Downbeat (Biting Love) (17 page)

The kiss was stolen and brief. By the time the door whapped open seconds later to reveal Nixie, he’d already released me, curled my fingers around the final six-pack and zapped to the other side of the room, leaving me to stand in the open refrigerator like a stunned goober of a doorstop, albeit a doorstop with throbbing lips and the dark taste of desire in its mouth.

“Did I interrupt anything?” Nixie asked brightly.

For the first time in my life I resented her interruption. She was only trying to protect me from the horrors of drowning in misplaced attraction, but kissing Dragan? Oh, what a death.

“Ms. Emerson.” Dragan held out an amber bottle. “Would you care for a honey-wheat?”

I glanced down. Two bottles were missing from the cardboard carton in my hand.

“Sure.” She pointed at her chest. “I expressed before I came to this shindig.” She snatched the bottle, twisted off the top and chugged down half. “Ah. It’s been a while. I forgot how nasty-good beer is.”

Dragan removed his own cap and tossed it into my charity bottle cap collection. As I got my own brewsky, found shelf space for the other three, and shut the door, he held his bottle toward Nixie. They clinked necks. The clinking of glasses, or in this case beer bottles, was a nice touch of camaraderie and one of the few social conventions that I understood, because it crossed class boundaries.

Then he touched bottles with me. That didn’t feel like a simple gesture of friendship. It felt like clinking glasses at a wedding dinner. Like the chiming of bells, signaling a greater connection.

“Um, Mom’ll be waiting.” I slapped open the door into the living room. Nixie and Dragan followed.

Mom brightened when she saw me. “Now we can be seated. Julian, you’re at the head, Nixie, on his right. Luke, you sit next to Nixie, and I’ll take the foot of the table next to you—so I can change courses more easily, of course.”

She winked. He paled.

Well he might. As that great German philosopher Jane Austen said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single gentleman in possession of a sizeable package must be in need of a grope”…or something like that.

I settled my hand on the chair at the foot of the table to rescue him. “You have to entertain our guests, Mom. I’ll be gofer.”

She beamed in a way I recognized; I’d walked into a trap. Though she pretends a certain innocence, Mom is crafty in all definitions of the word. “Thank you, Rocky. You and Dragan can clear and fetch courses. Bring out the salad, would you? Dragan, be a dear and get the dressing?”

I caught it the second time she said it. Courses, plural? Putting me and Dragan alone together in the kitchen, not once, but several times?

Unless Nixie interrupted us again. I wondered how many more beers she could possibly drink. Although, clearing and fetching only took a few minutes. He couldn’t do much more than kiss me in that time, could he?

I’d conveniently forgotten the Minute Waltz.

I scurried to the kitchen and opened the fridge. The tossed salad sat in a hand-fired bowl on the middle shelf, a matching ceramic cruet of dressing beside it. I took the bowl out of the refrigerator and turned.

Dragan was right there
again
.

He took the bowl from my hands, setting it on the countertop nonchalantly, as if he weren’t beating waves of hot male heat against me like a vibrator set on orgasm. “You’re wearing these again.” He plucked my glasses from my face and glared at them in disgust before dropping them next to the salad.

Wrapping long fingers around my upper arms, he gazed deep into my naked eyes. “You don’t understand how the sway of your hips as you walk makes me long to trace the beauty of your derriere with my tongue. How each breath you take teases your breasts against your shirt so that I yearn to suckle their tips. Your delicious feminine scent, your honey-smooth voice, ah, they caress me until I’m desperate with wanting you. You don’t believe me when I tell you how lovely you are. So let me show you.”

Each word sank into the stew of my hormones and stirred until my very skin rose with the need to meld with him. Whether I believed him or not my body didn’t care. It wanted, with a fearful strength.

He yanked me flush and devoured me in a kiss.

Shock burst bright in my every cell. When his tongue thrust powerfully into my mouth, cells exploded. Heat rushed in; the dark taste of male and rough texture of his tongue filled me. His arms cinched me tighter until I felt every muscular bulge, rock-hard and blasting heat like a furnace. This wasn’t the elegant conductor coaxing a response; this was the masterful male demanding it.

