Above me he groaned, face twisting in ecstasy as he drove into me even more rapidly with his eyes locked onto mine. I couldn’t look away, seeing his control evaporate inside the green depths. He clutched me as he gave in to the passion, kissing me almost bruisingly and shuddering for several moments.

When I broke away to breathe, he shifted until we lay side by side. His arms coiled around me, keeping our bodies touching. There didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in my lungs and even Bones breathed once or twice-a record, from what I’d seen before. By degrees I controlled my gasping and my heart settled into a nondangerous rhythm. He reached out and pushed the damp hair from my face, smiling before he kissed my forehead.

“And to think you actually believed something was wrong with you.”

“Something is wrong with me, I can’t move.”

It was true. Lying next to him, my arms and legs just wouldn’t respond to any of the commands I gave them. My brain had a back in five minutes sign hung on it, apparently.

He grinned and leaned over to lick the nipple closest to him, drawing lightly on it. The areola was oversensitive from his previous attentions, and a thousand tiny needles of pleasure rushed to the tip. When it crested to the very threshold of sensitivity he stopped, repeating the process with the next one.

Something caught my vision when I glanced down.

“Am I bleeding?” I asked in surprise.

It didn’t quite seem like blood and my period was a week away. Still, there was a distinct pink wetness on the crease of my inner high.

He barely stopped to look. “No, luv. That’s from me.”

“What is-? Oh.” Stupid question. He’d told me before that vampires cried pink. Guess the other fluids followed suit.

“Let me up, I’ll wash off.”

“I don’t mind.” He breathed the words into my skin. “It’s mine, after all. I’ll clean you up.”

“Aren’t you going to roll over and go to sleep?” Wasn’t that what usually happened? Unless he really, really liked to cuddle afterward, things were taking a markedly serious turn as his hand moved lower, seeking my depths.

He ceased his ministrations to laugh, raising his head from my breasts.

“Kitten”-he smiled-“I am far from sleepy.” The look in his eyes sent a shiver through me. “You have no idea how many times I’ve fantasized about you like this. During our training, our fights, the nights I’ve seen you dressed up and pawed at by other men…” Bones stopped speaking to kiss me so deeply, I almost forgot what we were talking about. “And all the while seeing you look at me with fear whenever I touched you. No, I am not sleepy. Not until I’ve tasted every inch of your skin and made you scream over and over again.”

He bent his head to my nipples once more, sucking them and worrying them with his teeth. The way his fangs rubbed the areolas was frighteningly erotic.

“One day I’m going to find that old bloke of yours and kill him,” he muttered, so low I could barely hear him.

“What?” Did he just say that?

A strong tug from his mouth distracted me, and then another and another, until my concerns melted away under the sensual assault on my nipples. After a while he looked at them and smiled in satisfaction.

“Dark red, both of them. Just like I promised you they’d get. See? I am a man of my word.”

Confusion clouded my mind for a second. Then I remembered that afternoon with him trying to burn the embarrassment out of me with hours of dirty talk, and color suddenly flamed in my face.

“You didn’t actually mean all of those things, did you?” My mind rebelled at the thought, but there was a rapidly beating pulse in my body that treacherously hoped for the opposite.

He laughed again, low and throaty. His brow arched in sinful promise, his eyes bled back to pure green, and his mouth slid farther down my stomach.

“Oh, Kitten, I meant every word.”

I awoke to something tickling my back. It felt like butterflies. Opening my eyes, the first thing I saw was an arm wrapped around me, its pale color nearly identical to my own. Bones was curled lengthwise along my back, hips touching mine. The butterflies were him pressing kisses onto my skin.

My first thought was, He picked the wrong profession. Should have stayed a prostitute. He’d make millions. The second one was far less pleasant, and I stiffened. If my mother could see me now, she’d kill me!

“Morning-after regrets?” He ceased kissing me with a noise of disappointment. “I feared you might wake up and flog yourself over this.”

While he spoke, I shot out of bed like I’d been fired from a cannon. I had to think about what to do, and I couldn’t do that in the same room with him. Not even pausing to find my underwear or bra, I just threw on a shirt and yanked up my jeans. God, my keys, where had I put my keys?

Bones sat up. “You can’t just storm out and pretend this never happened.”

“Not now,” I said desperately, trying not to look at him. Aha, keys! Grabbing them with clenched fingers, I ran out of the bedroom.

“Kitten…”

I didn’t stop.

THIRTEEN

I DROVE STRAIGHT HOME, MY EMOTIONS IN A tug-of-war the whole way. Making love to Bones had been beyond incredible, and he was right. There was no way I could pretend this didn’t happen. But there was more to consider than just my feelings. Left to myself, I would only be moderately wigged about having slept with him. The main reason for my panic, however, was knowing how my mother would react. I couldn’t tell her, ever. And that meant I had to stop this before it went any further.

My grandparents were on the porch, drinking iced tea when I pulled up two hours later. They looked like a postcard of Americana with their white hair and plain clothes, faces weathered from time.

“Hello,” I greeted them distractedly.

There was a hiss from my grandmother. Immediately afterward came a bellow of outrage from my grandfather. I just blinked at them.

“What’s the matter with you two?”

Curious, I watched as my grandfather turned three shades of red. After all, it wasn’t like I hadn’t strolled in the next day several times before, and they’d never commented about it. They’d adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it came to my late nights.

“Justina, get on out here, girl!” He ignored my question and rose to his feet. A moment later my mother came out, her face as bewildered as mine.

“What? Is something wrong?”

He answered her while still shaking with wrath.

“Just look at her. Look at her! You can’t tell me she wasn’t doing anything wrong last night! No, she was consorting with the devil, that’s what she was doing!”

I blanched, wracking my brain to figure out how he found out I’d slept with a vampire. Had I grown fangs? Reaching out, I fingered my teeth, but they were as square and flat as normal.

The gesture enraged him further. “Don’t flick your finger off your teeth at me, missy! Who do you think you are?”

To her credit, my mother at once began to defend me. “Oh, Pa, you don’t understand. She’s-”

Her voice abruptly choked as she stared at me with a lesser look of shock.

“What?” I demanded, frightened.

“Your neck…” she whispered, disbelief in her eyes.

Terrified, I pushed past her and ran to the nearest bathroom. Were there fang marks? God, had he bitten me without my realizing it?

Once I stared at my reflection however, the reason for their reaction became clear. Erratically spaced and in different shades of blue were four-no, make that five-hickeys. No telltale puncture wounds from a vampire’s teeth, but plain, unmistakable hickeys. Opening Bones’s shirt, I saw that my breasts bore similar marks. Good thing this top didn’t have cleavage or they’d all have fainted dead away.