Fixed 01 - Fantasy Fix (22 page)

“You can read only me, unless you have other talents you have been hiding from me,” he teased. “Were you to become like me, your talents would strengthen with time. I can read your mind with true clarity. Some others I can read fairly easily, some barely at all. I do get impressions from most humans, though. I am an infallible judge of character.”

“Too bad I’m not.”

He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I am really not an evil monster,
dushka
. I am just a man who has lived an unusually long life.”

“Yeah, and who lives off drinking other people’s blood. That hardly sounds like Prince Charming.” She scowled at him.

“The Prince is a fairy tale. I am real, and I do drink blood to survive. I am not ashamed of it. I do not kill those I drink from, and I do them no lasting harm. I have lived too many years not to be at peace with what I am, Regina.”

Reggie really wanted to ask how long he
had
lived, but his talk of “lasting harm” had brought a more pressing issue to her mind. “So you’re sure I’m not a vampire now?”

He grinned. “Positive. In order to become a vampire, you would need to drink from me as I have drunk from you. Unless that happens, you remain my very human, very stubborn, very adorable Regina.”

“Flattery is not going to sweep this all under the rug, bucko.” She humphed to cover up the warm fuzzies his words gave her. “You are a vampire. That’s big news in my world. I don’t generally date the living dead.”

“What sort of dead do you usually date?” He ducked her punch and laughed. “I‘m really not all that different than any other man. I have the needs any man has.”

And then some
, she thought, shifting her weight and feeling the evidence of the “some” she’d experienced a few hours ago. “Other men don’t drink blood,” she insisted.

“No, but among human men there are those who are greater monsters than I am. I would never hurt you,
milaya
. You are precious to me.”

That brought the fuzzies back, but she ignored them. One thing at a time. She needed more information. “You
could
hurt me, though. You’re really strong, and fast as hell. I’ve seen you move.”

Dmitri shrugged. “I am a man. I could have hurt you when I was human. But yes, being a vampire does give me additional strength and speed. Still, these are things I would never use to harm you.”

“What else can you do?”

“Am I a trick pony?”

She scowled. “You know what I mean. Like, are you going to turn into a bat or something?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why would I want to transform myself into a disease-carrying, winged rodent?”

“How should I know? I can’t understand why you would want to drink blood.”

His eyes fastened on the curve of bare skin where her neck met her shoulder, and all of a sudden his expression turned from lazy amusement to heated interest. “Ah, but your blood is intoxicating,
milaya
. Shall I describe for you its sweetness? Its warmth? The way it goes to my head like aged whiskey?” He met her gaze, and his eyes filled with wicked intent. “Shall I describe the cries you give when I drink from you?”

She remembered coming apart in his arms with his fangs and his cock all buried inside her, and she blushed. “Don’t change the subject. I’m trying to get some answers. I want to know exactly what I’ve gotten myself into here.”

Dmitri sighed and stretched out on his back beside her. He bore a look of long-suffering as he closed his eyes and began to recite facts. “You have watched too many movies and read some lurid novels,” he said. “Vampires are not the monsters humans like to portray us as. We are different by our very natures, but we are no better and no worse as vampires than we were as men. We are stronger and faster, this is true. Our senses are also keener, and our lifetimes can be prolonged indefinitely. In order to survive, we must drink blood. But we are not harmed by crosses or garlic or holy water or any of that nonsense. We can be killed if you destroy our hearts, for that is the organ that supplies our bodies with the blood we consume. And, of course, if you behead us we will also die. I know of few things that could live without their heads.”

“Few?” Reggie squeaked, so floundering for a grip on reality she could only focus on one statement at a time, and that had been the last one. “You mean there are things that can?”

“I always assumed politicians could do so. They so seldom seem to use them.”

Her jaw dropped open for a second, until she noticed he had cracked one eye open so he could watch her reaction to his teasing. She closed her mouth with a snap and glared at him. Somehow the things he told her actually reassured her. She couldn’t understand why, but her reality had just shifted and found a new foundation. Her belief system had made room for an unexpected addition, and now things looked to be getting back to normal.

