I collapse the space between us, and when Diantha leans up and presses her pillow-soft mouth to mine, I am human again. I am twenty-eight years old and my life is a single moment in this unending universe, and I taste freedom on her tongue. Sweet like cherries, crackling like electricity. Hunger throbs through me, racing down my chest, mixing with emotion, and I harden against her. Not because I want to drink her blood, but because I want to kiss her.
I haven’t fed in hours and all I want to do is kiss her.
So, I do. Slowly, even when her hips buck against mine with desire and frustration, even when her hands tighten around my lapels. I indulge in the sensation of her tongue sliding against mine, in the ecstasy of her teeth grazing over my bottom lip.
I slide my hand down the dramatic curve of her hip, hooking under her knee. The fabric around her hips parts for me and I drag my palm up and down her skin, letting the heat of her flesh feed me as I press my erection into her. She leans her head back and lets out a soft gasp.
Every inch of her body is alive, thrumming with vitality. I glide my hand around to the delicate, tender flesh of her inner thigh, relishing the sensation of her blood coursing right beneath the surface. She is so soft, so smooth.
She sucks in a quick breath when my fingers reach the sensitive crease of her inner thigh. Her strap slips off her shoulder, threatening to expose the heavy swell of her chest.
I press my finger into her pulse point again, and her mouth falls open to let free another soft moan.
“How…?”
“Our touch over your pulse”—I bring my mouth to the valley between her breasts, dragging my lips and fangs over her skin, tasting the sweetness of her sweat—“is part of the vampire’s kiss.”
“That’s not…” Her voice is jagged with desire. “That’s not in any of my tomes.”
I laugh. “I guess they don’t want everyone discovering the joys of fucking monsters.”
Her shoulders shake with gentle laughter as her hands come to rest around my neck. She melts into my touch as I paint a slow path from the swell of her breasts to her collarbone. Each connection of my lips and tongue with her skin sparks a primal, animal need deep inside me.
My fingers continue to roam higher and higher until I feel the lacy edge of her underwear and the heat of her sex. I lift my eyes to meet her heavy-lidded gaze.
“We were not supposed to celebrate,” I say.
Her lips part. “But…”
“But what?” I whisper in a teasing voice.
She’s already wet and the smell of her desire overrides any sense of humanity I felt in the last five minutes. “What do you want,amore?” I trace that lacy edge, the thrum of her blood making me painfully hard.
She loosens her hold on my neck and traces my chest with her fingernails again, her dark eyes almost feline. An invisible manacle keeping me from dropping to my knees and burying my tongue between her thighs. My fangs grow and my heart hammers as her hands descend, a firm, gentle touch I haven’t felt in years. Finally, they rest on my belt buckle. She dips a finger beneath the elastic band of my boxers.
“I want to feel you.” She tilts her head. The tendons in her neck pull. Her lips are plush and full, rosy and heavy with blood.
A growl brews in my chest. With one hand, I take her face in my hand, cradling the back of her head. With the other, I drag my thumb up and down the center of her, over the damp material of her underwear. “You want to feel me?”
She bites back a quick gasp of pleasure, sinking her teeth into her bottom lip. “I need to.”
“No.” I push her panties aside, finally feeling the true heat of her sex. Her aroma washes over me, an ocean wave of pleasure. A fierce riptide that threatens to undo me. “Tonight, you are mine.”
She watches me with innocent eyes, blood rushing to her cheeks as her mouth falls open.
I push a finger into her. She cranes her neck back and I watch the veins in her neck tense and expand as her body arches.
“Yes,amore,” I whisper. I bring my mouth to the column of her throat and press my lips to her pulse.
Her breath hitches and she rolls her hips. I push another finger into her heat as she cants forward to meet my touch, her curls fanning out in a wild swirl against the wall.
Sweat gathers on her hairline, in the crook of her neck, between her breasts as I chase her flavor, her scent, tracing the pulse in her neck with my tongue, harnessing all of my self-control to focus on nothing but what makes her breathing take on that rapid, ecstatic pace.
Finally, I give in. I drop to my knees and fist the fabric of her dress. Diantha bites back a sound of surprise and then, without hesitation, threads her fingers into my hair. Self-control be damned.
I look up at her, my heart in my throat. “May I?”
She nods, teeth clamping down on her bottom lip.
