Or should she be insulted? No, she was the one who’d come, uninvited, into his bedroom in the middle of the night. But that’s not why she’d come. Was it? No, of course not.
“I’m feeling kind of lonely, standing here naked,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Lose Snoopy.”
Oh. “Oh.” Yikes!
“No, wait. Let me unwrap you. Like a present.” Before she could guess what he meant, he knelt before her and placed a palm on each of her thighs, under the hem of her nightshirt. The tips of his fingers almost, but not quite, touched her pubic hair.
Blood rushed to that region, and the pleasure was so intense she felt herself sway.
Harek righted her and then somehow got his hands under her bottom and lifted the shirt, but only waist-high. At the same time, he spread her knees wider so that she was fully exposed to him.
“So pretty!” he said, sitting back on his heels and staring at her there. “Look at yourself, Camille. See how pretty you are.”
She didn’t want to, but she did. And what she saw was not herself. Correction, she saw herself, all right, wide open for business and practically waving a welcome sign, but what she homed in on, instead, was that part of Harek, big and hard, and pointing at her like a heat-seeking missile, and, boy, did she have the heat, or was that the hots, for him.
My brain is melting from hormone overload.
“Are you wet for me, Camille?” he asked silkily.
How did she answer a question like that? “Probably.”
“You better check.”
Huh? “Could we just get on with it, Harek. I’m not good at games.”
“Lucky for you, I am. Touch yourself, Camille,” he ordered.
She bristled. Camille was in the military. She was accustomed to taking orders, but not from men in her personal life.
“Do not try to deny that you know how.”
Of course she knew how. She was almost thirty years old. She had read Cosmo as a teenager. She’d read Fifty Shades as an adult. She put a finger, just one, her middle finger, to herself. And, yes, there was dampness. “Are you satisfied?”
“Not even a little,” he said with a laugh. “I am a greedy bastard.”
But when she looked at him, she saw that his silvery blue eyes were half slitted with passion, and his lips were parted, showing the pointy incisors. So, he likes looking at me there, and he likes watching me touch myself. She did it again, this time going deep, just as a test, and he barely caught the gasp of surprise that escaped his lips. Oh yeah, he likes it. He likes it!
“Witch,” he murmured, and kissed the fingertip she’d just put to herself. “Roses. More bloody roses!”
Women had a thing about body odor, especially down there. And she knew for a fact that she didn’t smell like roses there. Even so, she took a surreptitious sniff, and holy hell! She did detect a slight scent of roses.
But Harek had moved on to something else. “Take off the garment, sweetling. Slowly.” Meanwhile he was running his fingertips up the backs of her legs, from her ankles to her butt, then back again. If she hadn’t just shaved her legs that day, she would have guessed that every hair follicle was standing on end, waving, Me, me, me! Her pubic hairs definitely were.
“Sweetling? That’s a new one,” she said with horny irrelevance. “Well, since you ask you so nicely . . .” She crisscrossed her arms and tugged at the hem by her waist, raising it higher. And higher. And higher. Then over her head, tossing it to the floor.
He studied her body in infuriating silence. “You’ve been hiding a lot, Camille,” he told her then. “A lot.”
She did have a good body. A healthy metabolism and hard exercise guaranteed that. Her breasts weren’t big, but they were proportional to the rest of her body, and, since she’d never had children, the nipples were pink and smallish.
He touched her nipples, lightly, and smiled when her lower body jolted in reaction. Her dampness was becoming a flood.
“We are going to have such fun,” he promised then, and put both hands on her waist, lifted and tossed her onto the middle of the bed, following after her. With a sensual hum of approval he arranged himself over her with his hard part pressed into the V of her widespread thighs. If she was the violin and he was the bow (She’d moved on from rockets to musical instruments. So, sue her!), they were already making sweet music, down there. In the pit (Don’t have a dirty mind!) . . . the orchestra pit.
