“For your seduction?”
Screw consideration. “Yes.”
“Seduction, huh? Because you are so crazy hot to have me?”
“Well, lukewarm, but with a little encouragement, I could no doubt simmer.” Think boiling blood and steam heat rising off my favorite body parts.
She arched her pretty brows at him, clearly not buying his enchantment with her.
“If you must know, I have to seduce you in order to gain your consent so that I can fang the sin taint from you.” There! Any plainer and a six-year-old could understand.
“Are you saying that you seduce everyone you fang? I don’t recall you telling me that.”
Are you taking notes now? Dost think I tell you everything? There are things that would curl your . . . Never mind. “Of course not.” He tried to imagine seducing that pimply-faced, expletive-spewing teenage gang member he’d come across last week in a Miami alley, and shivered with distaste. He had saved the idiot youthling, though, and sent him on his buttocks-exposed, braies-dragging way to sin no more. With a sigh of exaggerated patience, he explained to Marisa, “Victims of a sin taint, or those dreadful sinners on the verge of being taken by the Lucipires, are offered a choice when we vangels find them. They must consent. We cannot fang them otherwise. Do they repent? Do they agree to a vangel’s bite to remove the sin poison? Or not?”
“Why am I not being offered a choice?”
He felt like tearing out his own hair, strand by strand. “Because!”
“That was mature!”
For a woman who claims to be exhausted, she sure can talk. Blather, blather, blather. “Because there all kinds of fangings. Betimes a vangel must fang a Lucie, during battle.” Yeech! “And betimes a vangel fangs his partner during sex.” Not so yeech! “It enhances the pleasure a hundredfold, I have been told. Sex fanging happens only with a life mate, not in the casual mating, such as modern-day one-night stands.”
“I still don’t understand.”
I don’t understand, either, truth to tell. I just know that I must save you. I must. Besides, the less you understand, the better, my dearling. Just say yes. “If I cannot make you agree willingly, then I will seduce you into compliance.”
“And that is acceptable according to the vangel rule book.”
“Vangel rule book?” He almost smiled. “I do not know what the ‘rule book’ says in that regard. Since we are at cross wills on this issue, I can only try to convince you to my way of thinking without actually clubbing you over your stubborn head.” And enjoy myself in the process.
“I’m so tired. Can’t we do this some other night?”
A ploy to stop me altogether. I am not so thickheaded that I cannot see that. “No, we cannot forestall the inevitable. I have too many other responsibilities weighing on me without worry over you.” Plus I have an enthusiasm that is becoming more enthused by the second. “I’ll do all the work. Just lie back and let me fang you.”
“Men have been telling women that for centuries, but they say ‘bang,’ not ‘fang.’”
“You deliberately missay me. And crudely, too. Just lie back and let it happen. It will be over before you know it.”
“Just lie back and dream of England, huh?”
England? What has England to do with this? The bloody Saxons! Even during sex, they stick their big noses in Viking affairs. “Or sugarplums, or whatever little girls dream of,” he suggested, instead.
She gave him a pointed, unconsciously sultry look. “I’m not a little girl.”
“I know.” Lord, but I bloody hell know!
He went down on one knee and removed first one high heel, then the other. He hadn’t expected the gesture to feel so intimate. But, by the heavens, it did. Monumentally so! She felt it, too. However, instead of enjoying the experience, she would have kicked him if he hadn’t surprised her before that thought entered her head by holding on to her ankles. “Wha-what?”
He considered pushing his luck and sliding his palms up her calves and over her thighs, but if there was anything a Viking warrior knew about battles it was: Timing is everything. Marisa wasn’t nearly ready for such a direct assault.
That didn’t mean he could wait for something to happen. What was that modern adage: “You snooze, you lose.” Or as Sorkel the Skald used to say, “He who hesitates has an axe in his head.”
