A Girls Guide to Vampires (28 page)

Beloved.

Raphael
! I answered, fighting with every ounce of strength I had left.

A warmth
, a presence I hadn't felt in the vision of the other night surrounded me. "You smell like flowers, but you taste of heaven." Flames licked up my back, burning my neck, lighting me on fire. I struggled to escape the flames, but the Dark One's hold on me was too great.

"I've thought about you all evening, thought about this. You were never once from my mind. You were meant for me. Every inch of you is perfect, perfectly made for me. You are mine."

He was coming closer. He was almost upon me.

We will be together forever, Beloved.

Nooooo!

"Say it. Say the words. I want to hear them." The fire consumed the front of me, burning down past flesh and muscle and bone, boiling my blood away until there was nothing left of the essence of me. What was left was love.

"Raphael!"

"Mmm.
I thought you'd never wake up."

I opened my eyes. Raphael's amber gaze burned into me seconds before his mouth claimed mine. I gave myself to him, gave him everything there was of me and accepted him in return.

A soulless howl of agony rent the fabric of the night, bringing tears to my eyes even as I understood that there was nothing I could do for the Dark One.

"Joy?"

I opened my eyes again and smiled at the concern in Raphael's beautiful eyes. "Hello, Bob."

"You went stiff for a moment."

I allowed my smile to go naughty and rubbed up against him. "I'm not the only thing that's stiff."

"Cheeky," he grinned, dipping his head down for another taste of my lips. The feel of his warm skin touching mine, the taste of him, of his body pressing mine down into the mattress, reaffirmed the knowledge that this was right, that this was meant to be. His presence banished the nightmare that almost was. A tiny spark of guilt flared to life with the thought that I should not be celebrating life with Raphael while another was suffering, but the honest part of my mind stomped out the guilt with the acceptance that some things were beyond my control.

I sucked on Raphael's tongue as he checked my teeth, sliding my hands down the muscles of his shoulders to his back.

"You're naked," I said, pausing in our kiss to breathe.

He leaned back and looked down at me, trailing a finger across my collarbone, down the middle of my breastbone, still farther down to my belly, ending with a tickle at the gates of my own personal paradise. "Ah, baby, so are you."

I melted into one big puddle of goo.
Baby
.
It wasn't the word, it was the way he said it.

"I was waiting for you. Somehow I thought you would prefer me dressed this way."

He leaned forward to nuzzle his cheek across my breast. The barest hint of stubble added a dimension of tingle that I hadn't felt before. I sucked in a delighted gulp of air.

"You are positively psychic."

"And you're only
just
discovering this?" I laughed, my laughter turning to a gasp as his mouth closed over my nipple. "OK, I like that," I admitted, wondering why my voice was an octave higher than normal.

Raphael laved my breast with long strokes of his tongue before he released it. "So do I," he
growled,
his voice deepening as he bent over my other breast. "Fancy that, a spare."

"Yes," I gasped, trying to get some air into my lungs. It was impossible to breathe while his mouth was on my flesh, so I gave up the notion and just concentrated on what he was doing. "I keep it there for emergencies. You never know when you'll need a spare breast, my mother always said. And she was right. I'm extremely happy at this moment that I had the foresight to bring my spare along with me on this trip."

"And it's in such delicious condition," Raphael said just before his teeth closed gently over my nipple. I purred and arched my back so he could feast on more of it.
"Round and firm and fully packed."

"You watch… too much… television," I panted as he kissed a hot trail across my belly. I had an idea where he was headed, and although I enjoyed the little nips and kisses he was delivering along the way, I figured I'd better stop him before he went too far.
"Um, Raphael?
You're not going to… you don't plan to… urn…
you know
, tongue tango down there, do you?"

He bit my hip, kissing the sting away as he parted my hesitant legs and settled between them. "I certainly am. I take it you don't have any objections?"

His dark head bent down to kiss a hot line up my thigh.

"Well, actually, I do."

He looked up. "You do?"

"Yes," I nodded. "It's nothing personal, but I don't like it. So if we could just skip the appetizer and get on with the main
course, that
would be fine with me." I reached under the pillow and pulled out the little plastic package. "I brought my own in case you didn't have any."

He frowned at the condom I handed him, then gave it back to me. "What do you mean, you don't like it?"

I made an indefinable shrugging gesture with the condom. "I don't like it, that's what I mean. I've tried it, and I don't like it, and since it can't be all that scenic for you down there, I'm sure you won't mind if we just skip it."

He shook his
head,
his curls brushing my thighs in a way that made them feel as if they'd been licked by flames. "I do mind. I don't understand how you can say you don't like it when you haven't tried it."

I frowned at him. "I have tried it!"

"Not with me!"

"Well, I don't have to, do I? I mean, it's pretty much the same with anyone, isn't it?"

Now
he
was frowning. "No, it isn't. I happen to be pretty good at this, or so I'm told, so if you'll just stop telling me you won't like it and let me do my job, you'll see for yourself."

I took a deep breath. "Look, do you think you could come up here to discuss this? I feel like I'm talking to my gynecologist with you down there face to face with all my feminine parts. I mean, that's not the very most attractive location on my body, and I'd really rather you not sit there and stare at that part of me."

He looked at the parts in question. I grabbed his head and pulled it up. "Don't LOOK at me there! I just told you not to look there, and now you are!"