I moaned softly, my fingers clutching blindly at his coat sleeves. My pounding heart hammered my ribcage as my legs melted. Before I could ooze down his body—and wouldn’t that have put my mouth interesting places—his hands slid onto my bottom and cupped me close. He ran his tongue along my lips and they started throbbing; he pressed a shocking thigh between my legs and I began to throb there too.

“Hey, Rocky,” Nixie sang from the next room. “What’s taking so long? Do I have to send in Julian?”

I shrieked softly and scrambled out of Dragan’s arms. He released me reluctantly and straightened. I paused, struck with how far he’d had to bend to fuse to me like that. He really was quite tall.

But wow. It seemed he meant what he’d been saying: he truly thought I was beautiful, desirable.

It boggled the mind.

He reached into the refrigerator and plucked up the cruet of dressing. Cocking a smile, he said, “Shall we?”

Cool, as if that kiss, or rather insta-seduction, had never happened. Maybe he just liked the challenge of arousing a relative innocent? I picked up the salad and gave him a scornful, “Sure.” Thrusting my chin in the air I stalked for the door.

As I passed he bent and brushed a chaste kiss on my cheek. I stopped, and threw a suspicious glance at him. His smile was smaller, more intimate, his eyes sparkling bright. “If it were simply the challenge, I’d have bedded you already, not drawn it out. Two courses to go.”

I wondered if I would survive.

Mom was circling the table, filling cups with wine. “A toast. To company, both new and old.”

I sat and murmured “Cheers” with everyone, then drank a healthy swallow. The wine went down smoothly. I peered into the paper cup; it was actually pretty good. Then again, I have no taste. I glanced at Dragan to see his reaction.

As he drank, his dark eyes were focused totally on me. His tongue slid over his lips. I shivered at the warmth in his gaze.

So yes. Good wine. Chalk one up for Mom.

I’d barely finished chasing my last cherry tomato around the firetruck when my mother said brightly, “Main course please, Rocky. The ham is under the tin foil, and the butter-and-spinach pasta and green bean casserole are on the counter. Oh, and there’s cranberry sauce in the fridge. Dragan, do you mind bringing out the jug of blush wine to go with?”

A different wine with each course? She’d made a huge effort to be chic—for me, because she loved me. My eyes stinging a bit, I grabbed the salad bowl and escaped into the kitchen.

Dragan followed with the cruet, gliding in like a big black panther.

The moment the door shut he grabbed the bowl, set it on the counter, seized my wrist and whirled me into his embrace. All thoughts of my mother disappeared. His touch woke my skin, his male scent filled my nose and my chin was already lifting in anticipation of another kiss.

So it was a complete shock when he buried his lips in my neck.

I gasped. The skin there is
sensitive
. His kisses and licks and nibbles thrilled straight to my belly as if hot wired. My eyes closed and I found my hands running through his hair, hair as warm and soft and fresh-smelling as bath oil.

He spun me into the counter and lifted me onto it. He stepped between my raised legs, his hips pressing into my private flesh, only a few layers of cloth making it less than hotly scandalous.

And then his fingers, those long, strong, elegant fingers, slid between us and stroked down the zipper of my slacks to the seam, down until they kissed my rising clitoris. He purred almost inaudibly and began to stroke.

I gasped again. He nibbled my earlobe and stroked me harder. I swallowed several times. I could feel the dampness between us, my sex going from hello to
Willkommen
,
bienvenue
, welcome, come on in! I grabbed his arms for support, my fingers barely denting massive biceps.

My skin tingled all over, my blood effervesced like soda water, yet my limbs were strangely pliant. My heart raced to keep up with the new sensations. My eyes slid shut as my pelvis grew heavy and dark with throbbing.

“Why are you doing this?” I panted.

“Mmm.” His breath billowed against my neck. “Because you taste exquisite. You feel exquisite. You are exquisite.”

