The Merzetti Effect (A Vampire Romance) (14 page)

And she went rigid, pushing against his chest.

Damn, damn, damn
. No ignoring that signal. His hands tightened on her waist at the thought of releasing her so soon, but he forced his grip to slacken, letting her pull back.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me.” Did he look as stiff as he sounded? Probably. But casual seemed to be beyond him at the moment. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

“What? Are you kidding?” Her eyes blazed up at him in disbelief. “That’s been coming for weeks. Don’t even pretend otherwise. I just want you to get rid of that thing.”

He might have corrected her‌—‌he’d been thinking about this for exactly twelve days‌—‌but his mind was distracted by her last comment. “What thing?”

“The gun.” She glanced pointedly at his lab coat pocket. “Could we put it aside, please, just for the next few minutes? I’m sure it’s perfectly safe, but I don’t like them. I’ve seen too many gunshot wounds roll through the OR to be comfortable with firearms.”

He drew the offending Walther from his pocket and placed it on the workbench. “Better?”

“Much better.” She gave him a smile, knowing and sexy and intimate.

His heart kicked it up another notch, and it struck him afresh that he was courting disaster.

Disaster?
Hell, he could be courting death itself. He needed to stop this madness before‌—‌

She slid back into his arms and he forgot to think because her mouth was on his again, and oh, merciful God, there was no way he was stopping. Not yet. Not before he absolutely had to. With a groan, he cupped her head, angling her face for better access and also to slow her down.

This was all there could be, all he dared allow, this mating of mouths and the agonizing sweetness of bodies brushing together. Oh, precious Jesus, he had to make it last.

He lifted his head, and when she tried to recapture his lips, he restrained her. “Slowly, Ainsley. Slowly.”

Better?

Yes, this was definitely better, she thought, as she surfaced from yet another long, drugging kiss. Better than any dream. Better even than her last lover, and he’d been very, very good. Of course, between her shifts at the hospital and Clay’s shift at the police station, their relationship was more of a “hi, bye, thanks for the orgasm” kind of thing. Then Delano nibbled the corner of her mouth, and she forgot about Clay Davidson.

Again, he took his time exploring her mouth. Again, she tasted the inexplicable but unmistakable flavor of a fine scotch. She’d never seen him drink any beverage, let alone something alcoholic, but there was no mistaking the taste of scotch whiskey on his tongue. Yet beneath the smoky, slightly mossy taste lay pure Delano. Dizzy with the pleasure of it, she pressed closer.

His hands still cupped her head, and she desperately wanted them on her body. On her breasts. On her ass. And oh, yes, between her thighs. She wanted it with a violence that left her trembling. She wanted him buried deep inside her, with his mouth at her throat, gleaming cuspids elongated and grazing her skin, tantalizing her with the promise of a joining more intimate, more thrilling, than anything she’d ever known.

But dammit, she also wanted this slow torture. She wanted to spin it out as long as they could possibly stand. This first exquisite exploration came only once.

He pulled back again, but this time she didn’t protest. This time she trusted him. And she wasn’t disappointed.

Winding one hand into her hair, he tugged her head back, exposing her throat.

Okay, straight to the main event. That worked too.

Her pulse leapt, and she closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself as he must see her, her throat exposed and vulnerable. Raw excitement shot straight to her core as she waited for him to lower his mouth to her throat, to rake his teeth over her skin…

“Ainsley, look at me.”

Dazed, she opened her eyes to find him looking at her with an expression that seemed torn between scorching need and tortured regret.

Regret?

He released his grip on her hair, but he didn’t pull away as she half expected. Instead, he lifted his hand to her mouth, drawing the pad of his thumb across her lower lip. Swollen and sensitized as her flesh was from his thorough, meticulous attention, the light caress made her shiver.

He closed his eyes, as though to better absorb even that fleeting sensation. When he opened his eyes again, they blazed with a ferocity that should have frightened her.

