We Are Made of Stardust - Peaches Monroe #1 (22 page)

“I don’t know. Definitely keep them on until you officially meet my roommate.” I glanced up the stairs for signs of life. “Unfortunately, she’s impersonating a person in a coma.”

My face twitched as I realized I’d made a coma joke. Once you actually know someone who’s been in a coma (my delivery guy, Carter), you either make twice as many inappropriate coma jokes, or just become aware of the ones you do. And the
brain damage
jokes are nearly as prevalent. I guess that, like
cankles
, some things just aren’t as funny when they’re personal.

“Does she sleep in the nude?” Dalton slurped around his vampire teeth.

“Nope.”

He was already moving past me, up the stairs. I followed him up, my hand clapped over my mouth to keep myself quiet.

He opened the door to her room and crept in, the old wood floors squeaking under his feet.

From within her covers, Shayla muttered something about coffee.

Dalton climbed right up onto the bed, his knees and hands on either side of Shayla’s form. I frowned, not pleased to see
my
vampire boy being so comfortable with another girl. But that was so… just… like Dalton, wasn’t it? For him to instantly feel comfortable and at home wherever he was, to not have any fears about being close to another person. It had to be an actor thing, as I’d never known anyone who acted like that.

He opened his mouth, raised his eyebrows, and pulled his lips back in a crazed expression that showed off the pointy teeth.

He nodded to me, so I said, “Shayla. Wake up. I’ve made a huge mistake.”

She grumbled and wiggled around.

I continued, “I’ve let a vampire into the house.”

The blankets peeled down, and she pushed her long, dark hair out of her eyes.

Dalton—no, Drake Cheshire—stared down at her silently, his fanged mouth wide open.

Time seemed to stop momentarily as she stared up into his eyes. The silence was broken by a high-pitched squeal and then hysterical giggling.

“That’s it?” he sputtered around the teeth. “No begging for mercy?”

She pushed his face away with one limp hand. “Bad kitty.”

He jumped up from the bed and started popping the prosthetic teeth off. Shrugging, he said to me, “Not the impression I wanted to make, but an impression all the same.”

“At least you scared me.”

“I sure did. Let’s see your room now. I bet it’s a girlie room with a pink canopy bed.”

His guess was so eerily similar to what Adrian had said the night before, I had to wonder if the two of them had been comparing notes.

“Right this way, sir.” I led him out of Shayla’s room and across the hallway to mine.

“I see you like books. And country furniture.” He picked up a handful of paperbacks from my yellow-and-blue antiqued dresser. That particular piece of furniture was actually a contemporary piece, from a cheap chain store. My mother had done her magic on it, painstakingly sanding the surface, applying one paint color, then the other, and finally battering the poor thing with a variety of implements.

He set down the books and wandered over to my walk-in closet. “Not bad storage you have here,” he said.

“Yeah, right. Back in LA, you probably have closets bigger than my whole room.”

“That, I do. Big rooms and huge closets. I have a wine cellar with sort of an art gallery in it.”

“Art gallery?”

“More of a shrine. To the balls-out crazy former homeowner.”

“Sounds cool.”

He turned away from my closet and crawled up onto my bed without being invited. “Mm, nice bed.”

I remembered what Adrian had said the night before about his huge house making him feel bad.

“Do you think a person gets more lonely in a big house?” I asked.

He kicked off his shoes and got comfortable on my bed, lying on his back with his head on my favorite pillow.

“Why do you ask? Are you offering to stow away in my trailer and come home with me?”

“Not at all. I was just curious. I’ve never lived without family or roommates, and usually in places that are cheap, which always means small.”

He patted the bed next to him. “Come here and let’s share the story of our first apartments away from home.”

I climbed up and arranged myself next to Dalton, my cheek resting on his outstretched arm.

“You first,” he said. “Did you go away to college?”

“I did. I rented a place sight-unseen, with Shayla.”

“Brave.”

“You have no idea. It wasn’t completely sight-unseen, because we talked to the landlord by email and got some photos, but I think they must have been standing on ladders outside the rooms to take the pictures, to trick you into thinking the rooms were big.”

