Much Ado About Vampires

“You wish to . . . lick?” he asked, the same odd expression on his face.

“Not all of you!” she said with dignity, straightening her shoulders. “Just that spot there, where your neck meets your collarbone. Where that little indentation is . . .” Her voice trailed off as he continued to look at her as if dancing boobs had just appeared on the top of her head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

He opened his mouth to say something, shook his head, and, with a dismissive glance at Cyndi and the others still clustered together in silent shock, pulled out a cell phone, speaking rapidly in Greek into it. “A boat will be waiting for you at the east dock.” His lips tightened as he looked at his brother before jerking him upright. “I trust that a visit to the hospital will reassure you that your charge has no injury beyond that done to her pride.”

“Pride?” Harry grabbed his arm as he was about to leave. He spun around and pinned her back with an outraged glare, which she more than met with one of her own. “She’s battered to hell and back again.”

His black gaze flickered over Cyndi, who thrust out her chest and gave him an outraged look. “I see no signs of battery.”

“She has red marks all over her chest and neck!” Harry said, pointing at Cyndi.

He looked at her steadily for a moment, and she could have sworn that one side of his mouth twitched. “Have you never had a lover who had heavy whisker growth?”

“Huh?”

“It is common among Greek men to have to shave more than once a day, and my brother and I are no exception to that fact.”

She eyed his jaw, squinting slightly. He did have a slight darkness on his lower face, as if he was about to sport some manly stubble. He also had extremely attractive lips, the lower one in particular, with its sweet, oh so very sweet curve, and the upper with a deep indentation up to a long, straight nose. Like with the spot on his neck, she had the worst urge to taste that upper lip dip. She actually licked her own lips thinking about it before she remembered that ogling a drunk’s brother, especially one who should have been on the cover of GQ, really wasn’t the thing. “Er . . . what was the question?”

He sighed. “Whisker burn. That is all the red marks are.”

“They are?” She turned to Cyndi. “Cyn?”

“He hurt me,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Even if it was just his rough cheeks, I need to see a doctor.”

Amy, Derek’s girlfriend and the other singer in the group, immediately hugged her, her blue eyes worried. Even Terry—bright, cheerful Terry, who always had a joke on his lips—looked somber as he moved closer to the two women. All four sets of eyes watched Harry with an obvious plea in them.

“Whisker burn.” She turned back to face the annoying god with the sexy lips. He raised an eyebrow, and she was thankful that he was clearly beyond such mortal things as saying “I told you so.”

“I told you she wasn’t hurt,” he said with slight smirk.

She pointed a finger at him. “You just knocked yourself off your pedestal, buster. All right, I’m willing to accept that your brother didn’t intentionally hurt her. But she’s very upset, and she does have some nasty rashes, so I think it probably would be better for everyone’s peace of mind if she saw a doctor. If you and Mr. Grabby Hands over there would just get out of here, I’ll get Cyn dressed, and we’ll take her to the mainland.”

His lickable lips tightened as if he wasn’t used to receiving orders—a thought that gave her immense pleasure. Oh, how fun it would be to take him down a peg or two, to remind him that he might think himself a god amongst lesser folk, but in reality, he was just nothing more than a man. An extremely rich, urbane, sexy, and probably quite fascinating man, but still a man.

She looked at the dip on his collarbone. Her tongue cleaved to the top of her mouth. “Temptation is a bitch.”

“You can say that again,” he muttered, giving her a dark look before turning on his heel and leaving the room, dragging his brother with him.

Also by Katie MacAlister

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