“You want to stop kissing me?” Her voice was barely a whisper, and she peeked up at him from beneath her eyelashes, and he thought this must be the hardest thing he’d ever done. Talk about self-sacrifice.
Nobility.
Cold freaking showers.
“No, I never want to stop kissing you, but I want to hold you, and I want us to sleep,” he said, clenching his jaws shut against the please, please, please, I need to be inside you right now that he was really thinking.
She squirmed and pushed away from him a little, just far enough for him to see the luscious pink tips of her full, round breasts. He listened to the blood pulsing through her veins, and the monster in him hungered to come out and bite.
He prayed for strength. This was Serai. If he bit her—if he took her blood—then he was nothing more than the beast, and he deserved to die horribly and alone. He deserved for her to shove him away in disgust. He wished she would.
He prayed she didn’t.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she said. “I want you to touch me.”
She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and the beast quieted, perhaps in shock at being willingly touched; the man took over. Daniel gave up the idea of complete nobility as a lost cause, because touching her body was a far, far better choice than sinking his fangs into her throat. He could push simple desire to the fore and shove bloodlust to the dark recesses of his soul.
He would. He must.
Forcing his fangs to retract, he flipped her onto her back and pounced, taking her breasts in both hands, and finally, oh, by all the glorious wonders, finally, he kissed them and then each nipple in turn. When she gasped and clutched his hair, he gave in and licked one peak into his mouth and sucked on it until she was crying out and trembling underneath him, and then he gave no quarter but instead treated the other breast to the same tender care.
He would pleasure her until she came, crying out his name, and then—then—he would make her sleep. Surely that was noble enough.
Serai cried out again and was almost rational enough to wonder if anyone could hear her through the walls, but then she didn’t care, when Daniel did that wonderful thing with his mouth to her breast and pure liquid fire shot through her body from her nipples to her most private parts. He turned to her other breast and took that nipple into his mouth while he gently pinched the other with his fingers, and she cried out again, wanting something, not knowing what, but needing—needing something.
Needing him.
So she told him, since her psychic commands weren’t working. “Daniel, I need—I need—”
“I know, mi amara,” he said, putting his hand between her thighs, right where she needed it, and stroking a finger through the hot wet slickness that had somehow appeared. And then his finger touched her right there and she cried out.
It wasn’t just heat, it wasn’t just passion, it was more, so much more. The man she’d dreamed of for eleven thousand years was kissing her and touching her, and oh, dear Poseidon, she thought she might actually explode from the pleasure and unbearable rightness of it.
“Daniel! That’s . . . you . . . oh, yes, yes, yes,” she said, as he kept rubbing her there in that most sensitive of spots. His finger pushed a little inside her and she gasped, and then his talented fingers, now wet and slippery, applied just the right amount of pressure, and her body shattered into a thousand fractured prisms of light.
He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, murmuring gentle, meaningless words as she trembled in his arms; just rocking her slightly back and forth, holding her until the tremors shuddering through her body from his touch subsided.
“That was . . . was that . . . was that making love?”
He smiled at her, but his face looked a bit strained. “Yes, but it gets even better than that.”
“I’m not sure I would survive better,” she admitted, and he laughed.
“You should sleep now,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face. “You need to rest. This has been a pretty big day for your first day awake in millennia.”
“You have a talent for understatement.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
Before she could protest, he tipped her chin up and pressed a brief, gentle kiss on her lips, then captured her gaze with his own.
“You should sleep now,” he said again, and a red gleam flared in his pupils.
She knew she should argue with him, but she was just so sleepy, and after all, he was right, they needed to sleep, and—Oh.
Oh, no.
“You used your nightwalker hypnotic powers on me,” she said, fighting against it, but the compulsion was too strong. The last thing she saw was the smile on his beautiful face, and then the room went dark as she sank into sleep.
Daniel smiled at her, even though his body was screaming at him to jump up, take a cold shower, or, better yet, take his cock in his own hand and give himself just a little bit of relief from the screaming pitch of need. He lasted about five minutes lying there, trying to be content to watch her sleep, but—as he’d told her—he was only a man.
He climbed out of bed, hit the shower, and did both.
Chapter 13
After a few restless hours of not-quite-sleeping and one short trip to the street outside of the hotel bar to relieve a drunken tourist of a pint of blood he’d never miss, Daniel lay again in bed next to Serai, holding a long strand of her silken hair in his fingers and wondering how long he could bear it before he woke her and took her, claiming every inch of her body as his. He wanted her to wake up with his cock sliding into the sweet warmth of her body, and only the knowledge of her innocence stopped him from acting on that desire.
Instead, he gritted his teeth and thought about unappetizing things like turnips, lima beans, and congressional politics. As the first fingers of dawn’s light made their way through the tiny gap in the curtains, Daniel heard the measured tread of the footsteps in the hallway. He jumped out of bed, clothed himself, and raced to the door, daggers handy although probably unnecessary. It sounded like Reisen’s walk, and Daniel’s excellent vampire hearing was generally dead-on about such things.
He pulled open the door to find Reisen standing there with one hand raised to knock. Daniel stepped out on to the green-and-gold patterned carpet of the hallway and gently closed the door.
“She needs to sleep. Yesterday was a strain.”
Reisen’s eyes widened. “Is that some vampire thing? Gargantuan understatement? A strain? She could have died.”
“It’s even worse than you know,” Daniel said grimly. “Is there someplace we can talk?”
“There’s a coffee shop in the lobby. Few humans are about at this hour. Melody is waiting there.” Reisen paused and then shrugged. “It’s against an inner wall, away from any windows. You’ll be fine there.”
“Not used to worrying about whether a bloodsucker bursts into flames, are you, Atlantean?” Daniel said, grinning.
“It’s a first.” Reisen waved the stump of his arm in the air. “I figure I owe you one. At least.” The warrior’s face turned grim, probably remembering that horrible day when an evil vampire named Barrabas had captured and tortured him.
“How about coffee, and we’re even?” Daniel hesitated, concerned about what Serai would do if she woke up alone. Whether she’d be afraid. “I’ll meet you there,” he told Reisen, and then slipped back into the room, wrote a quick note, and put it on the pillow next to Serai. Her face was burrowed in the pillow, so all he could see was the sensual curve of her arm and neck, but it was enough to make him want to climb into the bed with her and finish what he’d started only hours earlier.