Kiss him
, Blu thought.
On the mouth. Pretend it’s me. Or don’t pretend and make me jealous.
Creed looked to her, his mouth slightly parted to reveal the tips of white fangs. He silently asked her permission.
Blu stepped closer, fitting her hip against the victim’s thigh. The man groaned, a wanting sound that pleaded for connection, and he muttered, “Please.”
She stroked the side of his neck, and the vein but inches from Creed’s mouth bulged like a bruise under the wicked purple lights. Creed’s breath hissed across her fingers. She traced her husband’s lips, avoiding the slick white fang that stirred a chill in her breast even while their proximity made her wet with desire.
“Kiss him,” she whispered.
His reply entered her pores like a lover’s hot tongue. “As you command.”
Creed kissed the man’s neck, softly but sure as he swept the tip of his tongue over the vein. The man’s gasp hushed over Blu’s lips like a stolen prayer.
Creed held the man by the chest. Blu wanted him to move his hand lower, to brush it over the erection she knew the stranger had. Imagining the erotic act was exquisite enough. Any minute now her vampire husband would take the hard, pulsing vein with a different type of penetration.
“Do it,” she whispered. “For me.”
Mastering the stranger, Creed clenched his grip and
locked his mouth over the victim’s straining neck muscles. The man cried out, but it was desirous and blended with the moans and hushed climaxes around the room.
The scent of blood tinted the air. Blu pressed her cheek beside the man’s open mouth, intent on her husband’s exploits. Fangs pulled from the flesh, rising into his gums, and he began to suck. To draw out the man’s life and revitalize his own.
The man moaned loudly at her ear. Blu cupped her palm over his mouth, unconcerned for his pleasure now and a little irritated with his display. It was all about Creed taking sustenance. Her husband’s eyes were closed and his mouth sucked at the stranger’s flesh.
Make it her flesh, she wished. Not her neck, and with no fangs. Just Creed suckling at her breast like that, feeding, needing the connection, the aliveness, the exquisite pain and pleasure.
It mattered little they were so different, not supposed to be getting along, much less married. The sensual experience was not prejudice.
The stranger shuddered and climaxed. His gasp heated Blu’s palm. The swoon was always good to the victim.
Creed pulled his head back, parting from the flesh and blood—the life. He dropped the stranger onto the chair and stumbled backward against the satin wall, struck by a scintillating thrill.
Blu followed, fitting herself against him, studying his swoon.
His entire body was tense, as if at the peak of climax, but he made no sound. Eyes closed, he parted his mouth, the fangs down and glistening, but showing no blood; he’d licked them clean.
She traced his arm, feeling minute shudders strafe the hard muscle. The blood must be rushing through his system, she assumed. She didn’t understand the mechanics of it, but it didn’t matter. Extreme pleasure held him captive in darkly glamorous surrender.
She glanced her palm down his taut chest, and over his pants, expecting to find him hard there, as well. He was not. Good. The bite hadn’t turned him on sexually.
But then he did become hard, quickly growing firm beneath her touch.
He pressed her palm to his erection. “Good enough for you, Princess?”
“That was so erotic.” She kissed his jaw, but would avoid his mouth. A squeeze of her hand and his body tensed in reaction. “Turned me on. Did you come?”
“No,” he gasped, then chuckled softly. “Something close, but never like that. Not with a man. But you. You cannot touch me like this and expect we’ll walk out of here unchanged.”
“We’ll never be the same,” she agreed. “I desire you, Creed. Watching you take blood was a gift. Thank you.”
“Christ, Blu, harder,” he said, directing her hand over his cock.
She moved her hand, rubbing the front of his trousers over the hard shaft. Even through the fabric she could feel the pulse of the thick vein on the underside, the heavy, smooth head of it. She wanted to unwrap it and glide it along her warm skin.
He kissed the crowns of her breasts, hard, demanding. A lash of his tongue behind the leather corset targeted her nipple. Blu stretched back a shoulder, which lifted her nipple above the leather. He sucked at it as fiercely as he’d taken from the man’s neck.
“Oh, yes.” This was what she’d wanted. And she hadn’t realized it until now. “That’s good. Take me.”