I was lying on my side, fiddling with the fabric of my dress over the curve of my hip, and Dalton rolled in to face me, one hand landing confidently atop mine, on my hip.

“Did you have vermin?” he asked, which sounded surprisingly sexy coming from his handsome mouth.

I whispered, “Funny you should ask. Our third roommate was rather cockroach-like. We hardly ever saw her, and she wouldn’t venture into a room with the lights on.”

He squeezed my hand and smiled at me, that cute chin-dimple of his begging to be bitten. It seemed a little odd to be
starting
a date with pillow talk, but nothing about our relationship so far had been conventional.

“What about your first place?” I asked.

“Bath tub in the kitchen.”

“New York?”

“Where else?” He chuckled as his hand wandered down my hip, along my leg past the hem of my dress, and then back up again under my dress, along the top side of my bare leg. I shivered from his touch, even though the room was warm and full of morning sunshine.

“Something lived in the walls,” he said. “I don’t know what, but it skittered around at night.”

Something about his expression gave me another chill.

I whispered, “Were you scared?”

“Scared of being evicted, and of catching something in the damp air and not being able to afford a doctor.”

“Did you have roommates? Other actors?”

“A few.” His expression grew complicated, and he didn’t offer more.

“Was your next apartment better?”

He brightened. “Much better. I booked some jobs, things started happening, and within a few years I was out in LA, shopping for mansions like they were cars, and shopping for cars like they were tennis shoes.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“You like shopping?”

“I like to sign up for accounts and shop online, and then I mostly make lists and look at all the things I could buy. I click them into a shopping basket and imagine them showing up at my door, but then I don’t ever finish the purchase. Well, not unless I’ve been drinking wine, and then I buy the dumbest things, like a cuckoo clock.”

His hand was heavy on my leg, and he slid it down to my knees, then brought it back up, between my thighs. My breath caught in my throat, and he stopped his hand just inches from my panties. Something about the way he gazed into my eyes made my breasts heavy, aching to be touched.

“Um.” I was having a difficult time staying on topic with our pillow talk.

“Is that dress what you’re wearing out today?” he asked.

“Why? Is there something wrong with it? Don’t tell me you want to go hiking. I don’t mind a walk in the woods, but I don’t own proper hiking boots, or the appropriate hiking body.”

“I can see why that dress is your favorite,” he murmured, his voice low and seductive. “The blue matches your beautiful eyes.”

I broke his gaze long enough to peer over his shoulder at my door. It was nearly closed, but not clicked shut. Shayla was probably going to sleep for a few more hours, but the things I wanted to do with Dalton were closed-door things.

He continued, “If you want to wear that dress today, you should take it off right now.”

“Off?”

“Yes. It’s probably getting all wrinkled right now with you laying on it.”

He inched his hand up to a more sensitive location. Tingling sensations radiated through my lower body, focusing mainly in the area I sometimes jokingly refer to as Brazil.*

*A leg wax is for removing hair from your leg; therefore, a Brazilian is for removing the hair around Brazil.**

**With apologies to my friends from Brazil, who are probably dismayed by the whole thing. On behalf of every waxing salon who understandably doesn’t want to write the words “pudenda waxing” on their sandwich boards, I apologize.

“What about your shirt?” I whispered. “You’re getting all disheveled right now.”

“You think?”

“Your shirt would look great tossed over a stack of books.”

“I like the way you think.”

“So, about that shirt,” I said.

“Your desire is my pleasure,” Dalton Deangelo replied.

As he spoke, he gently pinched the rolling hills of Brazil and probed for a hot spring.

I moaned, helpless with pleasure and urgency, limp from his touch and his warm breath on my face.

He leaned closer and caught my lips in his, stealing my breath and making me quiver for him. His tongue danced with mine, and in an instant we were rolling together, entwined and struggling to free ourselves from our clothes.

I got his shirt off and immediately got to work kissing his tanned, muscle-bound chest. Hey lay back, and as I licked around his nipple and gave him a sidelong look, he gestured up with his chin in a go-for-it move.

