Chapter 6
By the time we left the office, the rest of the bar was dark, save for the emergency light over the counter. James and I locked up, and we walked to the car.
Feeling uncharacteristically needy, I kept a hand on James the whole way home.
If I wasn’t holding his, my hand rested on his thigh.
He raised his body temperature, the heat seeping through the denim of his jeans and warming my palm.
I was in a daze the whole way, only snapping out of it when we pulled into my driveway.
“Why don’t I run you a bath before I feed Carlos?
” James asked as he unlocked the door. He glanced back at me, and the evident apprehension in his eyes made me smile.
After more than a year together he was still scared of my dog.
The front door swung open, and Carlos’s telltale screaming commenced.
James leapt out of the way just in time for me to catch the furball, and when I looked up again, he was standing near the kitchen.
“It’s almost three in the morning,” I said with a glance at the clock. “You want me to have a bath now? Why don’t we just shower off and crawl into bed?”
James opened the back door to let Carlos outside. The closer I got, the more his nerves visibly faded from his body and as I approached, he opened his arm for me. “I want us to have a bath,” he said, his voice full of promise.
I leaned against the doorframe and crossed my arms, raking my gaze over his body.
With the threat of the dog clear, James held me close.
He was only a couple of inches taller than me, but he somehow found a way to tower over me.
He raised his left arm and braced against the doorframe above my head.
Damn it… what was all that stress about?
James’s left hand curled around my hip, and I tipped my head back in search of his mouth. Our lips met, and I hummed in pleasure.
“Mm, Carlos, hurry up!” I called between kisses.
James, content to make out against the door until the dog was inside, explored my mouth with his tongue.
I eagerly opened up for him, arching my back to grind my hips against his.
When I heard Carlos rush into the house, I pushed off the frame, panting.
“Go run the bath. I’m feeling exceptionally… dirty.”
James chuckled. “Trust me, love—this is about getting you naked and nothing more.”
My vampire whirled me around, backing me against a wall and pinning me to the surface. His erection dug into my hip, hard and ready.
“Even better.”
James took his time undressing me. At an infuriatingly slow pace, he teased beneath the hem of my shirt, shoving the fabric upward.
Rough hands slid over my stomach, kicking up sparks across the sensitive skin.
He pressed a tender kiss to his mark, and like it knew who I belonged to, it pulsed beneath his lips.
My shirt cleared my head, and while he flirted with my belt, I undid his in record time.
I popped the button on his jeans and lowered the zipper, pushing the denim away as I went.
My fiancé’s mouth returned to mine, tongue spearing between my lips. Piece by piece, our clothes hit the floor. James mapped out every corner of my mouth—like he didn’t already know me inside and out. One hand on my hip, he started the bath water with the other.
Nipping at my lip, he broke off the kiss. “Get in. I’ll be right back.”
He was gone before I could ask where he was going. I had just settled into the tub when James returned with a bottle of red wine and two glasses.
I arched a brow. “Since when do we drink wine?”
James offered me a shrug as he filled the glasses. “I figured a hot bath after a stressful night called for it.”
Then something occurred to me. “Where did we get wine? We don’t keep any in the house.”
“I ran to Liz’s.”
“Just now? You ran to the bar completely naked?” I slid forward to allow James room to climb into the bath behind me.
He gave me a smoldering grin and handed over one of the glasses. “It’s fun when you move too fast for people to see you.”
“Will you teach me to do that?”
“Of course, I will.” James punctuated his sentence by licking over the mark on my neck.
I smiled, resting against his chest. Between his strong arms and thighs around me, and the warmth of the water after being out in the chilly winter night, I relaxed.
Bringing my glass to my lips, I tipped it back for a mouthful.
At a tricky angle, I tipped it too far and wine poured down my chin to dribble against my chest. I moved to sit up, but James was quicker.
“You’re a mess, love,” he laughed, wiping the spill with his finger. He drew a path of heat up my chest, and as the digit swept over my neck, he brushed the mark again to send tingles throughout my body. He licked the wine off his hand, and my cock twitched.
