Black Magic Rose (15 page)

She’d been sized up many times over, but no one ever made her feel like he did, like she was special and beautiful. Not even human men had done that.
 

She bit the inside of her cheek hard, drawing blood and pulling herself back to reality. She would not fall prey to some dead guy with vampire magic. She wouldn’t no matter how damn handsome he was.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Attack me.” She widened her stance in anticipation of the assault. She’d show him about disengaging.
 

When he didn’t move, she stood up straight, jammed one hand onto her hip, and used the other to wave him over. “Some time tonight.”
 

He remained at the window.
 

Sofia tapped her foot impatiently.
 

He watched her. He was doing it again. That annoying thing he did when he simply waited for something to happen. He did it all the time. Stood there, melting into the landscape like the invisible man, waiting, sizing up his surroundings.
 

It was irritating. Sofia was not the stand-around-and-wait type. She liked to get to it and be done with it so she could move on to the next event.
 

“Fine.” She marched up to him intent on provoking him. However, her newly acquired night vision was not honed enough or maybe it was simply to narrow. She didn’t notice the leftover logs from her fire pit as she barreled at him. Her foot caught on one and down she went.
 

This time she didn’t land on her ass. Instead Dragomir moved. He caught her before she hit the ground, arms around her, cradling her against his chest.
 

“Whoa.” The first thing to register about her situation was not that he’d moved or that she’d tripped, again in front of him, or that her arms and legs had begun their transformation into gelatin. Instead, she noticed how quickly his heart beat beneath her hand, the one that had managed to land flat against his chest, inside his shirt.
 

She pressed her palm to his skin, and the beating sped. Her fingers caressed the hair tickling her skin, and his grip on her backside tightened.
 

She glanced up at him. His gaze was focused on her and once again warm. His chest rose and fell with more rapid breaths than she’d previously noticed. He licked his lips. She bit hers as the desire to kiss him swelled.
 

Would it be so bad to kiss him just once? Then she could say she’d done it, kissed a vampire and that she hadn’t enjoyed it and she wouldn’t recommend it and she could swear them off for good, having just cause to make such a finite decision.
 

His head dipped toward hers. She swallowed. Her legs had given out. She couldn’t decide to avoid this even if her life depended on it. She was staying in his arms unless he dropped her down on the ground, and if he did, she’d stay there, unable to drag herself to the house and wishing he’d kissed her.
 

She tilted her head back and his lips brushed hers.
Soft. Warm
. She parted her lips. His tongue slid between them, and she welcomed him. She removed her hand from his chest, sending it up and around his neck.
 

Her other hand stayed put, holding onto his bulging bicep.
Hard. So big.
Sofia’s mind went blank save for one thought.
Dragomir
. He was the only thing she could consider. Wanting him. To hold him. Touch him. Kiss him. To…

Not one other thought came to mind. She couldn’t remember what she’d been doing before this kiss or why she’d ever wanted to do anything else. All she knew was she had to have more of him.
 

She managed to will her legs out of their goo state and with a little lift from him she wrapped them around his waist. His hands cupped her ass, squeezing and kneading and pulling her closer to him.
 

She delved deeper into the kiss, crushing her mouth against his and exploring every inch. She finally broke the kiss when her back hit the side of the house and he pressed his hips into her.

“Oh,” she moaned. Her breaths were so heavy she could barely catch them.
 

He kissed her lips, her cheek, her ear, then her neck. The feel of his warm, wet mouth tugging on her skin drove her nuts. She writhed against him, knowing she was about to lose it. “I…I…oh…”

“Let go, Sofia. Come for me.” His low voice, softer, sexier than anything she’d ever heard drove her over the edge.
 

She dropped her head against the wall and cried out, “Oh God” as the wave of ecstasy washed over her. She squeezed her legs around his hips and pumped against him, moaning for more.
 

His mouth came to her neck once more, his tongue working the skin. Soft suckling sounds alternated with her moans, and the feel of his mouth tugging on her skin brought tears to her eyes.
 

The low rumbles vibrating from his chest sent zings of excitement through her breasts. His muffled groans of pleasure pleased her. He enjoyed her, wanted more. She held his head to her neck and ground her hips into him.
 

“More. More,” she begged.

His mouth came to hers and she felt his fangs. His tongue delved deeper. Sofia thrust her tongue into his mouth, wanting him to taste her, to have her. His fangs pricked her tongue and tiny pangs of pleasure shot through her. She cried out.
 

He broke the kiss, threw back his head, and growled. The sound echoed around them.
 

When finally their moment of pleasure ended, her head drooped to his shoulder. Dragomir propped his head against the house. His slowing breath puffed against her neck. His hands held her firm against his body. They stayed like this until her senses returned, until she was able to realize she had not only kissed a vampire, she’d dry humped him, against her house, begging for more until she came. And worse than all of that? She’d loved every second of it.
 

She scrambled out of his arms, awkwardly tumbling out of his grip in spite of how he tried to keep her from falling.
 

On my ass again
. Leaves crunched beneath her.
 

This time she got to her feet on her own, completely embarrassed by her behavior. She didn’t bother to look at him, just spun on her heel and ran back toward the house.
 

“Good night.”
 

She slammed the door shut behind her, locked it, and raced up the stairs to the shower.
 

Chapter Fourteen
 

“What the fuck?”
 

