Waiting in the Wings

hurting him—she couldn’t puncture his throat—not like he had…

“Again.” He growled and thrust.

She dug her nails into his back and started to pull away, but his fingers tightened in her hair and he dragged her mouth against his throat. Her mouth throbbed, in tune with every thrust he drove into her. Stars danced across her vision; her whole body shook with tremors of need—awareness of every brush of their skin. The pounding of his heart echoed against her ears, and she reared her head back and clamped onto his throat. Her teeth elongated, sharpening in a burst of pain, and she pierced his skin.

Moaning, she tasted him. Her head spun with the dizzying connection. His blood tasted like the sweetest nectar. It spilled across her tongue, and she rode the shockwave rocking through her body. His thrusts grew more fevered, but she drowned against the intensity of the feeling. A doorway opened inside of her, and he flooded her with pleasure. She saw herself, standing inside a rustic bar, bound breasts pushed up against the corset and grinning saucily at him.

She danced to some jaunty tune. Weaving in and out of the tables. Men occasionally tried to grab her. She always slapped them away with a smile and a flippant comment. A shyness in her eyes when she looked up at him and a breathless wonder.

The images flipped at her so fast, she couldn’t comprehend them all, and they tumbled her over, the intensity doubling and redoubling.

Her heart echoed the frantic pace of his. Mine…always mine…

She didn’t know whose thought that was, but it plunged over the edge with her as her body came apart, a second orgasm tipping her into a third. He stiffened against her and thrust a final time before following her over the edge and collapsing together, all warm limbs and nuzzling kisses. She lapped at his throat, closing the wound on instinct. Her fangs relaxed, losing their shape, and she lay there quivering.

He loves me more than himself. The depth of emotion she tasted in his blood, the loving memories he treasured—they filled her with wonder.

And terrified her.

What if she never remembered him?

Or worse, what if she did and she didn’t want him?

I left him once, didn’t I?

They lay wrapped up in each other, Richard’s face pressed against her throat. She trailed her fingers up and down his spine. She wanted to know every inch of him, to remember it the way he remembered her.

Why did I leave?

“Richard?” She whispered his name, softly and gentle. If he slept, she wanted him to sleep. Did vampires actually sleep?

He sighed and lifted his head. The troubled look in his eyes warned her that his mind traveled the same twisting path hers did. “Yes, my love?”

“What if I never remember?” No sense in holding her fear to her breast. Better to rip the bandage off and face it head on.

“You will.” Such confidence.

Lifting her brows, she trailed her fingers over his shoulder and up his neck to the spot she bit. No mark remained on his smooth, hot flesh. “You don’t know that. What if my memory is like this wound—gone, healed over and never to return?”

He shook his head once. “No. I will not accept that. A few days ago you didn’t even know you were a vampire. You didn’t have fangs. And yet here you are—you know you know me, you drank from me. What did you see when you did?”

“Me. I saw how you see me.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “You remember everything—and I’m a blank slate.”

“Not true.” Richard shifted, rolling onto his side and propping his head on a hand. His palm rubbed over her belly, warm and possessive. “You are still you. You are the woman you’ve always been. It’s all inside you—the quirky antics, devoted loyalty, playful mannerisms. You’re still my Kristina.”

She pushed his hand aside and sat up, scooting to the edge of the bed. She needed to think and not just to roll him over and fuck his brains out again.

Although that idea held a certain appeal.

“I left you.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke, staring unseeingly across the room to the leafy wallpaper with its exotic designs. “I walked out.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He was silent for so long, she thought he might not answer. He sighed, and the bed dipped as he moved. He rose and walked around. She tried not to watch the muscles ripple across his ass, but for a man—a vampire—who dressed in expensive suits, he cut a fine figure with nothing on his body.

Pouring a drink, he shot her a questioning glance, and she nodded. Her body hummed, whether from drinking his blood or the sex, she couldn’t really put her finger on the cause. He passed her a glass. She scented the coppery hints of blood. He’d been giving her blood steadily with every meal, but she couldn’t resent it.

She felt great.

“Why did I leave, Richard?”

“We argued. We often did.” He sighed and walked over to sit on the bed next to her. “You—you were always supportive of my business efforts. You even supported my bid to take New York. But the busier I became, the more you seemed to resent it.”

“And?”

“And one evening you wanted to go to some event. I couldn’t go because of a small crisis with some of the younglings who went too far. I needed to attend the situation. You were angry with me and demanded that I go, because I promised…” He grimaced and tossed back the drink.

“So you wouldn’t go to a party with me, and I walked out? What kind of shallow bitch was I?”

“You were not a shallow bitch.” His voice hardened, and he caught his hand around her neck, capturing her gaze with a passionate force. “Never—ever—refer to yourself that way again. Do you understand me?”

Trepidation shivered through her, and she nodded slowly.

He leaned in and kissed her, soft and sweet. Forehead resting against hers, he studied her eyes. “It was hardly the first time I disappointed you, sweet. I didn’t see it then, but I was often too busy to do any of the things you loved, and you were frustrated, battling for my attention when an entire city needed me. I told myself time and again, that it was just this one time more and that I would make it up to you, but that night—that night you were done with my choices. You left me to my phone calls and went to change. When you returned, you were dressed in the most provocative of fashions.”

“I tried to seduce you into going with me.” It was a guess, but it sounded like her. Dress her best and strut it out there for him to see and weep.

“Yes, and I was a complete bastard. I forbid you from wearing the outfit out of our home and then asked you to please stop so I could just get the mess cleaned up.” The forlorn note in his voice turned dark. “I was an idiot.”

“I went out that way anyway, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” He gave her a small smile. “Stubborn, sexy and supremely confident, you told me to go to hell and enjoy the heat, because you wouldn’t be there to warm my bed again. You stormed out.”

“And never came back.” Sadness welled up inside of her. Loneliness echoed in his words—loneliness and self-recrimination. She knew herself well enough to know if she had truly been that angry with him, she would have made a spectacle of herself—rubbed his nose in it.

“No. And at first, I thought it was to teach me a lesson, so I was stubborn about looking for you. I was determined that you would come back when you were ready, and I would be there. We would make up, settle our differences and it would be perfect again.”

“But I didn’t come back—” Kiki pulled away and took a drink, rolling the information around in her brain. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well, I didn’t think so. But you were angry and very frustrated—rightfully so. I should have looked for you