He placed his hands on her waist and rose to his two feet, taking her with him. For just one second, he placed a kiss on her stunned lips as she dangled above the carpet like a limp puppet. Then he tossed her up and onto the middle of the big bed and crawled over her before she regained her senses and attempted to get away. Or walloped him with a pillow.
“Get off me, you big baboon.” She yawned again.
“Not a chance.”
Yet another yawn.
It was insulting, really. Vikings did not bore women. And, no matter what else he was, he was still a Viking.
“I can’t breathe.”
“Liar.” His arms were levered over her, his lower body pressing her to the bed. He was not suffocating her, no matter what she implied. Still, he put his mouth close to hers and blew softly between her lips. He had no idea why he did it. A reflex, mayhap.
She gasped, and, to his surprise, she blew back into his mouth.
He gasped, too.
Soon, they were exchanging breaths in an even, rhythmic fashion. He was breathing for her. She was breathing for him. They were breathing as one.
He had never done such before, and he doubted she had, either, by the stunned expression on her face. At least she was no longer yawning.
“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.
“What are you doing to me?” he countered.
“This is the sorriest seduction I’ve ever experienced,” she said, though he could tell she was intrigued. In fact, she was licking her lips as if to retain the taste of him, even though they hadn’t actually kissed.
He imagined that he felt every lick of her tongue on a certain part of his body. “I have not yet begun,” he rasped out.
“Begun what?”
She’s confused. Good! Every Viking knows a confused woman is halfway to the bed furs. “Seduction. I have not yet begun my seduction.” He paused. “A sorry seduction, you say? Get seduced a lot, do you?”
“Every other day at least.”
He started to smile and then corrected the action because his fangs were already starting to elongate with arousal, and he didn’t want to scare her. Yet. Forget scaring. Another part of his body was elongating, too. The one that imagined licking. He could tell the exact moment she noticed the hardened rod aligned perfectly betwixt her parted thighs because her squirming stopped, abruptly. And it wasn’t fright at all he saw on her face now. The exhaustion had left her eyes and was replaced with . . . interest?
“Consider me seduced,” she said, and wiggled her bottom so that she rubbed herself against him like a cat against a catnip pole.
He felt like purring. Or swishing his manly tail. “No, no, no. You cannot be seduced so quickly. You must needs be writhing with want, begging for me to . . . take you.” What he really meant was “bite you,” but ’twas best not to remind her of that until the perfect moment.
“I could writhe,” she said, and did in fact do just that, placing her arms overhead and thrashing her body about sinuously like a harlot in heat. She gazed up at him through half-slitted, sultry eyes. Then concluded, “Seduced!”
Is she playing me at my own game? Is the witch trying to seduce me? Does she dare make mock of me? “You cannot be seduced so quickly. Seduction takes time and talent.”
Sure enough, when she thought he was relaxed with her seeming consent, she gave his chest a mighty shove and attempted to slide out from under him. He let her, but then caught her with an arm about her waist and rolled so that she was on top, straddling him, the hem of the dress having ridden up practically to the bridge of her thighs . . . a bridge he was dying to cross. In the process he slid th
e back zipper of her dress from her neckline to the belt, which he unbuckled and tossed aside.
Caught by surprise, she fought to crawl off him and, at the same time, keep her dress from falling off in front.
Accommodating fellow that he was, he helped. Lower the dress, that was.
Holy frickin’ clouds! Her hair, which had been clipped neatly atop her head with tortoiseshell combs, had come undone on one side and hung loose to a bare shoulder. The waitress dress, which he had sewn so expertly for her that afternoon, fell forward, catching at her elbows. She wore a blush-colored lace undergarment that cupped her full breasts and raised them up like ripe peaches, and he did love a good peach.
He rolled so that she was under him again. “Dost yield, wench? Dost repent of the sin you are contemplating? Dost welcome my bite? Dost agree to stay away from Harry Goldman and other men who pay for services?”
“Dost, dost, dost!” she mimicked. “Dost that ‘men who pay for services’ apply to you, too? You mentioned that you might be able to get the money for me.”
