His Lover's Fangs (5 page)

“Like that?” he murmured, kissing his way
lower still. “How ‘bout this?”

He licked a path along the strap of her bra,
then followed the lacy edge to the valley between her breasts. She
kept moving under him, not hard enough to throw him off, but
clearly trying to guide his mouth to whichever of her nipples he
was closest to at any given time. He thwarted her efforts and
continued to kiss along the edges of the bra until she understood
his game and became very still beneath him.

Pressing his grin into her right breast, he
finally gave her what she wanted, closing his mouth over her nipple
and sucking until the fabric was soaked through and clinging to the
hardened nub. Not to neglect the other nipple, he cupped it in his
hand and rubbed his thumb back and forth until it hardened,
too.

A tiny, wordless, needy sound rose to
Olivia’s lips when his mouth resumed its journey down her body, but
one hand lightly caressing each of her breasts appeased her.

His mouth trailed lower still, sliding on
skin he knew so well and that seemed so different now that it was
cooler. He raked his teeth against her stomach, and she arched into
him with a quiet grunt.

“
Stop playing,” she demanded, but to Logan
it sounded like,
keep doing what you’ve been doing.

He tried pulling the zipper of her pants down
with his teeth, but he had to admit to himself that wouldn’t work.
Dropping his hands to her pants, he undid them quickly and started
drawing them down. As close as he was, he could smell the scent of
her desire, thick and heady. His movements became jerky, impatient,
as he continued to undress her.

She raised herself onto her elbows, and he
could feel her eyes on him as he pulled off her pants and panties
in the same movement, stopping at her knees to tug her boots off so
he could finish. Her gaze was scorching.

When he sat back on his heels, he was panting
as though he had just run a hundred-meter dash; his body felt just
as heavy, just as reluctant to move. He could have spent hours
simply watching her, as she sat there in nothing but a bra,
disheveled, wetness glistening in the curls that hid her sex. He
felt a pang of need at how beautiful she was. He’d always
considered himself lucky, and had always wondered what she saw in
him. He wondered that same thing when he realized she was watching
him back just as intensely.

“You’re overdressed,” she said, deadpan.

Logan swallowed back a laugh. “Yeah? You
gonna do something about it?”

Her lips twitched with the beginning of a
smile. “Did I say I
care
that you’re
overdressed?”

Sliding her legs to one side, she kneeled,
then leaned forward. The entire movement looked like a dance. She
crawled toward him on all fours, and Logan’s heart jumped in his
chest. Even when she had flashed her fangs at him, even when she
had growled while they fought, when her mouth had rested an inch
from his neck, she hadn’t looked quite as predatory as she did now.
Logan gulped. His cock twitched in the confines of his jeans, and
while she kept her eyes on his face, her lips curled into a
grin.

She undid the buttons of his jeans and
sneaked her hand inside his boxers. He jumped at her touch, and she
froze, her fingers fleeting against his cock.

“Too cold?” she asked, starting to pull
back.

Logan shook his head jerkily and raised his
hips to follow her retreating hand. “No, not cold, just… cooler?
But I don’t mind.”

He didn’t mind at all, actually, and hissed
when her hand returned, curling around his hardened cock then
gently drawing it out though the hole in his boxers.

“Missed me, did you?” She grinned, pumping
her hand up and down his cock, her thumb swiping the precome in
that move that always made him gasp.

“Told you… told you I did,” he replied, his
voice breaking halfway through.

Finally remembering he had hands, too, he
wrapped his arms around her and battled with the clasp of her bra.
It didn’t help at all when she leaned in closer and started
mouthing his shoulder, his chest, his throat, pressing her lips
everywhere she could reach and tattooing lines of desire on his
skin with the tip of her tongue. With his hands and entire body
trembling, he almost gave up on taking that last scrap of fabric
off her, but he wanted to see her, all of her, every inch of her
skin, and reassure himself again that, yes, she truly had come back
to him.