She opened her mouth on his thumb, and let the salt taste of his skin bloom on her tongue, mingling with the whiskey taste his mouth had imparted.

“Delano‌—”

“God, I love your mouth.” His words were thick. “It was made for this.”

Unbearably aroused, she bit the fleshy pad of his thumb.

“Ainsley!”

His body went rigid, but she wasn’t sure if it was rigid good or rigid bad. But he hadn’t withdrawn his thumb, so she ran her tongue over it. Soothing, soothing.

Then she bit it again.

His control snapped. Suddenly, his hands were everywhere she’d wanted them to be, hard and demanding, his mouth fierce on hers. Oh, yes, please. He pushed her up against the nearest workbench, the better to grind his lower body against her. The urgent thrust of his arousal against her belly inflamed her beyond reason, and his hands left trails of fire on her skin.

Mindless with need, she rubbed her breasts against his chest. God, was that her making those noises? He was making her crazy. She wanted him to tear her clothes off before she burned up. She wanted to hook a leg behind his and take him down to the floor. She wanted to free the impressive erection straining against his trousers, and climb onto it. God help her, she wanted to scream, “Fuck me already!”

Instead, she did the next best thing. She insinuated her left hand between them to cup the bulge of his erection. Oh, Lord, it was nice. She squeezed gently.

He growled against her mouth, and she swallowed the gratifyingly desperate sound. Then, before she could guess his intention, he lifted her and deposited her on the edge of the workbench. She felt something hard poking into her back, but then he moved between her spread thighs and she forgot about the discomfort. All of her attention focused on the hard heat of him pressed against the center of her universe. Could he feel how wet and ready she was?

“Del‌—”

He covered her mouth, cutting off what surely would have been the plea she’d suppressed a few seconds ago. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, penetrating it in the way she wanted his engorged‌—‌

The thought died when she heard the unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked.

“
H
I
,
GUYS
. D
ID
you miss me?”

Delano’s blood froze. Goddammit. He was the world’s biggest idiot. Worse than an idiot. He was a fool.

He released Ainsley, careful to pull her t-shirt down from where he’d thrust it high atop her breasts before moving the shield of his body away.

“Okay, Eli,” he drawled. “Point made. That was terribly careless of me.”

Eli held the pistol Delano had left on the workbench, letting it dangle harmlessly in his hand. “In more ways than one.”

Delano met Eli’s steely gray gaze. “I repeat, point made.”

“God, Eli, you scared the hell out of me.” Ainsley’s voice was high and thin. Her lips were red and swollen from their kisses, the delicate skin of her face and neck pink from the abrasion of his stubble-roughened face. She smoothed her hair, her clothing, as though she could smooth her composure back into place with her hands. “Maybe next time you could just call out ‘I’m back’ or something like that.”

“Sorry.” With a smooth motion, Eli uncocked the Walther again and laid it back on the workbench. “As our boss so quickly surmised, I was making a point.”

Ainsley blushed, though whether from the not-so-subtle reminder that the man she’d been making out with was her boss, or just the fact that she’d been caught making out, was anyone’s guess. Then her chin came up.

“This was my fault, Eli. Really. Del wanted to head up to bed. I mean,
his
bed. Oh, you know what I mean.” Her flush deepened. “Our respective beds. Alone. But I detained him.”

Before she could stammer out any more, Delano interrupted with a question for Eli. “How was St. Cloud?”

“Busy.”

“The blood supply?”

“Back up and flowing. Though we’re not taking blood. I figured you had that covered here.”

Delano nodded his approval. “And the house?”

“Repairs’ll be done within the month, complete with refurbished lab.” He glanced at Ainsley, then back to Delano. “We really should talk.”

Ainsley leapt on Eli’s words, evidently grateful for the chance to bolt. “I’m sure you two have lots to discuss. I’ll just make my way back upstairs.” She turned to Delano. “Thank you for the tour.”

