She tore her lips from his with a gasp and began to stroke him through his slacks. “What are you doing to me?”
He licked and kissed a fevered path down her throat. “If you have to ask, I’m not doing it right.”
She responded with a sound that was part laugh, part moan. “If you weren’t doing it right, I wouldn’t be this tempted.”
Continuing to stroke and squeeze him, she drove him nearly mad with lust.
Giving her nipple a pinch, he poised his mouth above her other breast. “How tempted are you?”
“Extremely tempted.”
Roland fastened his mouth onto her breast, dampening the material of her T-shirt, finding the hardened peak and teasing it with his teeth.
She groaned, inflaming him further. When she abandoned his erection, he nearly protested. Then both of her small hands reached around, grabbed his ass, and pulled him flush against her as she rose onto her toes.
“I’m not like this,” she gasped.
Leaning his body into hers, he slid his free hand down the outside of her thigh, tucked his hand beneath her knee, and drew her leg up over his hip. “I like you like this,” he murmured around her breast. He could feel her heart beating wildly in her chest.
He rocked against her, urged on by those hands on his ass and her leg over his hip.
“You don’t—” She moaned, arched into him. “Y-you don’t understand. I don’t”—another gasp—“I don’t have sex with men I’ve just met.”
He slid the hand at her knee up her thigh, down over her lovely ass and farther until he was stroking her hot, moist center through the damp material of her jeans. “By sex I assume you mean intercourse?”
“Yesss.”
He raised his head and met her hungry eyes. “No problem. I can give you orgasms without it.”
Sarah stared into those glowing eyes, then grabbed a fistful of his hair and dragged his mouth to hers. His fingers continued to stroke her through her jeans as his body thrust against hers, increasing the pressure, raising the pleasure, making her wild with need.
She began an almost frantic foray with her hands, gliding them over his back, his arms, his chest, feeling the hard, heavy muscle ripple beneath her palms. His lips left hers, sweeping down her neck, briefly closing over the pulse that raced just beneath the skin before returning to her breast. Her head fell back.
The hand teasing her other breast slid around her back and crushed her to him.
Pain burst through her in a shattering wave. Sarah stiffened and thought she may have cried out.
His head jerked up, his eyes seeking hers.
Blackness swam at the edges of her vision.
She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but his hands left her in a rush.
Concern flooding his features, he eased her thigh off his hip and lowered her foot to the floor. “Sarah?”
She shook her head, unable to speak, unable to breathe it hurt so badly. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Where does it hurt?”
She shook her head again.
Gently cupping her face in one large palm, he held her gaze as the amber glow in his began to fade to brown. “Breathe,” he commanded softly.
She did, each breath choppy and torturous, realizing only then that she was clutching fistfuls of his T-shirt. Jeeze, it hurt. Every time she inhaled, it felt as though someone were pounding her back with a sledgehammer.
His thumbs brushed aside a few tears that escaped as she gradually began to recover. “If you can’t tell me,” he enjoined quietly, “show me. Is it your upper or lower back?”
Had the pain not begun to mellow from agony to hurts-like-hell, she probably would have told him, knowing he could end it. But she remained silent, breath coming a little easier now.
Perhaps her expression revealed that it was no longer that she couldn’t tell him, but wouldn’t, because she could actually see the frustration well up within him and spill over his handsome features.
“Don’t be stubborn. I’m at full strength. It won’t harm me.”
“Yes, it will.” Uncurling her hands, she let them fall to her sides and did her best to appear normal.
Roland’s jaw clenched as he released her and took a step back. “Don’t make me regret being honest with you, Sarah.”
Clearly he wasn’t buying it. “You said it hurts you when you heal, that you absorb both the wound and the pain.”
“It is fleeting!” he practically shouted. “Do you have any idea how much pain I have suffered over the centuries?”
“Yes, and I don’t want to be the source of any more,” she insisted.
He started to respond, then clamped his lips shut. Silence filled the kitchen as he visibly wrestled with his temper. “Is that the true reason you don’t want me to heal you? Or is there another?”
She frowned. What other reason could there be?
Before she could ask, he turned and strode, fuming, from the room.
Nietzsche, seated beside his now-empty bowl, gave her a condemning look, then began to groom himself.
She was still standing there, unconsciously staring at the cat, when Marcus poked his head in a few minutes later.
He took one look at her face and sighed. “That’s what I thought.” He entered the kitchen, his upper body bare, one hand holding a sheet wrapped around his waist. Pink scars that only hours ago had been open cuts marred the muscles of his chest, abdomen, and arms. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “When you reject Roland’s gift, you’re rejecting him.”
How did he know …?
Dread filled her. “How much did you hear?”
He smiled. “Enough. Sorry about that. Couldn’t help it.”
Heat flooded her face. She had forgotten about their hyper-acute hearing. “I’m not rejecting his gift,” she said, trying not to think about the heavy breathing and moaning he must have heard.
“That probably isn’t how he sees it.” Coming closer, he leaned against the cabinets beside her. “Look, we immortals tend to be a little … sensitive about our gifts. Every one of us has been feared, ostracized, or even abused because of them in the past. And not just by strangers. If you let Roland touch you to bring you pleasure”—her flush deepened—“but don’t let him touch you to heal you with his gift, what else is he supposed to think but that that part of him repels you?”
She threw her hands up. “That I don’t want to hurt him!” Why was that so hard for them to understand?
He snorted. “Sarah, the vampire who transformed Roland didn’t just feed on him, he tortured him. For months.” Roland had left out that part of the story. “In comparison, healing whatever wounds you have would hurt him about as much as removing a splinter. And the pain would be just as fleeting since he’s at full strength and your wounds aren’t life-threatening.”
She eyed him uncertainly, thinking he must be exaggerating the part about it being so painless, but …
Did Roland really think that part of him repelled her?
“Besides,” Marcus added, “healing you will bring him peace. I could feel his concern for you all the way from the guest room and I’m not even an empath.”
She thought about it a moment longer, her back still screaming at her.
When you reject Roland’s gift, you’re rejecting him.
Nodding slowly, she touched Marcus’s arm in a brief gesture of thanks, then left the kitchen.
Steaming water flowed into the whirlpool tub with a dim roar as Roland stood in the bathroom, a packet of herbs forgotten in one hand. Since Sarah had refused to let him heal her, he had intended to run a bath for her that would soothe her aches and bruises. But that may not be necessary now.
Bending, he turned off the tap, tossed the herbs onto the counter, and crossed to the doorway.
Sarah stood in the center of the bedroom, looking uncertain, apologetic, and pained. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I don’t want you to think I …” She looked away, brow furrowing, then met his gaze once more. “Would you please heal my back, Roland?”