When Wicked Craves (21 page)

She wore no bra—Lissa hadn’t packed one—and she
was grateful for that. She wanted nothing between her and Nicholas’s hands. Nothing to lessen the erotic caress that was sending deep purple ribbons of lust through her veins, all meeting between her legs and making her sex pulse with need.

She was wet—so much wetter than she’d ever gotten when she’d slipped her own hand between her legs, letting fantasy take her away. She’d never allowed herself to think about a specific man, or about his touch, or about anything other than the pure biological response. Because to think would be to know what she lost.

Now, though. Now she wanted to think about it. Wanted to imagine Nicholas’s hands stroking her, his fingers teasing her, his cock filling her.

She moaned, then silenced it when his palms brushing her nipples made her draw her teeth into her lower lip.

“Off,” he said, as he pulled her up just long enough to pull her shirt off. She was blind for a moment as it covered her eyes, and when she was free, his face was there, looking at her with an expression both hard with need and soft with desire.

She only had time to catch her breath before his lips were on hers and she was open to him, her mouth taking as much as he was giving, claiming and craving even as his fingers crept down to play with the button of her jeans.

She savored the pressure of his fingers pressed against her, the friction of her jeans sliding down her hips. Her panties were small and silk, and he cupped her triangle with his palm, the material wet with her desire.

With his fingertip, he traced the edge of the elastic, then teased the slick core of her, his finger slipping on
soft skin, sliding between her folds, finding her center. “Please,” she whispered, but the word was unnecessary. She could tell he had no intention of stopping, and while his mouth traced kisses down her neck and to her breast, his finger slipped inside. The sensation of being filled made her gasp, even as the thrill of his mouth on her nipple made her body tighten, as if thin wires ran through her, all connected, and he controlled the nerve center.

“Oh God.” She couldn’t say anything else. Couldn’t form any other words. Right then, if someone had asked, she wasn’t entirely sure she could remember her own name.

But she knew pleasure. Right then she knew pleasure so keen it bordered on pain.

While his mouth suckled her breast, his busy hands managed to wrangle her the rest of the way out of her panties.

She felt the air, cool against her damp sex, and sighed from the sweet sensation, so simple and yet so utterly erotic. He shed his own clothes as she watched, the removal of each item like the unwrapping of a Christmas present.

It was a lovely view, but she didn’t regret it when he slid on top of her and she closed her eyes, the heady sensation of skin against skin so unfamiliar and astounding that she feared she couldn’t bear it.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. “Am I the first to see you this way?”

“How’d you guess?” she murmured, her stomach muscles tightening from his touch, her sex throbbing, and her mind screaming for more.

He laughed softly against her skin and she sighed, certain that she could lie like that forever, reveling in his touch and the lazy way he explored her body.

His lips wandered over her belly, brushing the curve of her hip bone, tracing around the hair at her pubis. He was in no hurry, as if she were a dessert to be savored, and she felt herself spinning off into heaven as he tasted her, consuming every luscious morsel, not missing a drop.

Erotic, calm,
delicious
.

And then his lips danced lower still, his tongue becoming bolder, reaching out to taste and to tease even as his fingers stroked inside her thighs, his thumbs rising up to caress the soft flesh at the triangle of her sex, and his mouth closing over her in the most intimate kiss of all.

The touch was a shock. A miraculous, astounding, mind-blowing shock, and she arched up, her body wanting more and more even as it wanted to escape from such sweet torment.

But he wasn’t letting her escape.

Instead, his hands cupped her rear, and his tongue laved her, moving in rhythmic motions that seemed to grow inside her, building exponentially until it felt as though ripples of pleasure would simply burst through her body, breaking out of the confines of muscle and skin.

Until it seemed as though she was no longer flesh and bone, but simply want and need.

It felt, she realized, like it had in the mist. But this time, there was something to reach for. This time, she could find satisfaction.