As she tilted her head, her hair brushed against another person. A hand caressed her ass. It was not Creed’s.
He turned her around and slammed her against the wall. “Not this way for us,” he growled. He worked his hips, grinding his erection against her thigh. So hard and thick. She wanted it in hand, bared, bold and ready. “Just the two of us. Has to be.”
“Yes,” she said with a throaty pant. “Yes.”
T
HE
BMW’
S FRONT SEAT
wasn’t designed for comfortable sex. Blu fit herself onto Creed’s lap, straddling him with those crazy-sexy boots. He adjusted the seat all the way back so the steering wheel wouldn’t dig into her.
She’d taken the keys from him and stashed them in the glove compartment. Tucked at the back of the parking lot, and well away from the security lights, who was he to argue against a car make-out session?
“You make me so hot,” she said, skating down his neck with her tongue. “Feel me, Creed.”
While he wanted to kiss her, to pierce her mouth with his tongue and taste the wet heat there, he would not. He didn’t want to turn her off after he’d drunk blood, though the vodka he’d thrown back as they’d exited the club had cleaned his palate.
She directed his hand up her thigh and he curled his fingers past a few buckles, under the suede skirt and into her sex. Mercy, she was so hot there, slippery wet. He moaned at the chile chocolate heat of her.
She, a werewolf, hot for him? It was like gliding through a surreal dream.
“Make me come,” she directed. His shirt unbuttoned, she pressed kisses down his chest, and bit not too softly at his nipples. “Please, I need it.”
Head against the seat and still riding the blood swoon aftershocks, Creed slid a finger inside his wife. Every
woman was different, shaped individually and designed as if a snowflake, no two alike. The discovery of what could bring her to climax was always an excursion he enjoyed.
It didn’t take long to learn Blu needed direct and rhythmic contact. Slow and then a little faster. She rode his fingers, grinding the sweet spot.
A metal buckle rasped across his chin. The pain was small compared to the pleasure of Blu’s whimpering moans. She bowed to his manipulations and begged for more.
Tonight he would tame the wolf.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Harder.”
He pressed harder, stroking the inner shaft of her clit that controlled her pleasure. The heat of her drove him mad. She wanted so desperately. She needed. And her lack of fear, of discretion, enamored him.
“Faster, please.”
Her whimpering pleas dizzied him. He loved it when a woman asked for exactly what she wanted, what she needed. He wanted to give it all to her.
“Right there. Oh, my gods.” Her thighs tightened. She tensed. Gasps warmed his neck. “Yes.”
Her climax was loud, joyous and unabashed. She arched against him, her body stiffening as shudders shook her thighs against his. The red wig dusted his eyelids, his
nose and mouth. The call of her wild nature curled her nails into his shoulders, but he took the pain gladly.
One exposed nipple grazed his mouth. He sucked at it, sparking another exquisite peal from her parted lips. Her pleasure put him over the edge. His erection still firmly tucked inside his trousers, he came, spilling into the fabric and bumping his hips against her shuddering thighs. He gripped her hips, not allowing her to slip away.
Her body wilted upon his. She tucked her bewigged head aside his shoulder and curled one leg against his torso. She jutted the spike heel into his thigh, but not deeply. They panted together, deliciously spent.
She stroked his crotch. “You came, too? Good.”
The scent of her, like exotic flowers crushed against the flesh and salted, was the most exquisite perfume.
She laughed deeply, her breasts crushing against his beating heart. “That rocked.”
“I have to agree.”
Creed slid a hand up her arm, hot and sticky with perspiration. He pressed his fingers over her neck. The vein pulsed madly. Life soaring beneath his fingertips. Thick red corpuscles and platelets and sexy plasma.
His fangs lowered. Sweet darkness lingered but a bite away. An after-sex suck never failed to bring the donor to orgasm again. She would know what it really meant to be
rocked,
and that this vampire was all about the decadence.
Creed twisted his head to the side. Fighting the compulsion, he willed his fangs back up. A wistful smirk dismissed the desire to bite his wife’s neck.
Not yet.
Not without her permission.
I
T WAS RAINING BY THE
time Creed pulled the BMW up to the front door. He didn’t park in the garage, which was not attached to the house, and sat a hundred yards to the east near the front fence, because he didn’t want Blu to have to run through the rain.
