Page 18 of Desperately Seeking Vampire
“There’s still a lot to unpack in what you said, but although I don’t want you to fade away to nothing, I’m not willing to commit to a relationship yet, because we really don’t know each other.”
“I understand,” he said, and for a second, I felt like weeping. I wasn’t sure where these emotions were coming from, but I suspected that just being near him was triggering something deep in me that had been missing for my entire life. “I would never force you to do anything you did not wish to do, including binding yourself to me. Do you still wish to rub yourself on my thighs?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” I said, wiggling against him. “My body very much wants to get to know your body better.”
“Excellent. We will proceed with that,” he said, whipping my T-shirt off me, his hands going wild as he took my breasts immediately into them. They were pleased with this situation, and when he gently rubbed his thumbs over my nipples, I arched into them, my breath catching in my throat. “You have much more splendid breasts than I imagined on my ride here. I will have to compose a few lines specifically for them.”
“If you keep touching me like that, I may have to write you a poem of appreciation, also. Jeezumcrow, Ivo. Your chest is so enticing. Do you like your nipples played with, too?”
He stopped nuzzling his cheek—thankfully now healed, although it did feel a bit warm—on the underside of my breasts. “I don’t know. No woman has ever tried to—fwah!”
I had leaned down while he spoke, and took one manly nipple nub in my mouth, swirling my tongue around it before scraping it gently, oh so gently, between my teeth.
The next thing I knew, I was on my back with Ivo looming over me, his hair standing on end, his penis no longer undecided as to what it wanted to do. It was fully on board with the seduction plan, and poked me on the thigh as Ivo repeated the teeth-on-nipple act on me.
“Oh, goddess, yes,” I said on a moan, clutching the sheet beneath me as his tongue joined the fun, teasing and tormenting first one breast, then the other. “You may have been asleep for eighty-six years, but damn, sir! You are really good at breast tormenting.”
“You smell so good,” he murmured, kissing a path down my breastbone to my belly. “Your scent fills my senses. It burns in my blood, driving me to the very edge of sanity. It binds me with ethereal chains of desire. It brings out the primal man in me. I want to claim you. Mark you as mine. Possess you as moonlight possesses the night.”
“You poetic Victorian vampire, you,” I said on a near growl. “I’m so not into men dominating women, but holy handbells, Ivo. You saying things like you want to claim me just makes me want to ... I don’t know ... claim you, too.”
“We shall claim each other equally,” he said, his breath steaming a spot on my hip. He hesitated for a few seconds, time I used by tracing my fingers along the planes of his chest and arms. Even the red puckered skin that resulted from his wounds closing had faded away, leaving his skin unblemished and silky smooth.
I wiggled my hips a little, wondering why he appeared to be fixated at the spot on my hip. And that’s when I realized that the arms braced next to me that I had been stroking weren’t rigid because he was supporting himself, but that he was locked in some sort of an internal battle.
“Ivo?”
He didn’t answer. His head was turned away from me, but I could see the cords of his neck standing out in stark relief.
I scooted myself down until I was directly under him. His eyes were screwed shut, his jaw tight, his lips a barely visible thin line.
“Are you all right? Did you hurt something internally? If you tell me what the pain feels like—”
“No,” he managed to say, turning his head to face me, his eyes open and blazing with a deep, consuming need that rolled off him in palpable waves. “It’s not that.”
“It’s me, isn’t it?” I asked him, wanting to touch him, but unsure of his reaction if I did so.
“Yes. I thought I could do this. I want to do this. I want to pleasure you.”
“But you can’t without feeding?”
He moved off me, lying on his back, one hand rubbing his face. “I should be able to. Other Dark Ones can. But when I get close to you, when the taste and feel of you fills my senses, then ...” He stopped, turning his face away.
I said nothing. I didn’t know what I could say to comfort him. I knew what he was trying to do, how he was giving me the opportunity to decide whether I wanted to join my life with his, but my emotions were too tangled to make such a life-altering decision.
Especially not in the heat of full-body lust.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said.
He nodded, obviously understanding all that I didn’t say.
“Do you want me to—” I gestured toward his penis, which was still looking hopeful. “Finish you off?”
He turned to look at me at that. “You’d do that?”
“Yes. I’m not saying I’d make the same offer to anyone else, because ... well, we both participated, so your sexual arousal isn’t my problem. But I like you, Ivo. And much as I’d like to do things together, I would also enjoy giving you pleasure, if you could stand that without it pushing you past what’s bearable.
We both considered his penis for a few seconds.
