I told myself not to respond, but my body wasn’t listening. My hands, no longer restrained, were pulling him closer, my fingers twisting in the decadent softness of his sweater, and I was kissing him savagely. I was furious with myself, knowing in a moment he’d push me away, but even knowing, I couldn’t seem to stop. My left leg hooked itself over him, pulling him hard against my body, and we began moving against each other, craving friction, craving intimacy.
Then he shifted, just right, and a jolt of bone-dissolving pleasure wracked my body. My breath squeezed out of my throat in a broken, shaky groan as his lips found my ear. The tip of his tongue began to trace the whorls delicately, a barely-there sensation in stark contrast to the feel of him, huge and persistent, pressed hard against me.
“Dorina.” He delicately licked along the soft curve, slowly, down to the lobe, which he caught between his teeth sharply enough to make me gasp. Then his tongue plunged inside, tracing the inner channel and leaving a slight wetness when he withdrew. His breath over the moist center made me shiver helplessly. “Neither have I.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant; then I was assailed by a vision of strangling him until he turned more purple than my hair. The maddening, adjective-inspiring, devious son of a bitch! I managed to get a foot into his stomach and pushed hard. Because of the awkward angle, he didn’t end up sailing down the aisle again, but it did send him forcefully back into his chair.
When he made no immediate attempt to get up, I righted myself and moved away a few steps on the pretense of picking up my joint from the table. I needed it to steady my nerves, and I preferred having something to look at besides him. I realized I was shaking, and it pissed me off. One kiss and my brain almost trickled out my ears! It had simply been a long time. A very long time, I realized, since I’d known the taste of another’s breath in my mouth, the feel of a nipple hardening under my tongue, the way that muscle at the top of the thigh jumps when you bite it….
I sat down and took a long drag. For once, Claire’s skillful concoction didn’t seem to be working. “That was fun,” I drawled offhandedly, amazed that my voice sounded so normal. “Of course, the last vamp who kissed me ended up with a stake through his rib cage.”
I swear, I didn’t even see him move. Before I could blink, he was bent over me, hands braced on my shoulders, forcing me back against the seat. I caught his wrists, my grip as hard as I could make it, and we paused, staring at each other.
I don’t know what I looked like, but Louis-Cesare’s pupils were dilated, wide and dark, and his lips were parted. I felt my body react to the heat in that stare, and a shiver spilled through me. It was probably just my usual perverseness kicking in—Daddy’s pet vampire was the last person I should even think about getting involved with, so of course my libido had latched on to him.
“Do not provoke me, Dorina.” The voice was harsh, but not entirely steady. So, he wasn’t as unmoved as he’d like to appear. It wasn’t much of a victory, but at the moment, I’d take what I could get.
“Don’t provoke you?” I stared at his lips. I couldn’t help it; we were close enough to kiss. Do it, my pulse was beating. Do it, do it, do it. “Why, are you really that easy?”
Louis-Cesare flinched as if I’d slapped him. His expression changed, and for a split second he actually looked stricken. No, I thought. No, no, no. I felt like I’d twisted a knife in my own gut, when I should have felt triumphant. What the hell?
Louis-Cesare abruptly pulled away. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at me while I tried to get my breathing under control. When he finally spoke, it was nothing I’d expected to hear. “Why did you say that Lord Dracula will come to us?”
I searched around the carpet by my feet and found my joint. I took another much-needed drag before answering. My pulse was pounding hard enough that I could barely hear, but Louis-Cesare already had himself back under control. His sweater had recovered from our little tussle without anything so déclassé as a wrinkle; other than for slightly mussed hair, he looked like nothing had happened.
Damn vampire.
God, he could kiss, though.
“Because three people put him away last time, but only two are family,” I managed to say evenly.
“Then, logically, he should go after—”