A Girl's Guide to Vampires

We had our clothes off in record time. Raphael hit the bed first, me following immediately thereafter. I ignored his little grunt when I landed on him rather than the bed. I straddled his waist, sitting up and running my hands over his belly and chest, thinking about all the many and varied things I wanted to do to him.

Raphael swore.

'What?' I froze, wondering what I had done wrong.

'Just a minute.' He put both hands on my hips and heaved me off him, rolling over until he was sitting on the side of the bed. 'Stay there. Don't move. And don't stop thinking about what you're thinking, because I like that wicked glint in your eye.'

I stared at his back for a moment, then figured out what he was doing. 'Would you like me to hum a little condom-donning music while you're busy over there? Something in a march, perhaps? Or a Latin beat? Or maybe you prefer skaaaaAAAAAAAA!'

Quicker than you could say 'extra personal space' he was on his back again, and had me hoisted over him.

'Wait a minute,' I said, looking down from where he held me about a foot and a half above his body. 'I see what you're doing, Bob, don't think that I don't. You're not going to impale me with that thing until I'm good and ready to be impaled, and that's not going to be until I do some of those wicked things you saw glinting in my eyes, so let me down nice and slow and no one will get hurt.'

He grinned and slowly lowered me until I was sitting on his groin. 'It's like sitting on a broomstick,' I said, my eyes widening as I wiggled around on him a little, sliding back and forth along his long, hard length. Raphael's hands grabbed my hips, his fingers biting hard into my flesh as his head thrashed side to side on his pillow. 'Oh, my! Maybe I'm ready now. Maybe those wicked things can wait. Maybe I was a little overhasty in ruling out an immediate impaling.'

'Thank God,' Raphael croaked, his voice as harsh as gravel. In one smooth move he lifted me up, positioned himself, and thrust upward as I sank down. His groan of sheer pleasure rang in my ears as my body accepted his. He was heat, he was fire, a very, very hard fire that pushed and shoved and burned its way into my tender flesh, filling me, stretching me, pushing me beyond everything I'd known into some new world inhabited only by us. I ceased to be one person and happily joined myself with him.

The last thing I saw before my eyes rolled up in my head was his back arching up off the bed as I tightened every muscle I had around the hard heat of him.

'Do you know, you're almost panting in time to your heartbeat, which says a lot, considering your pulse rate must be at least in the two hundreds.'

Raphael groaned beneath me. I was drawing lazy circles on his chest, enjoying the feeling of his chest hair tickling my face as I pressed occasional kisses onto his flesh. His chest rose and fell quickly beneath me, making me wonder if I was squashing him. I put my hands down onto the bed and levered myself up slightly. Immediately his hands settled onto my bare behind and held me in place. I smiled to myself. We were still physically joined, a testament to his girth that we hadn't parted ways, so to speak.

'What does it feel like when you use a condom? I mean after. Does it feel ooky? I can't imagine it's a terribly comfortable feeling, what with all that… um… just hanging around the end there.'

Raphael's hands slid up to rest on my back, but other than that he made no response to my question. A perfectly good question, too, I thought. But perhaps he was embarrassed that he'd only lasted a couple of thrusts before blasting off. Poor man. That was all it had taken for me, too, but unlike women, men invest so much ego in their sexual prowess. I didn't want to make him feel anything less than a stud muffin, so I decided to let the subject drop and talk about something else.

'Did you have a chance to see Arielle after the police questioned her? I was going to sit with her, but that minion of Inspector Bartos… what was his name?… Detective Kovar made me go over the whole evening again. Poor, poor Arielle.'

'Why is it women can work just as hard as men while they're making love, but when it's all over, they can still put words together and have them make sense?'

I smiled at his disgruntled frown. 'It's called afterglow, sweetheart. Pillow talk is the best kind of talk. Do I take it you'd rather I let you recover in peace than discuss the important topics of the day?'

Raphael moaned an affirmative, his eyes closed tight. I grinned and pushed myself into a sitting position. His eyes shot open when I wiggled just enough to remind him that my cheerleaders were still entertaining him at their homecoming dance.

'Baby, I wish I could oblige you, but I think you killed me a few minutes ago.'

I raised up just a little, then sank slowly back down, gripping him as tightly as I could. He bucked beneath me and sucked in half the roomful of air.

'You don't feel dead to me,' I said, leaning forward to tease the tip of his little brown nipple with my tongue. 'You feel hot and hard and very, very alive. I can feel your pulse deep inside me. Here.' I did my best Kegel squeeze.

'Ah, Christ,' he groaned, grabbing my hips and holding on as he rolled me onto my back. He scooped my legs up until they rested on his shoulders. Slowly he pulled out of me until just the very tip of him rested inside; then just as slowly he stroked forward, filling me with so much more than just a delicious bit of flesh that tears came to my eyes with the beauty of him.

'You think I killed you?' I gasped, flexing my legs to pull him deeper into me. 'You're going to be the death of me if you do that again, you know that, don't you?'

He smiled a wicked, wicked smile so hot it singed my eyebrows. 'I'm not going to kill you, baby. Just take you to heaven and back.'

Oh, Lord, did he!

Chapter Fifteen

'So, Superman, it's been a half hour. Have you recovered enough to talk now?'

Raphael, lying on his belly, lifted his head just enough to press a tender, but sated, kiss to my ankle. 'I may never recover, but if you don't require anything more strenuous than me moving my mouth, I will strive to satisfy you.'

'Oh, Bob,' I crooned, wiggling my toes and reaching over to tickle his feet, 'there is no question about my satisfaction. I'm probably the most satisfied woman in the world. I certainly should be after the heroic effort you made to curl my hair.'

He rolled over onto his side, a smug smile gracing his adorable lips as he teased a finger along the line of my pubic bone. 'Looks like I succeeded.'

I bit his ankle.

He sighed and rolled onto his back, taking one of my legs with him, idly stroking my calf as he spoke. 'I assume you want to discuss the murder.'

'Amongst other things,' I said, thinking of Christian. 'You… um… did talk to the police, didn't you? I mean, really talk to them?'

'I did.' He didn't look too upset by the experience, so they must not have questioned him about anything but the murders. I breathed a sigh of relief.

'What, if anything, did the police say to you when they questioned you? They wouldn't answer any of my questions, they just kept telling me to explain again why I was in those trees rather than taking the shorter way to the hotel.'

Raphael swirled little circles on my leg. 'What makes you think they told me anything?'

I sat up and looked at him. 'You're a man. Men like the police always feel it's important to keep women out of the loop. They disguise it as a protection tactic, but really they just want something to feel superior about. So, what did they say to you?'

His lovely amber eyes considered me silently for a long minute; then he, too, sat up. 'Joy, that's something I can't tell you.'

'What? Why? Because of this secret in your past that you refuse to tell me?'