Books by Maggie Shayne (152 page)

But it didn’t matter that he hated me. That minor detail did nothing to dampen this desire that blazed to life inside me. I wanted him. How could any woman not want him, when he was laid out before her, naked and beautiful and utterly helpless? Even a virgin, even a nun, even a saint, would have been stirred to a sensual awareness. And I was none of those things, right now. I was none other than a vampiress. A creature of pure sensuality. A creature in whom every sensation was heightened and magnified a thousand times. And for the first time, the very first time, I realized that I was relishing this new nature of mine. Delighting in the sensual awareness. Wanting more of it.

What would it be like, I wondered, to make love to this man?

Foolish notion, of course. Oh, I could look on him, even touch him without his consent and perhaps without his knowledge. But I certainly couldn’t make love to him. It was impossible.

And I was getting waylaid by my newfound fascination with the male form. Because he was still in danger from the blood loss he’d suffered, and I mustn’t forget that.

He needed to feed. And there was plenty of sustenance in neat little bags just in the next room. I rose, dropping my washcloth into the basin and turning to go and get him some. But then I stopped as I realized how difficult it would be to feed him. I had only glasses. He was unconscious. I might be able to rouse him enough to make him drink, but…

But I didn’t want to bring it to him in a glass, cold and stale and weak. I knew the difference between that and warm, living blood. And I also knew the sinful delight of drinking from him. And that it had left him shuddering with desire as much as it had me. And I wanted to feed him myself. I wanted his mouth on me, his teeth sinking into my flesh, his lips drawing my very essence into him. It would stir the desire in me even higher. I knew that, sensed it, because of what had happened to me each time we’d shared blood before. But it would also give me such intense pleasure that I could not resist.

This craving for his touch had driven me to madness long enough. I would explore it a bit now, while he was unconscious, and unable to ridicule my longing with those knowing eyes. I would let him take from me, because I wanted to know what it felt like. And because I was feeling free and uninhibited with him lying there completely unaware.

Boldly, I stretched out on the bed beside his naked body. Wearing only his robe, I lay there, and I pulled him, gently, onto his side, and then lower, so that his head and shoulders lay across my chest. Oh, and I closed my eyes, delighting in the feel of his masculine weight pressing me down into the mattress. And then I sighed in anguish at the feel of my breasts being crushed beneath his bare chest. These were feelings I’d long ago decided that I would never know. The weight of a man on top of me. It was forbidden me. So I relished each sensation, one by one, enjoying it thoroughly before moving on to the next. I parted the robe I wore, baring my breasts so they could feel his chest against them. And it was good. I ran my hands up and down his spine, closing my eyes as I learned his shape. I cupped his buttocks. They were so perfect and small and firm in my hands as I pulled at them, arching my hips so that his erection pushed against me.

Yes, erection. He was hard now. Not even conscious yet, but responding to my touch as if he were. I’d sensed this desire ran both ways between us. Now I knew it was true.

I moved one hand upward, sliding it over the perfect curve of his muscled back, cupping the back of his head, and gently guiding his face to my chest. With my mind, I reached out to his, in just the way he had shown me.
Feed now, Vampire. Take what you need… what you crave…take it from me
.

And he did. His mouth moved over my skin, and I closed my eyes. He kissed my breast, and then his lips parted, and his teeth pierced that tender skin. I cried out in pleasure and pain and he drank from me, took from me, as I had taken from him. His movements were slow, and clumsy. He suckled me slowly, very slowly, and gently. Too gently. His hands fumbled upward, like the hands of a sleepwalker, and they found my hair, and stroked it, like stroking a cat, over and over as he fed. And lust for him raged and burned inside me, growing more powerful each time he swallowed.

I could feel him growing stronger. Feel him regaining his power. Soon his hands were in motion, finding mine, and sliding up my arms to settle on my shoulders. And then he lifted his head, opened his eyes. Hungry eyes, glazed with passion, heavy lidded. They met mine for only a moment, and there was no inhibition in them. No resistance. No hesitance. Just desire.

And a jolt of fear surged inside me, as I wondered what sort of beast I had roused to life. I should end this, right now, I thought. I should gently move him off me, and give him the chance to come fully awake.