When the clasp finally came undone, Logan let
out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He almost sobbed
when Olivia sat up, taking her mouth and hand off him so she could
slip the bra off her arms. Losing her touch was unbearable, and he
had to reach out again. His fingers followed the curve of her
breasts before continuing down her body and to the apex of her
legs. He missed the heat of her flesh, but it was still her, her
skin just as silky, just as responsive as she sighed softly in
response to his caress. When he touched between her legs,
fingertips slipping over her clit and sliding lower to her opening,
he had to pinch his lips tightly or risk whimpering. She was
practically dripping already, and he had barely even touched her
yet. Logan froze and took a deep breath, staring at her; did she
want him that much?

“What’s wrong?” she asked, and for the first
time he could hear hesitation in her voice.

“Nothing. I…” He swallowed hard. “God, you’re
so wet.”

Her features softened again, and whatever
trace of worry she’d had now faded away. “What did you expect with
your little striptease?” she whispered, arching her hips to press
harder into his hand.

“I don’t know. I guess I was trying to see if
you still liked the view.”

Her eyelids fell to half-mast, and she ran a
trailing gaze over his body. “I do.”

“If you still wanted me,” he pressed on, his
voice as unsteady as his fingers, which caressed her folds with the
gentlest touch.

She shivered against him, gold flames
flickering in her eyes, and said huskily, “
God
, I do.”

Taking a deep but shaky breath, he held her
gaze. He had to know if she felt the same way about him. “If you
still—”

Before he could finish, her mouth descended
on his, her tongue slipping inside to caress his own. At the same
time, she climbed onto his lap, one hand on his shoulder to steady
herself, the other still wrapped around his cock and guiding it to
the entrance of her body. She was so wet that he slipped in, all
the way in, right as she lowered herself onto him.

Their mouths broke apart when Logan gasped.
His eyes wide in pleasure, he looked at her, at this woman, his
lover, his love. He had thought he had lost her, but here she was.
His chest tightened, and he breathed out her name. “Liv… I…”

She ran the fingers of one hand through his
hair and smiled at him. “You what, lover?”

But he had no words yet to tell her how
thankful, how happy he was that she had come back. He kissed her
again, nice and slow, and hoped that she knew.

He clutched her hips tightly when she started
moving, immediately finding a rhythm and angle that caused both of
them to moan. She rose slowly and pushed down fast, with a wicked
twist of her hips on that last inch that always made Logan’s eyes
cross and his cock jerk inside her. They’d done this so many times.
He had watched her dance on top of him so often, and this was just
like all those other nights. And at the same time, the feel of her
flesh warming at his contact and the new strength hiding in each of
her movements made everything different.

Suddenly, it struck him that this was them
now: different and yet the same. Maybe. If she still loved him, it
would be. She hadn’t said she did yet. He didn’t want to think
about how he would feel if she didn’t say it.

She would say it, wouldn’t she? She did love
him, right? Wasn’t that why she had come back? But then, why hadn’t
she said it?

With that sudden fear gripping his insides,
Logan reversed their positions again until he was lying on top of
her, supporting his weight on one elbow. He looked down at her and
tried to see the love he had seen for so long in her eyes, but all
he could see were flames, the fire of desire that consumed her and
urged him onward.

“Harder,” she demanded, her voice only
echoing what her legs, locked around his waist, and her hands,
tight on his shoulders, were already saying.

He pressed deeper inside her, resting all his
weight onto her until she was gasping with each thrust.

“I love you,” he breathed against her lips.
“Liv, I love you so much. Do you—”

Rather than answering, she cupped the back of
his head in her hand and drew his mouth to hers. Even more afraid
now that she had avoided answering twice, he bucked harder against
her, grinding against her clit and pushing her relentlessly toward
her orgasm.

This time, she was the one who ended the
kiss, arching against him and throwing her head back as she moaned
aloud. The sound of her pleasure and the feel of her body
contracting around his cock set him off, and he buried himself one
last time inside her, pressed his face to her neck, and tried not
to think about what it meant that she hadn’t told him.