He inclined his head. “No trouble.”

When the door closed behind her, Eli snorted. “Thanks for the tour?”

Delano scowled. “She was bored. She just came down here looking for a little diversion.”

“And you provided it, I see.”

“Eli,” he said warningly.

“Oh, go to hell with that tone, Delano.”

“Excuse me?”

“My job, or a pretty sizeable part of it, is to protect you. But dammit, I can’t do that if you’re going to put yourself in front of a freakin’ freight train every time I look away.”

Delano stiffened. “For pity’s sake, I was just kissing her. Since when did you, of all people, decide kissing an attractive woman was a crime?”

“
Kissing her?
Delano, I was here. You were about to devour the woman. And this is not some morality judgment thing. You know me better than that. This is about you not dying before we can find a tool to fight these bastards.”

Delano scrubbed a hand across his face. “You’re right.”

“Damn right I am.”

Delano looked at his thumb. It still bore the slight but unmistakable indentation of her teeth. Jesus. He wouldn’t have taken her blood. Given the stakes, he had enough self-control to stop before that happened, no matter what Eli thought.

And no matter what else happened…

But she’d bitten him. Twice. If she’d broken the skin… Though thankfully saliva wasn’t the best vehicle for transmission for most viruses. Witness the rarity of HIV transmission from oral contact, or even from biting, for that matter.

Eli just stood there, as though expecting something more. Delano raked his hair back off his face. Dammit. In his own defense, he wanted to point out that Ainsley had been the aggressor. She’d literally grabbed him by the lapels and laid a lip-lock on him. The only problem with using that defense was his natural instinct to shield a lady.

Besides, it would be a cop-out. He could have fended her off easily, had he really wanted to. He just hadn’t been able to deny himself the interlude.

“It won’t happen again.”

Eli snorted. “Come on, man, I’ve seen the way you look at her. Hell, I’ve seen the way she looks at you. This isn’t gonna go away. You have to tell her. You have to explain why it could be disastrous for the two of you to hook up.”

His mouth hardened. “No.”

“Delano‌—”

“Don’t you think I’ve done the equation a hundred times? It still comes out the same. One way or another, her blood killed Edward Webber, even though it was not her choice. It may yet kill more predators before we have a workable vaccine to protect the vulnerable. But if we’re going to curb the behavior of those rogues, Ainsley is our only hope. You and I, we’re veterans of this war, Eli. We’ve taken lives.”

Eli’s hands clenched at his sides. “We’ve stopped ruthless killers!”

“Granted. But don’t you see their faces in your dreams, Eli? Don’t you see the humanity in them in those last moments before the spark of life leaves them? In the end, they are but men who lacked the strength to cling to their own humanity in the face of this mutation.”

“What I see in my nightmares is that sonofabitch who slaughtered half my team in Afghanistan.”

Delano lifted an eyebrow. “So you don’t suffer any pangs in those hours when everyone else is asleep?”

“Shit, Delano.”

“Would you have Ainsley carry the same weight? Wrestle the same demons in her sleep?”

Eli closed his eyes and sighed. “Have I mentioned how much I hate it when you pull this sensei crap?”

“A time or two.”

Eli took a deep breath and expelled it. “Okay, fuck it. Forget about this vaccine thing. We can hunt them down and kill them, one at a time.”

Delano rubbed a hand across his forehead. “We could. But as long as there are vulnerable populations, there will always be another predator to take the place of the ones we slay. We have to make that … lifestyle … untenable. Which brings us back to Ainsley’s blood.”

Eli looked away. “I don’t like it, Del. She should have the chance to choose for herself.”

Del?
Ainsley must be rubbing off. “And what if she chooses to withhold her genetic gift?”

Eli swore.

Delano pressed his advantage. “Our security is top notch. You made sure of it personally. Janecek is not going to get to her. All we need to do is make sure she keeps her distance from me, and all will be well.”