Virtual Virgin

“Delilah.” His gently corrective voice was even more seductive. “Are you going to force me to say nipples in mixed company?”

“Oh, shit.”

He shrugged, continuing. “Tits.”

Oh, shit!

“Fingertips. Navel. And, my favorite, thighs.” His expression turned smugly angelic. “Inner thighs.”

“I meant places that are showing. My favorite is a fingertip.”

“So school nurse, Delilah. Sterile. Impersonal.”

“Exactly. And where would you learn about school nurses, Brother Monk?”

“From one of my circle of current donors. Oddly, she prefers the fingertips too. Must like role reversal. Not on your luscious glossed lips, Delilah? That’s the only place you need or use cosmetics and you do them up right.”

“Thank you, Mr. Urban Decay. I love your Pocket Rocket lip gloss too. I recall you being afraid my Resurrection Kiss might have the reverse effect on you. It could put you back where you belong. Really dead.”

“I said I wasn’t sure of what your kiss would do now. I’m not afraid.”

“It might be lethal.”

“You need to know this. Your kiss has already revived Montoya. He’s immune. You’ll never know if your kiss can thrill or kill another man if you don’t test it out. Try me. I like danger.”

“Such a brave little lab rat. Fingertip,” I said severely, extending my forefinger, print up.

He took my hand in his, his thumb caressing the inside of my wrist, which felt way too good. I liked danger too, I was discovering. His dark head bent to my fingers. I felt like a medieval lady having her hand kissed. All the paintings of that period teemed with languid ladies being led around by the hand. Sanscouci would have had a field day if he hadn’t been hunting the battlefields then.

“You’ll feel a tiny prick, like from a school nurse, Delilah,” he murmured. “Your fingertip will hardly sense it.”

And he was right, it didn’t, because he pulled my hand and arm over his shoulder to draw me into his arms. His lips were on mine before I could say “Close sesame.”

I could have elbowed or kneed him, but I’d never let another man kiss me besides Ric—Snow’s Brimstone smooch certainly didn’t count. I couldn’t be sure Snow had ever been human, and Sansouci had. I needed to know what about my blood was so exotic or toxic it couldn’t be transfused to Ric. I now feared it could have a vampire taint. Would my half-vamp fading Brimstone Kiss have special effects on someone other than Ric?

Amazing what situations the ace reporter’s “need to know” could get an inquisitive woman into. I no longer wondered why the combination of scared and excited was so many women’s downfall.

I wasn’t falling at the moment, just a very close observer testing as much as Sansouci was. His tongue-tip slicked back and forth along my closed lips until that relentless tickle made them part. His tongue plunged inside for one hot, deep moment, mimicking a much more intimate incursion, before withdrawing. What a tease he was.

Sansouci sat back, visibly tasting me on his own lips. Tease.

“I avoided taking advantage,” he said, “by prolonging the contact past the anesthetic phase to the aphrodisiac effect. Anything you’re feeling now is purely natural.” His quickly lowered eyelids failed to conceal desire-swollen black pupils. “Perhaps not purely.”

“Besides a quick kick, what did you get out of it?” I asked.

He nodded like the connoisseur he was acting as at the moment. “Very rare. New to me. I’ve dallied in an intercontinental pool of blood over the centuries. You’re type AB. Maybe AB positive. Very rare,” he repeated.

I frowned, making a mental note to look that type up.

Sansouci rinsed his mouth with a swallow of the Virtual Virgin loaded. “For the record, your period is coming in six days. The flow will be heavy and the expected painful. I’m not getting the usual coppery tang. Somewhat metallic, still. Silver? Some vampires may be weakened by silver but I’m feeling . . . none of your business. Each person’s blood reminds me of a distinctive color. This is silver blue, like that zombie cocktail of yours, but not anemic, quite a hearty and even robust overtone. Rich but not cloying.”

“Who’s the freaking school nurse now?” I asked, feeling my cheeks warm at the mention of my period. I didn’t want to even think why a vampire would be able to sense that.

His laugh was low as he leaned near again. “Piqued, Delilah? I’m being too analytical? I admit I enjoyed a unique effervescent quality some might become addicted to. I might too, but I don’t want your blood. How was the taste test for you?”

“Quick and dirty, as I expected. Grow up, Sanscouci.” I knew my request was ridiculous to a seven- or eight- hundred-year-old vampire, but guys will be guys.

“You’re not retching with revulsion.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re an expert at this, right? Like a dentist.”

I was pleased, though. As the lyrics in the classic Casablanca movie song went, “a kiss is just a kiss” and that’s what I’d wanted to know. Sansouci had enjoyed that moment on the level of a stolen sexual buzz, but didn’t find it an orgasmic occasion. I was no longer passing on any remainder of the Brimstone Kiss effect to the man in the street. Or vampire.

At least not on the lips.

“So this is what you do. Kiss and run. Tell me about the harem.”

“They’re ordinary women with no men in their lives, for some reason. Young. Old. In between. Maybe they were abused when children and need the edge of mock violence to feel alive. Maybe they’ve lost someone who can never, ever come back. Maybe they’re just too busy to meet and date and mate. Maybe, Delilah, they just like me and what I do for them.”

“What do they get out of it?”

I was asking an existential question. He wanted to take me down to brass tacks. What does that mean, anyway? I was about to learn what it meant to Sansouci when he was ready to play me.

“I’ll show you.” He reached into the side pockets of his light cotton jacket and started laying items on the black glass where their reflection made twins of everything. “This is my tool kit now, not lances and swords and daggers.”

I recognized the first item, a flash drive lozenge.

“Dirty movies for the cell phone?” I asked.

“No. A vibrator, and not just any vibrator.” As he picked it up the surface shimmered through an electric rainbow of colors changing form in his hand. “This is the Swiss army knife of vibrators, small and portable but with eighty-six different shapes and functions.”

I tried not to stare at it bug-eyed. Huh? Call me an amateur. I’d just achieved supine. He pushed forward some small round rubber bands. I was thinking condoms, but was glad I hadn’t tried to be the A-student and sung out my guess.

“Silken bonds, expandable to any length or situation. Second-most popular. Of course you’ve never . . .”

I was taking the fifth.

“A pair of chorus-girl earrings?” I gawked when the sparkling pair of three-inch red-carpet shoulder-dusters hit the tabletop next.

“We’re back to that naughty word again, Delilah. Nipple clamps. Vibrating. Unisex too. They also work as actual earrings. They’d look hotter than hell with your current outfit. I don’t suppose you’d . . . ?” He held them up so they caught the light like Whore of Babylon pasties.

By now my cool white skin had overheated with a blush. Heartland-naive sucked.

“Yes,” he said, a wicked spring-green sparkle in his eyes, “that’s the effect I’m going for, but it’s called a flush. Just how far down do your flushes go?”

“You’re teasing me in payback for prying your history out of you,” I accused.

And, I realized, it was also because little boys like to torment little girls they like with scary objects like frogs and snakes, that Sansouci’s display was an adult version of the same scenario.

The next item was a nest of tangled chains of various lengths. “Some of my clients have numerous piercings and rings. These offer myriad decorative and functional combinations with onboard equipment. Your silver familiar ever assume any titillating forms?”

“Never,” I said, vehement, only then remembering a time or two . . . I felt my blush go scarlet. “I hate that,” I ground out. “I hate that my skin type does that.”