“I know what you want, Claire Murphy,” he whispered against her flesh, “and it isn’t spaghetti or a fictional earring.” His hand slipped beneath her shirt and raked against her back until he found her bra clasp and very easily unhooked it. “I want the same thing you do. I have since I first saw you in the hallway, more than a month ago. Does that surprise you? It surprises me. I don’t normally want things I shouldn’t have. I learned better long ago.”
How long?
Claire wanted to believe that what had driven her to suspect her neighbor of horrible crimes and unnatural abilities was nothing more complicated than her overactive imagination combined with the need to be touched and an undeniable attraction, which was apparently reciprocated. Her reasons for suspecting Simon of being an unnatural being were loneliness, boredom, and the craving for what he was offering her at this very moment, as he removed her tangled blouse and bra and tossed them to the floor.
He lowered her to the sofa. This time there would be more than a heated sexual moment that came and went too quickly. This time they would be naked and he would be inside her, and…oh, my. His mouth was warm on her breasts, and vampires were not warm. They were dead and cold. Unless they’d just fed and he’d picked up something besides flowers while he was out. Simon was not at all cold. In fact, his skin was hot, and she was almost certain she could hear the beat of his heart against her belly, where his chest rested as he sucked her nipple deep into his mouth. She wanted him at her neck again, but certainly didn’t complain. He would return there soon enough, she imagined.
He didn’t move back to her neck, not right away. Instead he unfastened her skirt and began to shimmy it down.
“Not so fast,” she whispered. “Not this time.”
“Trust me, this won’t be fast.”
She found comfort in those words, comfort from this man she had suspected of being a vampire moments earlier. What silly thoughts, thoughts she easily dismissed as he kissed his way down her body, which was naked but for the gold cross she’d taken to wearing. He didn’t seem to mind that tiny piece of gold, which was another point in his favor.
It was not the only point in his favor. Simon Darrow had a fine, sensuous mouth that was determined to explore every inch of her body. Where she was ticklish, where she was sensitive, where she had never been kissed before, he tasted her. He even lifted her leg and kissed her behind the knees, introducing her to an unexpected burst of joy. She felt that surge of joy everywhere, and yes, if he’d touched her where she was wet for him she would’ve come. She would’ve screamed. Again.
It occurred to her, as Simon trailed that lovely mouth very slowly up her inner thigh, that he was still completely dressed. That was so wrong.
“Take off your clothes,” she whispered, her voice raspy and demanding.
He laughed lightly, and his breath was warm against her skin. “Not yet.” He spread her thighs and touched her intimately with his tongue. He flicked his tongue, he teased her with light strokes and flickers, and then he moved in and rasped against her harder, fiercer. Claire came so hard she screamed and her back arched up off the couch. She grabbed Simon’s head and pulled him closer, and he did not fight her but pressed harder and deeper, slipping his tongue inside her as she shook.
And he hadn’t bitten her once.
“You said it would not be fast,” she said breathlessly, delirious and sad, shaking and satisfied, needy and happy.
“It’s not over, Claire,” he promised as he crept up and over her body and finally, once again, placed his mouth at her throat and sucked against that sensitive skin. “Women are wondrous creatures who can come again and again and again in a very short period of time.”
“I’ve heard that’s true,” she said as she turned her head more to the side to allow him the greatest possible access.
He nipped at her skin, but just a little. Naked, entirely vulnerable and recently satisfied, her mind began to work somewhat properly. What if she only imagined that Simon was warm and that his heart beat? That could be part of the spell he had cast on her. Why else would she be so, well, easy? Not that she was complaining. Far from it. In all the books she read vampires were sensuous creatures who wallowed in intense sexual encounters. She certainly felt as if she were wallowing, at the moment.
She no longer thought Simon was a vampire. Not conclusively. There was one other test she could try tonight, just to be certain. The sun had already set so she couldn’t study what happened to him in the daylight, but there was a mirror in her bedroom and if she could just see his reflection in it she’d be satisfied.
Claire took Simon’s head in her hands and drew his wonderful mouth away from her neck. “You have to be at least six foot two, and this sofa isn’t more than five feet long.”
“I can manage.”
“I have a perfectly good bed.”
“Beds are boring and ordinary. Everyone has sex in a bed.” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “What about the kitchen counter? The balcony? The elevator.” He grinned quite wickedly.
“I know you prefer odd, but I really am boring and ordinary,” she said as she reached down to fiddle with and then unfasten his belt buckle. He strained the denim with his erection, and she could not wait to have him in her hands, to touch him, to arouse him the way he’d aroused her. She gently forced him up and back, and placed her mouth on his neck. Yes, he was most definitely warm. His heart pounded. He shuddered, and she was glad.
“You’re neither boring nor ordinary,” he said. “You just haven’t discovered that for yourself yet. I see it, even if you don’t.”
Claire knew the truth about herself. She was nothing if not pragmatic. She was average looking, and her hair was an ordinary dark blond that rarely did what she wanted it to do. She was usually between ten and fifteen pounds overweight, and there were a variety of clothes in three different sizes in her closet. Fat clothes, ordinary clothes, and a handful of very nice I have a dream clothes.
She was a failure where men were concerned. More rightly, they had always failed her, which was why she now satisfied herself with reading on weekends instead of dating or painting her toenails or shaving her legs for some man who in the end…
But now was not the time for that old tirade. A very handsome man who was hard for her had just promised her again, and again and again. And maybe another again. She’d lost count. If she could just prove to herself decisively that he wasn’t a vampire, he might be the perfect man. At least for a while. No man was perfect forever.
“But you want the bed anyway, don’t you,” Simon whispered.
“Yes.”
“Fine.” Unsnapped and partially unzipped, still more dressed than not, Simon left the couch. He offered her his hand and she took it. He pulled her up and headed for the bedroom. It wasn’t as if he had to search. The apartment was laid out just like his own, in a mirror image.
Speaking of mirrors…
She led Simon toward the bed, and when they were in the center of the small room she stopped and turned to face the mirror above her dresser. There he was, gorgeous and black-clad and somehow animalistic. He definitely had a wild magnetism. She was so happy to see him there, reflected in all his human glory, that she smiled…until she realized that she was there too, in all her fifteen-pounds-overweight glory.
“Yikes.” She turned away and headed very quickly for the bed and the safety of a coverlet where she could hide. She jumped into the bed and pulled the lilac comforter across the plumpest parts of her exposed body.
Simon followed her at a slower pace, laughing. Not at her, at least she didn’t think so. When he peeled back the comforter that she’d grabbed to protect herself from his gaze, his smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t hide. You’re gorgeous.”