His heart sank down to his navel. Oh, the unfairness of it! To be reminded at this moment that I am here for a higher calling, not to take advantage of a wench’s weakness. “Now you would couple with me for money?” The sin taint must be getting stronger. “You said that you would prostitute yourself with Goldman but not with me.”
“I never used the word prostitute.”
“I have no patience with word games.” Certainly not now when my brain is blurred with the possibilities of other kinds of games.
“This is no game to me.” When he did not respond to that remark, she prodded, “Well? Show me the money.”
He shook his head. “The . . . uh, person from whom I might have obtained the funds, declined.”
“If there ever was such a person to begin with!”
“I do not lie.” Much.
“So you’re poor as a church mouse. Just like me.”
More like a rat. Leastways, that is how I am feeling in my failure to convince Mike. “You could say that.”
“Then I don’t agree to anything, you big oaf.”
“So be it,” he said with mock resignation. Mock, because he was beginning to enjoy this verbal sparring and its inevitable outcome. “Seduction it is, then.”
“Do your best,” she snarled, and there was definite challenge in her voice.
His elbows were braced on either side of her head, but his hands were free, and he used his fingers to brush the loose strands of hair behind her one ear. Then he laved a line with his tongue from the center of her upraised chin to the lobe of her ear, which he nipped with his teeth.
She stiffened.
His moist tongue traced the inner whorls of her shell-like ear. Then he blew the wetness dry.
She shivered.
He used the tip of his tongue to stab into the center of her ear in a cadence matched to the beat of his pounding heart. At the same time, his hands had moved under her and lifted her silk-clad buttocks, exposed by the rising hem of her dress, in his palms, and guided her hips in a rhythmic counterpoint to the thrusts of his tongue. Multitasking at its finest!
She moaned.
Or mayhap he was the one who moaned.
His head spun as a strange fog of sensuality seemed to be swirling about their bodies. Not quite a fog, actually. More like wisps of cloudy sensations wrapping around them like a cocoon, teasing, tempting. The tendrils of the mist were caressing his body, like fingers. Or was it Marisa’s fingers? No, her arms were braced tightly against her sides as she attempted to resist his charms.
And the air, ah, it was filled with the scent of honey and ginger. It occurred to him in that moment that the most delicious meal in the world, one he was going to try first chance he got, was peaches drizzled with ginger honey. Was there such a dish? If not, he would invent one.
Mayhap she had eaten something with those flavors, and that was why he smelled them so strongly. He would taste her lips, just to make sure. Leastways, that’s what he told himself as his lips swooped down to take succor from her parted lips. This was no sweet, tentative kiss. More like a hungry, devouring search for . . . something.
He nipped her lips and tongue. He wet her lips. He sucked and thrust and pressed and thrust and thrust and thrust.
Somehow, sometime, in the process, she’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Her bare legs twined about his thighs. And she was answering him, kiss for kiss.
It was no longer a question of would she yield? Would he?
Sigurd had never intended to take this “seduction” to the level of actual intercourse. Fool that he was, he’d planned the “near-sex” that his brother Trond had claimed to invent. All the touching and feeling and pleasure of bedplay without the sinful outcome . . . well, sinful in Michael’s eyes for unmarried couples, and, since marriage was forbidden, sinful, period, for vangels. Trond claimed it was almost as good as the real thing, meaning actual intercourse. This would be Sigurd’s first walk down that path.
Who am I kidding?
A lose-lose situation.
And I am definitely losing.
Or winning, some might say.
Aaarrgh!
He panted for breath as he raised his head to look down at her.
She stared up at him, and while she held his eyes, she undid the front clasp on her bra and drew the fabric apart.
He was truly lost then.
Her breasts were full, even lying down—some women’s breasts went flat as oatcakes when on their backs, a definite prick to the balloon of unrealistic male expectations—and not peach-colored at all. More a dusky olive tone to go with her Spanish heritage.
