Grace pressed one fist hard between her breasts, telling herself the ache there couldn’t be a heart attack, no matter how wildly that organ was galloping. She hadn’t been sick a day since she’d come to work for Miss Wei. She was simply anxious and overwhelmed. Too many parts of her life were out of her control right now. The attraction she felt for Christian, the things about him she couldn’t explain, even the strange break-in at the cottage increased her feelings of insecurity. The weight of her past was too much to add to that. She couldn’t stuff it into its box right now. In fact, if she didn’t get out of here in the next two seconds, she was going to scream.
“Grace?” someone said, lightly touching her shoulder. “Does Miss Wei wants us to—”
Grace stared uncomprehending at the female PA, the ringing in her ears drowning out the question Evelyn was asking.
A second later, Grace jerked. Christian had appeared beside her like a conjurer’s trick, his battered cowboy hat on his head again. He was surrounding her with his upper body and leading her away, as if he’d read the desperate longing straight from her mind. Despite the relief she felt, she couldn’t let him do it.
“I’m okay,” she said, feebly shoving at him as he more or less dragged her toward the door. To her dismay, she could hardly hear her own voice. “Christian, I’m okay.”
He mustn’t have believed her. As soon as they cleared the house, he hooked one arm behind her knees and lifted her off her feet. She clung to him, unable to resist, her face hidden in his neck. God, he felt good. She hadn’t imagined how smooth his skin was the other night. It was soothingly cool even in the sunshine, and he smelled mysteriously like the beach. His hold shouldn’t have been so comforting, but it was. She dragged her nose up and down his throat.
His face had been steely, but this seemed to amuse him.
“Grace,” he said with a groaning laugh. “You truly are determined to drive me mad.”
T
he moment Christian saw the PA approach Grace, he knew he had to act. The symptoms Grace was exhibiting—the dead-white pallor, the sudden sweat and shortness of breath—were similar to those he’d seen in human soldiers he’d had charge of, often long after battles were over. Whatever triggered the attack, she was in no shape to be fielding questions, not if she didn’t want her colleagues guessing she was panicked.
He threw his glamour around them to deflect attention and carried her as swiftly as he dared to the wardrobe trailer. Thankfully, it was out of the sun and unoccupied. Andy Phelps must have run an errand. Reluctant to set Grace down, Christian found a fat chintz chair tucked between costume racks. He sat there with her curled up in his lap.
The part of him that was male loved how she snuggled closer. The part of him that had its wits about it noticed she was nattering about Ohio.
His hand slipped upward to stroke her short ponytail, tied today in a jaunty scarf. To his deep satisfaction, her breathing steadied at his caress. The queen might have blocked his ability to calm her with his aura, but he could still do it the old-fashioned way. “We’re in California, sweetheart, not Ohio. I can show you the palm trees.”
“I know. I was just telling myself that.” She wriggled in his lap, causing other male parts of him to stir. “You’re very soothing. Would you mind if I held you awhile longer?”
He laughed under his breath, mostly at himself for wanting her where she was. “If you stay, I think you should tell me what upset you.”
She sighed and let her head rest on his shoulder. “I died once.”
A chill ran across his scalp. “You died?”
“My father . . . It was sort of an accident. I made him angry, and he threw me into the fireplace. He was drunk. I don’t suppose he meant to do real damage, but it took the men from the ambulance six minutes to bring me back.”
Christian’s lips felt cold. His ghostly Grace hadn’t said much about the manner in which she died. He’d presumed she hadn’t wanted to dwell on it. All he really knew was that her father had caused her death. Unsure where this was leading, he reminded his hand to continue kneading the tightened muscles under her ponytail. A relaxed Grace would be a forthcoming one.
“When did this happen?”
“A little over six years ago. I was seventeen.”
Seventeen. The same age his ghostly Grace had been.
“Do you remember—” He had to swallow and begin again. If it were true . . . if she was his Grace, one and the same and not reincarnated . . . “Do you remember anything that happened when you were dead?”
She shook her head, rubbing her face against his collar in the process. He wanted to concentrate on her answer, but the sensual, catlike motion sent distracting twitches through the mechanism that allowed his fangs to erect. “I know some people see tunnels and lights and angels, but I don’t recall a thing. The afterlife was a blank to me.”
When she shivered, he pressed his lips to her hair. “It might have been more than that. Sometimes people forget things they can’t handle remembering.”
“You mean like hell?” Her tone was only half teasing.
“No,” he said, surprising himself with how serious he was. “I’m sure you didn’t go to hell.”
Her head drew back so she could look at him. She seemed calm now, almost contemplative, but, God, her green gaze went through him, a thick arrow of heat targeting his groin.
“I’m not who I was then,” she said. “I’m not a cowed little girl, afraid to kiss a boy or make a single friend. I’m Grace Michaels.
I
tell people what to do today.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I left that house. My parents. I never looked back again.”
He ran the knuckles of his fingers along her creamy cheek. “You shouldn’t look back. You should embrace who you’ve become.”
He hadn’t been considering what he was saying, the idiot inside him enjoying the unique pleasure of comforting her. Given how he was acting, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when she twisted in his hold and came to her knees. The sudden absence of her weight from his lap made him aware of how stiff and full his erection was, enough that he shifted on his haunches in discomfort. Her knees were wedged in the flowered armchair to either side of his hips, the skirt of her turquoise dress spread out over him. Even with his vampire senses dulled by daylight, he couldn’t miss the heat radiating out from her sex.
“I’m not afraid to kiss a boy now,” she said.
