Page 9 of The Devil and the Dancer
A frisson over her skin.
Gavin’s hands stopped and pressed in. “What are you thinking about right now?”
Remember, Chloe. He knows when you’re turned on.
Sometimes living around vampires made Chloe seriously want to die. They smelled everything. They heard everything. The silent burp you managed to hide on your date? Not hidden if that date was a vampire. No bodily function was a mystery to them.
“What were ye thinkin’ about?” he whispered.
The mental image leaped to the front of her mind. Gavin’s fangs, long in his mouth, breaking her skin.
Her body responded.
His hands gripped tighter. “Chloe?”
“What do you think I was thinking about?”
“Sex.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t actually. But that’s a good guess.”
“So not sex. Now I’m even more curious.” His fingers went to work again, stroking up and down her back, teasing the top of her ass, the small of her back, the curve of her neck—
“Hmmm.” He trailed a hand down her arm. “Goose bumps again.”
The hand went back to her neck. His lips followed. Gavin held the hair at her nape and tugged, pulling her head back and exposing her throat to the cold night air and his mouth.
Goose bumps. She felt them everywhere.
Gavin kissed across her collarbone. “Were ye thinking about me biting ye?”
Her heart took off at a gallop just as his lips reached her pulse point.
“I think ye were,” he murmured. “And I think ye fancy the idea.”
God yes, I love the idea, and I must be going crazy.
Chloe shut her eyes and said nothing.
“Just so ye know,” Gavin said. “When I bite you, Iwillenjoy a taste from yer pretty neck.” He nipped her skin lightly. “But when I’m really hungry”—his hand slipped from the top of her thigh to the inside, dragging up, up, up until Chloe gasped—“there’s nothing like a nice bite right here.” He pinched the soft flesh just below the juncture of her thighs. “When I’mreallyhungry.”
Without another word, Gavin slid her to the side, leaving her breathless on the bench of the hot tub as he stood and climbed out, sporting an erection that made Chloe think very unprofessional thoughts about her employer.
She wasn’t going to whimper. She refused.
But she wasn’t going to sleep much either.
Gavin tooka deep breath when he reached the solarium that led to the stairs of his penthouse. Leaving Chloe in the hot tub, wet and ready for him, was one of the hardest things—no pun intended—he’d done in over a hundred years.
“You’re playing the long game,” he muttered. “It’s worth it.”
He’d been wooing the woman for months, seducing her in slow bites and always leaving her hungry for more. Tonight, when she’d inadvertently brought up turning and then—fuckhis luck—Gavin feeding from her, he’d nearly lost his mind. Between that and the realization he’d had the night before, his lustandhis bloodlust were raging.
He gripped the erection that threatened to rip his swimming suit and tried to think about anything but Chloe. Outside. On his roof. Hot and wet and—
“I’m a fucking numpty. Why did I leave?” He was just about to walk back outside when the house phone rang.
Walking over to the small desk, he punched the speakerphone button. “Whoever this is, you’d better have an excellent reason for calling.”
