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He typed out a quick text. Like to take you to dinner Sunday night. Place that has good music.
He closed the phone, put it aside. She was probably sleeping, wouldn't answer until later tonight. When she did, she'd probably tell him she'd already arranged to have musical entertainment at the bar, because he knew she was working on that. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd gotten Alan Jackson himself. The woman seemed capable of anything.
"Boss is grinning like he's thinking about a woman," Johnny said. "We know which one."
"Which is why we can't blame him for grinning like a fool." Kevin elbowed him. "She's only been here a few days and every man in the county has an eye for her."
Quinn scowled at that, and they all chuckled at his obvious displeasure.
"Looks like boss has already put his brand on her," Dave said.
If they only knew. Quinn thought it far more likely that Selene was thinking of putting a brand on his flanks. He better not plant that idea in her head, though his buttock gave an alarming little tingle at the idea, echoed by a turgid response from his cock. Yep, he'd definitely lost his mind.
"She seems to like him okay. Though she had Turley stay after hours last night and help her move some boxes around, and all he remembers about it is waking up with a smile on his face."
Quinn pinned him with a dark look. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, boss." Kevin's face shifted to uncertainty. "We're just messing with you. I'm sure he was just helping her move boxes."
"Time to get back to work," Quinn said shortly, rising and picking up his hat. The butterfly had apparently had her rest. She lifted off, all the men likewise stirring themselves for the grueling afternoon ahead. Quinn watched the delicate creature float away, then returned to Midnight.
He couldn't explain his possessive feelings toward a woman he'd barely just met, but in truth, when he spent time with a woman, even if he wasn't planning to set up house together, he expected it to be just the two of them until one or the other called it quits. He put the image out of his mind of the husky Turley coming anywhere near that lush body, feeling the tips of her fangs at his throat...
Midnight snorted as he mounted and sat his ass in the saddle a little harder than he'd intended. "Sorry, boy."
He had a busy day ahead. His best strategy was to work himself into full exhaustion by the end of it so he wouldn't have enough energy to wind himself up over stupid shit like this.
*
Mission accomplished.
He barely got enough of a shower to wash off the muck before falling face forward into the bed. He'd contemplated just sleeping in the barn and saving the cleanup, but the bed was too inviting to pass up. Christ, his past life as a rodeo cowboy had a way of hitting him hard on the more strenuous ranch days. He wasn't twenty anymore, yet now he felt every stupid thing he'd done to himself between twenty and thirty.
He was an easy sleeper, his internal timer rigged to wake him up when it was time to get up. He didn't do a lot of waking up in the middle of the night. Unless something was amiss. His eyes opened in darkness, the clock reading two a.m. in his peripheral vision. And he knew he wasn't alone.
The funny thing was the lack of alarm he felt. He'd known it was her even before he'd opened his eyes, which suggested he was still sleeping, dreaming.
"Aren't vampires supposed to be invited before they come into someone's house?" he said groggily.
"That's a myth to make people feel safer." Selene gazed at him from the foot of his bed. "You wouldn't invite me into your home?"
"My house, my bed. Anywhere you want to be. How'd you get in?"
"Came down the chimney."
"Like Santa Claus. A sexy, blonde Santa."
As she moved around to the side of the bed, he saw her suppress a smile. He was so out of it, he was like a drunk, saying whatever came to mind. He turned toward her, biting back a groan at his stiff muscles, but he wanted to see her. She stopped just out of reach, still studying him. "You haven't come to me in three days. I got impatient."
"I wouldn't have been worth much to you. Been working my ass off. Probably not much good to you tonight."
"Turn over onto your stomach," she said.
He flashed on what she'd said on the phone, about fucking him that way. The surge of worry and anticipation woke him up a little more. But she didn't appear to be carrying any strap-ons with her. All she wore was a thin, short dress, and she was barefoot.
He complied and the mattress shifted as she slid onto it. She tugged his sheet all the way down. "You do sleep bare-assed naked," she said, amusement in her voice. "I like that."
Then she straddled his thighs and began to give him a massage, starting at his neck and shoulders and working her way down. It was fucking bliss. He practically whimpered but managed to choke back the unmanly sound. He realized when she sat down on his legs that he wasn't the only one bare-assed. She was naked under the dress. It made him realize, though she was any man's dream, she was not a dream. She was really here, in his room.
He turned, and she adjusted so he could be on his back, looking up at her. She stayed on his thighs, but he stretched out his longer arms, slid her up so he could take a better hold of her. It put her right on the length of his stiff cock, but that wasn't his intent. He just wanted her closer.
"Christ, I missed you," he murmured. "I wish I wasn't so tired."
She pressed her mouth against the palm he had cupping the side of her face, and then rotated her hips. His dick, brainless as it was, just got harder.
"Honey, I--" He couldn't do right by her tonight. But she'd come all the way out here. He needed to try.
"Ssh." She shook her head at him. "It's not a matter of you being able to give, Quinn. I'm your Mistress, and I take when and what I desire. It's that simple. You're going to learn I'm not going to be denied. Your only job is to follow the flow of the current."
She lowered herself onto his body, breasts against his chest, and rotated her hips again. She was able to fit the head of his cock into the mouth of her pussy, and then she was sliding down on him, inch by inch, her face so close to his. He stared up into her eyes, gripped her hips, and then he was hilt deep in her, her so still, their bodies fused together. The quiet darkness of the room closed around them. Powerful as his growing arousal was, the energy between their locked gazes was ten times that.
"I almost called you a hundred times."
"You should have."
"You have a bar to run. And I happen to know your boss is a real bastard."
She smiled at that, put her mouth on his. It was a slow, deep kiss, and he wondered if she lost herself in it as much as he did, because it seemed to go on for quite a while. They made incremental movements on one another, stoking that joining point down below, but their mouths nipped, played, flirted then dove deep, that all-absorbing rhythm of motion and timing to a really good kiss. By the time it was over, her hands were fisted in his hair and he had his arms banded across her back, one hand sliding down to cup her buttock, stroke the silk of it as she moved on him.
"You're heaven," he told her, too lost in a haze of exhaustion, arousal and half-sleep to worry about sounding stupid.
Her gaze softened. When she started to rise, he noticed she seemed a little unsteady. Tightening his hold to give her time to regain strength also kept her close. "What did you mean?" he asked, his voice a low rumble. "That night you said you couldn't feed from me because I wasn't a marked servant."
"I could have fed from you, but it was a little soon after the last time." She paused as if she was considering whether she wanted to explain. Or maybe if he was asking seriously or just yanking her chain. While he wasn't sure if he did believe any of it, he wasn't yanking her chain. The thought had drifted into his mind like everything else tonight. Random, unfiltered and yet somehow significant.
"At a certain age, most vampires consider taking a fully marked human servant. It lets them have a regular blood source, among other things." Her fin
gers whispered along his throat. "A vampire has to mark a human three times for him to be her full servant."
"You mean...drink from him three times?"
She shook her head. "A serum is released in the blood. It's best to do it three different times, because all together, they can be painful. In a not-so-good way." Her faint smile reminded him how he'd embraced the pain of the lash. "I've thought about that a lot," she murmured, following his thoughts there. "I want to do that to you again. I want to give you more pain, watch how hard it makes you."
