EVEN VAMPIRES GET THE BLUES

chest right there for me to ogle. I gave in and had a good ogle, then managed to get my mind back to the question uppermost. 'Foreplay or no?'

He stopped mid-unzipping. 'Pardon?'

'Are you going to get naked now? Or just torment me with that chest first, driving me to a frenzy of lust- crazed wantonness that will make me rip the rest of your clothes off?'

He looked down at his chest. 'You want to rip my clothes off just by looking at my chest?'

'Very much so.'

'It's just a chest. Skin and hair.'

'Oh, I beg to differ.' I tossed aside my jeans and walked over to where he stood in a shady patch, stroking my hand down his chest from his clavicle to his sternum, following the lovely, sleek trail of hair that led straight down his belly and disappeared into his pants. 'This is not just skin and hair. This is no mere chest. It's chest deluxe. Chest supreme.'

He gave me an odd look, a mixture of disbelief and amusement. 'You're a strange woman.'

'So it's said. I know a good thing when I see it, however,' I said, pulling my hand back with an effort. 'So, did you want to dally with a bit of foreplay, or just go straight for the meat-and-potatoes thing?'

He dropped his pants. 'What do you think?'

'Whoa! You've been anticipating,' I said, admiring the view as I backed up a few steps. I pulled off my sweater and dropped it onto the chair so I stood in the sunlight clad in nothing but my underwear and bra. 'OK. I'm good with that. Investigating to do, people to see… and evidently, penises to ride. Do you like oral sex?'

'Do you always talk so much during lovemaking?' he asked, an odd look on his face.

'Not normally.'

He looked thoughtful for a moment. 'Are you still nervous?'

'Maybe a little. In case you haven't noticed, I tend to blabber when I'm nervous.'

I've never met anyone like you before, Paen thought. I don't think he intended me to hear him, but I grinned anyway as I did a sinuous little dance in the sunshine while slowly removing my bra.

Good. This'll be new territory for us both. Kind of puts us on equal footing.

'Is equal footing that important to you?' he asked, taking an aborted step forward, stopping because his toes hit the pool of sunlight that surrounded me.

'You hack your way through the foliage and I'll meet you at the bed,' I told him, giving in to the energy that flowed through me from the sunlight. I'm not very adept at dancing, or singing for that matter, but put me in the sun and I feel an indescribable rhythm, kind of like those solar-powered, highly annoying desk toys that weave and bob endlessly until you throw them against the wall or dump them in a dark closet.

'You're going to dance now?' Paen asked, having fought his way through the plants to the bedside. He was watching with interest as I slipped one side of my bra down in a sunny parody of a striptease. 'Not that I mind. You're very graceful. And I enjoy looking at your breasts. As well as the rest of you.'

I did a few slow-motion hip moves as I shimmied out of my bra, turning to slide my hands down my breasts, along my hips, to the lace bits of my underwear. 'I don't normally do this in front of people, but the sunshine makes it hard for me to stand still.'

'Take your time. I'm enjoying the show.'

I smiled coyly over my shoulder at him and skinnied my way out of my undies, tossing them over my head like they were a bridal bouquet.

'Do I get to keep them?' Paen asked when I turned around. He held my underwear in one hand.

'If you really want, you can. Or you can keep me, instead,' I said, slinking my way over to him.

'Hmm.' His thumb rubbed over the satin of the underwear. 'They're warm, silky, and very feminine.'

I smiled as he tossed them aside and pulled me up against his chest. His body was hard and unyielding as I rubbed myself against him, my soft, smooshy parts very different from his solid, flat lines.

'But you're warmer, silkier, and infinitely more feminine. I choose you instead.'

'Sounds good to me. Oh, wait…'

I slipped away from him to dig a packet out from under my pillow. 'Now or later?' I asked, holding it up.

'Might as well be now. I don't think I'll be able to stop once I get started,' he answered.

I had to remember for a moment how to breathe at the promise that showed in his eyes, but got the condom on him in record time, and flung myself against him to enjoy the tactile experience of his flesh against mine. 'Oooh! Man alive, it's going to be all over for me if you're going to do that!' My legs went boneless as he nipped the top of my ear with his sharp canines.

'There's not a large enough supply of blood for me to drink from this spot,' he murmured, his tongue licking away the sting.

I almost came right then and there.

'Dear god in heaven, don't do that!' I yelled, jumping backward, the backs of my knees hitting the bed so that I went sprawling across it.

'Enough earplay?' he asked, looking down at me.

My body quivered. All of it, every last single inch of it, quivered and twitched and tingled at the look in his bright eyes, so light they all but burned my flesh. 'I don't think I can take any more eargasms right now. I really want to experience the regular kind, if you don't mind.'

'Very well. Perhaps you would prefer this, then,' he said, kneeling next to the bed, spreading my legs so he was positioned between them.

'Oh, man,' I said on a half gasp as he rubbed his cheeks on my inner thighs. One minute I was me, Sam, a half-elf private detective with a secret addiction to greasy hamburgers, and the next I was a shining orb of rapture, as bright as Paen's eyes, my whole body attuned to every move his mouth made against me. He nibbled, he touched, he probed, his tongue swirled a tango of delight against sensitive parts that suddenly roared to life with a demand to be taken to heaven and back. Without conscious thought, I opened my mind to Paen and shared it with him, shared the ecstasy and euphoria and glory that was his mouth on my tingling parts. He adjusted his angle of attack, and sent me flying… right out of my body.

'Dammit, no! NO! NOT NOW! Aaaaaaaaargh!' I all but sobbed as my conscious being parted with my body, and started drifting around the bedroom, at the mercy of the dancing motes of light. 'God damn it! DAMN DAMN DAMN!' Paen, help me!

The scene below me was arousing, enticing, sexy as hell… and I wasn't there to experience the joy I knew Paen was bringing to my body.

Why is this happening? Why isn't it different with you? Why? I wailed.

Come back to me, Sam. Share this with me. Feel what I feel.

Before the words finished rolling around my head I was back in my body, just in time for the glorious Technicolor orgasm that swept over me. I screamed his name as he slid up my body, the pleasure he felt as his teeth sank deep into my breast almost as great as the pleasure he'd just given me.

Our minds merged, his exhilaration feeding mine until it spiraled into something more profound than anything I'd ever felt, a feeling that doubled, trebled as he moved against me, thrusting hard into me as he released my breast to bite hard on my shoulder. Pain flared bright for a moment, then dissolved into rhapsody, so mind- numblingly overwhelming that I could do nothing more than clutch his back as his body moved against mine, the sensations of him moving hard and deep inside me joining with the sensations he felt as he both gave and took life.

It was the experience of a lifetime, and one that seared itself onto my soul as he took me to another orgasm, one that triggered his own, the echoes of both rolling around our joined minds, the light from the being we made together filling every corner of darkness within him, bursting out until we were the light.

That was… dear god, are you still breathing?… that was the most amazing thing I've ever felt. It defies description. It was so astounding, I want to dance and sing and cry with the beauty of it. Paen—you're absolutely amazing. You pulled me back when I had left! Twice! No one has ever done that even once! I think I may faint. Or do a backflip. I can't decide which.

Paen lifted his head from where it had been nestled against my neck, his back covered in a sheen of sweat, his dark curls tousled, his eyes fading from brilliant, blinding silver to a rich grey. 'I told you so,' was all he said, a smile curling his lips.