Given our track record—not to mention the circumstances surrounding the upcoming battle—I was on edge, watching our surroundings with care. But nothing pinged my radar. The people around us were just... people. Normal people, as odd as it sounded to say that about a bunch of goths hanging out in a vampire club. So we fed, and we danced to bad music, and we tried not to pay attention to the hideously embarrassing decor.
And in the end, we left, buzzing with stolen energy—leaving a crowd of strangers who’d gotten to live out their vampire fantasies in our wake. In the shadows of a quiet alley, I looked up, meeting blue eyes lit from within like sunlight reflecting through a glacier.
Rans regarded me with something dark and deep swirling behind his inhuman gaze. I caught a breath I didn’t need, remembering just how much of my succubus blood he’d drunk, in addition to all the humans’.
“Come with me,” he said. “It’s hours yet until dawn, and I intend to take you tonight in every conceivable way someone can be taken.”
TEN
THANKFULLY FOR my dignity, I managed not to squeak ‘Yes, please’ in the same high-pitched voice the cute emo guy had used earlier. Instead, I grabbed the front of his black t-shirt and dragged our mouths together in a violent clash of lips and fangs.
An instant later, I was pinned with my back to the alley wall and Rans’ thigh shoved between mine. Which was... a promising start, even if the venue left something to be desired. This was the first time I’d really gorged myself on a crowd’s animus since becoming a vampire, and I could tell that the resulting buzz was affecting both my libido and my judgment.
Fortunately, Rans had a few centuries of experience on me, not to mention a badly hidden chivalrous streak. While I might be content to start the festivities with a quickie in an alley, I was confident he had something a little more comfortable—not to mention private—in mind.
“Not here,” he murmured, though his thigh was still pressed rather tellingly against my sex. “Come on—fly with me.”
His form melted away into mist, and I followed. It wasn’t difficult; the change had always been triggered by a desperate need to be elsewhere. And right now, I desperately needed to be wherever the hot vampire sex was going to happen.
We floated upward, the brick buildings of Soulard spreading out below us in the crisp autumn night. I let my vaporous form twine together with Rans’, following his lead until I grasped what our destination must be, and rushed ahead. He caught up and kept pace with me as I navigated along familiar streets from a thoroughly unfamiliar perspective.
Why had I hated flying so much before? Flying was awesome. Of course, I’d also hated the sight of blood, once upon a time. But blood was awesome, too. Somehow, since meeting Rans my life had become nearly unrecognizable, all within the turning of a single season.
With sudden desperation, I hoped that my newly unrecognizable life wasn’t about to end in the next few days.
My boring little neighborhood appeared below us, and at the far end of it, my boring little nineteen-forties two-bedroom bungalow. A boring little house with a boring little bed that was about to become anything but boring for the next few hours. I realized—suddenly and viscerally—how much I needed to make love to the man who’d bound my unbeating heart to his, on that boring little mattress.
I swirled down to ground level, forcing my way through a tiny gap in one of the poorly insulated double-hung windows rather than wasting time with doors and locks. Rans was right behind me. My transformation back to solidity still lacked something in terms of grace, and I stumbled a bit as I landed.
Cool hands steadied me. I went still, casting my inhuman senses outward.
“We’re alone,” Rans assured, his hands already busy with the hem of my torn t-shirt.
He was right; the house around us was still and silent. Edward wasn’t due back until tomorrow at the earliest, and we had the place completely to ourselves. I lifted my arms to help him get my shirt off before attacking his clothing in kind. We left a trail of discarded items—worthy of any romance-novel hero and heroine—leading all the way up the stairs to the master bedroom.
By the time my back hit the mattress, we were both naked. Our kiss this time was a bit more coordinated than the earlier clash of teeth and tongues in the alley, but no less desperate. I’d lived nearly twenty-six years without Rans’ lips on mine. At the moment, I had no idea how I’d managed it.
His body covered mine, shutting out all of the things I didn’t want to think about right now. One of my fangs rasped unintentionally along his tongue, the scrape followed by the heady taste of blood. I sucked on it, the wound healing almost instantly, though the taste lingered.
We made out like teenagers for so long that I lost track of time altogether. In a sudden bout of nostalgia, I wanted to somehow go back in history and personally thank every person who’d ever kissed Rans over the course of seven hundred years, because they were collectively responsible for the incredible technique I was currently enjoying. Then, I wanted to stop time altogether—freeze it at this moment, because I wasn’t remotely ready for what would be coming for us in the following days.
Unfortunately, time didn’t work like that. Most, if not all, of Rans’ previous partners were long dead. I’d never asked him about them, but now I burned with curiosity. Had he loved any of them like he loved me? I wanted to know everything about them—who they’d been, how he’d met them, how they’d died, how he’d mourned them.
Would I have enough time left with him to hear all of those stories someday?
His right hand trailed over my
