Page 98 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

“I left,” he says simply. “It’s the thing I am best at, and I’ve been extremely good at it since before this house existed. I have never once been in the room afterwards, and I don’t know what is supposed to happen now.”

Oh, I think. Then I stop thinking, because I have spent eleven weeks watching this man compress himself into what he believes he is allowed to be. Not tonight.

I open the bedroom door and walk inside, then turn and beckon to him.

“Come here,” I say.

He comes. I get his coat off and drop it on the floor of the bedroom. He makes a small sound that is probably an objection, but he doesn’t pick it up. Instead, his hands come to my waist, carefully, the way they always are.

“Penny—”

“You keep asking me things,” I say. “Ask me this one.”

His hands tighten, just a fraction, and when he speaks, his voice has gone somewhere lower.

“May I take this dress off you?”

“Yes.”

“May I⁠—”

“Yes, Julian.”

He doesn’t go fast. He never goes fast. But he stops going carefully, which is an enormous difference, and I feel it the exact second it happens. The dress goes, unceremoniously, somewhere behind him, his clothes follow, and then we’re on the good bed.

His mouth finds my throat. Not the marks, but the sensitive skin beside them. He stops there with his lips against my pulse, careful again, and stays absolutely still for long enough that I tug lightly on his hair.

“Julian.”

“I can hear it,” he says, against my skin. “And now I’ve tasted it.”

“What does that mean?”

He pulls back enough to look at me. The red is so strong in his eyes that it makes the rest of his face look sharper and stranger. His mouth is very close to mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he puts his thumb over my lower lip and waits. When my mouth opens, he slides his thumb gently inside. He has never done that before. The feel of his cool skin against my tongue is almost more than I can stand.

He watches my face as his thumb moves slowly in and out of my mouth, and I’ve never been so aware of anyone in my life. Then his mouth moves to my jaw, and my collarbone, and then down over my breasts. His tongue flicks out over one nipple, and I make a sound that has no dignity in it at all. He doesn’t smile, but I feel him pause, and then do it again, and again, and then he pulls back.

“I will take my time with that,” he says, “when we are not in a hurry.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” I gasp. He shakes his head and moves down, mouth trailing over my stomach until he reaches the edge of my underwear. He looks up the length of me, his eyes so dark that the glow is almost invisible, and I think he’s going to ask again. Instead he slides them off, watching my face the whole time.

And then he puts his mouth on me.

I have never been so glad I’m not standing up. His tongue makes slow, cool circles, his lips close around the places that are most sensitive, and the entire time, his eyes don’t leave my face. The pressure of that is what finally pushes me over, and I come saying his name.

I’m still catching my breath when he moves up to lie beside me, and I see the question in his eyes.

“Yes, Julian.”

His eyes close again, and I put my hand on his jaw. His eyelashes are very long and very dark.

“Tell me what you want to do to me,” I whisper, and his eyes open. The red in them is so hot now that it’s like sparks of light.

“I want to be inside you,” he says, in a low voice I have never heard before. “I want to feel you around me when I move.”

“Yes.”

“I want to be under you.” His fingers trace my collarbone. “I want you on top, so I can look up at you and see how good I make you feel.”