Hotter Than Hell (54 page)

“Shhh,” he ordered gently. “I know. I’ve also known all along that if I touched you just right you’d come apart, and you did. Before tonight, when was the last time you came, Claire Murphy?”

She swallowed hard before answering half-heartedly, “Does it count if I was alone at the time?”

“No. That most definitely doesn’t count.”

“Hey, wait,” she said indignantly. “
You’ve
been stalking
me!
”

“Just a little.”

Claire was frozen in place as Simon lowered his head to her neck. His lips pressed there at the place where neck became shoulder, and a rush of sensation shot through her. She shouldn’t be so easy, what had happened in his apartment aside. Her insides clenched and her knees went weak, and all he had done was lay his mouth on her throat. The kiss was gentle, and yet it made her feel as if she were melting.

“I know what you want, Claire Murphy,” he whispered against her flesh, “and it isn’t spaghetti or a fictional earring.” His hand slipped beneath her shirt and raked against her back until he found her bra clasp and very easily unhooked it. “I want the same thing you do. I have since I first saw you in the hallway, more than a month ago. Does that surprise you? It surprises me. I don’t normally want things I shouldn’t have. I learned better long ago.”

Claire wanted to believe that what had driven her to suspect her neighbor of horrible crimes and unnatural abilities was nothing more complicated than her overactive imagination combined with the need to be touched and an undeniable attraction, which was apparently reciprocated. Her reasons for suspecting Simon of being an unnatural being were loneliness, boredom, and the craving for what he was offering her at this very moment, as he removed her tangled blouse and bra and tossed them to the floor.

He lowered her to the sofa. This time there would be more than a heated sexual moment that came and went too quickly. This time they would be naked and he would be inside her, and…oh, my. His mouth was warm on her breasts, and vampires were not warm. They were dead and cold.
Unless they’d just fed and he’d picked up something besides flowers while he was out.
Simon was not at all cold. In fact, his skin was hot, and she was almost certain she could hear the beat of his heart against her belly, where his chest rested as he sucked her nipple deep into his mouth. She wanted him at her neck again, but certainly didn’t complain. He would return there soon enough, she imagined.

He didn’t move back to her neck, not right away. Instead he unfastened her skirt and began to shimmy it down.

“Not so fast,” she whispered. “Not this time.”

“Trust me, this won’t be fast.”

She found comfort in those words, comfort from this man she had suspected of being a vampire moments earlier. What silly thoughts, thoughts she easily dismissed as he kissed his way down her body, which was naked but for the gold cross she’d taken to wearing. He didn’t seem to mind that tiny piece of gold, which was another point in his favor.

It was not the only point in his favor. Simon Darrow had a fine, sensuous mouth that was determined to explore every inch of her body. Where she was ticklish, where she was sensitive, where she had never been kissed before, he tasted her. He even lifted her leg and kissed her behind the knees, introducing her to an unexpected burst of joy. She felt that surge of joy everywhere, and yes, if he’d touched her where she was wet for him she would’ve come. She would’ve screamed. Again.

It occurred to her, as Simon trailed that lovely mouth very slowly up her inner thigh, that he was still completely dressed. That was so wrong.

“Take off your clothes,” she whispered, her voice raspy and demanding.

He laughed lightly, and his breath was warm against her skin. “Not yet.” He spread her thighs and touched her intimately with his tongue. He flicked his tongue, he teased her with light strokes and flickers, and then he moved in and rasped against her harder, fiercer. Claire came so hard she screamed and her back arched up off the couch. She grabbed Simon’s head and pulled him closer, and he did not fight her but pressed harder and deeper, slipping his tongue inside her as she shook.

And he hadn’t bitten her once.

“You said it would not be fast,” she said breathlessly, delirious and sad, shaking and satisfied, needy and happy.

“It’s not over, Claire,” he promised as he crept up and over her body and finally, once again, placed his mouth at her throat and sucked against that sensitive skin. “Women are wondrous creatures who can come again and again and again in a very short period of time.”

