heart skipped a beat. Nana Lina’s ability to capture bits of the past never failed to amaze her. Or embarrass her. “How odd.”
“And I saw your soul mate, Diana. You met him, didn’t you?”
“I think so.” Diana chewed on her lower lip. “We’re supposed to see each other tonight. I…well…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Diana moved her cell phone to the other ear and glanced around the parking lot of the ranch.
“Diana. You know I can always tell when something’s troubling you.”
“Well,” she flopped back onto the hood and stared at the purple swirls rising up into the sky as the sun set. “It’s not something you normally talk about with your grandmother.”
“You can talk to me about anything, Diana. You know that.” After a moment’s silence, she added, “Even sex.”
“Yeah, well I…” Recalling just how good Sebastian’s soapy hands had felt as they slid over her skin, she nearly groaned. “God, Nana, I…I…”
“You’ve been waiting, and…?”
“And waiting, and waiting.” She rolled onto her stomach. The hood, still hot from hours beneath the sun, warmed her nipples through her shirt. Her neck pulsed. Her stomach growled. A group of ranch hands passed on their way to the only other cars in the lot. Diana waved, then cupped the phone to her mouth and whispered, “Okay, okay. I want to, I really do. So much it hurts. But what if he’s not the one? What if I’m wrong and I…you know…and it turns out that I’m wrong?”
“Wait, are you saying you didn’t yet?”
“I just met him.” She thought she heard her grandmother mumble something about losing her touch and frowned. “You can’t know everything, Nana Lina. Nana?” After what seemed like a very long stretch of silence, Diana glanced at her phone to make sure she hadn’t lost the connection. “Nana Lina?”
“Shh.”
Rising up to her knees, Diana held her breath. She could almost see her grandmother closing her eyes, inwardly reaching for her sixth sense.
“All in black,” her grandmother asked in a hushed voice.
“Not last night. But the night before, when I met him, he had on black.”
“I see a tattoo.”
Diana slumped down onto her heels. “Not that I saw. Look, maybe your vision is off…”
“Some bird. A raven, I think. Did you see him naked?”
Pleasure swirled in her pussy as she once again saw the shower spray Sebastian’s back, saw the water pour over his firm buttocks. “No, I just saw his back.”
“Well he has one. You just haven’t seen that part of him yet. Did he kiss you?”
“Oh, yeah.” She blushed at how husky her voice sounded.
“You’ve been kissed by quite a few men over the years, honey.”
“What’s that got to do with it,” she asked, oddly annoyed that they should be compared to the unbelievable kisses she’d shared with Sebastian.
“Well was his better, special?”
“Special? I’d say his blew the others away.”
“And now, after all these years, you’re considering giving this man your virginity after—what?—one date,” her grandmother asked, her voice rising with anger.
Diana moaned. “God, Nana, I don’t know what’s come over me. If he hadn’t kicked me out of the— Well I would have last night.”
“Look, you don’t need a psychic, Diana. You’ve always said you had no problem stopping men when they went too far. But with this man, it only takes a few kisses and you’re out of control. He’s your soul mate.”
She leapt off the hood and started pacing around her car. “Well it was more than—” She suddenly noticed the sun had finished its descent. A knot formed in her stomach. Darkness enveloped the parking lot. She glanced up at the lone light pole. “Come on. Light, dammit.”
A second later the sensor kicked in and the light buzzed to life. “Nana?”
“Are you alone?”
The sudden question brought her pacing to a halt and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Yes, why.”
“Where are you?”
“At the ranch. Next to my car.” Her voice boomed in her ears although she barely spoke above a whisper.
Diana glanced around the empty parking lot. The shadows between the lofty pines abutting it encroached on the scant circle of light from the weak bulb. “I have to go.”
“Listen, Diana. I’m going to tell you one more thing, then I want you in your car and out of there.”