Holy frickin’ cow! I didn’t know I could move from inside out, without actually trying.
Move over Beethoven. Mama’s got a brand-new song, she thought, then giggled at the idiocy of her musing.
“You think my agony is funny, do you, wench?”
She opened her eyes, which she hadn’t realized were scrunched tightly closed. Harek was arched over her on braced arms, and he actually did appear to be in agony. The best possible kind. Good! Welcome to the club. Even knowing, she asked with mock innocence, “What’s wrong?”
“I want you so bloody damn much, I’m having trouble controlling my enthusiasm, that is what is wrong.”
“Enthusiasm?”
He shrugged. “Viking for arousal.”
She smiled.
“You are enjoying my discomfort!”
“No. I like that you’re attracted to me.”
“Attracted! Any more attracted and I will be plowing a furrow in this mattress.”
“You have a charming way with words.” She put a hand to his chest, just to see if his skin was as warm as it appeared. It was. “Do you know that your eyes have turned silvery, and you have blue wispy wings coming out of your shoulders?”
“Not wings. No wings! Not when I am feeling so unangelic.”
“They sure look like wings.”
“ ’Tis probably smoke coming out of my ears from all the heat you are stoking in me.”
“Are we going to make love?”
“I do not know about making love, but I intend to sate my lust on you fifty ways to Valhalla.”
“You believe in Valhalla?”
“No, but I didn’t want to say that other word.”
“Heaven?”
“Hell.”
“You think you’re going to Hell for making love.”
“No, but I will be punished.”
“I don’t underst—”
He put his fingertips to her lips. “Enough talking.” Then he replaced his fingertips with his mouth, and she felt herself melting into a kiss so chocolaty sweet and sexually explicit that she was drowning in sensuality. Every erotic spot on her body was connected by thin threads of sensitivity to her lips. She vibrated with each brush of his lips, each lick of his tongue, each nip of his teeth. When she tasted him with her own tongue, brushing against his pointed incisors, he groaned low and deep in his throat.
A sudden alarming thought occurred to her. “Do you fang during sex?”
“I can, but I won’t, unless you want me to.” He was still braced over her body, but he was rubbing his silky chest hairs over her nipples, causing them to be engorged and aching for more. She arched up and did her own abrading, harder.
He chuckled.
“Why would I want that? Fanging?” she gasped out.
“It enhances the sexual pleasure for the woman a hundredfold, I have heard.”
“And for the man?”
He grinned. “A thousandfold.”
Of course, the idea was planted in her fool head now. “I don’t want to,” she lied.
“You don’t have to,” he replied. “There are plenty of other things we can do. Like . . .” He proceeded to do the most incredible things to her ears, first one, then the other. Using his lips and wet tongue and teeth and warm breaths, he aroused every nerve ending in her body, just by making love to her ears. And in between, he whispered words of encouragement to her, some of them wicked, not usually spoken aloud.
She used her hands to explore his shoulders and back and buttocks, but she couldn’t move her l
ower body, as she wanted to, because he had her pinioned to the bed with his hips. “I’m ready,” she finally said with exasperation.
“For what?”
“You.”
“Where?”
“Inside me.”
“It’s too soon.”
“Screw soon. I want you. Now. There are condoms in the bedside drawer in my bedroom. Oh damn, I wasn’t planning this when I came to your room.”
He arched a brow at her. “Condoms? You have condoms?”
“I wasn’t anticipating this. But the Navy makes us WEALS put protection in our toiletry kits. Just in case.”
“I don’t need a condom. Vangels are sterile.”
“Your brother . . .”
“Except for Ivak.”
In a momentary lapse from talking, Harek had raised himself slightly and Camille managed one quick thrust of her hips, causing him to slide inside her, to his surprise. It was always good to surprise a man in bed. But, truth to tell, slide wasn’t the right word. Because he was big, and she hadn’t had sex in a while, her slick channel was welcoming him with fierce spasms that moved him higher, inch by blissful inch. Holy frickin’ sex machine! A wave of orgasms swept over her, so intense she might have blacked out for a moment. Her eyes were probably rolling back in her head.