Exquisite? When folks said my flute playing was exquisite, I took it as a mild sort of hyperbole. No one had ever told me
I
was exquisite.

A flood of need
splooshed
.

“Whatch-you kids doin’ out there?” Nixie yelled.

I scrunched my lids briefly before opening my eyes. Dragan raised his head from the crook of my neck with a sigh and let go. I scooted off the countertop and bolted to the refrigerator. Well, wobbled.

A cylinder of cranberry sauce still bearing the circular marks of its can was in the fridge. I grabbed the bowl and abandoned the fridge to Dragan, skirting him with a yard of airspace to get to the end of the counter where the rest of the food sat. He’d already taken the pasta.

I picked up the chipped rummage-sale dish covered in aluminum foil; underneath would be a canned ham bristling cloves. I didn’t eat ham but I could smell the wine baste that my mom had used and blinked scratchy eyes. She really had gone all out. Next to the ham was the green bean and cream of mushroom soup casserole served at every family holiday dinner from Augusta, Maine to San Diego, California.

Hands full of ham and cranberry sauce, I stared at it in consternation.

Dragan sauntered over, holding the pasta and the jug of blush wine, and picked up the casserole dish with his free hand. I did a double take—no, he didn’t have three hands. The jug hung by its loop off his ring and pinky fingers while thumb, index and middle held the pasta securely. The man had insanely strong hands.

Well, I knew that, from the power of his strokes between my thighs… I scooted for the living room, my face a furnace.

I slid the ham onto the table and sat. Dragan deposited his burdens and sat next to me. With a small, intimate smile, he leaned over and squeezed my hand.

He acted like the chipped serving dishes, the kiddy plates, hell, our whole cheap and inelegant life didn’t matter.

Was it possible I’d underestimated him?

Food disappeared, although I never saw the men eat. They drank, they laughed, they talked. Luke lost the haunted look in his eyes for a time. Even some of the animosity between Julian and Dragan seemed to die down in the presence of food, drink and company. My mother didn’t say much but she was smiling and nodding at the others enjoying themselves. Even the dark circles from Nixie’s sleepless nights seemed to lift.

When the plates were empty and the serving bowls nearly so, my mother said, “And now for dessert. I made a cobbler. There’s cream to go with it.” She gave me a look. “Real cream. Not half-and-half.”

I smiled into her eyes. “Thanks, Mom.” I didn’t mean for the cream; I meant for everything, and her return smile said she knew it.

Dragan took me by the elbow. I shivered at his touch—more kisses in the offing? He guided me into the kitchen and then, to my surprise, kept going.

“The cobbler’s in the fridge—”

“I have a different dessert in mind.” He steered me to the back door and opened it. “Quickly now.”

“But—”

“They will simply find more ways to interfere. We have a small window of time before the big bad Alliance males notice we’re missing.” He shut the door soundlessly. “Let’s make the most of it.”

He hustled me through our tiny backyard into the alley that split our block in two. We’d just hit the street, half a block away, when a door slammed open.

“Rocky!” Julian sounded beyond peeved.

“Now we must really hurry.” Dragan scooped me up and ran. I grabbed his neck; we didn’t quite leave my teeth behind but he was motoring.

“Zajicek!” Julian again, closer. “Bring her back. You’ll pay if you hurt her!”

He emerged from the alley behind us. His eyes were a pissed-off violet, extra-long canines flashing as he shouted. “Zajicek!”

Dragan was already shoveling me into his low slung sports car—where had that come from?—and leaping into the driver’s side and starting the engine with a deep-throated
vroom
and zooming away from the curb.

I twisted in my seat to see Julian put on a burst of speed, running so fast his feet blurred. Dragan accelerated, smoothly but he wasn’t shy about it, introducing metal to floorboard and breaking a few speed limits—like the sound barrier. Hyperbole, but we quickly left Julian behind.

And then we left the city behind, and it was us and the road and the speed and the wind. I tipped my head back; strands of my hair whipped around my face.