Yes. Kristoff smiled . That doesn’t mean I hadn’t had a blow job before I met you.
No, of course not, I answered, pushing down a nasty sting of jealousy at the thought of him being so pleasured by any other woman.
The smile deepened.
But it’s an awfully modern term for you to be bandying about. I mean, didn’t you have some other name for it back then? Something euphemistic and romantic?
A soft “Pia, Pia, Pia,” drifted up from the backseat, where Mattias, still firmly in the grip of the mind-altering light-binding, lay with his eyes closed. I felt a momentary pang of guilt at keeping the spell on him, but a memory of his antagonistic tendencies had me brushing away the concern.
Well, there was one phrase I recall being used.
Oh, good. What was it?
The whore’s kiss.
I shot him a glare.
His lips curled a smidgen more. Why did you want to know?
If we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together, I thought it would be nice if we got to know each other better. I’m boring, but you’ve lived centuries. I can only imagine the sorts of things you must have seen.
All I remember is death, disease, and lots of fleas.
I sat back in my seat, disgruntled.
Oh, and one exceptionally talented prostitute in Rome. She had the most amazing muscle control. You would not believe what she could do with a hard-boiled egg.
You know, I’m willing to bet I can guess.
Silence filled the car as we drove through the night. It was starting to get dark now in Iceland during the nights, the endless sun of summer beginning its journey into early fall. I looked out into the darkness, wondering at how much my life had changed since I had first been here.
What is the mortal expression-“penny for your thoughts”?
Oh, come, now-you may be immortal, but you’ve been around us lesser folk long enough to pick up phrases like “blow job.” I couldn’t help but smile a little at his attempt at mental coyness.
I guarantee you that every male, no matter what form he takes, knows every colloquial phrase for oral sex. Some of us, however, have little to do with the mortal world.
I slid him a glance. “That must make it a bit difficult. Surely you had to interact with humans in order to eat.”
“I seldom fed from mortals. They complicated things too much.”
My heart, as usual, contracted at the oblique reference to his deceased love.
“When I did, I tried to keep the contact at a minimum. It was better for everyone’s sake.”
“Did you . . . er . . . did you . . . you know . . . have sex with everyone you drank from?” I asked, driven by a horrible spurt of jealousy I badly wanted to pretend wasn’t there.
His lips softened into a slight curve. “I told you once before that feeding, to a Dark One, is an intimate act that sometimes involves other aspects of intimacy. It is seldom planned, but sometimes happens.”
Damn him. I ground my teeth a little as we approached the town, trying to cope with my unreasonable need to demand to know just how many times he’d given in to that particular impulse.
You’re jealous, he said with a hint of surprise.
Shut up, I muttered, glaring out of the window at the blackness . I’ve had boyfriends, too, you know.
I know.
Startled, I looked at him.
Alec would have mentioned it if you’d been a virgin.
My mouth dropped open in horror. “You talked to Alec about me? About . . . sex with me?”
“He brought it up,” he answered, negotiating an exit into the town, consulting the GPS unit briefly before taking the appropriate turn.
“You talked about me?” Heat washed upward from my chest. I felt perilously close to tears or a nervous breakdown. I just couldn’t decide which.
“He told me about spending the night with you.” He glanced at me, frowning slightly as we came into a street filled with people streaming into a nightclub. “I didn’t ask for specifics, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I caught the echo in his mind. “You didn’t have to, did you? He told you everything. Everything! Oh, my God, he told you about me insisting on the light being off?”
“He said you were very modest.”
I could feel Kristoff desperately trying to shove thoughts back out of the way so I couldn’t pick through them, but I pounced on a mental image that made my skin burn. “Oh, my God! He told you he didn’t . . . that we didn’t . . . Oh, my God!”
“You’re making too much of this. Alec and I have always discussed women, although I do not go into specifics as he does.”
“Oh, really? And did you tell him all about you and Angelica?” The words were off my tongue before I could stop myself, but I regretted them the instant I heard them.
Kristoff’s jaw tightened. He kept his gaze grimly on the people milling around as he inched through them. “No.”
The familiar stab of anguish I was coming to think of as Angelica pain lanced my chest. Of course he didn’t talk to Alec about her. She was special. She was the woman he’d chosen to spend his life with, not one who had been thrust on him by circumstances and fate.
Unreasonable and unwanted tears pricked the back of my eyes. “Did you tell him about us?”
“No.” He shot me another swift glance. “Would it make you feel any better to know I was pleased when he told me that he had not engaged in anything other than oral sex with you?”
“You were?” I asked, looking at him despite my embarrassment. “Really? Why?”
He nodded, a slightly chagrined expression on his face. “I’ve been told in the past that I can be overly possessive where women are concerned. You had expressed your preference for Alec, and I accepted that, but I could not help but be pleased that he did not possess you completely.”
I didn’t quite know what to say to that, other than to acknowledge my own little kernel of happiness that he, too, could be jealous. “Possessive, hmm?”
His lips turned downward, his eyes steadfastly on the street before us. “It is not unknown for Dark Ones.”
“Given what I’ve seen,” I said, thinking of the vampires I’d met, “I’d say that is a fair statement. I have to admit that I kind of like it.”
One of his lovely sable eyebrows rose. “I thought women did not like possessiveness.”
“A little of it can be nice,” I said with a little smile to myself. “Too much is obnoxious, but a little . . . It makes us feel wanted.”
He said nothing as he pulled into a parking lot next to what looked like a government building, but allowed me to feel the need that always seemed to be simmering within him.
I was a bit surprised to find my body answering his with a little hum of excitement. “Do you need, for lack of a better phrase, topping off?” I asked as we sat together in the warm, intimate darkness of the car.
“Do you really want to have sex here in the parking lot, where anyone could see us?” he asked in return, his eyes glittering like a cat’s in the night.
I considered, for a few seconds, that very thing. “I don’t suppose you could eat without us going at it like bunnies?”
He pursed his lips at me, and before I could stop myself, I leaned into him and licked them. With a low growl he wrapped both arms around me and pulled me onto his lap, claiming my mouth in a way that left me breathless and mindless of everything but him.
Does that answer your question? Reluctantly, he released my lower lip and looked down into my eyes, the teal fire in his bathing me in the warmth of his desire.
I suppose it does. My skin tingled where I was pressed against him. We sat like that for a moment, unwilling to part, but a slight snore from the backseat had me pushing myself off him. “Later?”
“You can count on that,” he said with a look that almost seared my clothes. “I know of a place here you will
