Kiss of Surrender

  “I can’t believe I’m discussing gardens when I have the most beautiful woman in the world standing before me in all her naked glory.”

  “I can’t believe you are, either,” and defying his order not to move, she turned. “I want to see what you’re doing.”

  Zeb allowed himself to feast then. A visual feast.

  Her breasts were round, like the perfect halves of large navel oranges. Their creamy skin only acted as a backdrop to pink areolas, also perfect circles, with rose-hued nipples in their center, engorged with her want of him. Then he looked downward. “I wondered if you would be blonde there,” he remarked huskily. He also wondered if her nether curls would be damp with what Vikings called woman dew in the old days. He would find out soon enough. “Blonde is nice, but I prefer your natural color. How long will it take to grow out?”

  “As soon as I can get a bottle of hair dye, I’ll be mousy brown again.” She seemed rather shy at his examining her there and squirmed a little.

  “Light brown, with honey highlights,” he corrected, patting the soft curls. That’s the only touch he could allow himself now, lest he begin delving for . . . honey. “Your brown hair has highlights of pure gold.”

  “You really are good at gaming.”

  “I forgot this was a game,” he told her in a raw voice of utter candor. “I want to make love with you. Every way I know how. I want to create new ways of loving. With you. I want . . .” He let his words trail off because that was the throbbing element in his body at the moment. Want. He wanted. So many things. And they all revolved around this woman.

  “Then do it,” she whispered in an equally raw voice.

  He lifted her with arms around her waist and walked her to one of the recliners, kicking it with his toes into an almost level position. Then he tossed her down and crawled up and over her. Shifting this way and that till he got their body parts aligned, especially his unwieldy erection, he then leaned on his elbows over her and smiled.

  She smiled back.

  “Do you like lip kisses, Nicole?” he asked, pressing his lips lightly against hers. “Or would you prefer that I move right to your breasts?” He raised himself on one elbow so that he could palm a breast, rubbing in a circular fashion. “Or shall we go directly to the main course?” Back to being braced on both elbows, he thrust his cock against her female parts several times in succession.

  “All of the above,” she whispered, her hands already framing his face and pulling him down to her. Against his mouth, she inquired impishly, “Are we still playing Statues?”

  “Movable Statues,” he decided, nipping at her bottom lip, which was curved into a smile.

  He kissed her then. For a long time. With his fingers tunneled in her hair, gripping her head. Usually, he spent only a moment on a woman’s body above her neck, but he found himself relishing all the different aspects of her mouth. He molded her lips into changing patterns until he got the perfect fit. He forced her mouth open with his thrusting tongue. He settled into slow, drugging kisses, then took her mouth with a savage intensity.

  And she kissed him back. With equal fervor. Not at all repulsed by his fangs. In fact, she seemed to enjoy licking at them in fascination. Her tongue seared his when she dared to enter his mouth. Then she sucked his tongue deep into her own mouth.

  Between kisses, he whispered things to her, naughty things he wanted to do to her later.

  Between kisses, Nicole, bless her wanton heart, whispered things back at him, naughty things she would do to him later.

  They were both panting for breath when he raised his head. Staring down at her, he saw her honey eyes were dilated and dark with arousal. Her sweet mouth was swollen from his kisses.

  He moved down her body then, placing his face over her breasts. At first he just lapped the outer edges, moving closer and closer to her areolas and then her pebbled nipples. When he flicked his tongue over one of them, she let loose with a long moan. Her limbs went stiff. And the joining of her thighs spasmed against him.

  She was coming to orgasm from this little bit of sex play? By the runes! This was going to be a night to remember.

  “I am so embarrassed,” she said, turning her face to the side. “It’s just that it’s been so long, and my breasts are sensitive, and—”

  “Shh, dearling, your pleasure is a compliment to me.” He proceeded to minister to her breasts in earnest then. And for a long time. He kissed the taut nipples and tantalized the buds with the tip of his tongue before plucking on them gently with his teeth. Each time he sucked on them, deeply, he could tell there was an answered draw in her woman’s channel because she raised her hips in counterpoint and moaned her unceasing pleasure.

  Trond had read a woman’s magazine of Alex’s one time, not that it was his usual practice. Most of them just made mock of men. In any case, this magazine article said a woman’s mammary glands caused men’s neurological systems to shut down. That was probably true. He did love looking and touching a woman’s breasts, and most especially he was enjoying Nicole’s.

  He kissed his way over her muscle-honed abdomen, tonguing her belly button that was sans its gold ring today, jewelry not permitted in active military ops, but he remembered how it twinkled there that night in the tavern. Her belly was slightly concave with a tattoo on her right hip, which he traced with his fingertips and then the tip of his tongue. It was a letter V.

  Raising his head slightly, he arched his brows at her. “The letter V?”

  “For victory. I got it after I left Billy. And it symbolizes some of the other hurdles I’ve overcome as well.”

  “I like it,” he said.