“We can wait until it stops raining,” he suggested, drawing a finger along her thigh. He slid it down between her thighs, and Blu sucked in a breath. “Is that a don’t-touch-me-anymore noise?”
“Actually…” She opened the door and held her palm out to catch the cold raindrops. “It was a catch-me-if-you-can noise.”
She batted her lashes at him and blew him a kiss.
Spattered by tiny droplets, Blu raced toward the front door, but her high-heeled boots made the run treacherous. Didn’t matter. The rain soaking into her pores felt
great, but it didn’t erase the sheen of perspiration produced from their amazing car sex.
Caught about the waist by powerful arms and swung around, Blu laughed. She twisted in the vampire’s embrace when he set her down. Impatiently, she shoved his unbuttoned shirt down his arms.
“Out here?” he asked.
“Here’s a tidbit about me, vampire. Rain makes me horny.”
“And here I thought it was what we’d just done.” He lifted her leg, tucking it alongside his hip, and found her bare bottom with his palm. His touch branded her.
“Mmm…” A kiss upon her clavicle licked away the rain. “What of the spies?”
“I didn’t see any when we drove up,” he said. “They must be tucked away from the rain for the night. Or else they followed us, and we lost them along the way.”
“Works for me. The shrubs block the view of the lower front door and the step is carpeted.”
“Oh, yes?” He nudged his foot behind her boot, forcing her knee to bend. As she went down, he cradled her and positioned her across the front step, which was carpeted, but with that scratchy, plastic outdoor stuff.
“Wait.” He tugged off his shirt and laid it down so she could at least fit herself from ass to shoulders on something softer. Such a gentleman. Lifting one of her
legs high, he bit a buckle and tugged. “These are insanely sexy.”
“Maybe you should bite them off? One by one.”
“It would take all night,” he muttered as he moved to kiss up her neck and then at her ear. “I want you now. We only just got started in the car.”
She wanted to continue, too, and yet what they’d shared in the car had been their first real no-holds-barred encounter. Blu wasn’t quite prepared to give it all up just yet.
“More of what we did in the car,” she said, bracketing his face with her hands and holding him but inches from her face. Dark and spicy, his scent did not preach patience. “Not full-on sex yet, Creed. I’m…not ready.”
“Ah?” He nodded. “I’m sorry. I am rushing things.”
“No, you’re not.” She wrapped her legs about his hips. “What we did in the car was amazing, and I want to keep doing it now, but I’m still not completely there yet.”
“Trusting me.”
She shrugged and blinked at the rain that spattered her forehead and eyelids. “Is that okay?”
A kiss to her breast lingered there. Creed glided his hand down to her thigh and then between her legs. He certainly knew how to play her to a screaming orgasm. She should reciprocate, but she worried that once she got his erection out from his pants, even she wouldn’t want
to stop. She liked the feeling that came with holding a man’s penis: utter control.
“It is more than okay.” He stroked her between the legs softly, a delicious change of pace from their previous frenzy. “You are not too cold? You’re shivering, Blu.”
“Mmm, it’s a blend of ecstasy and a chill.”
“I can do something about that.” He kissed her quickly, then sat up, his legs straddling her hips, and spread his arms before him, as if to part a veil.
Suddenly the rain stopped. Creed leaned over her and studied her face, and then Blu realized the rain had not stopped. It had just stopped raining on them.
“Did you do that?” she murmured.
“Just one of those tricks one keeps up their sleeve.”
“You’re not wearing a shirt.”
“So I’m not. Water magic.”
“You said you weren’t going to use your magic. Something about atoning?”
“I feel sure no witch will mind me keeping my wife dry and warm. As long as you don’t tell.”
“I won’t tell,” she whispered, crossing her fingers behind Creed’s back.
Creed brushed his lips lightly across her eyelids, tasting the rain. Within moments he brought her to another deliciously muscle-twisting high. She didn’t cry out so loudly as she had in the car. Instead she came
softly, glancing into the realm of utter delight, and then landing back in the real world.
In the arms of her vampire husband.
