Vampire in Atlantis

He lowered her to the bed and lay down beside her before she could take a breath. The towel had vanished between bath and bed, but he covered her body with his own. He was still fully dressed, and she shivered with the wantonly tactile sensation of his clothing against her skin.

“Are you cold?” He pulled the bed’s coverlet up and around them, but she shook her head, laughing a little.

“I feel like I’ll never be cold again, if you keep kissing me,” she confessed, and she was surprised at the breathless sound of her voice.

He laughed and it was his turn for triumph. His eyes darkened, and she knew, oh, yes, even she in her inexperience knew what he felt.

“There’s more, if you’ll allow me to touch you,” he said.

“I know what making love is.” She could feel the heat in her cheeks at her bold declaration, but she didn’t want him to think she was completely ignorant.

He kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips, and then her neck. “There’s knowing, and then there’s knowing. May I?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, um, what?”

“May I touch you?”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she whispered, and then she lay perfectly still and waited for her world to change.

Daniel thought his brain might explode if she said no, so when she said yes, he didn’t hesitate but did what he’d wanted to do since he first saw her again after so long. He touched her.

All over.

He ran his hands down the silken skin of her arms while he kissed her, and then he rolled to his side, pulling her with him, and stroked her back and her hair. And kissed her some more. He couldn’t seem to stop kissing her, as if he were drowning and she were the very oxygen he needed to survive. At first she lay still, as if afraid to move, but then she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him even closer. Her kisses were enthusiastic and tentative all at once, as if she was learning the art of kissing.

Which, of course, was exactly what she was doing. He had no idea why the thought of it humbled him at the same time it drove him mad. His cock was so hard the imprint of his zipper would probably be a permanent tattoo if he didn’t get out of his pants soon, but he didn’t want to scare her by undressing. Not yet.

He took a breath and dared to let his hands drop to the sweet, sweet curve of her hips and ass, and he couldn’t help the way his own hips bucked against her when he had both hands wrapped around her lush behind.

“Daniel, it . . . tingles. I never, I don’t . . . It feels like I’m empty and hungry for something,” she said, her cheeks blushing a hot rosy pink. “I never knew I could feel like this. I want—I want—”

“I want you, too, mi amara, but I’m not going to rush you,” he said, feeling like a big damn hero. Or a big damn fool. “Not yet. It’s too soon, and I don’t want to take advantage of the heightened emotions you’re feeling right now.”

“You want to stop kissing me?” Her voice was barely a whisper, and she peeked up at him from beneath her eyelashes, and he thought this must be the hardest thing he’d ever done. Talk about self-sacrifice.

Nobility.

Cold freaking showers.

“No, I never want to stop kissing you, but I want to hold you, and I want us to sleep,” he said, clenching his jaws shut against the please, please, please, I need to be inside you right now that he was really thinking.

She squirmed and pushed away from him a little, just far enough for him to see the luscious pink tips of her full, round breasts. He listened to the blood pulsing through her veins, and the monster in him hungered to come out and bite.

He prayed for strength. This was Serai. If he bit her—if he took her blood—then he was nothing more than the beast, and he deserved to die horribly and alone. He deserved for her to shove him away in disgust. He wished she would.

He prayed she didn’t.

“I don’t want to sleep,” she said. “I want you to touch me.”

She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and the beast quieted, perhaps in shock at being willingly touched; the man took over. Daniel gave up the idea of complete nobility as a lost cause, because touching her body was a far, far better choice than sinking his fangs into her throat. He could push simple desire to the fore and shove bloodlust to the dark recesses of his soul.

He would. He must.

Forcing his fangs to retract, he flipped her onto her back and pounced, taking her breasts in both hands, and finally, oh, by all the glorious wonders, finally, he kissed them and then each nipple in turn. When she gasped and clutched his hair, he gave in and licked one peak into his mouth and sucked on it until she was crying out and trembling underneath him, and then he gave no quarter but instead treated the other breast to the same tender care.

He would pleasure her until she came, crying out his name, and then—then—he would make her sleep. Surely that was noble enough.

Serai cried out again and was almost rational enough to wonder if anyone could hear her through the walls, but then she didn’t care, when Daniel did that wonderful thing with his mouth to her breast and pure liquid fire shot through her body from her nipples to her most private parts. He turned to her other breast and took that nipple into his mouth while he gently pinched the other with his fingers, and she cried out again, wanting something, not knowing what, but needing—needing something.

Needing him.

So she told him, since her psychic commands weren’t working. “Daniel, I need—I need—”

“I know, mi amara,” he said, putting his hand between her thighs, right where she needed it, and stroking a finger through the hot wet slickness that had somehow appeared. And then his finger touched her right there and she cried out.

It wasn’t just heat, it wasn’t just passion, it was more, so much more. The man she’d dreamed of for eleven thousand years was kissing her and touching her, and oh, dear Poseidon, she thought she might actually explode from the pleasure and unbearable rightness of it.

“Daniel! That’s . . . you . . . oh, yes, yes, yes,” she said, as he kept rubbing her there in that most sensitive of spots. His finger pushed a little inside her and she gasped, and then his talented fingers, now wet and slippery, applied just the right amount of pressure, and her body shattered into a thousand fractured prisms of light.

He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly, murmuring gentle, meaningless words as she trembled in his arms; just rocking her slightly back and forth, holding her until the tremors shuddering through her body from his touch subsided.

“That was . . . was that . . . was that making love?”

He smiled at her, but his face looked a bit strained. “Yes, but it gets even better than that.”

“I’m not sure I would survive better,” she admitted, and he laughed.

“You should sleep now,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face. “You need to rest. This has been a pretty big day for your first day awake in millennia.”

“You have a talent for understatement.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

Before she could protest, he tipped her chin up and pressed a brief, gentle kiss on her lips, then captured her gaze with his own.

“You should sleep now,” he said again, and a red gleam flared in his pupils.

She knew she should argue with him, but she was just so sleepy, and after all, he was right, they needed to sleep, and—Oh.

Oh, no.

“You used your nightwalker hypnotic powers on me,” she said, fighting against it, but the compulsion was too strong. The last thing she saw was the smile on his beautiful face, and then the room went dark as she sank into sleep.