Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“Skarde?”
“Hmm?” He snuggled closer to his pillow, too groggy to figure out if it was a real voice or a dream.
“Skarde.” Her voice was louder, right in his ear.
“What?” he grumbled. “Daytime…sleep.”
“I can’t feel my arm,” she said. “Do you think you could move over a bit?”
His pillow shifted and in a matter of seconds he realized it wasn’t a pillow. He was using Gemma’s chest to support his head.
“Balls.” He jackknifed off her, flinging himself up to roll to his side of the bed, but he overestimated the jump and slid backward to the floor, dragging the tangled comforter with him. Pushing the covers off his head, he found her peeking down at him from the mattress.
A smile lit up her entire face. “Did my boobs bite you?”
Scrambling, he struggled to get free of the comforter, which he discovered to be impossible. Another slip and he landed shoulder-first on the floor. He huffed in frustration and ripped at the cover.
“My boobs have a mind of their own and have been known to misbehave.”
He tried to follow her words with his sluggish mind, which never functioned well during daylight hours.
She propped her chin up, giving him a glorious view of the naughty boobs. His heart lurched at her carefree attitude. No woman joked with him, especially not one who hadn’t actually slept with him. Hell, he’d never slept in a bed with a woman he hadn’t fucked.
Her feet kicked up behind her and crossed. “There was this incident in college when they popped out of a tank top on a date. I admit my shirt was too small to contain the girls, but they must’ve wanted action because they just…” She gestured to her chest. “Exploded out of the shirt.”
After untangling himself, finally, from the cover, he stood. As he scratched the top of his head, he watched her eyes dip to his naked navel before they traveled back up his body. He was on board with everything promised by that scan.
“Are you a guy who tosses women around? I mean, can you be athletic…er, energetic in bed?” She compressed her lips and scrunched her nose, which was adorable.
“I know that’s a random question, but it popped into my head with you being so large.
I mean strong.” Her eyes dipped to his crotch. “Large too.”
“Didn’t you watch me with females on the show?” He despised the idea of her watching, of anyone watching.
“No…I mean…” She sat up and stared down at her hands. “I never saw anything inside a bedroom. I’m sorry. It’s creepy to think of me or anyone else watching. I get it.” She peeked up to look at him. “It’s not my fault I was watching. It’s a show on TV.”
She hadn’t seen him have sex. That was something.
“I get that you’re not attracted to me or my kind,” she stammered. “I know I’m not from your world and I’m human, which isn’t usually a good thing for you.”
Was she blind? Not attracted to her?
She fiddled with the edge of the comforter.
“I’m babbling. This is awful. Your aura or hotness or whatever vampire thing you have must be frying my brain.
You don’t need to pretend to be attracted to me.
You be you. I’ll be me, which means it’s time I go back to my world and resume watching yours while not being in it. ”
“Let’s clear up one thing.” He prowled toward her, and then over her without actually touching her.
She fell flat against the bed, eyes wide.
He allowed his chest to touch her breasts as a single point of contact.
He might as well have been on fire with as much heat as it ignited between them.
He bracketed her chin with his hand to force her to look into his eyes.
“It’s the middle of the day. I’m a vampire, which means I should be asleep.
I drink human blood. Your type of blood.
I want it…a lot.” I may want you more than anything, but I won’t let anyone steal my soul and turn me to evil, not even you.
“If I bite you, you’ll become like me. You’ll need to drink blood. You’ll become vicious to do it.”
His mouth watered as he lowered his head toward her neck. The drive consuming his mind was so intense he teetered on the edge between existence and unreality.
“No,” she squeaked out and craned away. “I don’t want to be like you.” Her breaths came in short gasps. She tried to escape his grip, but he didn’t release her. He smelled her fear, which was good. He needed her to respect the danger he posed.
Every single rise and fall of her breasts pressed into him. Her heightened heartbeat didn’t help his no-sex-and-no-bite decision.
His fingers dragged across her pubic bone, causing her legs to spread wide. “If you were a woman I could trust myself not to bite and only fuck, this would be different. We’d already be naked.”
“Are you going to bite me?”
“No,” he said on a choked gasp. He leaned in, lowering his nose close to her neck, and inhaled. The urge to bite hazed his sanity. His teeth tingled. He forced out, “I could do it…but I won’t.” He repeated it twice more before he could move.
