Кейти Макалистер - A Girl's Guide to Vampires

"Woman," he growled, pulling me up until I was pressed against his body. "You are going to be the death of me."

His hands were busy on the hooks of my bra.

"Yeah, but what a way to die."

He smiled a smile that was filled with all sorts of wicked promises, promises I couldn't wait for him to fulfill. "Baby, you have no idea."

"Really?" I asked, allowing him to remove my bra. He pushed me back onto the bed, rolling on top of me for a moment to kiss my wits away. I smiled to myself as his tongue went wild ordering mine around, checking my teeth, stroking the roof of my mouth, and generally being demanding, but then it was gone as Raphael rolled off me and opened the drawer to his nightstand.

"I get to put it on you this time. I want to try doing it with my tongue. Roxy said she heard it's possible… what's that?"

He rolled back over until he was lying on his side next to me, a long bottle in his hand. "I'm partial to cherry. I hope you like it as well."

"Oooh," I squealed, partly in response to the idea of something a little different, partly because of the desire in his eyes. "Is that one of those slicky lotions that make you slide all over one another and heat up when you blow on them?"

"Yes," he said, flipping open the top as he bent to take my breast in his mouth. I squealed again when he tugged ever so gently with his teeth on my nipple, then moaned when the cool liquid hit the tip, oozing downward. He leaned over me and took my other breast in his mouth while his fingers teased the slick oil over my breast. The combination of the heat of his mouth and the coolness of the lotion made my mind go numb with pleasure. He teased circles around my cherry-flavored breast, gently rubbing my nipples between his slippery fingers just as he started suckling hard on my other breast.

I almost came off the bed, my back arched up so high.

"Like that, do you?" he chuckled, his voice intimate and sexy and rough with pleasure. He dribbled a little lotion on my bare breast, then switched sides and sucked all the cherry goodness off the first breast, laving my breast and nipple with long, sweeping strokes of his tongue.

"RaphaEL," I screamed, clutching his shoulders as he burned my breasts up with the fire his hands and mouth were causing. "Oh, please, Raphael, you have to stop! My nipples are going to explode, and then what'll I do? I don't think they can do nipple transplants, can they? Oh, sweet baby Jesus, that's so goooood…"

He drizzled cherry down my belly, his fingers painting me with the wetness, tracing intricate paths that his mouth soon followed. While he was busy nibbling around my belly button, his hand slipped down to my underwear, rubbing the heel of his hand over me, his fingers teasing the satin into my heated core. My eyes crossed at the cool silk of his curls brushing against my skin with each stroke of his tongue on my belly. The dance of his fingers against my soft folds was driving me wild, winding the coil inside me up tighter and tighter. "Raphael!" I shrieked.

He smiled against my stomach.

"Take my underwear off!"

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Demands? Do I hear demands?"

"Please," I begged.

"That's better," he smiled, and nuzzled the flare of one hip. "Do I take it you don't like it when I do this?"

He pulled my underwear tight against my flesh, his finger stroking out a quick tempo that had me mindless in seconds.

I whimpered. It was all I could do, I couldn't form words—words were too much to expect when my body was being pleasured beyond any pleasure it had known.

"Baby, all you have to do is tell me what you want," he crooned, his eyes hot and wicked and full of the terrible, terrible things he wanted to do to me.

I prayed he had time to get to every last one.

"Please," I sobbed, my body bucking in time to his fingers. "Just you. I want to feel just you."

He ended one torment by pulling my underwear off, but started another when he spread my legs and went wild with the bottle of cherry.

"Dear God in heaven," I cried at the first stroke of his tongue against my heated flesh. "Raphael! Bob! Please!"

"Anything for you, baby," he said, settling my thighs on his shoulders and preparing to send me flying. His mouth sent me into a maelstrom of sensations: fire, silk, pleasure, love, desire, need… they were all tangled up together as he drove me higher and higher until at last I went up in a bonfire of ecstasy. He caught my shout of exultation in his mouth as he plunged into me, so deep it was impossible to tell where he ended and I started. He pulled my hips against him as he entered me again and again with quick, hard thrusts, touching my womb, touching my soul, searing himself into my heart with every hot word of love he moaned into my neck, setting me alight with the pure joy of our combined rapture.

"Each time," I told him later as I stroked my fingers down the long, damp sweep of his back to the curve of his lovely behind; "each time I think it can't get any better, and then it does."

His head raised from the crook of my neck just enough to press a kiss to my collarbone.

"You set me quite a standard to follow," I complained. "I don't know how I'm going to match you, let alone exceed you. Everything you do to me is wonderful. Do you have any idea what sort of stress that puts on me to strive for perfection? What if I fail? What if I can't ever match you?"

"You're forgetting an important fact." He pushed himself up so he could grin before swooping down to capture my lips in his. "Practice makes perfect. We'll just have to let you practice until you're perfect."

I thought about that for the scant second before I gave myself up to the hot lure of his mouth. "Works for me."

"Where's your gun?" I asked, stepping out of the claustrophobic shower so tiny I wondered how Raphael fit into it.

He was dressed, sitting on the bed pulling his boots on, having washed off all our cherry fun. He looked up as I toweled myself dry and reached for my clothes.

"My gun?"

"Yeah. You know, the one you pulled on us when we did our breaking and entering the other day. The big one."

"Why do you want to know?"

I unzipped my dress, stepped into it, and turned so he could zip me up. "Idle curiosity. I thought maybe since you were in charge of security you'd be wearing it, but you haven't, and it's not under your pillow, so I was just wondering what you did with it."

His hands were warm on my back as he pulled the zipper up; then he turned me around and looked at me for a minute with those amber eyes that could melt my knees. With a sigh, he bent down and reached under his bed, pulling out a small black metal box.

"Oh, it's in there?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

He pushed the box back under the bed, then grabbed my hips and pulled me onto his lap. "Joy, about what you said earlier—"

"Oh, my apology? Yeah, I know I still owe it to you."

"No, about—"

I put my hand across his mouth. "Let me do this with style, will you? I really am sorry for what I said, Raphael. You're entitled to your privacy, and if you don't feel like you can trust me with something in your past, that's fine. It hurts me, but I'll live. I just want you to know that, despite the pain I feel because I know I'm not as important to you as you are to me, I will still be here for you. I love you, and that means I'm stuck with you no matter how badly you treat me."

I pulled my hand from his mouth and smiled at him, pleased I had gotten my groveling out of the way.

There was a decidedly disgruntled look on his handsome face. "That was an apology?"

"Sure was."

"Ah. Perhaps it is the latest rage in apologies—one that backhands the person you're apologizing to."

I nudged him on the shoulder. "Stop being so argumentative. You're supposed to accept it and tell me you love me and worship me and you'll never, ever keep anything from me again."