Chapter Eighteen
GET IT WHILE THE GETTING’S GOOD
B
EING
a vampire made a person more sensitive. More aware. Cort certainly knew this after centuries of existence, but never had he experienced a female as responsive as Katie. Maybe it was because she was newly crossed, but he didn’t think that was the sole reason.
He suspected Katie Lambert was always very sensitive, and now her natural sensual nature was just heightened. But as she shook with her release, he also realized no woman had ever made him feel this aroused either.
She’d come for him just from his licking and teasing her nipple. How much would she come from his tongue between her thighs or his hard cock thrusting in and out of her wet heat?
He nearly came himself just imagining her reaction. God, she was so amazing. So beautiful and sweet and giving in her arousal as she was in every other part of her life.
He shouldn’t be surprised. And maybe he was actually more surprised at his own desire for her. His body throbbed, pulsed, desperate to be inside her gorgeous, supple body, but he also wanted to take this slow.
Maybe this wasn’t the first time they’d made love. But it would be the first time she remembered, and he wanted it to be perfect. A moment she remembered forever.
He moved his lips to her other breast, swirling his tongue around her other tight, pert nipple. She tasted like raspberries and sunshine, and his cock strained against his jeans.
He pressed kisses down her belly wanting to taste more of her. She moaned and wiggled her hips as he inched closer and closer to the place he wanted to be. Where they both wanted him to be.
He nipped her hipbone, smiling against her smooth skin as she writhed again, demanding without words that he give her what she wanted.
He did, parting her creamy white thighs and positioning himself between them. Her warm, musky scent filled his nose, reminding him of a dewy morning with the sun warming the green grass.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he whispered.
She gazed down at him with her sapphire-blue eyes, her honey hair tangled around her heart-shaped face. She was truly his idea of a perfect woman, and he was finally going to make love to her.
Last night was the best night of his life, as far as he was concerned.
Sorry, Johnny—no disrespect to you.
But last night’s events brought him to this moment, and he couldn’t regret that.
He lowered his head, running a tongue up the sweet slit between her thighs. She gasped, raising her hips off the bed, demanding more. He delved his tongue deeper, swirling the little bud, the place that begged for his attention.
He licked and nipped and teased her until he could taste her release on his tongue, sweet and tangy and completely Katie.
Only once she was mindless with her ecstasy, her head thrown back, broken cries escaping her parted lips, only then did he pause to undress.
She watched him with hungry eyes that spurred him to hurry, to return to her and make her his completely. And he intended to do just that. Possessiveness mingled with his desire, ramping up his need for her to a level that should have shocked him, maybe even frightened him a little. But it didn’t. In fact, it felt perfectly natural.
Just like it felt perfectly natural to move back over her and feel her soft, supple body underneath his. He gazed at her for a moment before lowering his head and kissing her again.
“I think we must have made love last night,” he murmured against her lips.
“Why?” Her voice was husky and breathless and seemed to stroke over his skin just like her small hands rubbing down over his back. He suppressed a pleased moan.
“Because,” he said, refocusing on his thoughts, “this feels so natural, so right.”
She smiled and nodded. “It does, doesn’t it?”
He smiled back, then kissed her. She returned the kiss, wrapping her arms and legs around him. Her body felt so wonderful encircling him, he had to know how it felt to be deep inside her.
Positioning his hips, he pushed gently, parting her, entering her just a little.
She gasped, and their eyes locked.
He pushed a little deeper. Her lips parted, shiny in the lamplight.
He tilted his hips, just allowing a bit more of his rock hard length into her wet heat.
She cried out, lifting her hips, wanting more of him. He wanted that, too. To bury himself deep inside her, as deep as he could go. But he also wanted to savor this moment.
“You feel so good,” she whispered.
Damn, she felt beyond good. But he kept his pace slow, savoring every gasp and moan Katie made, every movement, every sensation.
Once he was inside her to the hilt, he couldn’t take it slow any longer. He had to move and Katie was urging him to with each grind and swivel of her hips.