When she was able to glance up—he was still embedded in her, unmoving—she saw that his teeth were gritted and sweat beaded his forehead. He was clearly fighting his own climax. A strange haze seemed to surround them, like a cocoon, and it smelled, surprise, surprise, like chocolate roses. She was going to bottle the scent and make a million dollars, if she ever survived this awful/wonderful sexual experience.
Harek seemed to be watching her, waiting for something. “Are you ready?”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a gasp.
“I take that for yes,” he said with a smile, and began to slowly, very sloooooooowly, draw himself out of her body until only the head of his penis was inside her. The friction was pleasure and torture so intense that she let out a long moan and raised her knees, spreading herself even wider.
He took his time going back in again, too. She wanted to beat his back with her fists and scream, Faster! But her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth as she panted for breath. She did put her hands on his hard butt cheeks, though, trying to encourage him.
The stubborn man took his slow good time.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Innnnnnn.
Ouuuuuut.
She was dying and having dozens of mini orgasms while he stroked her inner walls with frustrating slowness. Once he stopped when he was in her fully and rubbed his pubic bone against her clitoris, back and forth, back and forth, ’til she exploded in a full-blown climax of shuddering spasms.
“Are you done now?” she asked, though she couldn’t see for the exploding stars that blinded her. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but not by much. Down below, she was one shattering mess of sensations. Hard to tell what was going on in sex central, too many things at one time.
He laughed. “I’ve barely begun.”
That cleared her vision fast.
“Hold on to the headboard, sweetling,” he advised then. “This is going to be a rough ride.”
What a corny cliché, she thought as she grabbed for the wood spindles. Almost immediately, she revised her thinking to Go, cowboy, go!
He slammed into her, over and over and over. And each time he hit her clitoris, just so, only for a brief second, but more arousing because it was so brief. In and out, he stroked her, long and hard. ’Til she barely stifled a scream.
Looping her legs over his shoulders, he hit her from a different angle, and the inner convulsions started all over again. She was grasping and ungrasping him in a rhythmic dance as old as time, but unlike anything she’d ever experienced before.
She almost screamed again, and this time he reared his head back and gritted out his own climax before falling heavily onto her body. Only belatedly, she worried that her parents might have heard her, but there appeared to be silence in the house. Thank God she hadn’t actually screamed. But a loud whimper could be heard in the quiet, couldn’t it? She listened some more. Just silence, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock downstairs. Whew!
Like a rag doll, she lay splayed out, with him still semisoft inside her body, his face resting against her neck. She could feel his fangs pressing against her skin, but he made no move to bite her. Thank God! She wouldn’t have the strength to fight him off. Nor would she want to.
“Sorry I am, Camille,” he said against her ear.
“Why?”
“I did not spend nearly enough time in foreplay. Next time I will do better.”
“Next time?” she choked out.
“Did I not mention that I am a greedy man?”
She began to laugh then. The man had that effect on her. Better? That was impossible. That was the best sex she’d ever had. The best sex anyone had ever had. With an angel, yet! She doubted Adam and Eve had had such good sex. Or Samson and Delilah. As for his vampire half—and wasn’t that an interesting question, which part of Harek was vampirish?—good ol’ Drac had nothing on him, Impaler or not!
Unfortunately, or fortunately, her laughter extended to all parts of her body. Even down below. And that semisoft part of his body was clearly enjoying the humor with growing—what was it Harek had called it?—enthusiasm.
Chapter 12
Vikings and cowboys, same thing! . . .
“Your vagina is laughing,” Harek grumbled, but he wasn’t really displeased.
“My lady parts are not laughing,” she asserted.
“I beg to differ, m’lady. But not to worry. Your happy lady parts are making my man parts happy, too.”
