Brax bit down a smile and let out another sigh.Back to Loony Toon land.“It’s not literally bigger, Pen, it’s just the fever talking. How’s the throat? Still feel swollen?”
“Wants something cold. It feels like it’s scalded. All of me feels scalded. Can I have an ice pack? Oh, wait. I have you.”
“You can’t swallow me.”Well, she could.Images of her warm mouth slipping up and down his cock as she moaned in relief and he moaned in pleasure, culminating in freezing drops that she’d be glad to receive—Shit.He went hard without a second’s thought.
Penny blinked up at him myopically. “Is vampire blood cold?”
“Uh, mine is right now.”I guess her mind went to a different liquid.
“Is vampire cum cold?”
Maybe not so different.“What?” He fell off the bed and scrambled back up, wide-eyed.
“I’ve never been with a vampire! How would I know? Is there some vampire sex manual in the Pine Ridge library?”
They both stared at each other for a second.
“Actually...” Penny began.
“Probably. It’s warm. Enough,” Brax answered hastily, wishing to get the hell off of this subject.
“Would yours be, right now? Because you’re so cold?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never nearly frozen to death since I’ve been dead. Or when I was alive, come to think of it.”
“Poor you.” Penny patted his head and sat herself in his lap, bare thighs to his jeans. She shifted uncomfortably and then growled. “It’s not as good like this.”
“What? Face-to-face is better?”Damn it, that turned to sex in my head. It was perfectly innocent when I started, I swear!
Penny shook her head and yanked her hair off her neck. “With your pants on. Your clothes aren’t as cold as your skin. Pants off, please?”
“Sweetheart, again with the fever and you not havin’ a damn bit of sense.”
“I do so too have sense!” Penny petulantly told him. “I am sick. Possibly supernaturally sick. I need a supernatural cure. I need an ice bath, and maybe someone who can stop me from going outside. Was I outside? My mother texted me to stay inside. I was outside, that’s how I met you. Anyway...” Her hands were suddenly squarely on his shoulders. “You are helping me. You do that. You do that more and more. I like that. I don’t know if I like all of you, but I like parts of you. Right now, I like your skin. And you have to play fair. I’m in my underwear, so you get in yours.”
There was an acre of babble that needed sorting, and what did he choose to say? “I don’t wear ‘em, Penny.”
“What? Not at all? Like, never?”
“Not at all. Ever. Although, believe me, earlier today I wished I had the warmest woolies in the universe. Would have worn eighteen pairs of thermals if I’d had ‘em. Not that it would help. The wind out there, that ain’t normal wind. It cuts through flesh like a silver blade.”
“Pretty words, poet words,” Penny leaned back, tugging on his pants again.
“Hey! We just established that—”
“I’ll take mine off, too!” Penny said peevishly. She muttered to herself, but the words were coming out of her mouth,“Stubborn vampire can’t understand simple things. Skin equals better for both. Ergo, more skin.”
“Don’t!” Brax gripped her hands hard as she moved to follow through on her idea. The position they arrived in was compromising. Speaking of warm and woolly, her tight little panties left nothing to the imagination. Must be made of spider silk. He could see a dark triangle of curls, a thin line between lips, even the obscured color of her pink flesh as she rocked back, thighs still spread over top of his.
“Is it because I don’t love you?” Penny asked. “You want me to love you so that we can be like this? Because I respect that. I think too many people have naked stuff without love.”
“Hell, naked stuff, is it?”
“You know what I mean!” she whimpered, shaking him off and nearly falling backward. He grabbed her again, and she gave up the struggle, his cold fingers soothing her hands, which she’d said throbbed with pain as well as fever.
“Oh, no. Look, contrary to my vampire playbook, I’m actually keen to help you. I’d do anything to help you. I’m just not sure us rubbin’ our naked bodies together would help you in the long run. I’m pretty sure that later you’d hate my guts, more than ever, an’ worse, hate yourself.”But really, this is more about avoiding a lethal round of “Stake the Vampire.”
She pushed off, fell, and rolled to her hands and knees, whimpering as her fingers bore the brunt of her weight. She crawled away, off to the vanity where Brax had left the magazine and pen. She started scribbling while talking aloud. “I do solemnly swear that I’m sane enough to understand that people don’t usually get naked together, but I think I’m going to boil over inside, and you feel good, and I promise not to hate you unless you—” she stopped and looked nervously at him.