She wanted it—that explosive release. She could feel
it now—could feel Nicholas delivering her so close, taking her to such intimate heights. She pumped her hips in automatic response, as if she could climb her way to the top of the precipice and send them both tumbling over.

His mouth pulled away, and she almost screamed in frustration. But then she felt the whisper of breath upon her, and the soft stroke of a finger teasing her slick folds.

“Come for me,” he whispered. “I want to feel you come.”

And then, as if his words held as much power over her as his touch, she felt the climax build … and then she cried out as her body exploded in an array of lights and colors.

She rode it, never wanting the experience to end. When she finally slid down the crest and back to reality, he held her close, stroking her skin, his soft touches silently threatening to take her back to the heights she’d just reached.

“Soon,” he whispered, as if reading her mind.

“I want to touch you,” she said, shifting so that she was on top of him.

Slowly, because she wanted to relish the moment, she drew her hands down his body, letting her lips follow her fingers, exploring every inch of him with touch and taste and sight.

By heaven, he was beautiful.

“What’s this?” she asked, her finger tracing the geometric tattoo on his shoulder blade. A circle inside a square inside a triangle inside a circle. “Alchemy?”

“It’s the symbol for the philosopher’s stone,” he said. “The secret to eternal life.”

“One of the secrets,” she said, drawing over the symbol with her fingertip.

“Yes,” he agreed, as she pressed her lips to the tattoo, feeling his muscles contract under her touch, hearing him moan as she trailed kisses down his back and the soft, sensitive skin at his side.

After she’d explored every inch with her mouth, she pressed against him, full contact, wanting to feel him against every inch of skin. The sensations that ricocheted through her were beyond anything she’d ever experienced, and she never wanted it to end.

It would, though. When the sun crested the horizon, this fantasy would end, too.

In the meantime, though, she wanted more. And not even more sex—although yes, that was definitely on the agenda. She simply wanted to touch.

“You’ve gone away into your thoughts.”

“Good thoughts,” she said. “Stretch out,” she demanded, ordering him to lie along the couch, his body taking up the full length of it, his head pressed against a pillow.

“Perfect,” she said, then slid in beside him. She squirmed into position, until as much of her was touching him as possible.

“Keep that up, and this little break you’ve orchestrated is going to be over before it’s begun.”

“I probably wouldn’t be too put out by that,” she admitted. “But I do like this.” She licked her lips and glanced down. “But are you, um, okay?”

His low chuckle rumbled through him. “I’m wonderful. Anticipation, Petra. It can be both powerful and pleasurable.”

“Anticipation,” she repeated, her fingers stroking him. “And touching.
Touching.
” She sighed. “Hard to believe something so simple can be so staggering.”

“There’s nothing simple about it,” he said. “Millions of nerve endings responding to the slightest brush. It’s science and biology.”

“It’s amazing. And it’s not science that’s making me feel like this.”

“Like what?”

She considered the question, wishing she could find the words. “Like I’m outside myself looking in. Like I become more myself when you touch me. Like we’re melding, and yet staying apart.” She shook her head, frustrated by the inadequacy of her description. “Touching you makes me feel the way I did when we were mist. As if we were connected so deeply that it wasn’t a question of touching, it was a question of being.”

He stroked her hair. “I understand.”

“Really?”

His laugh rumbled through her. “I do. And at the same time, you baffle me.”

He said it with enough seriousness that she propped herself up on an elbow. “How?”

“You’re human, and yet you not only experienced the mist state, but you recall it.”

“I experienced it, all right.”

He followed her hairline with his fingertip. “I still want to understand why.”

“Does it matter? Do you think it’s relevant to the curse?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But yes, it matters.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m curious. It’s a question, and I want an answer.”

She laughed. “Can’t argue with that.”

“Your family,” he said. “They’ve always been able to manipulate magic?”

“I don’t know about always,” she said. “But definitely as far back as anyone knows.”

“Perhaps that’s the reason. The power rising from the earth. Perhaps it’s strong enough to keep you aware during the transformation.”

“Or maybe I’m just special.”

