The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) (18 page)

His fingers caressed the backs of my hands. His arms pressed against mine. I could feel his breath on my neck now, as if he knew that was one erogenous zone that made me tremble.
 

I closed my eyes and savored.

"How can you hit the target when you have your eyes closed?"

His voice had gotten warmer, a black ribbon he wound around me. I wanted to lean my head back, allowing him to support me as I melted into his arms.

I’d never felt like this with anyone. As if I wanted to become part of him, lose myself in another creature. If he moved away, I’d cry. The loss of him would be so horrible that I would never be the same.

How stupid was I?
 

I blinked open my eyes and turn my head just a little. His smile had disappeared. He might've been a vampire at that moment, his eyes feasting on my carotid artery.
 

I should be afraid, couched in ignorance about Dan as I was.

"Who are you?" I asked softly. "What are you?"
 

"Your destiny?"

He wasn't a shape shifter. Nor was he a witch or vampire. He was something else, special, unique, and probably wholly human.

Probably.

For his sake, he should run, far and fast. I had no idea if I could hurt him in the thrall of lust. Would I bite him? I hadn't bitten Maddock, that I knew of. If I had, he deserved it.

Destiny? No, Dan wasn't my destiny. Nor was I his. But when my hands dropped and I placed the gun on the counter before me, time elongated and seemed to stand still. When he turned me in his arms, I went willingly, expectantly. His hands framed my face, his thumbs tilting up my chin.

I watched as his face lowered, wanted to warn him about the danger. I hadn't practiced often, but I knew if I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth near the base of my front teeth, my fangs would snick into place. If I cut him, would the taste of his blood turn me into a ravening beast? Would I lick his lips and wish for an open wound? Would I become more vampire than Marcie?
 

I didn’t want to take the chance with Dan.
 

He didn't give me the opportunity to say no. But unlike Maddock’s coercion, this was one of gentleness and a certain sweetness. His fingers threaded through my hair as he smiled down at me. He didn't say a word as his lips lowered to my mouth. He didn't try to convince me or seduce me. He only smiled and I was his.

Kissing Dan was like entering a perfumed room, one shrouded in shadows and promising the revelation of treasures. A space in my chest seemed to open and be instantly filled with gasping wonder. My body heated, warming from the inside out. My breasts plumped, the nipples hardening.
 

I slowly reached up, my hands skimming up his shirt, feeling all the muscles covered so lovingly with one hundred percent cotton.
 

Lucky fabric.
 

My fingers pressed against his throat before reaching behind his neck.

A curious pinging was beginning inside me, as if all the cells of my body, up until now in stasis from being a vampire, were coming alive and shouting their need to be acknowledged. Life pulsating and demanding. My heart beat faster. My breath accelerated. Everything in me craved him, desired him, and needed him.

His lips were full and soft, coaxing with an expertise against which I had no defense. His tongue bathed my lower lip, tasted my tongue, darted in then out, making me open my mouth wider, the better to be vanquished.
 

One hand cupped my breast and I gasped at the sensation, so sensitive as to be almost painful.
 

Then he stepped back and I was suddenly alone, adrift and abandoned. I blinked open my eyes.
 

“Forgive me,” he said, his look intent.
 

Why had he apologized? Did he expect me to do so as well? I wasn’t going to.
 

I’d worried that Maddock had damaged me, that I’d never be able to feel close to another man without being afraid. Maddock had no part in what was between us. Nothing he’d done could affect this heat or discourage this need.
 

I looked away, down at the floor, over my shoulder at the target at the far wall.

He was still too close. A zone of heat traveled between us.
 

I wanted to be taken. On the floor, against the wall. In full view of the beautiful Swedish blonde. I didn't care. My baser self was rising up and taking over what was left of my sanity.

Stretching out my hand, my fingertips touched his shirt. Then I was in his arms again and his mouth was on mine.
 

I felt the earth move. No, that was me. Dan was lifting me, then placing me on the cold concrete floor. A realization I had for a millisecond before he was sliding his hand beneath my top, working his magic over my bra until it loosened. The moment he cupped my breast, I lost all sense of place.
 

I only felt.
 

I was a creature of touch and warmth, nerve endings and pleasure points. I’d never known that my elbows were so sensitive or that a kiss on my temple could make me smile.
 

How quickly I undressed, the feat accomplished while being kissed into oblivion. I remember thinking, in a far off way as if my conscience had been silenced by a feather pillow, that anyone could come into the firing range and see us.
 

I didn’t care.
 

My fingertips became swords as I gripped Dan’s bare back. My breaths were pants. My blood was heated to the point it felt as if it boiled through my veins.
 

When he entered me, the splintering bliss of that moment stopped everything: time, awareness, a sense of self. I was only a creature whose sole purpose was to mate, to feel, to drown in pleasure.
 

I surfaced long moments later, staring up at the ceiling and noting that someone had painted a night sky on it. A smiling moon leered down at me. Stars twinkled en mass, an effect that had me blinking a few times before I realized they were lights.
 

Holy gorgonzola, what had just happened?
 

Dan was still on me, a heavy weight but not a burden. I didn’t want him to move for a moment. I liked feeling the gallop of his heart against my chest and hearing the gradual slowing of his breath.
 

It made me feel alive, just like sex made me feel alive.
 

