In the Heat of the Bite (33 page)

“I’m not certain, love,” he gasped out, finding it easier and easier to talk and breathe at the same time. It seemed as though he had to do both of them. “It just seemed like the best place to fall.” He eased up on one knee and covered his heart with his hand. His toes and fingers were pulsing with his awakening.

She cupped his face in her hand. “What is it, Matthew?” she asked.

He leaned close to her, his mouth inches from hers, and breathed against her lips. She flinched. “What was that?” she asked as she scurried back across the bed, clutching the counterpane to her chest.

He crawled onto the bed and grabbed her foot, stopping her retreat. “Stay,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happening. But I have a feeling you’re part of it. Did you put a spell on me? To make me come to life?”

Rhiannon frowned a bit as though remembering something. Then she shook her head. “If I could have done that, I would have done it when I first met ye, Matt,” she admitted. Then she scooted closer to him, and he tugged her hand to lie upon his chest. She smiled when she felt the steady rhythm of his heart. Then she pressed her ear to his chest. The proximity of her head to his nether regions had him instantly growing hard. He urged her to sit up.

“I want to try something,” he said. She nodded her agreement and sat still. He kissed across her jaw and down the side of her neck. Then he nibbled on the tender skin there, making her giggle. He sat back and lifted his lip in a sneer. “Do you see fangs?”

“Not a single one,” she said with a shake of her head.

He was aroused, and she was naked, and he was hard, and she was letting him kiss her, and his teeth wouldn’t work?

“Yer heart is beatin’, yer teeth won’t work, and ye’re breathin’ because ye have to and no’ because ye want to.” She tilted her head at him. “Ye ken what this means? Ye’ve become human.”

“That’s impossible,” he harrumphed. He’d never heard of such a thing, not in all his years.

Her hazel eyes twinkled mischievously as she pointed to the tent of his trousers. “Typically, when ye’re like that, yer teeth descend, but they have no’.” She colored prettily when she realized what she’d said. “Ye think maybe ye just need more motivation?” she tried.

Matthew groaned as she scooted closer to him in the bed.

Rhiannon’s heart soared as the realization that the
man
before her truly did love her. He wouldn’t be like this if he didn’t. However, he wasn’t as easily convinced that his situation had changed. But after he’d spent more than six centuries as a vampyre, she supposed she could understand his reluctance. So she’d just have to go about proving the truth to him and had no qualms at all about using her womanly charms to do so. She tugged the counterpane from her shoulder and bared the tops of her breasts to his gaze. He lovingly traced a path along the line of the blanket with the tip of his index finger. “Teeth yet?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said, but he was already tugging her counterpane lower. He gasped as he tugged the linens from her breasts, baring them both to his gaze. He reached for her, his eyes hungry, his hands eager.

Very gently, Matthew pushed her back to lie on the pillows on his bed as he brushed her nipples with this thumbs, squeezing her breasts gently in his hands as he did so. “Teeth yet?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said, his voice a little more choked than the last time. He bent his head and took her nipple between his lips, gently rolling the turgid flesh and abrading it with the tip of his tongue. Rhiannon closed her eyes to the onslaught of feeling. Then he sucked the trembling peak into his mouth and had her gasping with pleasure and reaching for his head to draw him closer.

“Teeth yet?” she asked between breaths.

He smiled slowly at her as he bent to take her other nipple in similar fashion. “No, love,” he said, just before he drew that aching peak into the warm haven of his mouth.

“This is disturbin’,” she gasped as he moved up to look into her face, her sweet breath brushing across his cheek.

“This is bloody brilliant,” he said before his lips touched hers. He gently coaxed her mouth open with his tongue, sliding it along the seam of her lips. She opened to him. The pulse between her thighs intensified. “My heart is beating like mad,” he said softly.

“Mine, too,” she admitted. Then she giggled at the absurdity of the comparison.

“What’s amusing, you little witch?” he asked as his hand walked down her belly and his fingers slid into her curls. He dipped a finger inside her and brought her own moisture up to slide around that little nub of pleasure she hadn’t even known existed before him.

Her mouth opened of its own accord, her answer to his question eclipsed by her moan of pleasure as he built a fire within her. Then he stoked it with his teeth and tongue and lips on her breasts, the pleasure of which nearly tore her asunder.

“Matthew,” she gasped out.

“Yes, love,” he asked, sounding awfully calm.

“Will ye take me already?” she pleaded.

“Take you where?” he asked playfully as he tugged the boots from his feet. “You want me to take you back to Eynsford?” He unbuttoned the fall of his trousers and pushed them down and then settled his hips firmly between her thighs. He was hot and hard and probing at her tender flesh. “You have only to ask…”

She smacked his shoulder. “Ye ken that’s no’ what I meant.” He began to tug his shirt over his head and she helped him.

“I’m a gentleman, Rhi,” he teased. “Stop trying to get me naked.”

He pressed at her center, sliding through her wetness to probe at her softly. Yet he still didn’t slide inside her.

“Ye’re already naked,” she charged. “So the damage is done. I have corrupted the gentleman. So be it marked on this date.” She wrapped her legs around his waist and tugged him forward.

“So be it marked on this date that the man lost his heart to a witch and found it all at the same time.” A tear rolled from her eye as he said the words.

“Mark it however you like,” she urged. Then he finally slid inside her. He moved slowly, taking small plunges that drove her wild as he looked into her eyes. She felt small nibbles against the side of her neck and flinched slightly.

“Teeth?” she asked.

Then he pressed home and stilled within her, allowing her time to adjust to his size and the small amount of pain that had come with his entry. “No teeth,” he confirmed, obviously fighting to stay still within her. He looked down and brushed the hair from her face.

“Yer eyes,” she said as she cupped his cheek. Any lingering doubts she had vanished as she looked up into his soft green eyes.