  He skipped over the part of her body he most wanted to feast on, and instead used his fingers to touch and his mouth to kiss down one thigh and knee and calf and ankle and foot and toes, then up the other leg till he was at sex central. He knelt on the floor, took her by the rump, and yanked her forward, then used his shoulders to separate her thighs wide, placing her feet on the edge of the chair. In fact, he pulled the table between the two chairs closer. It had two candles on it. Reaching behind him to the coffee table, he picked up the two candles there, too, so that he had more light to see that hidden part of the female anatomy that was so fascinating to men.

  “I don’t know, Trond,” she protested, trying to draw her knees together.

  He wouldn’t let her. “I want to see.”

  “I’m too open.” She was leaning up on her elbows, looking down at him.

  He shook his head. “Not open enough.” He paused then. “I will stop if you want me to, but . . . let me, please.”

  She nodded hesitantly.

  For a second, he just looked at her there, the golden curls glistening with her arousal. He knew without checking that his cock would have a bead of semen on it, as well . . . man dew. The anticipation of touching and tasting her there was wonderfully unbearable.

  With trembling fingers, he parted her folds and could have cheered at the slickness that beckoned him. With just one fingertip, he traced a line from just above her clitoris, that knot of nerves where a woman’s joy was centered, down the side almost to her bottom, then back up the other side. While she watched him, he put the fingertip in his mouth and sucked. “Sweet.” Returning to that swollen bud, he touched it lightly, then flicked it from side to side.

  She arched her back up off the recliner, keening, “Too much, too damn much!”

  “Never enough,” he murmured back.

  At the same time he put his mouth to the bud and began to suckle her there, he stuck a middle finger inside her woman’s channel. Immediately, her inner muscles began to convulse around his finger and she thrust her hips against the intrusion. Out of her parted lips, she kept moaning, “Oh, oh, oh, oh!”

  Finally, when her body slumped, he’d had more than he could handle. Lifting her limp body up higher on the recliner, he laid himself over her again, and with his cock nestled in her folds, he began to pump himself to a raging climax. In the end, his head and s
houlders reared back and he shot his semen against her folds. It wasn’t the kind of sex he would like to have with her, but it was still good.

  When he was able to move, and it took a while, he kissed her lightly on the lips and said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Her eyes were still closed, and she didn’t respond, but there was a smile on her lips.

  He went into the bathroom and cleaned himself off, then came back with a warm soapy cloth to do the same for Nicole, who was sitting up now, staring at him as if in a daze. Thank goodness the chair was leather and easily wiped off.

  She stood and stretched, then said, “If that was near-sex, I’d like to know what not-so-near sex is.”

  “You liked it?”

  “Wasn’t that obvious? So, are we still playing games? Is the play still on?”

  “If you want,” he replied hesitantly.

  “Definitely. Act one is over. Time for the lady director to start the second act. Against the wall, my friend, I’m going to show you how we female soldiers torture our prisoners.”

  Trond wasn’t sure he liked the idea of that. Oh, who was he kidding? Anything she did to him would be a pleasure. If she breathed on him, he would probably come again.

  “You are not to move, unless I tell you to,” she said. “You could say this is Statues Redux.”

  He braced himself facing the wall between the living room and the kitchen with his arms folded over his head, his forehead pressing against the plaster.

  She traced the palms of her hands over his shoulders and upper arms, then seemed to be fascinated by the bumps on his shoulder blades. She touched them, she kissed them, she pressed her fingertips against them as if she expected something would pop out. “And you will have wings here someday?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Do you like that idea?”

  “Not particularly. Not any more than I like the fangs. They are a fact of my existence.”

  She kissed her way down his back and seemed to like the small of his back the way he liked the small of hers.

  “I really, really like your butt,” she said with a laugh.

  He laughed, too. It was funny the way modern women fixated on the buttocks, their own and men’s, as well. He couldn’t recall any women in Viking times ever commenting on that part of his body. Now, his cock, that was a different matter.

  “Marie and I were talking about it one day. Marie called it prime.”

  “You and Marie were discussing my ass?” Now, that surprised him.

  “I like the backs of your knees, too,” she said. “They have dimples.”

  “I do not have dimples. Anywhere,” he insisted.

  “Turn around, big boy,” she ordered then. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Plenty. That’s what he had. Again. Already.

  “A Blue Steeler,” she said with admiration, running her fingertips briefly over the blue veins of his thick shaft that reared out from the thatch of black hair at his groin. In invitation.

  Instead of taking him up on the unspoken invitation—he had visions of her leaping up with her legs wrapped around his waist, undulating him to another orgasm—she examined his nipples with her fingertips, then her teeth and mouth, suckling him. He liked it, but it was not where he wanted her mouth at the moment, not that he would expect that of her.

  But, of course, she did just the opposite of what he’d expected. She sank to her knees, gripped his buttocks with the fingertips of both hands, then spread her lips over the flaring head of his cock.

  His mind went blank, and he almost came. “Easy, now, Nicole. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, looking up and holding his gaze as she took him inch by inch inside her mouth. Her eyes were large and liquid with her own excitement. Her cheeks hollowed as she drew on him.

  That she would do this for him touched a spot deep inside him, one he’d sheltered and kept hidden for ages. The intensity of feeling for her that spread through him like wildfire almost scared him into pushing her away from him. But he didn’t, of course. What man would?