“Please,” she begged, urging her hips upward again, and he gave in to his need, pulling out and thrusting in deeply.
She cried out, and her fingers dug into his shoulders.
“God, yes.”
He wasn’t sure who said that, all he knew was that he agreed fully. Her tight heat and the feeling of her writhing underneath him, reacting fully to each of his movements was pure heaven. The abandon on her face was pure beauty. The pleasure radiating throughout his body was pure ecstasy. He’d never experienced anything so perfect.
Underneath him, she shuddered, her muscles tensing, her body pulsing around him, and he almost followed her into an orgasm. But he focused, not an easy task with her so warm and giving and utterly lovely against him.
But he wanted her to come again. As many times as she could before he found his own release.
And she did orgasm several more times, until she was limp and satisfied, small, pleased whimpers replacing her wild cries. Only then did he allow himself to come. Deep inside her.
For a moment, she stiffened when she realized what he’d done. Years of being conscientious about birth control, he suspected. But then she relaxed again.
And while he fully enjoyed his own climax, her reaction had him thinking about the consequences of what had happened last night. Katie was a young, caring woman. She’d probably wanted to have children one day, and that was no longer a possibility.
He was reminded of another time, when losing options like that had ruined his relationship with a woman he truly loved.
He looked down at Katie, who lay with her eyes closed, and her honey-colored hair tangled around her on the mattress. A slight smile curved her pretty pink lips.
She didn’t look upset. In fact, she looked quite content but that was probably because the reality of her situation and all the changes that would cause in her life hadn’t sunk in yet.
He hated the idea that bitterness and regret might overshadow her cheerful nature. But he didn’t see how it couldn’t. Becoming a vampire hadn’t been her choice. That would anger her eventually. He’d seen it happen. It had destroyed his first wife. And in the process, it had destroyed him. He’d vowed then to never let something like this happen again. But now it had.
“What’s got you looking so serious?”
Cort realized he was still staring down at Katie, although in the moment, he hadn’t been seeing her.
Katie smiled up at him, then caressed his cheek. Her gentle, affectionate touch thrilled him, but it also stirred more feelings of guilt inside him as well.
“I’m just blown away by how amazing that was,” he told her, which wasn’t a lie. Not in the least. It was the best sex he’d ever had. And for someone who had lived as long as he had, that was saying a whole lot. He’d even believed at one time he’d once been married to his soul mate, but the crazy events of last night had him questioning that, too.
He was starting to believe Katie Lambert—wait, she was Katie Cortez now—was his soul mate.
Oh yeah, totally crazy. Totally crazy. Sure he’d known her a long time, but really? Could the events of one night really prove this woman was his destiny?
And let’s not forget that he didn’t even remember the events. Yeah, he couldn’t make an assumption like that.
But with their bodies still touching, his cock still nestled between her thighs. Her hands stroking him so sweetly . . .
He looked down into her eyes, so blue he felt as if he could drown in them. And drowning in those beautiful eyes, there was no doubt in his mind that she was supposed to be with him.
He knew that, but did she? Did Katie feel the same way? Because he’d believed once before the woman he wanted to spend eternity with felt the same way. But he’d been wrong. Deadly wrong.
He couldn’t risk that kind of assumption again. And he couldn’t try to force his feelings on this woman. She seemed to be taking her vampirism amazingly well, but he was pretty sure that was because it hadn’t fully sunk in. How could it?
“Are you sure you are okay?” she asked again, her fingers twining through the unruly waves of his hair.
He nodded, then lowered his head to kiss her lingeringly.
“I’m better than okay,” he murmured against her lips.
He felt her smile, and joy—joy he knew he probably didn’t deserve—warmed his chest, making him feel almost human again.
He realized in kissing this woman that he was in love with her, and had been from afar for a long time. Which explained so many things that he hadn’t been willing to look at before now.