T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
Blu peeked in on Creed in his office. “I’m going for a jog.”
He barely looked from the papers before him. Then, as if prodded to life, he dropped the paperwork and rose to meet her at the door. He stroked aside the pink strand fallen loose from her ponytail.
“You’re gorgeous when you come,” he said.
They’d stumbled, arm in arm, into the house last night, but a note from Housekeeper had sent Creed to the servant’s quarters. Blu hadn’t followed. She had gone up to shower and had fallen into a blissful sleep.
Brushing her cheek into his palm, Blu shrugged. “How’s Malena?”
“Malena?”
She made air quotes. “‘Housekeeper’? That’s her name—Malena.”
“Ah. She’s no longer with us. Family emergency. A new housekeeper will arrive tomorrow.”
“Wow. That was quick. So a new housekeeper. I dare you to learn this one’s name.”
He smirked. “Much easier not to. They come and go so quickly. So a jog? In a dress?”
She tugged the hem of the short sundress. “Uh-huh.”
“All right. I know it’s never wise to try to understand your inner workings. You have the remote?”
“Yep. Thanks for understanding.”
“I adjusted the wards last evening. You should have no trouble passing through the gate.”
“Thanks. More magic?”
He nodded.
“We’re going to discuss you, your magic and the witches sometime. Soon. If you expect me to keep your secret.”
“Yes, I do, and we will.” He stroked her arm with soft, feathery touches. “Care to meet me later this evening for some—” a stroke strayed across her nipple and it hardened, which pleased him immensely “—entertainment? It involves chile chocolate sauce.”
“You hired the chef? Nummy. Of course it’s a date. Nothing can keep me away from chocolate.” She kissed his temple. “Back in a few.”
Aware he watched as she prowled away, Blu blew a flirty kiss over her shoulder before turning down the hallway.
“What am I doing?” she admonished as she hit the driveway outside and ran along the yard periphery to the back where she could slip out of her dress. “Flirting with my husband like that?”
As if she wanted him. When this whole marriage thing
was only a farce. A
situation,
as he’d callously labeled it that first night.
And the vampire! He wasn’t supposed to fall for her. For a feral, wild animal, as he’d put it. He most certainly was not supposed to have sex with her.
“Must have been something in the incense,” she decided.
But she knew differently. Last night had shot her theories of bad sex with vamps all to hell. Just thinking about his fingers inside her, moving over her, commanding her to a raging orgasm, made her wet again.
“Not cool, Blu. Not right now. Save it for later.”
So she shoved the vamp from her mind, but not without a secret shudder. And a wonder. Was he thinking about her right now? About sliding his fingers inside her and feeling her come at his command?
“He should be.”
That he had commanded the rain to part all around them was another wonder. If he could do that, what other tricks did he have up his proverbial sleeve? And just what would he do to ensure she kept that secret?
“Could involve Wolfsbane,” she decided, with a shudder. She’d have to be very careful how she handled the information with which he’d trusted her.
Once close to the east wall of fencing, she clicked the remote and eyed the shrubbery to spy where the gate might be. Just ahead, she saw it.
“Nice. But why a gate at the back?” Maybe he owned some of the land that wasn’t fenced off. It was possible.
Approaching cautiously as she gained the open gate, she decided to leap through, thus avoiding any possible trip wires. Better safe than sorry. Of course she knew wards required only magical intangible sensors. And he had said he’d adjusted them.
“Still. Just to be safe,” she muttered.
Closing the gate, she then tucked the remote near a rock wedged in the grass.
Slipping off her dress, it shimmied down her legs and puddled on her bare toes. Tugging off her wig to toss it on top of the dress, she then shifted. She didn’t jog as a two-legged creature, after all.
The shift was easy and always felt like a really intense, stretching, Thai massage as Blu’s bones, flesh and organs reshaped. Her human mind segued with the animal mind. She still possessed some human thoughts in wolf form, but mostly her thoughts grew instinctive. So if she had a task to accomplish in wolf shape she had to focus.
The pores on her skin tightened, forcing out fur. Her skull squeezed, producing flashes of brilliant sunlight at the backs of her retinas. Teeth and claws grew.
As Blu made the shift, she concentrated:
three miles to the north.
