Only for you , mi corazón. His hips moved impulsively as she stroked him. Do you know what you are doing to me?
I can feel it, she said, panting into his mind. I can feel what you feel. This is amazing. This is wonderful. This is . . . oh, you really like this, don’t you?
His eyes rolled back in his head for a few seconds before he growled at her, deep from his chest.
“And what of you, temptress? Do you like this?” he asked, his fingers parting her, finding areas with gentle brushes of his fingertips that he knew were driving her mad with ecstasy. Her mouth burned on his, her tongue twining around his in a way that almost pushed him beyond control. Tell me what you want, mi cielito.
More, she demanded, I want more.
He broke off the kiss, her eyes glazed with passion. “Do you know what you are asking? ” His voice was rough with emotion, the erotic images in her mind mirroring his.
“Yes. I don’t care. I just want you. Right here. Right now.”
She found a rhythm that made him grit his teeth with the need to not end it all in her hands, his pleasure spiraling wildly out of control until he could bear it no longer. He pressed her against the rock, lifting her hips to him, the hot center of her beckoning to him. He slid into her with a groan of purest pleasure, one that was echoed by her as she shifted her hips, taking him even deeper.
Please tell me you’re close, he all but begged as she bucked against him, her legs wrapped around his thighs. I won’t last long. And if you don’t stop thinking things like that, I’m not going to last, period.
Now! she yelled into his mind. Do it now!
He thrust hard against her, mindless to everything but the need for completion, the burning hunger that roared out of control when her muscles grabbed him, spasming around him as she found her pleasure.
Feed! she demanded, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her back arched against him as the tremors of her orgasm locked her muscles tight.
He couldn’t have stopped himself if the world were ending. He bit the spot behind her ear that seemed to beckon to him, feeling her jerk against him for a second before relaxing with a sigh of rapture as he drank. He shared the sensation with her, so she could feel the power of feeding, and that fulfillment joined with his arousal until he thrust deep within her, his climax so powerful, it left him drained of every emotion but one.
And that he refused to acknowledge.
Chapter Four
The moment Alec’s orgasm claimed him was the moment the truly reprehensible part of my mind pointed out two things that it felt were important—the first was that I had just had mind-blowingly fabulous sex with a murderous vampire, and the second was that I’d just had mind-blowingly fabulous sex with a murderous vampire . . . right out in the middle of the Akasha. That last point was driven home when in the distance I heard a scream of anger.
Alec pulled back, his breath as rough as mine, the sense of shared fulfillment fading as we stared at each other.
“Good lord. I had sex with you. Right here. Where anyone could have seen us.” The taste of him lingered in my mouth, a sweet taste, one I doubted I’d ever get enough of.
Stop it! I yelled at my little devil. Stop pointing things out like that! For god’s sake, look what you made me do—I had sex with a vampire!
“You don’t have to say the word “vampire” like it’s revolting. We prefer ‘Dark One,’ anyway,” he said, withdrawing from me with an audibly wet noise that had me wincing in embarrassment.
“Sorry,” I murmured. “I was a little bit . . . enthusiastic.”
To my utter surprise—and inner delight—he grinned as he tucked himself away. “You weren’t the only one who was enthusiastic, querida.”
I bent to retrieve my underwear and jeans, not able to look him in the eye after my wholly irresponsible and completely uncharacteristic behavior, still a little weirded out by his choosing querida as a term of endearment.
It was clear he didn’t understand that I was the woman who had been killed, hadn’t put together the pieces of the puzzle I’d so disjointedly spilled. And although god knew I was physically attracted to him, the last thing I wanted was to be in Jacintha’s position—bound to him forever.
Why not? the devil inside me asked before I hushed it up, worried Alec might overhear it. You’re here. You’re lonely. He’s in pain. You could comfort him. He’d be grateful for that. He might even come to love you.
I closed my eyes against the pain that thought brought with it. I didn’t want to be merely a convenience—I wanted a man who would choose me because of who I was, not because of some connection that was lost several hundred years before, and certainly not because of one random act of sex.
Oh, dear god, that was the single most erotic, most fulfilling experience of my life. But as the endorphins faded, the thought returned to me that I had had sex with a vampire. Jas would never let me live that down if she ever heard of it.
“Who is Jas?”
“Jacintha. My sister. And stop reading my mind.”
“Stop projecting into my mind if you don’t want me to read your thoughts. Jacintha, eh? The one who is a . . .” I felt the brush of his mind against mine for a moment. “A Beloved? Interesting. I do not know this Avery Scott, but I do not get to Britain much.”
“I object to you just marching into my head whenever you like,” I told him, my hands on my hips now that I was decent again. “I don’t think it’s polite at all.”
“That fact that I’ve marked you isn’t right, either, but that doesn’t seem to concern you.” He frowned at me. “Just who are you?”
“I’ve told you three times now!”
“Yes, I know your name, and I know that you’re mortal, and that you hum when you orgasm, but who are you? Why are you here, and why did you revive me?”
“I felt sorry for you, more fool me,” I said, pushing past him to glare at the gently rolling landscape of rocks, dirt, and more rocks. “I hum? Really?”
“Yes.”
“How mortifying.” It was, too. I had no idea I was a hummer.
He shrugged. “I don’t see why you’d feel that way. I think it’s charming.”
I stared over my shoulder at him. “You’re . . . you’re a strange man.”
“That’s been said before. Is that why you came on to me, because you felt sorry for me?”
“I did not come on to you! You were the one thinking all sorts of smutty thoughts about me!”
“You thought them about me, too.”
“Only because you put them in my mind! Besides, you manhandled me!”
He raised one glossy black eyebrow, looking me over from crown to toes. “If I had manhandled you, love, you wouldn’t be standing right now. I will admit to responsibility for a certain amount of what just happened, but I don’t make a habit of engaging in sexual acts with women I’ve just met.”
There was an odd sort of mental twitch, as if his words weren’t quite the truth. I tried to peer into his mind to see just what it was he was shielding from me, but I lacked the ability to just go marching into his head as he did mine.
“Well, thank you so much for making me sound like a great big ho!” I slapped his arm. “For your information, I have never, ever had sex with a man who I knew less than six weeks. Minimum! So you can just stuff that in your ‘I’m so incredibly sexy, women can’t keep their paws off me’ pipe and smoke it!”