Like the fact he hadn’t really dated since he’d met her. Three years without dating. Okay, three years to a vampire wasn’t even a blip on the radar, but it was also unusual for a male vampire to abstain—or any male, really. And since he didn’t bite to feed, and he hadn’t gotten laid on a regular basis for years, he was sort of the king of self-denial.
But he hadn’t been interested in sex with anyone but Katie. And now that he thought about it, the only time he had found any contentment was when he was around her. And he’d found reasons to go into work early, just to catch her playing. He also found reasons to convince her to stay to watch them. Which, now that he thought about it, he never really had to twist her arm to convince her.
So what the hell had stopped him from making this move long ago?
He looked back down at her, mussed and sated. She was beautiful, as always, but her beauty was slightly different now. Her skin glowed paler, almost pearlescent, and her full lips were a deeper pink, rosy and ripe. Her looks were changing, even this soon. Vampirism enhanced the vampires’ looks, making them more alluring, more appealing. Cort supposed it was nature’s way of making them more effective hunters, another way of drawing their prey to them like some lovely and very deadly flower.
He knew the changes would happen, and he was just as susceptible to her increased beauty, but those changes upset him, too. They reminded him that she truly never would be the same Katie she’d been yesterday. And he’d changed her.
Would she really be alright? Would she eventually resent him?
He met her eyes, noticing under her content, lowered lashes, they looked different, too. More pupil than iris, more black than cheerful blue.
Katie raised her head then, and kissed him. Her movements were hungry and aggressive, and his body instantly reacted, his cock, still nestled between her thighs, stirred and quickly hardened. Now that was one definite upside to being a vampire—little to no recovery time.
“I want you again,” she murmured against his lips, her hands roaming over him, as demanding as her lips.
He could tell, and he wanted her, too. Desperately.
For a moment, his concerns were overshadowed by desire. He couldn’t think of anything but her body writhing underneath him, her fingers digging into the flesh and muscle of his back.
Her lips strayed from his mouth to kiss the length of his jawline and sensitive underside, moving downward toward his neck.
He found himself angling his head, finding her open-mouthed kisses as exciting and sensual as everything else about her.
Damn, everything she did drove him wild. He ground his hips against her, his cock prodding the entrance of her sex. She parted her legs more, inviting him inside. Back inside her, where he belonged.
Just as he positioned himself, the head of his penis just sliding inside her, he felt it.
Pure ecstasy. He gasped, then groaned, the sound broken and breathy.
She’d bitten him. Her fangs punctured his skin in that perfect place along his neck, just above his collarbone.
Oh. Dear. God. This had to be what heaven was like.
His eyes drifted shut, and he submitted to her, and just when he would have orgasmed from the sheer ecstasy of her bite, a moment of reality hit him.
She was a fledgling. She wouldn’t know when to stop. She could literally suck him dry. And for another brief moment, he wondered if he even cared. It simply felt too wonderful right this moment.
“No.” He managed to struggle away from her, stopping her, stopping himself.
Katie blinked up at him, dazed and confused. Desire still glazed her eyes, making them glassy and unfocused. His blood glistened on her lips, glossy and deep red.
She touched the back of her hand to her lips as if to stifle a whimper of frustration, but as she moved her hand away from her mouth, she saw the blood, and her eyes widened. All hazy hunger and lust gone, replaced by dismay and disgust.
“I—I bit you,” she said, her voice reedy.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, knowing that the reality of what she could do, that she could bite and drink another’s blood, was horrifying her. As if to prove his thoughts, she gaped at the blood smeared across the back of her hand.
And this would be the start of her resentment of him. The beginning of her anger at what she’d become. What he’d made her.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, not looking at him but at his blood on her.
“There is no reason to apologize,” he told her, shifting out from between her still spread thighs. She became aware of her position and quickly closed her legs and reached for the sheet, pulling it up around her with her non-bloody hand.
He didn’t want her to feel ashamed at either her hunger or at her desire. Both were normal. But he was afraid the moment was already marred.