In wolf shape, she shook her body, ruffled her fur and let out a low howl that wouldn’t be heard by the vampires outside the front gates, but probably the wolves would pick it up.
She raced away from the gates, across the edge of a plowed field. Her paws took the uneven ground swiftly, gliding through the air effortlessly. Corn stalks three feet high lashed at her muzzle and fur, but the wolf loved the freedom. Tongue lolling, she trotted from the field and along the edge of the forest.
Three miles to the north, the wolf spied a vehicle she associated with humans—but also her breed. Normally she would avoid human contact. But the scent on the van was familiar, a welcoming beacon.
The back doors of the black van opened, and she leaped inside.
A blanket was held before her. The wolf dodged her head into the olive-green wool and shifted. Her bones and flesh stretched, the fur and tail giving way as her limbs lengthened. The last change was claws segueing to fingernails.
Blu tugged the blanket about her shoulders and made sure it covered her completely in front. It didn’t cover her legs at all. They could have provided a bigger blanket.
“Whose idea was this to meet so far out? I so should have driven here.”
Two werewolves in black camo gear sat in the back of the van, hands between their knees. Ridge, her father’s bodyguard and right-hand man, was bulky and had no apparent neck. Blu felt comfortable enough around him to trust he did respect her. In a werewolfie-alpha kind of way. He’d never hurt her, and had once torn a horny pack member from her before he could rape her.
The other wolf she didn’t know, but his ruddy skin and scruffy beard put her off almost as much as his menacing gaze.
Normally she was all about the hairy men. But lately, she’d developed a taste for a cleaner more aristocratic look. Hmm…
“You weren’t followed?” Ridge asked.
“Not unless a bunny rabbit got curious.”
She settled on the metal bench across from Ridge but kept her distance from the other, who was beginning to creep her out. She could sense his increased breathing and smell the musk on him.
Get a room and take care of it yourself, buddy.
“So what’s up? Bree gave me the message I was to rendezvous here.”
The last message she’d checked before handing her precious phone over to Creed. He’d won it fair and square. And she was definitely up for the next challenge if it ended as it had last night.
“Your father wants an update on you and Lord Saint-Pierre.”
“Dirty vampire,” the other muttered.
“Who are you?” Blu snapped with affront. “Who is he?” she asked Ridge.
“New recruit. Diaz, keep your trap shut. And don’t look at the princess like that. Head down.”
Diaz obliged, but Blu could still feel his leering gaze creep down her legs. She appreciated Ridge’s respect, but tugged the blanket tighter across her chest. While they could satisfy their lust perfectly well with mortal females, male wolves were susceptible to the female wolf’s pheromones, oftentimes against their own volition.
“Your father wants to know if you’ve been able to get close to the vampire.”
“I’m working on it.”
“I’m supposed to ask…” Ridge looked down, twitched his fingers in a loose clasp. “If the marriage has been consummated?”
“That depends on what definition you’re looking for. The Council’s definition or otherwise?”
“Have you had sex or been bitten yet?”
“Hmm, sort of and no.”
Ridge’s pleading gape gave her a chuckle. “What does that mean, Princess? I gotta have something to report back.”
“What that means is, I’m making way in the intimacy department. We’ve made out. Kissed. Done—” she smirked and tucked a loose strand of dark hair over her shoulder “—things. But no official sex yet. And no biting. That’s never going to happen.”
“Your father feels it is necessary to show the vampires we’ve succumbed. The Council requires it.”
“Succumb, my ass. This chick isn’t going to let anyone bite her neck. Pact or no pact. Besides, it shouldn’t matter, not with my father’s plans.”
She stretched a leg, and when Diaz noticed, she smacked his knee with the back of her hand, and said to Ridge, “Could you put a leash on him?”
“Princess, about the bite—”
“Sex should be enough. And…I’m working on that.” This conversation humiliated her more than the idiot Diaz’s lolling expression.
“I’ll report back to your father.”
“You do that. Anything else?”
“The banquet is in a few days. You’ll be there with Lord Saint-Pierre.”
“Of course. The Council wants to see how we’ve progressed. We’ll attend and put on a show. My father doesn’t plan anything for that night, does he?”