“I’m inside you, and you want to discuss my eyes,” he teased as he began to move, stealing her breath once again.

“Later,” she grunted as the pleasure welled within her. His hand slid down to her curls, where he caressed her center, taking her to new heights as he moved inside her, hot, hard, and heavy. He tilted her hips so she could take more of him, though she hadn’t known that was possible.

All the while, he murmured words of love in her ear as he brought her higher and higher and finally allowed her to topple over that precipice. He followed immediately, coming home deep inside her as she pulsed around his length.

Matthew untangled her legs from around his waist and rolled to his side, and then he tugged her to lie on his shoulder. He pressed little kisses into her hair, his breathing as labored as her own. She reveled in the feel of his breaths moving in and out of his chest and his heart beating beneath her cheek.

“Teeth yet?” she asked, knowing the answer but asking it anyway.

He bit his teeth together, making a clacking sound. “Not a single one. And I had no thoughts at all during that about drinking your blood. In fact, it makes me a little uneasy, the very thought.”

His stomach growled loudly below her ear, and she sat up to look at him. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he laughed.

Rhiannon shook her head. “No, my guess is
better.
Ye need real sustenance. Lord Kettering downed an entire table of food. The meal could have fed half of Edinburgh.”

Matthew pushed up on one elbow to look down at his witch. What she’d just said made no sense at all. “What’s this about Kettering?”

She stared up at him as though truly seeing him for the first time. “When his lordship came after Blaire, he’d changed. Just like ye have.” She shrugged against the pillows. “In fact, I never met him while he was a vampyre.”

Matthew was well and truly breathing, because the wind had just been knocked out of him. “James transformed? Like I have?” It was too much to comprehend. For over two hundred years he’d known Kettering. He’d known him since he was a child, in fact, at a neighboring estate. He’d saved him from an untimely death. How was it possible that James had
changed
and not told him? He glanced down at his signet ring, identical to James’. He could still sense James’ presence. And Alec’s.

Rhiannon blinked up at him. “Ye dinna ken.”

“No.” He’d had a letter from his old friend, containing a magical signet ring, which he’d in turn bestowed upon Alec. That same letter detailed a final battle with an old foe. And he’d received other letters since. James and Blaire had retired to his estate in Derbyshire and looked forward to seeing him soon. His old friend had gushed about the happiness he’d found with his bride and his eternal wish that Matthew could find the same
peace within his heart
someday. Was
this
what he meant? “Human?” he muttered to himself.

“Lord Kettering said it was his love for Blaire that made his heart beat again.” She smiled. “And it was yer love for me that made yers beat again. Ye really
do
love me.”

Of course he really did love her. He loved her with his whole heart. He loved that she smelled like gardenia blossoms. He loved that she stood in the middle of her own storms. He loved how she made him feel. “I do.”

“Then why,” she lightly smacked his shoulder, “were ye kissin’ someone else in the garden last night?”

Where did she get such a foolish idea? His conversation with Radbourne popped in his head. “If Lady Eynsford saw that, then her powers are faulty.”

“It wasna Cait. My sister saw ye in the garden last night with some other woman, and ye kissed her.”

Callista. That’s what all the fuss was about? How utterly ridiculous. Matthew scrubbed a hand across his face. “I don’t remember kissing Callista. I suppose it’s possible. But—”

The color drained from Rhiannon’s face. “Callista?” she echoed.

Matthew tucked a lock of hair behind Rhiannon’s ear. “
If
I kissed her, it was in a very brotherly fashion. She was in a snit last night, and I’m afraid she ended up scarring one of Eynsford’s pups.”

“What the devil are ye talkin’ about?” Rhiannon sat up to face him and clutched the counterpane to her chest. “I want ta ken why ye were kissin’ her, since I ken ye
do
love me.”

Matthew leaned forward and kissed the very tip of her nose. “She’s my maker. She’s the one who saved me that awful night in the Holy Land. She plucked me from a pile of dead knights, men I had known and fought with side by side on the battlefield. I wouldn’t be here without Callista.”

A range of emotions played across Rhiannon’s face. “The Duchess of Hythe mentioned her. She said yer grandfather was fond of her.”

He couldn’t imagine how Rhiannon and Eugenia Hythe had landed on that subject. He was almost hesitant to ask for fear of her answer. “How exactly did that come up in conversation?”

“Ginny described the woman she saw ye with, and Her Grace said it reminded her of someone she kent when she was younger.”

“And my fondness for Callista?”

Rhiannon nibbled her bottom lip as though she was trying to decide whether or not to answer him. Finally she said, “The duchess told me that Callista had half the men in London fallin’ at her feet. So I asked if yer grandfather was one of them.”

“Sneaky lass.” He grinned at her. Who knew jealousy could make one’s eyes sparkle? “You could have asked me. I would have told you I am
fond
of Callista, but that’s all. She’s like a mother to me in a strange sort of way.”

Rhiannon gulped. “Are ye sure?”

At that Matthew fell back against his pillows, laughing. He’d known Callista for more than six centuries, and in all that time, never had he desired her. He knew she was beautiful and mortal men desired her, but he’d never been part of their numbers. Seeing her in that light would have been impossible. She was Callista. His maker. His oldest companion. His friend.

“I hardly find it amusing.” Rhiannon sniffed, looking down on him.

Matthew tugged her back down beside him and curled his arm around her waist. “You are beautiful when you’re jealous. And when you’re angry. And,” he softly kissed her, “every moment in between, Rhiannon.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and sighed. “Are ye goin’ ta do that every time ye want ta distract me?”

He couldn’t help himself. He laughed again. He could well imagine laughing with her the rest of their lives, just like this. And he hoped to never repeat the previous day. “Do you know how I spent yesterday, dearest?”