He sucked in a breath he didn’t usually need. Her thumbs stroked the little muscles to either side of his mouth. Beneath her right thumb, the dimple he didn’t like admitting he had threatened to turn visible. Slowly, carefully, she slid his sunglasses off. His hat was next, laid aside by slender fingers that couldn’t resist fondling it. Vampire though he was, he quivered at the strength of the anticipation that coursed through him.
“If you’re going to kiss me, I wish you would,” he said.
She bent to him, taking his mouth with a tenderness that made him ache right down to his soul. He couldn’t squash the reaction. Her kindness, or its semblance, had always been his downfall. Her tongue was sweet and thorough, rolling his, sucking his, pulling tingles down his spine and out the tip of his cock. On and on the oral caresses went. No one kissed him like this. No one cared enough, not in five hundred years. When she pulled back, her gentle hands still framing his face, he wanted to follow her.
“Oh, boy,” he said in spite of himself.
Her gaze lowered to the hump rising from his lap.
“I want to touch you,” she said, the declaration wonderfully breathless. “I want to run my hands all over you the way I didn’t have the nerve to when you kissed me. I want to remind myself I survived.”
“Again,” he said a trifle huskily, “if you’re going to, I wish you would.”
H
e made her smile. Maybe she shouldn’t have let him, but she couldn’t help herself. His permission was so heady, like wine rising to her brain. She slid her hands down his dark pin-striped shirt to the Western belt buckle at his waist.
Damon from Mattson’s definitely hadn’t selected that.
“Allow me,” he said when she couldn’t figure out how to unlatch the medallion.
His fingers were so graceful they made her shiver. After the belt was open, he placed his hands back on the chair arms.
“I think you can handle what comes next,” he said.
She didn’t know if she could, but she wanted to, especially because she sensed he didn’t often let women have control. She took hold of his shirt to pull the tails gently from his trousers. When she reached around him to free the back, he lifted his hips to help. He might have gone higher than he needed. The bulge of his hard-on brushed her panties. That was a distraction she didn’t need, as was the heated way he watched her. Struggling to ignore both, Grace unbuttoned him from the bottom, her lip caught between her teeth as she tried to make her fingers work smoothly. When the shirt was free up to his collar, she pushed the halves to either side of his lean, hard chest, framing his tapering gorgeousness in dark cloth.
His beauty was enough to make her forget self-consciousness. His skin wasn’t tanned, but more of a pale olive. Smooth as cream, it wrapped his ribs and muscles, drawing her palms and fingers irresistibly across it. As she touched him, he rolled his neck, then stretched his fingers and bunched his thighs—as if it were impossible to stay still with her hands on him.
“You’re hot,” she marveled, drawing both sets of fingers down his long center line. “Sometimes your skin is cool, but when I touch it, it’s fiery.”
Suddenly, she understood why the Production Code censored people’s navels from being shown on film. Christian’s was sexy, a deep, moon-shaped orifice that demanded her longest finger be swirled in it. She thrilled when his stomach muscles tensed in reaction.
He caught her wrists before she could stroke up his chest again. Trapped by the gentle hold, her thumbs came to rest on either side of his erection. The size of it was imposing. Maybe he knew she thought so. Maybe he liked her being afraid. When she glanced up, his dark eyes were molten. He rolled his hips off the chair toward her.
That this was a suggestion soon became clear.
“Unzip me,” he said. “Make my cock fiery.”
She was certain it was already, but she wasn’t going to refuse. This was what she wanted: this feeling that every part of her was alive. With trembling fingers, she unhooked his waistband and found the zipper. His lungs moved faster as she eased the metal tab down the teeth. A moment later, her breath sucked in. Christian wasn’t wearing underwear. There was nothing beneath the fine silk-lined wool but him.
“Oh, my God,” she breathed as his maleness was released through the parted cloth.
He was lovely, more than she’d expected, almost too perfect to be real. His skin was the pink of a baby’s blush, his twisting, engorged veins the blue of lapis lazuli. Once his shaft was free, it rose thick and straight from a nest of surprisingly orderly raven curls. He could have been a naked statue—except statues were never carved this big. His cock was both thick and lengthy, with a ruddy cap whose slit welled with a single diamond of liquid.
Knowing instinctively this was a good thing, Grace’s entire body clenched with desire.
“I thought you were going to touch me,” he said.
She didn’t need more prompting. She wrapped her hand around his base, her palm enclosing no more than half his length. Because it seemed wrong not to appreciate all of him, she pulled her grip to his flaring tip, sweeping the now-trickling wetness off with her thumb. The second she felt him there, she had to keep rubbing. His crest was smoother than anything on earth.
Apparently, it was also very sensitive. Christian’s breath rushed out as he fought not to close his eyes. Grace had to fight not close hers, too. She gripped him again and repeated the savoring pull. He was so satiny, so warm and vital, his pulse a strangely slow, hard thudding within her hold. It was as if his body ran in slow motion compared to hers. Fascinated, she spread her second hand over his rippling abdominal muscles and slid her palm up his chest, stopping only when she found a tightened nipple to rub over. His light hair made the friction whisper deliciously.
She didn’t see Christian’s hands move, but suddenly they were clamped over her buttocks under her skirt. With a forwardness that should have shocked her, his fingers kneaded her panties as a growl rumbled in his chest.
“Grace,” he said, his hoarse voice licking fire through her. “I want to take you. I want to be your first.”
Heat welled from her, wet and silky, her body ready to surrender before the rest of her was. She felt like she was melting from the inside, like she could simply fall back and fling her legs wide for him. Despite the craving, she found she wanted something else even more. She shoved his shirt over the ball of one broad shoulder, bending to suck that rock-hard muscle against her teeth. His skin was just barely salty here.
“Did you hear me?” Christian demanded, his own face buried against her neck. He sounded angry, but his touch had gentled. The drag of silken lips on her pulse point made her shudder.