“Well, that’s one way to drink wine,” I said. The comment sparked an idea in my head. “Get in front of me.”
James stared at me, confused, but he obeyed anyway.
Hot, bubbly water sloshed over the sides of the tub as we adjusted our position, and then James was between my thighs, now facing me.
I leaned back and arched my neck, turning the glass so the deep red liquid trickled over my neck and chest. James watched, mouth watering.
He ducked before I could command him to do so, lapping up the drink with his tongue.
He chased the droplets across my stomach, my chest, licking his way up to my neck.
I shuddered, melting into his touch. Just before my eyes fluttered shut, James’s chain vanished from sight.
We’d come to the same conclusion: Dark red liquid would taste so much better if he licked it off my skin.
“You’re sure?” he asked, voice tight like he was fighting every urge he had to restrain himself. He took our glasses and set them on the floor. “You’re ready to try again?”
I pried my eyes back open. His arms trembled to either side of me; red swirled in his irises. The bathroom light reflected off of his elongated fangs…
And a shiver went down my spine.
I couldn’t wait.
“Yes,” I huffed, latching onto a thick fistful of James’s hair and tugging his head down to my neck.
His tongue darted out to lap at the mark, but despite his obvious impatience, he didn’t sink in right away. “I have an idea.”
I gave him a flat look, ruined somewhat by my obvious desire. “Is it to tell me everything about turning so there won’t be any more surprises?”
He apologized to me with a long stripe of his tongue over his mark, and I eagerly accepted it. “Sorry, love. There are aspects of the bond that I haven’t experienced in decades, and they slip my mind.”
“Mmm,” I managed, “as long as you make it up to me like this.” I gasped on the last word as his tongue did something to my skin that drove me wild.
I didn’t know how he expected me to comprehend anything he was saying when he was doing that to me.
I moaned, my hips rocking up in search of his.
My heart rate sped up, pulsing beneath his lips.
When he opened his mouth and his fangs tickled the sensitive flesh, I cried out for more. “What’s your idea?”
“If I let the bite bleed before I seal it,” he said, “it might give the venom more time to work.”
“Okay,” I agreed. I’d give in to just about anything he asked me for. “Just do it.”
“There’ll be quite a lot of blood, love,” he warned.
“Good thing I’m engaged to a vampire.” I rose from the water, bringing my mouth a hairsbreadth from his. “Bite me, fiancé.”
James growled, and I swallowed the sound with my lips crushing his.
His knee slipped, and he crashed down on top of me in the bathtub.
Water spilled over the sides, but we didn’t care.
I was too busy chasing James’s tonsils with my tongue.
He braced himself with one hand on the edge of the tub and the other brushed my birthmark on my ribcage—the one that proclaimed me his mate.
Knowing what it would do to him, I speared a hand through his hair, my fingertips teasing the matching piece to the puzzle he sported on his neck.
He shuddered, wrenching himself free from the kiss to trail a hot path across my cheek, my jaw, and down to my collarbone.
Sweat beaded across my hairline, and it had nothing to do with the heat from the water. James was on fire, as if he was close to losing all control.
Maybe someday I would know what that was like.
He licked over the bruise on my neck, lingering venom from the previous bite already tingling beneath my skin.
The anticipation was killing me. My pulse increased, beating against the flat of his tongue.
I panted, growing dizzier by the second.
Time seemed to slow, then stop altogether.
James, who tended to sink in fast, was apparently unhurried this time.
Thin, sharp razor blades scraped over my skin, drawing an almost pathetic-sounding whimper from my lips.
“Please,” I whined.
“Shh.”
And damn it if my body didn’t know to just obey, just like that time in the alley when he had his hand around my throat.
As if he could read my thoughts, his palm snaked up my side until it curled around my neck, his thumb and forefinger teasing my pulse points.
I moaned, and he pressed gently with his fingers.
This time, his fangs pierced my skin slowly.
The burning started instantly. The deeper he bit, the farther the venom spread, blazing through my veins and igniting every inch of my body from my neck all the way to my fingers and toes.