Dragomir paced back and forth behind the house for three hours. The lights had gone out twenty-two minutes after she’d run into the house. Twenty-two minutes and fourteen seconds to be exact. Not that he purposely monitored her so closely, but that was the exact time the lights went out.
 

Did I just…? I did.
“What the fuck?” He marched back toward the woods.
 

How was he going to explain this? How was he going to tell Jankin what he’d done? He raked his fingers through his hair for the hundredth time, then down over his face.

“Damn it.” His hands smelled like her. His hair smelled like her. His entire body smelled like her. “Damn it!” He glanced toward the house to be sure he hadn’t wakened her with his shout.
 

Her respirations continued in the slow rise and fall of a sleeping woman, one who’d been pleasured by a vampire. A vampire who’d been contracted to ensure her safety, but who apparently thought taking advantage of her was part of the job.
 

“I didn’t take advantage of her.” He snapped a branch from a nearby pine tree. “She attacked me. She told me to attack her, but then she attacked me.”

He spun around and beat an oak tree to his left, pounding the pine bough against the trunk of the tree until all that was left was a two-foot stick.
 

“She was falling. I caught her. That’s all I did. She…” He tossed the stick to the ground. Sap covered his hands, and when he tried to push his hair back from his face, he ended up with sap on his cheeks and forehead and hair stuck to his fingers. “Damn it!”
 

He froze and listened. Still the quiet breathing of a pleased woman was all he heard.
 

He sniffed his hands, aggravated by the persistent desire to smell her. Now he smelled like pine and flowers and fruit. He still couldn’t figure out which flower, but this was not the time for deciphering what she smelled like. This was the time to practice an explanation.
Still, what was that? Hyacinth?
 

He shook his head and continued pacing. He hadn’t bitten her. He’d managed to keep his fangs to himself. But he’d wanted to bite her, wanted to sink his fangs into the soft, supple skin of her neck. And she’d wanted it. She’d offered her neck, held his face to her skin, begged for more.
 

“Fuck!”
 

He had wanted to bite. Wanted to mark her as his own. The pull to mate her was overwhelming. But he’d resisted. He hadn’t crossed
that
line.
 

“I’ll just tell Jankin she’d had too much to drink and she came on to…” He sighed. “I should have known better.” He fell back against a tree and banged his head repeatedly. “Jackass.”
 

He licked his lips, still able to taste her. The heady flavor of lust combined with coconut rum. Her lips had been sticky, sticky and sweet. As if she needed to add a little something more to her already unbearably intoxicating scent. And, the flavor of her…

He hardened just thinking of her. The idea of undressing her, kissing every inch of her, touching her in places no other man should ever touch her, being inside her. His cock throbbed.
 

“Fuck!”
 

He glanced toward the house. This fucking woman was killing him. His pants were stained and sticky. His hands and hair and face were sticky. His lips were sticky. And he had the most horrible desire to pleasure himself right here in the woods outside her house just because thoughts of her plagued his mind.
 

He wanted to sink his fangs into her flesh in so many different spots. Her neck, her breasts, her thighs. His cock strained against his jeans, rubbing on the zipper.
 

“What the fuck?”
 

He adjusted himself, glaring at his cock as if that could quell his desires. He’d never in more than eight hundred years felt this way for a vampire or a werewolf and certainly not a human, though he’d happily enjoyed all three plenty of times.
 

“Fucking Jankin. This is all his doing.” He kicked at a pile of leaves. “Come to Wooddale. I need the most skilled warrior for this assignment.” He did his best Scottish accent. “Bastard. A setup. She’s like the devil. Dressed in her business suits with her hair up and pretty green eyes batting at me. Why not just offer me the damn apple?” He rubbed his temples.
 

Dragomir spent the next hour practicing what he’d say, deciding how he’d explain pinning Sofia, possibly his boss’s descendant, against the back of her house, bringing her a level of ecstasy he was sure she’d never experienced with any other man, and then having his own orgasm when he was supposed to be teaching her to disengage herself from compromising situations.
 

He groaned and cursed the day he turned vampire. “If I can’t disengage myself, how can I teach her? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” His voice echoed in the woods and his gaze darted toward the house.
 

*****

Six hours later, Osgar arrived to relieve him. “Ever the disheveled mess,” Dragomir said as he rose from the porch steps.
 

“Look who’s talking.” Osgar sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “What happened to you?”

“She sleeps. All night.” Dragomir turned toward the woods and trudged back to Cader, both dreading and needing to speak with Jankin.
 

“I like what you’ve done with your hair.” Osgar laughed after him.
 

He’d get answers. What woman could upturn a vampire? Only one with special power. Dragomir had managed to convince himself of this during the long night. It was the only possibility.

After this last event he was absolutely certain she was a descendant of Jankin MacDuff, the vampire. How else could she be so damn beguiling?
 

Dragomir couldn’t afford to waste time when he needed answers, but there was no way he’d face Jankin stinking of clumsy, immature sex with Sofia. There’d be no getting a single question out, never mind an answer, if Jankin thought he’d defiled Sofia. In his quarters Dragomir showered and dressed in clean clothes before finding the master.
 

Jankin sat at a black oak desk, focused on the computer screen. His main office, the one deep within the Lower Level, was larger than the conference room, holding a giant table that matched the desk at one end, a more comfortable sitting area with sofas and chairs at the other end, and another door, hidden by an oil painting of Scotland. The hidden door led to Jankin’s private chamber.