He licked his lips slowly, and then lowered his head again, and all of my good intentions dissolved. His fevered lips traced a path to the roundest part of my shoulder, and then he nipped at me there. Sharp, strong teeth drawing blood, and I tipped my head back, gasping in delight. And then he moved again, down over my chest. Pausing and making me gasp again. He sampled each of my breasts, and the skin over my rib cage, and my belly, and my hip, and then he buried his face between my legs, licking and biting at me even there. By the time he began working his way back up my body again I was in agony. My facial muscles contorted into a grimace of longing and restraint. My breaths rasping in and out of my chest. My skin dampened by his mouth, and dotted with tiny, erotic wounds.

He stretched his nude body atop mine, and lowered his mouth toward my lips, and I caught him, framing his face with my hands and I whispered, “Wait.”

God, the look in those tiger-striped eyes of his. He was a creature driven sheerly by sensation right now. And I was very close to joining him in that state. Very close.

“Wait for what, Angel,” he whispered, from somewhere deep in his throat. And he pressed his mouth to mine, caught my lower lip between his teeth and snapped at it.

I twisted my head to one side. Perhaps I never should have started this. I hadn’t intended for it to go this far. I hadn’t been fair to him. He likely had no idea what he was doing. I hadn’t thought it through, hadn’t planned on what would happen if he should awaken. “You’re losing yourself to the bloodlust,” I managed, though I didn’t want to talk right now. Didn’t want to explain things to him or warn him away. I simply wanted him to take me. Now, before I had time to think it through. I wanted him inside me. Fast and hard and deep.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, fast and hard and deep, Angel.”

Oh, God, I’d forgotten to guard my thoughts.

“Oh, Christ, Angel…touch me. Touch me like you want to.” And he took my hand, and brought it down between us. And I did. I ran my fingertips up and down him, encircled him and squeezed him. And I read every one of his thoughts as they passed through his mind. He wasn’t blocking them. Not at all. All Jameson could think about was how every single sensation was magnified a thousand times since he’d been brought over. And how Rhiannon had told him that with sex it was more like a million times, and how he hadn’t experienced that yet. And how he wanted to. How he’d been wanting to since he’d first felt the touch of my lips on his skin. How he’d dreamed of doing this with me.

Knowing it drove me to lunacy, I think. I pressed against him arching my hips, and then his lips trailed down my jaw to my throat, and he sucked at the skin there. And St. Francis of Assisi couldn’t have resisted. I wrapped my arms around him and held tight, and he brought his head up and kissed me. Deeply, the I’d been wanting him to. Pushing his tongue into my mouth and feeding on mine in turn. Kneading my buttocks with his hands and lifting my hips toward his in a fury of need as well as promise.

Frantically, he pushed at my robe and I lifted my upper body from the bed to help him peel it from me. Between the two of us, we managed to remove the robe completely without breaking apart at all. His heart hammered against my chest. He was panting, and his skin was hot to the touch. He muttered, and I kissed him and clawed at his skin, nearly incoherent with the need burning in me.

He knew how overwhelming it could be, I sensed it. He was kicking himself for it. It had all been patiently explained to him. He’d been warned, so he knew what to expect, he told himself. While I did not. All I knew was that every cell in me was screaming for release. He was weak from the pain of that bullet, and still, I was certain, not fully aware of what he was doing. But I couldn’t stop it now. I couldn’t.

Ah, but dammit, he was coming aware, and he was thinking he should stop.

“Angelica…”

I lifted him away, rose just a little, parting my thighs wider, positioning myself beneath him. His passion-glazed eyes held mine as he lowered his body, slipping inside me. I arched against him, tilting to receive him as he pushed deeper. I took more of him. And I closed my eyes and moaned. And that sound seemed to take the last of his resistance, and grind it to dust. He grasped my buttocks and pulled me tight to him, plunging himself all the way into my body. And I tipped my head back and cried out in pleasure. He began to move inside me. And I rode him, clung to him, felt like a warrior goddess as I took all he could give and demanded still more.