I began to shiver, sweat beading across my skin.
Pain set in, and the heat in the room almost became unbearable.
James withdrew, but only long enough to whisper, “You’re doing great, love.”
Warm, wet blood trickled down my neck, and James swooped in to lick it clean, humming at the taste and releasing my throat to wrap his hand around my cock.
It throbbed in his palm, and a low groan tore up from deep in my chest. Blood pumped faster than he moved, rivers of deep red flowing down my chest, getting tantalizingly close to the water before he chased them with his mouth.
I could hardly move, my head too foggy to comprehend more than the burning deep inside me and the firm, steady way James shuttled his hand over my rapidly thickening erection. Clearly, I could push past the pain.
Typically, he only bit me once—that was all he ever needed. So it shocked me when he turned his attention to the left side of my neck and sank in there as well. My eyes flew open.
Big mistake.
Rivulets of red blood poured down my chest so fast that it made me woozy. Was that from the blood loss, or simply the sight of it?
Or was it the way James lunged to take another drink? When he peered up at me from his spot between my legs, chin and teeth stained the same crimson as his eyes, my body somehow found the resources to send blood to my cock.
“God, you taste good, Ryder,” James growled, body blurring from the restraint of holding himself back.
He drew a finger through the slippery mess on my chest and brought it to his mouth, sucking it clean.
I could only lie there, watching through heavy-lidded eyes.
I never would’ve imagined that seeing someone lap my own blood off my chest would turn me on, but if the way my cock throbbed in James’s hand was any indication, I loved it.
I couldn’t speak. That’s far enough, I wanted to say.
I could feel the venom coursing through my body.
That had to be it. I had to be turning now.
But my tongue felt like lead in my mouth.
I tried to raise my hand, to bring my vampire to me, but I couldn’t.
The only sound that escaped was a strained wheeze, but James seemed to get the hint.
Funny enough, I still wanted to give myself to James in any way I could. If that meant lying there while he had his way with me, so be it.
Thankfully, he got the hint. He brought his mouth to my neck again, licking over each bite mark to seal them shut and stop the bleeding.
Now trapped beneath my skin, the burning from the venom intensified.
The pain threatened to overtake pleasure, but James distracted me by squeezing my shaft beneath the bath water, now tinted red from the blood.
He sucked and kissed his way down my chest, my stomach, cleaning up what he could with his tongue and praising me the entire way.
Slowly, the burning faded away, taking the heavy feeling in my limbs with it.
At first, I could only move a finger to stroke James’s hand.
I protested when he let go of my cock but welcomed his arms around me to help me sit up.
He knelt between my thighs once more, and my arms found their place around his neck.
Red smears decorated his mouth and chin, and a drop of blood lingered at the corner of his mouth.
Unsure what came over me, I lunged forward to lap it up.
James swore, clenching his fist in my hair and tipping my head back to bring our lips together.
The copper taste of my own blood flooded the kiss.
James’s tongue darted into my mouth, and it didn’t matter to me that we were both covered in my blood, or that it seeped into the bath water.
My strength returned, and the heat pooling low in my belly came back to me. I might turn, I might not, but either way I wanted my vampire.
Eventually, my lungs burned so desperately that I had to break off the kiss to catch my breath. It only occurred to me then that James was still offering soft compliments in my ear. I panted, resting a sweaty temple against his jaw, shivering at the realization that the water had gone cold.
“Can you stand up?” James asked me.
After test-wiggling my legs, I nodded. “I think so.”
“Good. I need to get you rinsed off before I put you to bed. It’s time for you to rest.”
As I stood, the heavy weight between my thighs almost made me protest, but then I swayed on the spot.
I was lightheaded, a dull ache beginning to set into my limbs.
The pain increased with each beat of my heart, and by the time James pulled the plug in the bath and turned on the water, my stomach was churning.
Soon, his arm around my waist was the only thing to keep me upright.
“I’m not feeling so great,” I managed, swallowing against a bout of nausea.
“I know, love. I’ve got you.”