If you could call having a flaming affair with a vampire “normal.”

Reggie scooted down a bit and turned on her side to face him, propping her head in one hand, the other maintaining a firm grip on the sheet. “Wooden stake and sunlight?” she asked, her tone now more curious than frightened.

“If you drove a wood stake through the heart of any living thing, I imagine it would not live much longer,” he said, turning to mirror her position. He didn’t touch her, but somehow she felt the intimacy of his company. “And sunlight is painful, but not usually life threatening. We cannot absorb the melanin in the blood we drink,” he explained. “And we do not produce our own. Therefore, we burn easily. But I have yet to burst into flame.”

She humphed. The man had a way with sarcasm. “So, basically you’re telling me you’re a totally average guy with superhuman strength, the ability to read my mind and a very selective diet.”

He grinned at her. “Precisely.”

“And you’ll never grow old or die.”

“It is unlikely to happen for a very long time.”

Her death grip on the covers loosened. “Don’t you get bored? I mean, after a century or two, I’d think you’d have seen it all.”

“I have many varied interests that keep my attention,” he informed her, still grinning. “Human culture is a fascinating thing. It evolves constantly and with dizzying speed. And if you wish to know my age, you have only to ask me.”

Apparently, her fishing hadn’t been as subtle as she’d thought. “Fine. How old are you?”

“I was born in Kiev, as I told your date this evening.” His eyes met hers, and that damned eyebrow quirked again. “In the year 1243.”

Reggie shrieked and leapt from the bed, dragging the sheet with her. Or at least, that’s what she tried to do, but since Dmitri still lay on top of it, the sheet refused to budge. All she was able to take with her was the corner, which barely managed to cover the vitals—a fact Misha noted with apparent approval.

“You’re seven-hundred and sixty years old?!?!?”

Misha clearly decided to ignore the fact that she sounded like a fishwife. He merely raised that eyebrow and reached down to give a light tug at the sheet. “Seven hundred and fifty-nine,” he corrected calmly. “The anniversary of my birth is not until October.”

“Oh, well, pardon me. That makes everything perfectly all right. Those few months are incredibly important to me. I’d hate it if I broke my rule of not dating older men by that wide a margin.”

“Sarcasm does not become you,
milka
. Besides, what does my age matter? Do I look seven-hundred-fifty-nine?”

“Of course not. But that…that’s not just old—not just dead—it’s compost!”

He tugged harder at the sheet, beginning to look impatient. “And I am very much alive and very much desirous of touching you again. Come back to bed.”

“I’m not ready to,” she scowled, digging her heels into the soft oriental carpet under her feet. “I’ve still got questions.”

“You can ask them later. Right now, I have more important things to do.”

He gave one hard tug on the sheet, so fast Reggie had no time to let go. She went tumbling forward and landed right in his arms. He had her on the bed and underneath him again so fast she felt dizzy.

“Misha, cut it out!” He tossed the sheet away, pinned her arms over her head with one hand, and set about torturing her with teasing licks and nibbles that trailed down her throat to her breasts. “I’m serious. I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do with you.”

“I have several suggestions for you.”

“I’ll just bet you do, but that was not what I meant.” She tried to inject a tone of firmness and resolution into her words, but that wasn’t so easy when the man had licked her nipple and was blowing on the moist tip to watch the areole crinkle. She bit back a moan. “I just found out my lover is a vampire. I’ve got some decisions to make.”

Dmitri moved back up and draped himself over her, his bare chest pressing her into the mattress, his legs between hers, the rough fabric of his jeans teasing her naked skin. She could feel the length of his hard-on pressing against her, but it was the tender heat in his eyes that captivated her.

“
Dushka
,” he murmured, using his free hand to cup her face and rubbing his thumb over her soft mouth. “I am afraid your decisions have already been made. I will not allow you to leave me. You are mine, and I intend to keep you.”

“Keep me?” She blinked. “You can’t just decide to keep me!”

“And who shall stop me?”