When I began to tremble and shake, and when my eyes flew open wide, he knew. I hadn’t erected any shields around my mind either. Not just now, and he knew exactly what I was feeling. Even
felt
exactly what I was feeling. I was shocked at the pleasure of this. Shocked at the delicious tightening going on at the very hub of my body. I’d never felt it before, didn’t know what the pinnacle was, but strained toward it all the same.

And when it came, he bent his head and sank his teeth into my throat, and sucked hard at me. And the orgasm doubled, and trebled, and went on and on and on. I felt shattered by its power, and I screamed, and my nails scratched bloody trails down his chest, as I arched like a cat, pressing my hips to take his erection all the way into me, and pressing my throat to take his teeth all the way into me. And he came too, his shuddering release seeming to spill more than his seed into my body, seeming to draw more than the slick fluids from my core, and from my throat. It seemed his soul was drawn from him as well, and it seemed mine was drawn from me. And the two tangled and twisted and mingled together, even as our body fluids were doing, and became one. The ecstasy was so intense I thought I would die. I honestly thought I would die. Waves and waves of it washed over me, sweeping me away into a world of insane sensations, pure, undiluted physical ecstasy. No pleasure this incredible could come without a price.

But I didn’t die. I came back to myself, very slowly, and when I did, I felt disconnected, dizzy, as if my brain were still floating out there somewhere.

And Jameson was collapsed on top of me. Arms twined around me, his head on my chest. Utterly relaxed and already, I thought, sinking in a pool of velvety sleep.

When he woke…

I drew a deep breath and let it out very slowly. When he woke there was going to be hell to pay. I doubted he’d forgive me for this latest transgression any more easily than he had when I’d attempted to murder him. This had been very close to rape.

I reached down for the comforter, and pulled it up to cover us both. And then I lay there, and wished that this fevered coupling had assuaged the hunger I had for him. But it hadn’t. It still burned inside me. Still grew. It anything, this had only made it stronger. Deepened and empowered it to demanding new levels.

Lord help me, I craved the man like never before. And I was damned if I had a clue what to do to change it.

I was ruled, for that brief interlude, by nothing but feeling. Sensation. Lust. Desire. Sin. And I took him like a true harlot. No seasoned streetwalker could have seemed more thorough, I’m certain, than I was that night.

Out of my mind. Overwhelmed by my own heightened passions. I must have been.

But then I woke, to find myself naked as the day I was born, and twined around the vampire like a vine that would wither without him. And I was mortified.

Worse than anything else for me then was that I remembered every second of it. Every guttural sound I’d made, and every shameless thing I’d done. I even remembered the climax that had seemed to shatter my soul into a thousand glimmering bits.

Very carefully, I pulled myself out of his arms, and sat up…and then I gasped in horror at what I had done, for it was even worse than I had realized. I’d scratched his chest with my long nails, and he was covered in tiny bite marks. And he was naked, and sleeping, and easily as beautiful as a god. A dark pagan god. My temptation. My downfall. My Satan.

God help me, but desire stirred in me anew as I looked down at him there. I pressed my hands to my face in shame. And then I cried. For I did not know this creature I had become. I did not know her at all. And I was not at all certain I wanted to.

“Angelica,” he whispered, and I felt movement as he sat up. His hands touched my shoulders as if he would slip his arms around me and pull me close. Comfort me.

But I could not bear his touch. Not now. Not when I wanted it so.

“How could I have done it?” I whispered.

“Ah, Christ, Angelica—”

“You should have warned me. You knew what would happen to me if I were ever to let you drink from me. Because it was the same when I drank from you. You knew, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Vampire?”

Lowering his beautiful striped eyes from mine, he nodded. “Yes. I knew what kind of lust would hit you if I drank from you, Angel.” He lifted his head and looked me in the eye. “I just had no reason to think you would do it. Why would I warn you against something I thought you’d never do?”

“You should have. Don’t you see what you’ve done? What you’ve taken from me? What you’ve made me?” I turned my face away, snatching at the blankets to cover myself.

“I didn’t
make
you into anything, Angelica. You are what you are, and you did to me exactly what you wanted to do. You were the aggressor, Angel. I was barely in my right mind. Hell, if I’d done to you what you did to me you’d be screaming rape.”