A Girl's Guide to Vampires

pulled my hips against him as he entered me again and again with quick, hard thrusts, touching my womb, touching my soul, searing himself into my heart with every hot word of love he moaned into my neck, setting me alight with the pure joy of our combined rapture.

'Each time,' I told him later as I stroked my fingers down the long, damp sweep of his back to the curve of his lovely behind; 'each time I think it can't get any better, and then it does.'

His head raised from the crook of my neck just enough to press a kiss to my collarbone.

'You set me quite a standard to follow,' I complained. 'I don't know how I'm going to match you, let alone exceed you. Everything you do to me is wonderful. Do you have any idea what sort of stress that puts on me to strive for perfection? What if I fail? What if I can't ever match you?'

'You're forgetting an important fact.' He pushed himself up so he could grin before swooping down to capture my lips in his. 'Practice makes perfect. We'll just have to let you practice until you're perfect.'

I thought about that for the scant second before I gave myself up to the hot lure of his mouth. 'Works for me.'

Chapter Seventeen

'Where's your gun?' I asked, stepping out of the claustrophobic shower so tiny I wondered how Raphael fit into it.

He was dressed, sitting on the bed pulling his boots on, having washed off all our cherry fun. He looked up as I toweled myself dry and reached for my clothes.

'My gun?'

'Yeah. You know, the one you pulled on us when we did our breaking and entering the other day. The big one.'

'Why do you want to know?'

I unzipped my dress, stepped into it, and turned so he could zip me up. 'Idle curiosity. I thought maybe since you were in charge of security you'd be wearing it, but you haven't, and it's not under your pillow, so I was just wondering what you did with it.'

His hands were warm on my back as he pulled the zipper up; then he turned me around and looked at me for a minute with those amber eyes that could melt my knees. With a sigh, he bent down and reached under his bed, pulling out a small black metal box.

'Oh, it's in there?'

'Yes.'

'Ah.'

He pushed the box back under the bed, then grabbed my hips and pulled me onto his lap. 'Joy, about what you said earlier—'

'Oh, my apology? Yeah, I know I still owe it to you.'

'No, about—'

I put my hand across his mouth. 'Let me do this with style, will you? I really am sorry for what I said, Raphael. You're entitled to your privacy, and if you don't feel like you can trust me with something in your past, that's fine. It hurts me, but I'll live. I just want you to know that, despite the pain I feel because I know I'm not as important to you as you are to me, I will still be here for you. I love you, and that means I'm stuck with you no matter how badly you treat me.'

I pulled my hand from his mouth and smiled at him, pleased I had gotten my groveling out of the way.

There was a decidedly disgruntled look on his handsome face. 'That was an apology?'

'Sure was.'

'Ah. Perhaps it is the latest rage in apologies—one that backhands the person you're apologizing to.'

I nudged him on the shoulder. 'Stop being so argumentative. You're supposed to accept it and tell me you love me and worship me and you'll never, ever keep anything from me again.'

'I'm supposed to do that, am I?'

'Yes, you are.'

He tipped me over onto my back and loomed over me. I smiled and looped my hands around his neck.

'And you came all this way just to apologize to me?'

He started nibbling on my neck, his hot breath starting familiar fires that had just been put out.

'Well, not just for that. Roxy and I had to talk to Dominic.'

'Why?' he asked, his hands sliding up my dress to massage my breasts.

I squirmed and lifted my jaw to give him better access to all the sensitive neck spots, my hands tracing out the muscles in his back. 'Roxy set it up. Dominic had something to tell us.'

'Something about what?' His tongue curled around the outer edges of my ear, his uneven breath doing more to me than the hot touch of his mouth.

'Something to help us. Oh, God, Raphael, you can't do this again, we just got cleaned up!'

'Something to help you what?' he asked, sucking my earlobe into his mouth as he gently squeezed my breasts.

I nuzzled his cheek and tried to remember what I wasn't supposed to tell him. 'We're trying to find out who killed Tanya.'

He froze for a moment, then released my ear to look into my eyes. 'Why?'

I traced my fingers across his silky eyebrows. 'Because you're a suspect. So am I, although I don't think Inspector Bartos was serious about that. I hope he wasn't serious. But you… he doesn't seem very happy about you. And, Raphael, say what I will about you being pigheaded and stubborn, you're everything to me. I can't lose you. I won't let him take you from me. So if Roxy and I have to do a little detective work to prove you're innocent, we will.'

He kissed me, hot and demanding. 'You're the most amazing woman. I've never known anyone as giving as you.' I opened my mouth to tell him that was the sort of thing I wanted to hear, but he silenced me with another hot kiss. 'Regardless, I can't let you do this. I appreciate that you want to help me, but you don't have anything to worry about.'

'But Inspector Bartos—'

'Leave the detecting to the police, Joy.'

I pushed him back so I could sit up. 'Look, I have enough on my plate right now, what with having to deal with Christian, I do not need you locked up in jail on a trumped up murder charge simply because I didn't make the effort to prove you're innocent.'

He took hold of the back of my dress and kept me from getting off the bed. 'You don't have to prove I'm innocent; the police know I am. What do you mean, you have to deal with Christian?'

I gave him a look of sheer disbelief. 'Oh, sure, the police know you're innocent. That's why you're heading up their suspect list.'

'What has Christian done? Why do you have to deal with him?'

'I don't want to talk about Christian, I want to talk about saving you, you arrogant, maddening man! Why I want to save your annoying, if extremely dishy, hide, I don't know, but I mean to, so you can just stop being all macho and ordering me around and—'

'Joy.' He took my face in his hands and leveled a look at me that shriveled the words up on my lips. 'You will not investigate this murder any further. The man who killed Tanya has not been apprehended, and until he is, you are not safe. Do you understand me?'

'Of course I understand you—you're being possessive and dominating—'

Raphael rolled his eyes, muttered something that sounded like an oath, and pulled me forward, his kiss hot enough to take the curl right out of my hair. 'I'm telling you I love you, you foolish woman.'

'You are?' I asked, breathless from the power of his kiss.

His eyes were things of beauty, gems of the brightest quality, clear and translucent and filled with love. Somehow his declaration took the sting out of his bossiness.

'I am. I love you and worship you, and after this is over, I'll never keep anything from you.'