Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"Are you sure you're fine? Everywhere? I'll have to see. Just don't move."

I felt a triumphant surge of life restored in every cell. I felt strong and alive. I felt…very hot. I had to have something right now, and I knew what it was. And according to Ric, it was fine.

I rolled over to wriggle out of my black stretch leggings and pull out the precious Cicereau photo saved on the small flash drive, which had stayed put and come through everything without any visible damage. Spandex rocks!

I rolled back over to straddle Ric's hips and unclasped his belt, unhooked his pants, ripped down the zipper, pushed all that aside, and pulled what I wanted through the slit in his silken shorts. It was still in that delicious state of becoming all that it could be, but I was far from through.

I lay atop him and stopped whatever he'd been about to say or do with a fingertip to his lips. Despite all he'd been through, only his top shirt button was undone. I undid another two and put my left hand over his heart. My right hand pushed the shirt collar aside until I could see the faint blue bruise at the side of his throat. When I'd exposed it, his heart rate quickened.

"Tell me about this." I whispered, stroking it with my forefinger.

"It's a love bite. You ought to know. You did it the first day you met me, mi tigre hembra"

Calling me "tigress" was only inciting me tooth and nail. "Why is it such a turn-on for you, mi hombre?”

"Lord, Del, you were there, in the park when that bolt of sheer sex coursed through us. You didn't even remember turning your head into me and biting my throat. That made me come. No woman's ever done that, given me an orgasm that way."

"I must be pretty potent." I ran a fingernail over the mark and felt his heart leap against the palm of my hand. Something else leapt against me.

"Del – " His voice and breath were ragged.

My own pulses thundered to feel him ready but pinned beneath me. But he kept his arms and hands still, giving me the lead I'd asked for. Demanded.

"We know now it was earth magic," he said, "borrowed lust, but it worked to bond us."

"No woman has ever bitten you in passion before? Anybody or anything else I should know about?"

He smiled slowly, flirting in foreplay. "I said no woman had ever bitten me there before."

I let my fingernail trail hard over "there." His heart rate doubled again, fluttering like a caged hawk in my hand.

"Who has then?"

"Are you jealous?"

"Madly. I want to know why you want what you do, so I can give it to you better."

His face sobered. No more teasing evasion. I took my finger from his throat, my hand from his heart, kissed the flutter, and laid my head on his chest to hear the deeper hollow thud of his heart through his body.

"I was a boy," Ric whispered finally, though we were alone and Nightwine's devices were disabled and no one else could overhear. He was speaking from a place he'd never wanted to go back to. I knew that place well.

"In Mexico. Dirt-poor Mexican desert. Still, there were cattle, burros, goats, and peasants to try to live off the bitter land. I was…an orphan, like you. I slept with the burros at night. I used to see visions of Our Lady of Guadalupe sometimes. I could even smell the roses that are her sign. She comforted me like a mother come to give her son a goodnight kiss.

"I never could remember such a…legendary thing as a kiss. I grew up among evil men and brutalized animals. But I was on the fringe of manhood, maybe twelve. One night the burros were restless. I slept and dreamed and something came to me and kissed me on the neck. My first kiss. It was long and sweet and I sensed it in my sleep and didn't ever want to wake up. When I did, my neck and throat ached. I was glad to feel that, to prolong the mother's kiss I longed for. I touched the place, the site of the miracle, of the Virgin's compassion, smelling roses. My fingers came away wet with my own blood."

I'd heard this with tears welling behind my eyes – who would dream that Ric Montoya's successful, attractive present was built upon such a barren, hurtful, lonely past? His last sentence chilled my soul, though, and even my surging libido.

I jerked my head up to face him. "You'd been visited by a vampire!"

My heart almost stopped. No! Once vampire-bitten, a human was forever susceptible to the breed's spell. It couldn't have been worse if he'd told me he had cancer.

He nodded, and lifted an arm to catch my first falling tear on a fingertip. "Yes, Delilah." He smiled tenderly. "But it was a vampire bat."

"A real bat?" What did that mean? Was that better or worse? "Are you sure it was the real thing?"

"In the Chihuahua desert? What else? It was a bat, the same blood-sucking parasite that was named after real vampires, a Mexican bat. There are millions of them. I was mistaken for a burro, probably because my hair was uncut and covered my neck."

"Then you're not…infected by an undead human vampire bite?"

"No." He stirred under me, lifted his hips and my weight with the move, the gesture saying sexy things again.

"No. But the next night I was visited by a vision of a dancing girl with writhing hips and naked breasts and she kissed me on the neck in that very same spot, and I had become a man."

I got it. That had been his first turn-on. Wet dream. Weird maybe, but harmless, right? And my heart ached for the lonely boy in the desert, sleeping with donkeys and goats. There must be more, much more, to Ric's story, but this whispered confession had soothed my immediate panic.

He watched me accept that and put his arm back down. I wriggled up his body and placed my hand on his heart again. The rate had quieted nicely and he was half-soft between my legs again. If pseudo-vampire dancing girls and vampire bats did it for him, I was ready to throw myself into the part.

I breathed hotly on his neck, my hand gauging his pulse rate. I ran the tip of my tongue over the bruised spot, and then my lips. My many kisses added up to a month of goodnight visitations. He was breathing hard and his heart was racing, boy and man ready for so much more. So I bore down hard and sucked a series of moans out of him, then teased his skin with my teeth. I was a very bad batgirl.

"Delilah!"

I sat up and pushed him into me and tore my Spandex top over my head. Luckily I was wearing a bra I'd bought during my post-Sunset Park shopping spree. I have to admit that Irma's taste has always been way sleazier than mine, and she'd been in firm control that day. Ric's hands twitched, but remained out of play. I was in control now, in control of the vertical. I moved up and down slowly, my body swallowing that tantalizing length again and again, rocking and rolling.

Ric was gasping. "You've never been so aggressive before, mi tigre hembra."

"I've never almost lost you before."

"It was worth it, then. We'll have to do that again," he panted, caught between a moan and a laugh. "I'll have to do this again too."

I could feel him on the brink of explosion; I collapsed down upon him, sinking my teeth hard into the vampire bat spot. My spot.

We came together, I screaming, Ric adding an inciting basso of satisfaction to the clan vocalizations. Los Lobos had seen to it there'd always be a call of the wild in our encounters.

I pushed myself back up finally, looking down at him. And he finally moved his arms, his hands on my hips, his fingers toying with the thin sterling silver hip-hung chain I wore for him under everything, impaling me gently down deep onto him one last time. For now.

Sweat evaporated slowly and sweetly on our bodies. Ric's face gleamed like a golden idol's in the funky old-fashioned cottage lamplight. I could feel him softening in me, a sensation as engaging as a thick milk chocolate bar melting in your mouth.