“What? What?” Slowly turning, she searched the dark depths for some sign of danger. Someone was out there. She felt eyes watching her every move. Her lungs seized.
“When the time comes, remember everything I ever told you about your soul mate. Everything, Diana. And then, if what I told you makes sense with what you see, try to hold on to the fact that he is your soul mate. Try to accept—”
A sudden gust of wind kicked up sand and pebbles from the makeshift lot and hurled them in her direction. Diana ran around the car, one arm flung over her face. The mini-sandstorm seemed to follow her, pelting her back as she flung open the door. “Accept what?”
“What he is.”
“What are you saying, Nana?” A shudder tripped down Diana’s spine. Part of her wanted to scream at Nana Lina and stop her from saying the words she’d said so many times before. Another part needed to hear it, needed to hear that soft voice remind her that love mattered more than anything else.
“Get in the damn car, Diana!”
Diana flung herself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, pressed the lock button and stared wide-eyed at the sand hitting her windshield. “You’re scaring me, Nana.”
“Just remember this, Diana. When soul mates reunite, their bodies recognize each other immediately and long to become one. But sex isn’t all that matters. Only if they stay together—accepting and trusting each other—can soul mates’ hearts become one. Diana, if you open your heart and soul to him and accept him and the life he leads, you could experience a love most people only dream about.”
A gust of wind rocked the car. “I gotta go.” Not waiting for a reply, she flung her cell phone onto the passenger seat and, expecting to see a fang-toothed maniac, peeked into the rearview mirror.
Olympia stepped out from behind a tree and watched Diana’s car speed out of the parking lot. Swatting away the dirt the tires had kicked up, she snarled, “Diego!”
Diego poked his head up from the bush he’d been hiding behind. “Is she gone?”
“Of course she’s gone, you fool. Do you think I’d be standing here if she wasn’t?”
Standing in the moonlight, her sleek black hair draped around her shoulders like a cape, her low-cut shirt revealing the edges of her areolas and her fangs dripping with blood from the rabbit that had dared to cross her path, Olympia knew she could not look more enticing or terrifying. She watched Diego draw in a fortifying breath before he stepped into the parking lot.
“Tell me, Diego, do you think it’s healt
hy to lie to me?”
“Lie?” His eyes darted from the quivering rabbit lying on the ground to Olympia’s fangs. Glancing over his shoulder, he took a step back.
“You said he did it. You swore!” She crossed her arms under her breasts and watched the sweat bead on his forehead.
“He did!” Diego stared at the receding brake lights of Diana’s car and raked his hands through his hair. “I swear he did.”
“You saw him do it?”
“Well not exactly.” He took another step back. “But I know he did. She started moaning and whimpering. I couldn’t even get into her mind. The pain was so overwhelming it blocked out everything else.”
Olympia grabbed Diego’s face in both hands and bestowed a kiss she ended with a vicious bite. Blood filled her mouth when her fangs sliced through the tender flesh. Glaring down at him as he clutched his torn lip and dropped to his knees, she pointed down the road and asked, “Did that look like a woman in pain? Did she look like she was dying of hunger? Like she was insane?”
Diego licked his tattered lip. “God, Olympia. I’m telling the truth. She was hurting so much it made me sick.”
“Sick? Over a human?” Olympia wondered if she’d misjudged Diego. He had been doing special favors for her ever since he’d entered puberty and she’d introduced him to pleasures only a female vamp with centuries of experience could provide. He’d become so addicted to her body and blood, so easy to manipulate with promises of more, that she’d even been able to convince him to try to bond with his high school sweetheart. Convincing him the next day that little, innocent Maria had cheated on him had been easy.
Diego had grown to trust Olympia. He’d immediately brought the bonding to a halt, then abandoned poor Maria, mad from her uncompleted transformation, on Fentmore Island. “Maybe Diana’s transformation brought up the memory of Maria. Maybe that made you too sick to notice Sebastian failed!”
Undeniable Page 14