He laughed. “Yes, well, that’s a reasonable hypothesis, too.”

She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “So if the tattoo is the symbol for the philosopher’s stone, that must mean that your interests in alchemy lay in immortality, and not in turning metals to gold.” She was teasing him, but as she spoke she realized that he’d never actually told her his particular interest in alchemy. Even so, she was certain it wasn’t gold.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, when she told him as much.

“Because you’re the first vampire I’ve met who seems … I don’t know. Like the extra time is a gift.”

His chest rumbled as he laughed. “You are more perceptive than I realized, Petra Lang.”

“I spend a lot of time watching. When you don’t touch, you find ways to compensate.”

“Of course. And you’re right. I don’t regret what I have become. Not usually.”

“But there have been times? The daemon?”

His face hardened and she could feel his muscles
tense, as if he was fighting to keep calm. She’d struck a nerve, and struck deep. She waited for him to tell her how, to explain what memory she’d triggered, but instead he breathed deep and slow, and when he spoke, the steel had left his body. Only his cadence gave him away. Steady, rhythmic. As if he had to concentrate to stay on task.

“The daemon is a part of me, of course, as it is in every vampire. I battle it constantly, but the battle is familiar now, and I know I’ll come out on top. But there have been two times when that wasn’t the case.” He drew in a breath. “The first was when I was made. The second was when I was betrayed.”

“Lissa,” Petra said, remembering the conversation on the plane. “I shouldn’t have brought up bad memories. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s okay.” He shifted so that he faced her more directly, then stroked her arm slowly with his fingertip. The gesture was sweet and simple and so intimate it made her want to cry, especially since he didn’t even seem to be aware he was doing it, as his full attention was on her face. “It was Serge who guided me through those months, forcing me into the Holding and making me battle my daemon. More than that, giving me the strength to prevail.”

“I find it hard imagining you broken.”

“Do you?”

“It’s just the way I see you. Strong. Competent.” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “If I’m wrong, keep it to yourself.”

“Of course,” he said with a grin.

She laughed, then laughed even harder when he
pulled her close and kissed her ear, his arms tightening around her waist.

“And that’s why you’re doing all this now? Trying to save Serge the way he once saved you?”

“It is.”

“I hope we can do it. Actually, I guess I hope Ferrante can do it.”

“Yes,” Nicholas said, but his face had gotten hard again.

“Nicholas? What is it?”

“I tell you this because with luck you will meet the man, and you need to know what there is between us.”

“All right,” she said, her voice soft, matching the solemnity of his.

“But I also tell you because I want to. Nothing more, nothing less. I simply want you to know.”

“I—” She realized
he was going to tell her about the way he’d betrayed Ferrante, and she wanted to say something, but “thank you” seemed strange and inadequate when placed against the urgent heat in his eyes, a heat that twisted her up inside and made her regret all the more that the sun had to eventually rise.

So she said nothing, merely nodded and gently squeezed his hand, hoping that through her touch he would understand how much it meant to her that he would let her see a bit of his heart, and shoulder a bit of his pain.

“When Marco took me in, I already had a solid education in the classics, in mathematics, in science and philosophy. I was as well educated as a young man of good family was expected to be, and my father wished me to marry and take over the management of his properties. He was a wool merchant in Florence, and though my family never rivaled the Medicis, we were quite successful.”

“I’m guessing your interest wasn’t in wool.”

“It was not,” Nicholas said. “Ironic, perhaps, since I was so very interested in everything else.”

“A Renaissance man,” she said, grinning. “When was this, by the way? Was it actually during the Renaissance? Or were you ahead of your time?”

“When the light of learning ripped through Europe, I was already walking exclusively in the dark. My mortal education took place at the end of the thirteenth century, and though I was well educated by the time I reached my twenty-fourth year, I was not expected to do anything with that learning other than step into my father’s role as a wool merchant.” He shrugged, as if nonchalant, but she could tell his emotions were anything but. “I defied my family and apprenticed myself to Marco Ferrante.”