After only seconds, by sheer force of
habit, he pushed himself off her, rolling to lie by her side so she
would be able to breathe. Only when his own breathing started
slowing down did he remember: she didn’t need to breathe anymore.
But even so, she
was
breathing,
her chest heaving as fast as his own. He rested his hand above her
heart. There was no thumping beneath his fingers even though his
hand moved up and down along with her ragged breaths. Her heart was
silent, but it was still there. Did it still belong to
him?

“I love you.”

He held his breath and waited for her to
reply in kind. Seconds passed. The lack of air burned his lungs,
and he had to exhale. Had he been wrong?

“Even with what I am?” Olivia asked at last.
Her fingers raked through his hair almost absently. “What I’ve
done? Can you still—”

He didn’t let her finish and repeated the
words, his voice fiercer now. “I love you.”

Again, he waited for her answer. Didn’t all
lovers expect this very thing: the same words given back to them
when they professed their love? Was he expecting too much?

“
Do you know what my first lesson was when
I woke up?” she murmured, rolling onto her side to face him. “Vamps
don’t love.
Can’t
love. Ann
kept repeating that to me, telling me how fun it would be when I
killed you, because you’d still be the same and I wouldn’t. I think
it’s like… a rite of passage or something. Vampires who expect
their Childer to kill humans make them kill someone they love. She
said her Sire did the same to her.”

There was
something
in Olivia’s voice that chilled Logan to the bone
and made him shiver. Something dark and dangerous, an intonation he
had never heard from her when she had been human. But then, he had
never heard her talk about humans dying at a vampire’s fangs in
such a casual way. Another chill ran through him, raising
goosebumps all over his body, and he tried not to be scared of
where she was going with that train of thoughts.

“The first thing my Sire taught me,” she said
with a shake of her head. “And I knew after just minutes that she
was wrong. And so everything else she tried to teach me after that,
it just didn’t stick. I kept telling myself, she’s wrong about not
being able to love so she can be wrong about this other stuff, too.
About feeding and biting and having to obey her.”

Logan’s apprehension faded away as she spoke,
and with each word he was more and more certain that she was doing
more than telling him how she had pulled away from her Sire. She
was telling herself, too, reminding herself that, yes, she could
say the words and she could mean them, too. There was no reason for
her not to.

He didn’t have to wait very long.

“I love you,” she murmured, eyes clear and
shining with truth that rang like a silver bell through her words.
“Every bit as much as I did when I still had a pulse.”

Leaning in close, he kissed her again, and if
earlier their kisses had been like a blaze, burning his mind to
cinders and trailing tongues of fire down his spine, this was
different. Gentle. Sweet. The kind of kisses they had shared when
they had been too tired to touch each other, too exhausted to even
talk, but still, always needing each other.

When they pulled apart again, lying side by
side, heads tilted toward each other so that their temples just
brushed together, Logan closed his eyes. He was beginning to feel a
little cold, and the floor wasn’t all that comfortable, but he
didn’t care. Not when Olivia was right next to him. Five nights
without her, not one of them a good night of sleep.

“What now?” she asked after a little while,
just as he was starting to drift toward dreams.

“I was thinking sleep,” he mumbled.

“That’s good seeing how the sun is up and I
can’t go anywhere,” she said dryly.

Logan opened his eyes and, frowning, turned
his head to look at her.

“But what about when night falls?” she asked,
her eyes still on the ceiling.

He rolled onto his side and rested his
temple against his fist. “Do you
want
to go anywhere?”

She turned toward him, mirroring his
position. “Not particularly.”

“Then I suppose you don’t have to leave,” he
said slowly, waiting to see how she would react, but she remained
poker faced. He pushed on to see if he could make cracks appear in
her too-complacent façade. “What you do have to do, on the other
hand, is help me fix this place. You wrecked it.”