“I will!” She squirmed beneath him, trying to slide out of his embrace. Not that it did her much good. The man weighed a ton, and all of it was muscle. He controlled her easily. “I’ve
never
let a man tell me what I can and can’t do, and I’m not about to start now, Mr. Dictator. I’ve got a mind and a will of my own, and I am not your possession!”

“But I have possessed you,
milaya
.”

“Big frickin’ whoop,” she growled, still wriggling. “That doesn’t give you any rights to me. I might like to let you have your way in bed, Dmitri, but outside of it is a whole ’nother story. I’m sexually submissive. I’m not a doormat.”

Dmitri sighed. “I never thought of you as a doormat. And I have never treated you as one. I love your fire and your stubborn streak. I would not want to rob you of those.”

His words convinced her to at least stop struggling, not that it seemed to be making any sort of impression on him anyway. “Dmitri, if you love those things about me, then how can you ask me to let you make these sorts of decisions for me?”

“Regina, how can you expect me to let you go?”

His softly spoken words and expression of weary longing almost made her melt. She nearly gave up the ghost right there, wrapped her thighs around him and called him, “sir, yes, sir.” But her mind saved her, beating her heart back into its ribcage and holding it at bay until they cleared the rest of this mess up once and for all.

“Dmitri, you barely know me. We’ve spent a total of about twelve hours together over the course of one week. Why am I supposed to think you want me? For this?” She arched her hips against him and ignored the flash of pleasure it caused. “Somehow I don’t think you have much trouble getting laid.”

His eyes flashed.

“Do you think this is merely ‘getting laid’ to me?” he demanded, his frustration clear. “Do you think I feel this way with other women? That you would feel this way with other men? You are my mate. The woman I have never found in all my centuries of living. The one I thought I would never find. And I
will not
let you go.”

That was almost good enough, Reggie acknowledged to herself over the flood of pleasure and wonder the statement caused; but almost didn’t count. She wanted the whole shebang. So she prodded the wounded lion.

“Why not, Dmitri?” Self-preservation be damned. This was her future they were tap dancing around. If she had to make him furious to get what she wanted, so be it. “Why not let me go? Why not write this off as a couple of nights of good sex and move on to your next conquest? Why not let me move on? Why not let me give Marc a call and let us have a real date this time? The kind that doesn’t end at the restaurant but in a bed or on the floor or in the back seat of his car. Why not?”

“Because I love you!
” he roared. “And no man will
ever
touch you but me!”

A smile curved her mouth until she probably looked like an idiot. She didn’t care. “Well, okay, then.”

“You are going to be my wife, and I refuse to hear—“ He jerked to a stop mid-tirade and blinked down at her. “What did you say?”

“I said okay, you big goob.” She grinned. “I love you, too. I don’t want anyone else to touch me. And incidentally, if that was a proposal—and if it was, it was a god-awful excuse for one—then the answer is yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” she repeated and tugged impatiently at his grip, which still pinned her hands over her head to the mattress. “I’ll marry you, provided you ask me again properly. And since I plan to celebrate our five-hundredth anniversary at the very least, that means you’ll have to make me a vampire, too. Let’s get started. I’m not really looking forward to the blood-drinking part, so do you think we could get that over with first?”

The man looked positively shell-shocked. “You want to marry me and become a vampire.”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” She finally tugged her hands free—or, he let her tug her hands free—and wrapped them around his neck. “Now let’s hurry up before I lose my nerve. Not about the marrying part, about the vampire part. I’m really not good with blood. I faint at the sight of it. I won’t have to look at blood when I drink it, will I? Because that might make things kind of tough for me…”

While she babbled, Dmitri’s expression went from stunned to satisfied. When she finally trailed into silence, it shifted into its natural state—wicked.

“You may keep your eyes closed if you wish,” he purred, pushing her thighs further apart and settling his hips deeper into the cradle of hers. “But if you do, you might miss something.”

Reggie groaned and buried her fingers in his thick, dark hair when he lowered his head and latched onto her puckered nipple. “Oh no,” she moaned. “I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”

Chapter Sixteen

No man should be able to make her this horny this fast, Reggie thought while she melted under Dmitri’s warm mouth and skilled fingers. And no man should be wearing his jeans while he got her this hot.