Maybe this was why vampires went after humans, to experience this sensation.

Dan propped himself up on his arms, staring down at me. I’d always felt self conscious about sex, the before period where you undressed and the after period where you apologized or explained.
 

The before period had spun past so quickly I didn’t remember getting my clothes off and I sure as hell hadn’t felt self conscious about it. Now, though, I was wondering if I needed to say something.
 

Dan spoke first. “Wow.”
 

I smiled. Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.
 

“Wow, yourself,” I said.
 

“Damn, Marcie.”
 

Yep, that’s exactly how I felt. I didn’t want him to move. I didn’t want to move. I felt so damn good that I was content to live the rest of my life on this patch of cold concrete.
 

Dan had other ideas. He reached out and snagged his shirt, rolled off me and put it on. His shorts - and I wasn’t all that surprised to note they were designer shorts - were hanging from a knob of one of the cabinets. His pants were on the floor at the other end of the booth.
 

I watched him dress, taking in the perfection of his body. I remembered my college courses in biology, how the female of the species picks the most likely candidate to sire her brood. He had to be the strongest of the applicants, the most attractive, the one guaranteed to survive and to produce offspring that would thrive.

As a female of my particular species, I’d picked damn well.
 

His skin was taut, the muscles of his legs, arms, and chest evidence that the man worked out. When he turned, I studied his backside. When he glanced back at me, I couldn’t help but smile even as I felt myself warm.
 

I’d never been caught admiring a man’s butt before.
 

I finally sat up, putting myself back together. My top hadn’t been removed, but my bra was curiously tangled beneath it. I found my pants beneath the gun cabinet and the remnants of my panties on top of the ledge.
 

One of us had tossed them up there. At this point, I didn’t know who.
 

We didn’t speak as we dressed, but it wasn’t that embarrassed kind of silence I expected. Instead, it felt oddly right, as if we’d done this before, that this wasn’t an impromptu thing. I didn’t feel uncomfortable with him, but I should have. At the very least, I should have felt compelled to defend myself.
 

I don’t do this all the time. In fact, I never do this.
 

I didn’t say a word. Nor did I tell him that loving him had been a baptism, of sorts. I doubt any guy would like that kind of description about what had just happened. Yet it felt as if I’d been washed clean, that anything Maddock had done would never matter again.
 

I felt whole and damn near virtuous, and wasn’t that a howl, especially since I was going to have to go commando back to my room. How had my panties gotten ripped?
 

Once we were both dressed, Dan came to me, framing my face with his hands.
 

The area around us was warm and smelled of sex. I’d never been so conscious of being female before or of him being male. If he’d nodded to me, I would have flung myself to the floor and waited for him, a vampire virgin if not a vestal one. Okay, maybe not a virgin, but feeling new and unused.
 

But he only smiled at me.
 

“I think we’d better wait on the lesson,” he said.
 

I nodded. I needed to get my libido under control. My entire body needed a good talking to.
 

He took my hand and led me from the room. I hoped to God he didn’t have security cameras here. I wonder what we looked like, a thought that had me chiding myself all the way back to my room.
 

Once there, I could swear Charlie winked at me, but when I looked again, he blinked a few times, yawned, then resumed his position of chin on his paws.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

The strings are still vibrating

I played coward for the rest of the day, staying in my room, ordering dinner from what essentially was room service. I took a shower, washed my hair, and sprayed perfume everywhere just in case I had a visitor later. I put on my favorite dressy pajamas, black with white bands at the wrists and ankles.
 

Until dinner, I scarfed down crackers and cheese. I don’t care what I went through, I was almost always hungry. Is there anything better than a Ritz cracker and extra sharp cheddar cheese? Okay, maybe a taco, but I was using what I had in the refrigerator in the dressing room.
 

I hadn’t changed my mind and magically become embarrassed about having sex with Dan, it’s just that it changed our dynamics a little. I was still dependent on him despite having written him a rent check.
 

Now that we had sex, he had another level of control over me. Maybe it wasn’t control, but men have a tendency to be protective of women with whom they’re intimate. It’s no doubt the biological urge of all animals to protect the mate. I expected him to be even more territorial about my comings and goings.
 

A few hours later, I put on my beige trench coat and sneakers again. Charlie and I headed in the general direction of the back of the castle. One of these days, I really should reconnoiter, but it seemed rude to explore. There were three wings I didn’t know anything about, including an inner courtyard that I’d seen from a window but had never investigated.
 

When I came to the entrance to the corridor to the parking garage, I was forced to stop and ask directions at one of the intercoms.
 

“We can take him outside for you, Miss Montgomery.”
 

Did Dan only hire pleasant voiced women?
 

“That’s okay,” I said, “If you’ll tell me where, I’ll take him.”

Until I had to call Charlie’s owner, his real owner, he was my responsibility. I got the instructions, repeated them to myself as we followed the maze of corridors. A right, two lefts, a right, and go to the end of the hall with the red exit sign.
 

I found myself in a fenced-in grassy area. Two other dogs, both black labs, were running along the six foot high privacy fence mounted with security lights. One of them stopped and ran up to Charlie with a hail fellow well met expression. I couldn’t tell offhand if the dog was a neutered male or an interested female. From Charlie’s expression and sniffs, I deduced the latter. Was it Noir, his girlfriend?