“I’ve heard that’s true,” she said as she turned her head more to the side to allow him the greatest possible access.

He nipped at her skin, but just a little. Naked, entirely vulnerable and recently satisfied, her mind began to work somewhat properly. What if she only imagined that Simon was warm and that his heart beat? That could be part of the spell he had cast on her. Why else would she be so, well, easy? Not that she was complaining. Far from it. In all the books she read vampires were sensuous creatures who wallowed in intense sexual encounters. She certainly felt as if she were wallowing, at the moment.

She no longer thought Simon was a vampire. Not conclusively. There was one other test she could try tonight, just to be certain. The sun had already set so she couldn’t study what happened to him in the daylight, but there was a mirror in her bedroom and if she could just see his reflection in it she’d be satisfied.

Claire took Simon’s head in her hands and drew his wonderful mouth away from her neck. “You have to be at least six foot two, and this sofa isn’t more than five feet long.”

“I can manage.”

“I have a perfectly good bed.”

“Beds are boring and ordinary. Everyone has sex in a bed.” His eyebrows lifted slightly. “What about the kitchen counter? The balcony? The elevator.” He grinned quite wickedly.

“I know you prefer odd, but I really am boring and ordinary,” she said as she reached down to fiddle with and then unfasten his belt buckle. He strained the denim with his erection, and she could not wait to have him in her hands, to touch him, to arouse him the way he’d aroused her. She gently forced him up and back, and placed her mouth on his neck. Yes, he was most definitely warm. His heart pounded. He shuddered, and she was glad.

“You’re neither boring nor ordinary,” he said. “You just haven’t discovered that for yourself yet. I see it, even if you don’t.”

Claire knew the truth about herself. She was nothing if not pragmatic. She was average looking, and her hair was an ordinary dark blond that rarely did what she wanted it to do. She was usually between ten and fifteen pounds overweight, and there were a variety of clothes in three different sizes in her closet. Fat clothes, ordinary clothes, and a handful of very nice
I have a dream
clothes.

She was a failure where men were concerned. More rightly, they had always failed her, which was why she now satisfied herself with reading on weekends instead of dating or painting her toenails or shaving her legs for some man who in the end…

But now was not the time for that old tirade. A very handsome man who was hard for her had just promised her again, and again and again. And maybe another again. She’d lost count. If she could just prove to herself decisively that he wasn’t a vampire, he might be the perfect man. At least for a while. No man was perfect forever.

“But you want the bed anyway, don’t you,” Simon whispered.

“Yes.”

“Fine.” Unsnapped and partially unzipped, still more dressed than not, Simon left the couch. He offered her his hand and she took it. He pulled her up and headed for the bedroom. It wasn’t as if he had to search. The apartment was laid out just like his own, in a mirror image.

Speaking of mirrors…

She led Simon toward the bed, and when they were in the center of the small room she stopped and turned to face the mirror above her dresser. There he was, gorgeous and black-clad and somehow animalistic. He definitely had a wild magnetism. She was so happy to see him there, reflected in all his human glory, that she smiled…until she realized that she was there too, in all her fifteen-pounds-overweight glory.

“Yikes.” She turned away and headed very quickly for the bed and the safety of a coverlet where she could hide. She jumped into the bed and pulled the lilac comforter across the plumpest parts of her exposed body.

Simon followed her at a slower pace, laughing. Not at her, at least she didn’t think so. When he peeled back the comforter that she’d grabbed to protect herself from his gaze, his smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t hide. You’re gorgeous.”

Claire knew she was anything but, but she didn’t argue. At this moment, so turned on he was probably not seeing straight, Simon believed it to be true. That was enough for her. At this moment she didn’t even care if he was a vampire or not. He’d brought her flowers and thought she was gorgeous and made her come so hard her head was still spinning. Nothing else mattered.