  He tunneled his fingers in her hair then and guided her, his heavy-lidded eyes following her every move. For the next five minutes, or was it five seconds, she brought him to the epitome of male ecstasy.

  When it was over, he sank to the floor with her, succumbing to the sensory overload. With her just cradled at his side, their backs to the wall, he kissed the top of her head. “Thank you,” he said.

  “My pleasure.” She cuddled closer.

  For several minutes, they just sat, listening to the winds batter the bungalow that had apparently been built to withstand such storms. Who knew when the electricity would come back? Who cared?

  Finally, she drew away from him and smiled. “So, what’s the score so far in our game?”

  He didn’t hesitate for one moment before saying, “You win. Hands down, sweetling. You win.”

  Twenty-two

  Act four . . . or was it five? . . . and oops! . . .

  Nicole was in love with Trond.

  Unbelievable as it was, unacceptable as it was, she had to admit she’d fallen, head over boondockers, for the big galoot. And it was unbelievable that it had happened so quickly and with a man she had taken such a dislike to, initially. And it was unacceptable because the guy was a freakin’ vampire angel, for heaven’s sake!

  Not that she would tell him about her love.

  He would probably laugh at her.

  It was now roughly two a.m. He’d made love to her on the recliner. She’d made love to him against the wall. They’d made love to each other standing in the dark shower. And none of it with penetration. Amazing!

  By feel she’d made her way to the kitchen to get a drink of water while Trond was trying to batten down one of the shutters that kept banging in the wind. He came up behind her, soaking wet from the rain, and hugged her from behind.

  “You’re wet and cold,” she protested.

  “Warm me up then,” he said, then complained, “You got dressed,”

  “Just with a T-shirt.”

  He inserted a hand under the hem to check and smacked her rump lightly for good measure.

  “Let’s go,” he said then, grinning at her. “We haven’t had near-sex in at least, oh, fifteen minutes.”

  She grinned back at him, already becoming accustomed to his fangs that he apparently couldn’t control when in a state of “feverish arousal,” his words. Seemed to her, his “feverish arousal” was lasting a long time, which she chose to view as a compliment. “Poor boy! Fifteen whole minutes!”

  They both picked up candles to carry to his bedroom. When they got there, he flipped the coverlet off, totally. Then, eyeing the sheets and her, he said, “I have an idea.”

  She had to laugh at that. “Honey, you have way too many ideas.”

  “Are you tired? Do you want to sleep?” The hurt, puppy dog expression on his face was almost comical, especially with the fangs.

  “No, Trond, I’m not tired.”

  Immediately, his expression went joyful. He picked her up by the waist—a habit of his—and tossed her up and onto the bed, facedown. He crawled up over her, not like a puppy, but like a cat, a big scary cat. In fact, he growled in her ear and whispered, “The things I am going to do to you, lady!”

  “Should I be scared?” She turned her face to the side on the pillow and nipped at his chin.

  “Very, very scared.”

  For the next hour, and, yes, it was at least that long, they tortured each other with bone-melting caresses and multiple orgasms, for both of them.

  He forced her to all fours and made love to her doggie-style, without actual intercourse. The way he tortured her front while engaged in that particular bout had her screaming an unending orgasm at the end.

  They rolled over and over, taking turns on top as they set each other aflame, fueling the fires of desire over and over. It was too much and not enough.

  This time when she forced him to his back, persp
iration beaded her forehead. Her blood raced alarmingly as she rode the back side of his penis that lay pressed against his belly by the weight of her body. Suddenly, accidentally, she had pressed against the tip of him and he was inside her, halfway.

  “Oops!” she said.

  His body went stiff, and he shut his eyes, clenching his teeth.

  “I’m sorry.” She started to lift herself off him.

  He slapped his hands on her butt to hold her in place. “Do. Not. Move.”

  To her humiliation, her inner muscles began to clench and unclench him. She was having a blasted orgasm with him only partially penetrating her.

  He groaned. A long groan.

  “Am I hurting you? We can stop now. No harm, no foul.”

  He started to laugh then, and she felt it right down to his erection that seemed to be shaking inside her. “Stop now and I might have to kill you,” he said.

  On those words, he flipped her over and slammed into her body, full-tilt boogie all the way to heaven, or at least her womb. Glancing downward, she saw his dark pubic hairs blend with her blonde ones in an oddly touching way, like they were meant to be together, those hairs.

  Trond was a big man. When she said he filled her, she meant he filled her.

  “Hold on tight, sweetling. I haven’t done this in two hundred years and I have a fierce need.”

  He wasn’t kidding. So energetic were his thrusts that he actually lifted her off the bed, moving her across the mattress until she hit the headboard. The wet sounds of their mutual slickness was carnal music they created together.

  He told her what it was like to be inside her, like a tight glove of warm syrup.

  She told him what it was like to have him inside her, like silk on hot marble.

  With chest heaving, his hips rolled wildly, and he continued to ride her hard. He couldn’t seem to stop himself. She didn’t want him to stop.

  She caressed his shoulders. She soothed him with warm whispers of encouragement. “It’s okay. Don’t worry. I can take it.”