can get Diamond and me out of here. OK? Do we have a deal? I give you blood and you get us out of the Akasha? One bite for yes, two for no, all right?”
The vampire just lay there, his eyes closed, his hair begging to be stroked. How on earth did one resuscitate a vampire? Mouth-to-mouth? I removed my wrist from his mouth, eyeing his lips with concern. He wasn’t dead, but it seemed somewhat creepy to just slap my mouth on his and breathe for him. What if there were beetles in his mouth?
“Urgh,” I said, shivering. “Too icky. I’d better look before I try that.”
If anyone told me that one day I’d be kneeling in limbo, prying open the mouth of an almost-dead vampire to see if insects had invaded him, I’d have laughed myself silly. It didn’t strike me at all as funny as I angled the man’s head first one way, and then another, trying to get enough light to see into his mouth. With a muttered apology, I wiped off my forefinger as best I could, and swept it around his mouth to make sure there were no lurking bugs.
His mouth was surprisingly warm, not moist the way a mouth should be, but slightly humid. I sat staring down at him, my index finger in his mouth, a sudden jolt of awareness hitting me that I was ashamed to admit was akin to arousal.
It got worse when he started sucking on my finger.
“Oh, my,” I said, staring in amazement as his neck muscles worked. “Mercy. I think . . . oh, man. Mister? You there?”
I pried up one eyelid, but his eyes were rolled back. Still, he must have some sort of an awareness if his suckle reflex had been triggered.
“What could work on a finger can work for a wrist,” I told him, gently removing my finger, letting it trail along his parched lower lip. I was going to edge my wrist between his teeth, but some urge deep inside me instead had me bending over him, holding my hair out of the way with one hand as I angled my neck down over his mouth. A strange awareness prickled along my skin as his dry, cool lips touched my neck. I waited a minute, but he did nothing. With a sigh, I scooted down until I was partially draped over his body, my hair spread over him like a screen as I shifted in tiny little movements until my nose was buried in the dusty silken coolness of his hair. I slid a hand under his neck, pressing his mouth to my flesh, my whole body tight and tense, as if I were waiting for a blow.
A soft exhalation of his breath warmed my skin for a moment, followed by a brief rasp of his tongue. “Go ahead,” I told him, breathing in the scent from his hair, ignoring the musty smell of the dirt to revel in the woodsy, earthy scent that seemed to sink in through my pores.
Pain suddenly flared in my neck, pain that quickly turned to heat that rippled outward, flowing down through my veins. I moaned, clutching his head to me, the sensation of life flowing from me to him more arousing than anything I’d ever felt in my life. No wonder Jacintha didn’t mind when Avery needed to feed from her—this was the most erotic sensation I’d ever felt, and that was with a comatose vampire. What would it be like when he was awake?
The impaired side of my mind cackled to itself that I could even contemplate feeding the vampire after he was on his feet again, but at that moment, I would have been willing to sign away all common sense in order to stay just as I was.
Two hands suddenly gripped my arms, the fingers biting into my flesh, holding me against him as he continued to feed, the sensation of his mouth making my breasts grow hot and heavy, and much more secret parts sit up and take notice.
Suddenly, I was on my back, the rocks beneath me digging painfully into my back, the vampire’s body heavy on mine, but none of that mattered. It was his mouth that my entire awareness was focused on, his wonderfully hot mouth still on my neck as he drank deeply, and I had the oddest feeling that I could actually sense the blood flowing through his body, replenishing him, like water poured over parched earth. It soaked into every atom of his being, and with each passing moment, I felt myself soaring on a sort of high, a blissful awareness that I was fulfilling a need that had, until that moment, lain dormant in both of us.
My hands slipped from his head as I gave myself up to him, floating away on a fluffy cloud of euphoria, content with life at long last.
Chapter Three
Alec couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He had rolled over to find a woman in his arms. She lay on top of him now, her head limp against his neck, her heart slowly beating, yet at the same time he could swear he felt it beating within him, as well.
Someone had fed him. Someone, this woman lying across him, had, for an unknown reason, fed him.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice harsh and rough from his coma.
She didn’t answer; she just lay across his torso, her body warm on his. He closed his eyes for a moment at the pain that awareness brought with it.
Dammit, he wasn’t even allowed to escape the hell of his life through near death. He was to have no peace, no relief; not even the insensibility of a coma was to be granted to him. His heart, or what remained of it, was sick with the knowledge that he had an eternity of even more torment to exist through.
“All right,” he told the woman, shoving at her arm. “You’ve done what you were sent to do. I’m awake and miserable. Get off me.”
She made no move, just continued to lie there on top of him.
And the damned rock still dug into his back.
He sighed, wondering how much more torment he could survive before going stark, staring mad. Insanity seemed like the only route open to him, the only escape of the torment of his life, and yet, his pride had always held him back from just simply going mad. Now he wondered if it wasn’t easier than existing for each excruciating second.
“You’re hurting me. Not that you probably care, but I’d like to get up and smash a certain rock to gravel, so if you’d kindly remove yourself from me, I’d appreciate it.”
The woman still didn’t move, and it struck Alec at that moment that her heartbeat was too slow, her body too heavy on his.
“Miss?” he said, prodding the woman.
She lay limply on him, her breath shallow on his neck. For a moment, he closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of her. She smelled like wildflowers after a rain, clean and pure and sweet as honey. Unable to stop himself, he turned his face into her hair and breathed deeply, pulling her scent into his lungs, burning it to his memory.
Something inside him thrummed as the deep hunger awoke again. He inhaled deeply again, wanting to feed on her, wanting to take within himself the warmth he knew she held, the sweet, spicy taste of her blood still on his tongue. If he turned his head just a little more, he could reach her shoulder. He could drink until he was full. He could take everything she had to offer, every last sip of life, and roll her off him. She deserved it for torturing him this way. If only she didn’t smell so damned good . . .
He growled a few oaths to himself as he shifted her off him, letting her roll into the spot he had chosen for his final resting place, crushing that foul rock into nothing before examining his torturer.
She was mortal, apparently in her early thirties, with brown hair, arched eyebrows, and a delicately boned face that was covered in freckles. Her lips were slightly parted, and he had to fight with himself to keep from bending over her to taste their pink sweetness. With a connoisseur’s eye, he cataloged the rest of her—large breasts, broad hips, probably slightly over medium height, big-boned . . . not at all the type of woman he found attractive. He preferred his women on the slight side, delicate and frail. This woman, while not an Amazon, looked every bit the phrase “hearty peasant stock.”
Hearty peasant stock or not, he knew he’d taken too much of her blood. Her heartbeat was steady, but it had probably been a close thing. He wanted to tell himself that it didn’t matter, that she was clearly there as part of his punishment, but guilt pricked him nonetheless.
Guilt and something else. He caught himself enjoying the sweep of her hips, the rounded weight of her breasts beneath a washed-out blue tank top. Her arms were also freckled, and for some reason, that pleased
