The person who could utter those noises really appreciated her.
He was also careful of her. The moment she felt a smidgen dizzy, he stopped.
“Shh,” he said at her sound of protest, one long finger stroking down her cheek. His face was more relaxed than she’d ever seen it, his cheeks flushed, his thin mouth totally sensual.
“You bit me,” she said, slurred and dreamy. “You drank my blood.”
Golden embers flared in his eyes. “You know you aren’t as surprised by that as you ought to be.”
She didn’t want to talk about that. “Do you feel better now?”
Her hands were resting on his shoulders, partly to caress his amazing skin and partly to keep from keeling over at the aftershocks of pleasure. With his gaze locked to hers, Christian took her right hand and drew it down his bare chest. He slid her fingertips over his navel and the waistband of his worn jeans. He didn’t stop until her palm lay atop the impressive hardness at his crotch. Heat radiated through strained denim as he molded her hand closer.
“I want more,” he said, low and rough. “I want to bite you when this is inside you. I want to fill you with my come while I suck your blood into me. That’s the ultimate pleasure for someone like me.”
She shuddered with renewed desire, her flesh twitching so strongly she almost came.
“Yes,” she managed to get out. “Please do that.”
Maybe her perceptions had been distorted by their brush with death. Christian growled with approval as her clothes seemed to fly off her. Her body whirled and she was beneath him on the couch, naked, with her thighs spread for his approach. Kisses stung the peaks of her breasts like fire, and then his velvety smooth erection was sliding into her. The living, pulsing heat of it stole her breath.
“God,” she gasped, her hands pressing the muscles at the small of his back.
She guessed he liked this. He snarled and bit her neck and lunged all the way inside her at the same time.
For a second, before he began to thrust, before he drew in a tiny sip, the sensation of the double penetration coiled her nerves up exquisitely. Her anticipation of what was coming was painful.
Fortunately, he didn’t wait long to whip up the curtain on the main event. With an urgency that astounded her, he began to move. The feel of his body surging powerfully in and out was even better than him only biting her. Her climax was a nail he was hammering repeatedly. Each time his mouth pulled on her, each time his big blunt tip struck her utmost limit, ecstasy rang through her. She was crazed with pleasure, filling up and filling up and then just as deliciously emptying. He was coming, too, over and over, as if he couldn’t get enough of her. She loved how he grunted as he went over, loved how he tried to hitch himself deeper at the ultimate moment. Certainly, there was nothing graceful about how she slung her hips up his cock, or the wetness that ran from her. This was about sensation, about giving—and getting—more of it.
After about ten minutes, he hiked her feet up around his ears. Since he’d stopped biting her, he could speak.
“I dreamed of this,” he panted, holding her legs in place with his shoulders. “I fucking wanted this the day you walked into my barn.”
Grace couldn’t answer. She was coming so hard tears ran from the corners of her eyes. The new position, and his excitement at it, had her nails digging in his back. She suspected he liked the fact that he controlled both their motions. The couch springs squealed like they were about to snap.
“In the dirt,” he said, punctuating the image he was creating with a thrust and twist of his hips. “Me in your cunt and you sweating under me.” He groaned as her inner muscles tightened, then sped up savagely. “Can you feel how big you make me? God, you fuck me so good.”
Grace loved every rough word he said. This was what he was really thinking, no prettying up his language for female ears. It made her feel close to him, made her feel abandon. At that point, if she could have driven herself
into
his body, she would have. Christian gasped at her enthusiasm, one hand clamping on her bottom to keep her in sync with him. His grip was strong but welcome; she couldn’t go wrong with it guiding her. In truth, nothing could go wrong with him for a partner.
He nuzzled her like he felt it, too, his mouth opening on the bite he’d left on her throat. The way he licked it, as if he were savoring one last drop, pulled pleasured shudders from inside her.
They came one more time before he eased her legs down. Grace responded to her freedom by digging her heels into the cushions, grabbing the back of the couch, and pushing her pelvis all the way up him.
“Grace,” he moaned. “Jesus, honey, that feels good but don’t hurt yourself.”
His hand stroked her side and hip soothingly. Part of her wanted to keep going, but he
was
more experienced and probably knew better. In any case, what they’d done was almost enough. Physically, it was more than. She let herself go limp beneath him, let her thighs relax and her feet smooth over his bunching calves. Her hands cruised up and down his chest, which was heaving enjoyably.
“You’re so
good
at this,” she marveled. “I never would have guessed having someone bite me would be that exciting. I suppose my . . . predilections are as unusual as yours.”
G
race thought he had a
predilection
? As if drinking blood was a new fetish? Christian had accused her of denying whatever oddities he showed her, but this was ridiculous. She had to have felt his fangs, had to have seen his glamour-free foreignness. They were in the midst of filming a vampire movie. How could she not jump to conclusions? To his amazement, when he tried to read her, he still couldn’t penetrate that mysterious head of hers. He should have been able to. He’d done more than the minimum for forming a blood bond.
Once he’d drunk from Grace, Christian should have been able to override any compulsion or protection Nim Wei had put on her. The queen was strong, maybe stronger than he’d comprehended, but as far as he could tell, she hadn’t bitten Grace. Something else was keeping him out, possibly the same force that had seized control of his body inside the car.
Struck by the idea, Christian rose uneasily from the couch. He was naked. He’d torn off his clothes as hastily as he had Grace’s, and they lay in untidy heaps in her living room. Grace, apparently, wasn’t used to nude males. She rolled onto her side to watch him.