“I noticed,” she said, and gave a little wiggle to demonstrate that she was aware of his growing appreciation, still inside her.
It was true, though. He could feel the residual ripples of her humor throughout the muscles of her body. In her breasts, which were flattened against his chest; in her arms, which encircled his shoulders; in her thighs, which were wrapped around his hips; and, yes, those interior muscles surrounding his own Mr. Happy. It was the strangest aspect of the female anatomy he’d ever experienced, and he’d experienced some really strange ones, like the woman in Vestfold with labia so long she could tie a knot there, which her husband sometimes did when he had to be off a-Viking for months at a time. A chastity belt, you could say.
From the light streaming through the open bathroom door, he saw the sex flush that infused her face and neck and parts of her chest. Her lips were bruised by his earlier kisses. Her hair was bed mussed from flailing about. In essence, she looked like a well-sated woman. Gorgeous. Well, she was still plain, in a way, but gorgeous at the same time. And the scent of roses—and chocolate now, too—was almost overpowering. Like an aphrodisiac.
He leaned down and kissed her lightly on the lips. “That was wonderful. Spectacular.” Then he eased himself out of her, inch by torturously erotic inch, and rolled over onto his side, taking her with him so they were facing each other.
Blinking with surprise, she said, “Oh. I thought . . . you’re right. It’s late. We should go to sleep.”
He blinked back at her, not understanding, at first. Oh. She thought he’d withdrawn from her body because he was done. Hah! He ran a fingertip from the center of her neck, over her shoulder, and down one well-toned arm to her wrist, where he lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, where a pulse beat strongly.
She shivered, then faked a yawn.
“Nice try!” He was the one laughing now as he swatted her lightly on the rump.
“But you . . .” She waved a hand downward.
“I didn’t pull out because I’m done. I want to start all over again and enjoy every bit of the present you’ve handed me. Believe me, I’m going to savor every sexual, greedy moment until my chain ge
ts yanked.”
“What present?”
“You.”
He could tell his answer pleased her. “What chain?”
“The one Mike is going to pull when he finds out what I’m doing.”
“Mike?”
“The archangel.”
“Oh, that again.”
“Always that, dearling. You still aren’t convinced, hmm?”
“Not even a little. Well, maybe a little. How can—”
He put a fingertip to her lips to stop further questions and eased her to her back. Leaning over her, he promised, “I’ll explain anything you want. Later. But for now, I want to taste your skin. Especially here.” He licked her lips. “And here.” He licked his way around and over a nipple. “And here.” He dipped his tongue into her navel. “And here.” He leaned toward her curly hairs.
But she took his face in her hands pulling him upward. “Not there. I need to go wash up first. I’m . . . messy.”
He shook his head. “I like you wet and messy from my climax and yours. We can bathe together afterward.”
For the next half hour, he did in fact check out every part of her body, front and back. He especially liked the way he could turn her pink nipples rosy red with flicks of his tongue and soft, then hard suckling that had her arching her back off the bed and ordering him not to stop, “Don’t you dare damn stop now!” She’d come to a peak just from his ministering to her breasts.
Then there were the backs of her knees, which were especially sensitive. When he licked her there, she nigh shot up off the bed and squealed like a pig . . . a cute pig. Maybe that wasn’t the best comparison; best he keep that thought to himself.
He tried sucking on one of her toes, but she kicked him in the groin. He decided to save that particular sex play for later. It was a well-honed taste that had to be developed.
He liked the curve of her buttocks and the sweet crease that separated them, and he told her so repeatedly. She was uncomfortable with his attentions there, like many women were. If he had more time, which he was almost certain he would not, he could teach her not to be so squeamish.
She told him, “Move on!”
Of course, her nether hairs and woman’s channel merited much savoring. Her unhooded clitoris was standing at full attention by the time he was done with her. Not that he was done by any means, but she was keening with need and he had pushed himself beyond the limits of his own self-control.