In that moment, Sigurd decided that he liked olives, almost as much as he did peaches.
The areolas were a dusky rose, the nipples pointed nubs of paler pink.
He touched them, just touched them with the tips of his fingers, and she arched up off the bed, keening her pleasure in a long wail. “Aaaaaahhhhh!”
Temptation reared its head, and he succumbed without a shred of resistance to the desire, nay the compulsion, to sample the feast laid afore him. No tentative licks of the tongue or sweet kisses from his lips now. Instead, he took one breast into his mouth, areola and all, and sucked rhythmically, his tongue pressed against the hardened nipple.
As if he’d flicked the switch on her motor, she began to buck against him. With a keening wail of “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh . . .” she began to climax. Just from his ministering to her breast! What would she do if he employed any one of the dozens of other talents he had in his centuries-old arsenal?
Her peaking triggered his orgasm as well, and even as he continued to suckle her and thrust his denim-clad hips against the vee of her legs, he did something he had not done since he was an untried youthling back in the Norselands. He spilled his seed inside his braies. And it felt so damn wonderful!
He raised his head and saw that she was as stunned as he at the short bout of ecstasy that had overcome them. He probably could have gained her consent then for a sin fanging, but he wanted more now. Much more. Instead of being sated, his appetite was whetted. The sensual fog still surrounded them, in fact was growing stronger. Resisting temptation was no longer an option, if it ever had been. Especially since underlying it all was the faint scent of lemons.
With a speed honed over the centuries, he eased out of his jeans and small garment, wiping the wetness off himself with the dry part of the briefs. Then he tugged her loosened dress down over her hips and legs, leaving only a blush-colored scrap of fabric covering her clearly damp mons.
He put a hand over the dampness, then leaned down to sniff her musk. What a heady, heady scent to an already aroused male! And, yes, he was growing hard again. It had been so long, and she was so very fucksome.
His touch there caused her to rouse from her sex stupor, and she blinked several times before murmuring, “What? What did you do to me?”
He was not about to let her regain her senses. Yet. Nor
would he argue who had done what to whom. Yet. The silk briefs joined the waitress dress, his jeans, and briefs in a pile on the floor. Not daring to put his body over hers, skin to skin, for fear of embarrassing himself, again, he instead lay on his side, propped on one elbow, and gazed down at her. No time to admire his handiwork in the kiss-swollen lips and budding nipples, or the sex flush that covered her face and upper chest. He placed a hand over her dark curls and urged, “Open for me, sweetling. Let me bring you to paradise.”
“Been there. Done that. Waiting for the T-shirt.”
“Huh?”
“Listen, Sigurd. It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex, and—”
“Not nearly as long as me, sweetling.”
She tapped him on the chin in chastisement for his interruption.
He nipped at the forefinger before she yanked it back.
“As I said, I’ve gone without for a long time, and that’s my only excuse for coming like a locomotive at your mere touch.”
“Loco-locomotive,” he sputtered. “Mere?”
She scowled at yet another of his interruptions.
He played with one of her breasts to make up for his rudeness.
She slapped the hand away. “Let me finish.”
He rolled over onto his back and put his hands up in surrender.
“As I said, twice now, I haven’t had sex since dinosaurs roamed the earth, practically, and I certainly didn’t plan on doing so tonight, but now that I’m here, I don’t believe in playing games,” she informed him.
“Which means?”
“Let’s just do it and be done.”
Huh? What did she say? “Just do it,” he repeated dumbly. “No. See, the thing is, I never intended for us to actually do it. More like near-doing-it. Ha, ha, ha! Wait. What are you doing? Oh! Oh crap! Oh no, no, no! Oh yes, yes, yes!”
She had thrown a leg over him and levered herself up to a sitting position. On him! Before he could blink or say, “Sweet swiving sin!” or some such nonsense, she took his rampant erection in hand and was guiding him home.