He jumped away from the bed.
Her head rolled toward him. “I don’t understand why I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. It’s scary.”
“I’m not a man. I haven’t been human in a very, very, very long time.
” He pulled at his hair to tie it behind his neck.
“You have to go or I’m going to bite you.
I can only resist this for so long.” He released a few strangled breaths.
“When I do bite you, who knows if you will completely turn or if you’ll end up a half-dead, partially turned slave. ”
“A slave?” she squeaked out.
“No vampire has succeeded in turning a human in over a hundred years.”
“Why can’t you make more vampires?”
“No one knows. Maybe a curse or poison or something on our kind. If by some miracle you did turn, that would be bad.”
“Bad for me or bad for you?”
“There was a vampire here last night to remind me how much I can’t do a single fucking thing with you. If I bite you…if I turn you into one of us, terrible things are foretold to happen.”
“There’s a foretelling about me?”
He glanced her way. “There are other more powerful vampires who want to capture and torture you. They want to bite you to see if they can turn you. Go through the mirror glass and don’t come back. I put it back up over there.” He pointed.
“How do they know I’m here? I’m not from here.” She sat on the bed’s edge.
“A witch saw your arrival.”
“How do you know it’s me they’re talking about and not someone else?”
“I’m the central figure in the prophecy. No one else who fits the other parts of the foretelling has shown up until you.” He pointed a shaky finger at the mirror a second time and whispered, “Get the hell out of here.”
His hands never shook. Not until this woman pushed the limits of his control.
She got off the bed, but instead of running for her life, she walked to him. “Did you kill Dylan or does he need to go back with me?”
“He’s no longer a concern.” His words sounded slurred.
She swallowed hard. “He died because of me.”
“One of you was going to die. Be glad it was him and not you.”
“I’ve never been the reason someone else died. Well, other than that wizard, but he didn’t seem like a nice person. I’m not sure how I feel about Dylan. He was a doctor at the hospital where I work. Are you okay if I keep the crystal? It’ll remind me of you.”
It’d saved him a time or two when fighting a demon, but he had other, more powerful crystals. “It belonged to my father, my biological father. It’s all I have left of him.”
She started to take it off. “Oh, I couldn’t—”
He held up his hand. “Keep it. You need to…go.”
“I don’t have anything to give you to remind you I’m real.
Oh—” She removed a ring from her right hand.
“This is the last thing I have from my parents. I never knew them. They were in an accident and died when I was about four. I was raised by foster families.” She wrapped his hand around it.
“I want you to have it. I value it above anything else I own.”
He held the ring tight in his hand and sat hard on the bed.
She sat next to him.
His accent thickened. “What are ye doing? Did ye not ken the whole being in danger? Faigh air falbh… Go from me or I’m going to lose it on ye.”
“You’re not going to bite me. I kind of feel like you need this.” Her arms came around him. She squeezed with her head against his shoulder and didn’t let go. He let her hold him. Had anyone ever sat next to him and hugged him? Not that he remembered. He wasn’t huggable.
As she released him her hand traced along his jaw. She angled her body toward him and traced his lips with her fingers. She whispered in a soothing tone, “Don’t freak out on me. I can’t resist. There’s something about you…”
Her tiny hands held his head in place as she brought her lips against his.
Shocked, he remained motionless while her soft, warm lips kissed him once, twice, then three times.
Her small tongue darted against the seam of his lips. She teased them apart and licked against one of his sensitive canines. Shockwaves tore through him.
Tumbling off the edge.
With a moan, he slid his palm to fit against the back of her head and angled her, opening his mouth to draw her inside. Tongues teasing each other, she rotated to straddle his lap. Her hands tangled in his hair as she kept kissing him and began gyrating on his lap.
The small, urgent noises coming from her throat pushed him to claim her. To remove all distance between their bodies.
Moments later, to give each other a chance to breathe, he kissed along the graceful column of her neck. His teeth scraped over her jugular as his tongue measured the throbbing blood pulsing through the large vein. The smell of her blood became the focus of the predator in him. Need to taste.
Need to bite.
“Going to bite… Could kill you.” He growled deep in his throat and whispered hoarsely, putting a twinge of mental persuasion into the order. “Run.”