Well, none of that anymore. I wanted him to give me all he could. Because I’d been holding back too, and now I didn’t have to anymore.
“Spatula stand,” he said with a slight chuckle that somehow didn’t make the mood any less sexy as he put a black hunk of something with metal prongs sticking out of it back up on top of whatever we’d bumped into.
“Fascinating,” I said, and for the first time, I didn’t really mean it.
Wanting to get back to the moment, I crashed my lips to Rowan’s yet again, my hands going for his belt. Everything was heat, frenetic movement, and desire, all twisted up together before we slammed into the wall. Rowan broke our kiss again and snatched something from the air as it fell from wherever it had been mounted on the partition.
“Handheld UV light,” he said before placing it back on the shelf. “One of my least favorite tools. I’m sure you can understand why.”
“Uh-huh.”
Back to kissing.
I liked to think I’d remember the specialized tools he was showing in the morning, but I doubted the information was being logged in my short-term memory. Every part of my mind was occupied with what I was feeling, smelling, tasting. Rowan was a total eclipse of the rest of reality, and I was totally down for it.
He pinned me on a table and caught my lower lip between his sharp teeth. I moaned into it, but the moan quickly turned into a groan when he, for the third time, pulled away from me to catch something else that fell from the table. Either gravity had a vendetta against me, or Rowan’s house was incredibly cluttered.
“Magnifier lamp,” he grumbled, sounding annoyed.
“Hey, not to be a diva or anything, but is there anywhere in your house where there aren’t delicate things waiting to fling themselves to their doom?”
His gaze darkened, and he cupped my cheek, his thumb deliberately moving toward my mouth. He traced my kiss-swollen lips in a move that was far more erotic than it had any right to be.
“I know just the place.”
As crazy as it sounded, I could have stayed in that moment right there for the entire rest of the night. The inferno cracklingbetween us was perfect in every sense of the word, and I was enjoying how embroiled I was in our passion. It truly was insane that such a sweet, considerate, and lovely man could look at me withthatparticular expression in his eyes. The one that made it believable to think vampires were partly demonic. Have I ever been desired like that in my entire life?
I didn’t think so, but really, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was being desired like that, so I was going to let myself linger in that for as long as I could.
“Follow me,” he murmured, his voice unabashed sin as his hand slid from my cheek down my neck. His grip tightened a fraction, then he trailed it down to my hand. Our fingers interlaced, and the next thing I knew, I was being led upstairs and down a hallway.
We went through the door at the very end, and I knew there wouldn’t be any errant tools to tumble and break the mood. The room was pristine, with a long, built-in closet all around one side, a bed on the right half of the room, while the other had a gorgeous skylight that revealed dozens upon dozens of stars in the endless depths of the night sky.
Below it was a recliner that looked comfortable, an ottoman, and two overloaded bookshelves. If I was nocturnal, that would be the perfect reading spot.
“Not to be personal, but why do you have a bed? Don’t you, like…”
“Sleep in a coffin? I do, when I need to sleep deeply, and when I’m injured it can speed up recovery. I prefer being under the stars whenever I can. Reminds me of home.”
That was sweet, but I didn’t really get a chance to discuss it further, because suddenly I was being picked up and kissed again. Not that I was complaining. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I liked being thrown around and manhandled. Not byanyone, mind you. But by those I trusted and gave permission? It was definitely hot.
“I want you,” I whispered as his lips claimed mine once more. I was already addicted to making out with him, which was a slightly silly thing to say in my mid-thirties, but whatever. I was drunk on the passion. On everything I was feeling.
“As I want you,” he practically hissed as I finally fully got that shirt off him and raked my nails down his back. His flesh was strange beneath my fingers but not unwelcome. It gave as one would expect, but there was a slight resistance to it, a firmness that spoke of something a little to the left of the natural order. But instead of being a turn-off, it enticed me that much more—as did everything about the gentleman in front of me.
Well, gentle outside of the bedroom, because as he threw me down onto the bed, it became clear to me that he didn’t intend to treat me like glass.
And I was fucking living for it.
“Wanna taste you,” he said, kneeling on the floor where my ankles were only just hanging off the bed. “Needto.”
Holy shit,that had no right to make my entire body light up like it did, but every cell jolted with a shot of excitement. Molten magma pooled in my belly while my heart went a mile a minute. Yet somehow, it wasn’t painful. It just made me…
Greedy.
But when nothing happened for a moment, confusion lanced through me. It wasn’t until I looked down the curves of my body to see those amethyst eyes of his reflecting the quicksilver shine of the moon that I realized he was waiting for permission.
Of course, the vampire needs permission before he can come inside.