The attention flattered him until she spoke.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He turned to her and, for a small space of time, got a bit distracted. Over the centuries, he’d seen plenty of naked females, but those females weren’t Grace. Her human skin was all cream and roses, especially her nipples . . .
“Christian?”
He dragged his eyes to her face. “Do you ever feel like a guardian angel is watching over you?”
Grace’s laugh was a rush of air through her nose. “Hardly. Why do you ask?”
Because someone helped me save you tonight. Because back when you haunted my mortal life, you spoke of a heavenly guide.
Nim Wei had been able to read his mind when he’d been human, with the exception of thoughts that involved Grace. He’d never put much stock in Grace’s talk of divine assistance. Despite the faithfulness of the time he’d been born to, or possibly because of it, hell had been easier to believe in.
Maybe he’d have to reconsider that.
Grace drew his attention by sitting up. Somewhat pointlessly, she pulled a small Chinese pillow into her lap. “You’re thinking something very strange, Christian. You should see the expressions crossing your face.”
“I hardly know what I’m thinking,” he said.
“Well, you should dress,” she replied, reluctantly setting aside the pillow as she rose to search out her clothes. “I know I’m as much to blame as you are for what we did tonight, but I’d prefer it if people didn’t know you’d been here.”
Before Christian could formulate a response, she lifted her blouse from behind a lamp. She stared at it with her mouth open. The white cotton was in shreds, as if an animal had clawed it off her. Christian had enough of her blood in him that he blushed. He’d exercised even less control than he’d thought. He was probably lucky he’d stopped drinking when he did.
Grace blinked and set the tattered blouse aside, one more piece of evidence she was going to ignore. “I hope your clothes are in better shape,” she said.
Anger flared inside him. “I don’t need them. I’m not leaving you alone.”
“You’re not staying over.”
“Grace, someone shot at you.”
“We don’t know that.”
“
I
know that!” he said. “I read it straight from the shooter’s mind!”
“Christian, I see you’re taking this Method acting business seriously, staying in character and all, but—”
He cut her off with an infuriated snarl. “I’m not leaving you tonight.”
Grace folded her arms underneath her breasts, which did nothing for his already fragmented concentration. “If you’re that worried, why not call the police?”
“The police can’t protect you as well as I can.”
“Christian.”
“I’m not leaving.
You
call the police if you want my naked body out of here that badly.”
At last, he’d hit on the right riposte. She turned red, huffed in a flustered way, then stomped out of the room. She returned, dressed in pajamas, with a blanket and two pillows.
“You bled on the couch,” she said. “You’ll just have to lie in it.”
Her snit would have been more convincing if her gaze hadn’t drifted to his cock and widened. He’d risen again, fully and with fervor. His kind didn’t take long to recuperate, particularly after they’d fed.
Grace shoved the bed things at him. “You keep that . . . that
prodigy
away from me, you hear?”
He was grinning as she flounced back into her bedroom and slammed the door. One kiss would have had her sighing for him again, one touch of his practiced fingers.
Some facts of life even Grace Michaels couldn’t deny.
C
hristian’s face haunted Grace all night; the rest of him as well, actually. He was beautiful without his clothes on, shining and white and strong. She fell into one dream of him after another, reliving his strange but exciting bite, his forceful movements when they made love, his cries as he found pleasure. The thickness of his cock was a fantasy by itself. Each time she shuddered awake amidst her tangled covers, she verged on coming. How she mustered the strength not to go to him, she would never know.
Despite all this nocturnal drama, she woke as if she’d had the best night’s sleep of her life.
It was just past dawn, and she was starving. When she tiptoed into the living room, Christian was sound asleep on her couch. He’d found a second blanket somewhere, and both were pulled up over his head.
He’s here!
something stupidly girlish inside her sang.
He stayed with me all night.
A flush she didn’t think was arousal swept over her. Her heart and not her lust was rejoicing in his presence. She wanted to crawl under those blankets with him, wanted to snuggle close to him forever.
Then her stomach growled, reminding her ideas like that were neither smart nor practical.
She fixed herself a proper breakfast: not just coffee but eggs and bacon and buttered toast. She mixed some frozen orange juice for good measure and drank down two glasses. None of her clanking around woke Christian, which she might have secretly hoped she’d do.
He didn’t stir until she was slipping quietly out the door.
“Hold it right there,” he snapped, so much authority in the froggy order that her muscles froze. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
“I left a note saying when and where you’re working today.”
“Screw the bloody note,” he growled.
Did Texans say
bloody
? she wondered.
“Wait for me,” he said, grabbing his clothes and heading for her bathroom. “I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
In her experience, attractive men as young as he was took longer to primp than that. The water in her shower turned on, then shut off before it had the slightest chance to warm up. Her medicine cabinet opened and shut, but she held on to her patience. She was glad she had when she discovered Miss Wei hadn’t come home last night. Christian’s was the only car she had access to.
“Let’s go,” he said, zipping his motorcycle jacket up his bare chest. Aside from his missing T-shirt, last night might not have happened. He didn’t have a scratch on him. Not a scab from being shot or any signs of lingering weakness. If he’d stepped under her icy shower, he’d managed not to dampen his hair. His eyes were sleepy, but the rest of him appeared as hale and hearty as she was.
Oddly, he smelled of the fancy French sun cream she’d treated herself to last summer.