“Suck my nipples like they’re Skittles,” he said.

“You remembered.”

I had difficulty forming suction between his flesh and my mouth, because I couldn’t stop laughing over the Skittles comment.

Finally I latched on like a clever baby, and he groaned with pleasure as his manly nip hardened in my mouth. I was on my knees at the side of his torso, folded down with my butt on my heels. I walked my free hand down his bare torso and on to his belt. My fingers traipsed down over the buckle and across the denim plains, stopping over a swelling feature. I gave his hardening mountain a squeeze.

With his eyes closed, he whispered, “You do everything just right, don’t you?”

I let go of his nipple and licked the cut line between his pectoral muscles. Salty. I licked my lips, then went in for more, licking all the way up his neck and over his Adam’s apple.

“Perfect,” he whispered.

Carefully, I looked down at my body and raised one leg so I could straddle him. With my knee down on the other side, his body felt solid and good between my legs. I leaned in again and kissed the side of his neck, where it was smooth shaven but the stubble could be felt just under the surface using my tongue. His pulse ebbed under my lips, and I found myself sucking hungrily on his flesh.

He groaned. “You’re going to give me a hicky.”

“No, don’t be silly.” I flicked my tongue against his pulse point and went in for another bite and suck. His neck was yummy.

As I enjoyed his neck, he raised his hips beneath me, grinding against my growing-damp panties.

I moved from his neck to his lips, kissing him eagerly, as he matched my every greedy move. Our bodies moved, and we were grinding together like teenagers, him rock-hard and still in his jeans and me in my underwear and dress.

He grabbed hold of my dress and pulled it up over my head, then tossed it aside without pause or ceremony.

In my underwear only now, I pressed my palms into his chest and arched my body, throwing my head back and exposing my neck.

He curled up, his abdominal muscles rippling, and kissed my neck as he pulled me back down with him. I felt his tongue, his lips, and even the bright pain of sharp teeth, the pleasure like the setting sun flashing through trees while you’re driving fast on the highway.

With one hand, I blindly reached for the drawer next to the bed and grabbed one of the packets.

He clutched my hips and pulled me up long enough to unfasten his belt and wriggle his jeans and boxers down.

I eased back down, his bare cock hot against my inner thigh, now slick with perspiration. We slipped back and forth, rocking with him nestled in my hipbone, and my nub grinding down against his pubic bone.

“C’mere,” he said, calling me to his lips with a tilt of the chin.

I cinched up and kissed him, leaning forward enough for his fingers to get to me, pressing at first and then pulling the thin cotton thong I was wearing to the side. His fingers stroked my wetness, making me quiver again. He thrust his tongue inside my mouth, and I could barely think, barely breathe, barely do anything but exist with his beautiful body under mine.

Something round nudged against my pussy, and I ground down eagerly. He felt so good sliding inside me, that first smooth stroke.

It only lasted an instant, though, because my eyes flew open. Eyes open! Eyes open, Petra!

Panting, I looked down between my legs, relieved to see that the condom was already in place. With a contented sigh, I slipped back down again, engulfing him hungrily.

“Yes,” he said, raising his hips as I lowered mine, filling me with his length, his width, his desire.

With my palms on his chest, I adjusted my body position, distributing my weight on my knees so I could move freely.

“Yes,” he repeated, his eyes closed.

I was on top.

My body took over, moving with its own mind. My gaze roved over the beautiful body beneath me, and mine, catching sight of the tops of my breasts, milky white in the morning light next to Dalton’s tanned body. If I didn’t have my pretty bra on, holding the girls at attention, there was no way I would have moved as freely as this.

I didn’t have time to think about that, though. Or anything. My orgasm was coming, and it was my master. I rocked my hips obediently, my insides gripping tightly.

“Call me Braveheart,” Dalton urged.

“You mean Lionheart. So help me, do not make me think about Mel Gibson when I’m in this state,” I breathed.

“I am your pony. I am Lionheart. Ride me hard.”

I whispered, “Lionheart.”

A feeling zapped through me, like I was doing something very naughty.

“Lionheart,” I growled, letting myself land a little harder.