He quickly shed his clothes, and she was not disappointed by the body he revealed. Lean and perfectly sculpted, he had a runner’s body. And an impressive erection she could not look away from. If he was shy at all, she’d never seen any evidence of that shyness. If he had a single second thought or an ounce of hesitation, he hid it well.

Even if it was their first time together, there would be no awkwardness, no uncomfortable moments where she wondered what was expected of her or they bumped foreheads. No, this was an extraordinary night, and Claire felt as if she were caught in a wonderful dream, as Simon joined her on the bed.

The sensation of his bare body against hers was breathtaking, and when he kissed her on the mouth she held his head in her hands and gave that kiss all she had, because she could give him no less. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around him, pulling him close, pulling him toward what she craved.

“Oh!” She twitched and pulled away slightly. “I’m such an idiot! Do you have protection? A condom?”
Anything?

“I can’t have children, and I carry no disease.” The words were pragmatic, simply spoken.

“Why should I take your word on that?” she asked, certain that many a woman had been fooled by similar promises.

“I will never lie to you, Claire.”

She shivered to the bone. Those were important words, and he spoke them as if they were truth. Of course, she wasn’t sure any man was capable of
never
lying. Still, the expression in his eyes was one of honesty as well as passion. Maybe she was a fool, but she believed him.

Yesterday she’d been stalking him down the hallway, convinced he was a vampire. Tonight he was in her bed, and she didn’t care
what
he was.

He understood that she liked his attentions at her neck, and while he didn’t neglect the rest of her body he spent many wonderful minutes there. Claire touched the hard curves and planes of his body, and discovered he was particularly sensitive just below the belly button, especially if she touched him there with the tip of her tongue. As she had suspected, there was no awkwardness, no hesitation.

Her curtains were open, so moonlight lit Simon’s face as he spread her thighs and guided himself into her. Making love with him was like dancing with a lifelong partner, like waltzing without conscious thought—and maybe an inch or two above the dance floor. She didn’t think at all with him inside her, not about vampires, not about being odd or boring, not about mirrors or crosses or garlic. There was just his body and hers and the way they came together.

It did cross her mind once, briefly, that the water on the stove was probably boiling by now, but it was a thought that did not last long.

Simon looked at her face, he held her eyes with his as he rocked above and inside her, pushing deeper and deeper with each thrust. The way he looked at her…he saw her, in a way no one else ever had. He knew her. He wanted her.

He held himself deep, and for a half second it seemed that his dark eyes were touched with streaks of red. Flashes of fire lit the depths. Claire came again, and with Simon inside her it was more powerful than before, more important. Her body convulsed around his, and he came, too. They were so incredibly connected, so very much together, that she wondered why she’d ever been satisfied with anything less.

And to top it all off, like the cherry on top of a hot fudge sundae, he drifted down and kissed her neck.

Claire’s job was undeniably tedious, and on Wednesday her mind was elsewhere as she mindlessly entered data into her computer. She yawned a time or two, and fielded the questions from her coworkers who were sequestered in nearby cubicles. Do you feel OK? Are you coming down with something? You look like you didn’t get enough sleep last night, what happened? You’re a little pale, someone said.

She finally decided to tell them that a noisy neighbor had kept her up half the night. That was close enough, though in truth she was much noisier than Simon.

Maybe if she’d felt closer to any one of them she might’ve said more, but while they were friendly coworkers they weren’t exactly friends. Most of her good friends were now married and had kids, so she didn’t see any of them on a regular basis, not like in the old days. Oh, they got together and had lunch now and then, but the talk always turned to potty training and which kid had learned the alphabet at the earliest age and which schools in the area were the most acceptable. There were occasional weekend barbecues or infrequent and horrific blind dates that made conversations about three-year-olds seem scintillating. No, her friends had changed, and so had she. Claire didn’t feel like she could call even them to share what had happened.

Besides, what had happened with Simon last night had felt so very, very personal. More intimate than sex, more important than the laughing and the touching and the orgasms.