At the same time, he had managed to undo nearly all the buttons of her shirt and was working on the last as he kissed her lips again. He rested his hand on her right breast, cupping it through the thin fabric of her undershirt. Alexia gasped as he began to massage her, rolling her nipple between his fingers without baring her skin.
Then his mouth was on her breast, wetting the fabric with his tongue while his fingers found the fly of her pants. When he had unbuttoned her pants and unzipped them, he pushed her undershirt up above her breasts and resumed kissing and suckling them with a hunger she knew was as potent as her desire. He flicked his tongue over the tips of her nipples and then kissed his way down, between her breasts and below the arc of her ribs.
He pushed the waistband of her pants down to her hips, and she arched her body so that he could pull the pants all the way off.
Then he stopped.
“Damon?” she whispered, lost in a haze of pleasure.
His eyes, when they met hers, were almost those of a stranger. But not a dangerous one, not like what he had been before he had left with Michael.
The emotion was there, yes—passion laced with lust and bewilderment, as if he had as much trouble believing this was happening as she did.
“It’s all right, Damon,” she said, pulling him down again. “I’m all right, and I want this. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”
Whatever had made him hesitate, her words broke the spell. He bent to kiss her navel and continued below, working toward the powerful ache that only he could cure. He reached her tight nest of curls and slid his tongue into the tender depression beneath.
Alexia moaned as he tasted the soft, moist flesh, stroking and exploring. She tangled her fingers in his thick hair, urging him to drink deeply. He licked his way to her entrance and dipped in, just for an instant, before working back up to her clitoris. He took it between his lips and sucked, drawing Alexia to a nearly unbearable pinnacle of need. Pleasure became pain, pain pleasure. She began to throb and tremble, balancing on the brink of a fall that would never end.
But when she stepped over the edge, Damon was there to catch her. She felt herself pulse wildly against his mouth, felt him lick the moisture from her swollen lips as if it were the only sustenance he would ever need.
But he wasn’t finished, and almost as soon as it was over she felt a renewed ache between her thighs—an overpowering need to be filled with everything Damon could give her.
He licked his lips, savoring the sweet taste of Alexia’s body. He was not ignorant of the many flavors of a woman, but never had he experienced it this way before. Not even with—
He pushed the memories away. Alexia deserved everything he had to offer her, and he needed to be inside her as much as he needed blood to stay alive.
Positioning himself over her, he unzipped his fly, too impatient to remove his pants.
She spread her thighs wide to accommodate him, and he settled between them, his cock briefly resting between her stomach and his. Then he lifted himself, shuddering as her hand found him and guided him in.
His need was too intense to control. With a long, slow thrust he entered her, listening to her gasp of surprise and moan of pleasure as she felt him begin to move. She was tight and very wet, and he knew for all her casualness about sex that she hadn’t been with a man for a long time.
But she didn’t ask him to be gentle, and for all his efforts to move slowly, his hunger continued to drive him. He thrust deeply and pulled out, thrust hard again, and all the while Alexia gripped his shoulders and urged him on. Her head rolled back and her eyelids fluttered. She cried out his name.
When she finally came again, pulsing hard around his cock, he followed her quickly, pumping fast to fill her with seed that could never create life. He released his breath and buried his face in her neck, still tucked inside her, reveling in the scent of her perspiration and the hot femininity of her sex.
But this wasn’t only about his pleasure, his need. He lifted himself up again so that he could see her face. It was flushed and relaxed, but when her eyes opened and her lips parted to display her teeth, he knew she wasn’t really seeing him. She wasn’t aware what was happening when her incisors grazed his neck, pressed gently down and pierced the skin. She had no idea that she was saving herself as she licked up the blood and sucked it from his veins, but for him it was pleasure even beyond pushing deep inside her body, and he knew it was the same for her.
He wasn’t forcing her. Her own body was doing what instinct told it to do. She was keeping her promise to him, and he wasn’t going to stop her, not even if she hated him afterward.
A strange feeling overwhelmed Damon, and it was so unfamiliar that he didn’t recognize it until he heard his heart beating in time with hers.
It was joy. And as he felt Alexia’s tongue trail over his skin and his blood flow into her mouth, he knew this moment, this emotion, would never come again. When she jerked again beneath him in a third orgasm, her thighs locking around his waist and her gasps of pleasure mingling with his, he thanked whatever gods might be that they had found each other for this brief moment in time.
When Alexia woke, everything had changed.
She felt it first in her heart, beating strong and steady for the first time since her patch had been stripped from her skin. Next she noticed that the pain under her arm was gone, and when she felt the wound she found it cool and dry to the touch, hardly even a trace of a scab remaining. Her whole body hummed with energy and an inexplicable happiness.
Breathing in a lungful of late-morning air, Alexia realized that all her senses had been renewed, sight and smell and hearing, as if she had taken one of the illegal drugs that were said to create a sense of oneness with the world that could change a human’s experience for a lifetime.
But the only drug she had ingested was her joining with the man beside her, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, his expression so relaxed that she realized just how much he had suffered trying to protect her and keep her alive. Here he had no masters, no ugly memories...only peace, for a few precious hours.
She had new memories now— good memories of lying beside Damon, quivering with excitement as he found all the most sensitive spots she’d forgotten, tasting her breasts and farther below, where his tongue had searched out the very center of her need.
And she remembered him moving inside her, fitting so perfectly that she could imagine it was her first time, her first lover, and there could never be another. She remembered her own moans and cries as he thrust deeper, harder, carrying her into a white-hot sun of pleasure beyond description.
After that...Alexia sighed, closing her eyes as the warmth of the rising sun, creeping over the hills to the east, bathed her face and shoulders. There had been those few moments of utter bliss at the end, an explosion of sensation that had blotted out all thought and consciousness, everything but that eternal moment of ecstasy. She could still feel her body humming with it.
Had Damon felt the same thing? Did it really matter? They had comforted each other, giving and taking in equal measure. That was all anyone could ask.
More than she had ever asked for. Or could ever expect to come again.
Unwilling to wake Damon, Alexia rose silently and went for her pack and canteen. Her balance had returned, along with the strength in her legs. She knelt to pick up the canteen and realized it was nearly empty. So was Damon’s. Almost certainly he had given her most of the water when she’d been ill, but she was pretty sure even Daysiders needed to drink something other than blood.