He cocked one eyebrow at me and gently disengaged my hands from his head. "I've never before met a woman who had an inferiority complex about her genitals."

"I don't have an inferiority complex," I snapped, fast losing my temper with his insistence to stare at my crotch. He was doing it now, he was eyeing me like he expected Bugs Bunny to pop out and start dancing. "I just don't like people setting up camp at my crotch and admiring the view, OK?"

"Joy."

"What?"

"Lie back and close your eyes."

"No."

"Yes."

"I don't trust you. You'll just take advantage of me and look."

"I'll close my eyes too."

"Promise?"

He sighed, his breath gusting warmly on all of those delightful tingly albeit unscenic parts. "Yes, I promise. Now do as I say. I won't do anything you don't like, all right?"

"I'll hold you to that," I warned, lying down again, tense as a nun in a whorehouse.

He didn't answer
me,
he just rubbed his cheeks on the inside of my thighs. Just as it did on my breasts, the abrasion was just rough enough to make my skin tingle.

"Do you like the feel of that?" he asked.

"Yes. Do you have your eyes closed?"

"Yes." He rubbed his cheek against my thigh again before kissing a serpentine path upward. "I like it as well. You taste sweet, and your skin is so soft, it's like satin." He kissed the other side, licking and nibbling a path northward. My legs tensed up the closer he came to home base. "Relax, baby. You'll like this, I promise. You're so hot, I know you must be burning up inside."

I clutched large quantities of the blankets as he eased a finger inside me.

"You
are
hot. You're hot and silky and almost ready for me."

"Are you going to narrate this whole thing?" I asked, peering down over my belly at him. "Must we have the annotated version of oral sex?"

He grinned as he placed a kiss very carefully on the exact center of me. "I thought it might be more reassuring for you if you knew how much I was enjoying it, too."

"Oh. OK. That's fine. I was just checking in case there was going to be a quiz later."

He grinned again, his finger withdrawing, only to return with a buddy.

"Oh, my," I gasped, wondering how long a person could go without breathing. The feeling of his fingers stroking me, stretching me, was something I'd never felt before. It was warm and intimate and, coupled with the little kisses he was now pressing upon a very sensitive spot, thoroughly enjoyable.

"Like that, do you?" His fingers slid slowly out, then thrust back in fast. I arched up and came damn close to bursting into the national anthem.

"Ah, baby, we're only getting started. We have so much more to try. Let's see how you like this…"

His head dipped down until he was pressed against the very heat of me, his tongue replacing his fingers as he stroked and teased and sucked the layers of skin aside until he reached the hot spot. "You taste like heaven," he moaned into me, his fingers sliding in and out with an increasing rhythm. His tongue matched the rhythm, making my whole body throb in time to it as he picked up the pace faster and faster, spinning me higher and higher until I was sure there was nowhere else to go, but there was, and he took me there.

"That's it, baby, let yourself go. I'm right here with you."

And he was, too. He was in my heart and my soul, in my blood, in every breath I took, in every thought and every desire. An orgasm so strong it shook me to my core swept through me, starbursts of ecstasy bursting behind my eyelids as I arched up and called his name to the heavens.

When I came back to earth, five or six hours later by my best estimate, he was propped up between my legs with an extremely smug, extremely male smile on his face. One eyebrow rose. "So, you didn't care for that, I take it?"

"You," I told him as he crawled up my body and stretched out next to me, "are going to suffer for that comment."

"Is that a promise or a threat?" he asked.

"Both," I told him as I pushed him onto his back and leaned over to kiss him.
"Hmmm. Different."

"I like the way you taste," he grinned. "You're hot and sweet and better than an all-day lolly."

I bit the tip of his nose, my hand skimming down the planes of his chest. "I'm sure I will be able to return the compliment."

"I hope you will, but I don't think I can wait for that now." He reached over to the built-in nightstand and tugged open the drawer, pulling out a blue box.

"My treat," I told him, retrieving the condom from where it had slipped under his hip. I gave him a little love bite similar to the one he'd given me, then scooted over and gave in to the desire that had plagued me ever since I saw him naked.

"Tattoooooo," I cooed, licking it. His belly contracted. I smiled one of my special wicked smiles, and lowered my head to suck his sunburst, reveling in the way his breathing quickened as my hair brushed against his erection.

And
boy,
was it erect. It banged me on the ear. I stopped sucking his tattoo and gave it a good, long, critical look. Up close and personal, so to speak.

"Um," I said.

"Here," he nudged my shoulder with the box. "Would you care to do the honors, or would you prefer I do it?"

I continued my visual exploration.
"Um."

"Baby, much as it turns me on to
have
you staring at me like that, I'm fast approaching the bursting point, and it's starting to get painful."

I gave him one last look,
then
started to open my condom. "Sorry. I'll just put this on and you can dive right in." I glanced back over at the part in question. "That's assuming you'll
fit
."

"Joy, use these. Your condom will break if we try to use it."

"Huh?" I read the box that was shoved under my nose. "
L'homme Grande: for the gentleman who requires extra personal space
." I looked back at his penis, trying to measure it with my eyes. "You know, I think maybe we need to talk about this a bit. You seem to be bigger than any other guys I've been with.
A lot bigger.
I know I said bigger is better, but there is a limit to everything. You don't happen to have a ruler handy, do you?"

Raphael groaned and
swore, his eyes tightly shut
. "Joy, please, just put the condom on, or let me do it. I honestly don't think I can take much more of this."