Chapter 12 - Naomi #2
I could cry. I really could. In fact, I was pretty sure my eyes were filling with tears. But before I could indulge in that emotional release, there was a skittering sound and a small, dark shape rushed toward us.
I yelped and jumped aside, only to realize that the shape wasn’t heading for us, and rather was beelining for the doggie bags that had been dropped on the asphalt, and also that said shape was a raccoon.
Well, I couldn’t blame the little guy for being motivated. The food really had been that good.
However, it was too good to donate to a trash panda, so I growled low in my throat.
I couldn’t make all that convincing of a sound, but it was enough to knock the nocturnal creature out of its crusade and send it skittering back to the alley.
Honestly, city raccoons were wild. The parking lot had to smell like angry alpha, and it didn’t seem to care in the slightest.
But when my gaze returned to Rowan’s face, he was wearing an odd expression. Nerves shot through me yet again, and despite his previous declaration that he liked me despite my being a latent shifter, doubt flooded my brain.
“Something wrong?” I asked, dreading the worst.
But I should have known better, because the worst could never come from the kind, thoughtful vampire in front of me. “Is it weird that I found that kind of hot?”
“Uh—” I started laughing. It wasn’t the most hilarious thing I’d ever heard, but something about his tone, the situation, and really the whole night hit my funny bone in just the right way.
Before long, Rowan joined in, and we clung to each other for support because the cachinnation was too much, too overwhelming.
In the best way, of course.
I had no idea how long we stayed there working on our very own noise complaint, but as we slowly came out of it, I realized we were still embracing, chests heaving against each other and faces a scant distance apart.
We were even closer than we’d been when we’d danced, and it was the most skinship we’d had so far.
My gaze met Rowan’s, and I was caught up in the same feeling I’d had before the storm that had cockblocked me on our first date. Well, I supposed kiss-blocked was a more apropos term, but certainly less evocative.
We stayed like that, that delicious tension from dinner returning. It was full of heat, full of desire, and we lingered in it.
But then, just when I thought I might burst, he closed the distance, and I finally got that kiss.
Fuck.
It was everything I’d built it up to be in my head and more since our first kiss on the pier. Somehow, that already felt like ages ago.
The pressure of his lips was just right, and it felt as if steam should issue out from our temperature difference, like molten rock pouring into a glacial ocean.
They were soft, and smooth, and when my mouth opened to his, I couldn’t help but shudder at the way he gripped me.
This felt like the hunger I’d seen in his eyes, and fuck, it was fantastic.
What we were doing felt like so much more than making out. It felt revelatory, and I just wanted to submerge myself in every aspect of it.
We kissed each other like our lives depended on it, and I wanted to stay like that forever.
But eventually, when I was close to climbing him like a tree, Rowan broke our lip lock and looked at me with such a heady expression.
Suddenly, I understood why vampires had their own section of erotic fiction even among humans.
It wasn’t fair for one person to look so insanely good while also looking like he wanted to eat me up.
Yum!
But then he spoke, and the rumble in his words layered over the deep velvet of his normal voice shook me right down to my dripping core.
“Which one of our places is closer?”
That was actually a great question!
The door of Rowan’s home banged open and slammed into the wall.
If we’d gone to my place, the loud sound no doubt would have startled my neighbors in the next apartment over.
But we weren’t at my place, and I wouldn’t have cared if we were.
I barely had the wherewithal to close said door with my foot behind us.
Our hands and mouths were all over each other’s bodies. I legitimately had no idea how we’d even gotten to his house in one piece, but I was sure I’d broken at least a couple of speed limits on the way there.
Didn’t care, though. Nope, the only thing I was concerned about was our clothes flying this way and that as we practically ripped them off each other.
Normally, I would care a bit more about the longevity of my dress—it was difficult to find something that fit me perfectly, given my build and height.
Some designers didn’t understand that short women still wanted to look like adult women.
But fuck the dress! Rowan couldn’t get it off me fast enough, even when it got caught in my hair.
That was probably the only thing that could distract me from my mission of unbuttoning his shirt, and somehow I managed to untangle my tresses with a single hand, my other popping open two of Rowan’s buttons.
“Have I ever mentioned I have a bit of a competency kink?” Rowan murmured, his hands sliding down my neck and ghosting over my shoulders once I’d tossed my dress down the hall.
Goosebumps spread out across my body. His skin was smooth as marble, but the tips of his fingers were slightly calloused, unsurprising for someone who worked with a lot of stringed instruments.
I wanted those long, elegant digits of his to touch every part of me, leaving trails of his desire.
And I wanted them in me too. Reaching, curling, rubbing…
He kissed me again, and I threw myself into it, pressing my body to his despite the fact that he still had one stubborn button that remained. But even with that last stalwart connector, I could feel most of the cool planes of his chest against my own heated form.
He was sculpted better than any god, his alabaster skin unblemished over tightly honed muscles.
Svelte and utterly delicious. I wanted to get my mouth on him, to trace every plane, striation, and dimple until I could map it out with my tongue by memory.
I wanted to be so full of him that the ache of missing him the next day would be literal instead of metaphorical.
I wanted him to scramble my brains until I didn’t have to worry about thinking anymore.
I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.
My back collided with some sort of wooden furniture piece—I wasn’t about to turn around and see what it was, because again, I did not care. Suddenly, the vampire reached out to the side wicked fast, and I realized just how much he’d been held back in his whole ruse to appear human.
Well, none of that anymore. I wanted him to give me all he could. Because I’d been holding back too, and now I didn’t have to anymore.
“Spatula stand,” he said with a slight chuckle that somehow didn’t make the mood any less sexy as he put a black hunk of something with metal prongs sticking out of it back up on top of whatever we’d bumped into.
“Fascinating,” I said, and for the first time, I didn’t really mean it.
Wanting to get back to the moment, I crashed my lips to Rowan’s yet again, my hands going for his belt.
Everything was heat, frenetic movement, and desire, all twisted up together before we slammed into the wall.
Rowan broke our kiss again and snatched something from the air as it fell from wherever it had been mounted on the partition.
“Handheld UV light,” he said before placing it back on the shelf. “One of my least favorite tools. I’m sure you can understand why.”
“Uh-huh.”
Back to kissing.
I liked to think I’d remember the specialized tools he was showing in the morning, but I doubted the information was being logged in my short-term memory.
Every part of my mind was occupied with what I was feeling, smelling, tasting.
Rowan was a total eclipse of the rest of reality, and I was totally down for it.
He pinned me on a table and caught my lower lip between his sharp teeth.
I moaned into it, but the moan quickly turned into a groan when he, for the third time, pulled away from me to catch something else that fell from the table.
Either gravity had a vendetta against me, or Rowan’s house was incredibly cluttered.
“Magnifier lamp,” he grumbled, sounding annoyed.
“Hey, not to be a diva or anything, but is there anywhere in your house where there aren’t delicate things waiting to fling themselves to their doom?”
His gaze darkened, and he cupped my cheek, his thumb deliberately moving toward my mouth. He traced my kiss-swollen lips in a move that was far more erotic than it had any right to be.
“I know just the place.”
As crazy as it sounded, I could have stayed in that moment right there for the entire rest of the night.
The inferno crackling between us was perfect in every sense of the word, and I was enjoying how embroiled I was in our passion.
It truly was insane that such a sweet, considerate, and lovely man could look at me with that particular expression in his eyes.
The one that made it believable to think vampires were partly demonic.
Have I ever been desired like that in my entire life?
I didn’t think so, but really, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was being desired like that, so I was going to let myself linger in that for as long as I could.
“Follow me,” he murmured, his voice unabashed sin as his hand slid from my cheek down my neck. His grip tightened a fraction, then he trailed it down to my hand. Our fingers interlaced, and the next thing I knew, I was being led upstairs and down a hallway.