Sucker Bet (9 page)

Wait a minute. Even though the grip of pleasure, Nate wondered what that statement implied. "Bigger than you expected
before
or
after
I was actually inside you?"

Her fingers stilled. She gave a soft laugh. "Sorry. I meant before. You know, in general. Bigger."

Alright then. "I've never made a study out of it, but I'm glad I don't fall short in your eyes." And when was she going to start moving again? Nate thrust his erection into her cupped hand, trying to encourage her to stroke again.

She took the hint. "No, you definitely don't fall short."

Then she leaned forward and wrapped her lips around him. Nate closed his eyes and groaned. Wow. That was a beautiful thing.

Gwenna was shocking herself, but only in the best of ways. She couldn't believe she'd just taken it upon herself to pull Nate's erection into her mouth. But when she had turned on her side, it had been right there, and she had been curious. His whole body was muscular and firm, with hair in various places, lending to his overall rugged and masculine appearance, and his erection had added to the singularly attractive picture. Everything about him shouted male, and she had wanted to touch him, explore the way his flesh felt.

She also had the urge to taste his blood, to sink her fangs into his erection and suck on that pulsing hot liquid, but she knew the only way to do that was to put Nate under a glamour, and that wouldn't be right. He should have the option to say yes or no to her nipping some blood off him, which would require explaining that yes, in fact, she truly was a vampire. Which wasn't a conversation for the moment. They had more important things to take care of right now.

Like the fact that she was desperately aroused yet again, and amazed at that feeling. But as she slid her mouth up and down over Nate's flesh, she had a sexual epiphany. This actually felt astonishingly good. Tasted delicious. Felt powerful. Like she held the key to his control in her movements. A shift here, a lick there, and she could change the tenor of his pleasure, increase his moans, feel his body tense in ecstasy. It was exciting to register that kind of equality, that kind of give-and-take between them, that it wasn't him dominating the experience. The way she was used to with Roberto.

This was completely different, this was mutual pleasure, and she wanted to explore it fully. She took Nate into her mouth over and over until he was slick with her saliva, his hands gripping the back of her head, his heart pounding loudly in her vampire ears, and her own body was hot and tight and aching with desire. Finally, she broke off, breathing hard, her lips wet and swollen.

"Holy crap, Gwenna." Nate sucked in some air and shuddered. "You're killing me."

"But in a good way, right?" she asked, lying on her back, and shrugging out of her jeans, making sure she did it slowly, human style, as opposed to with vampire speed, which she would prefer. Yet whisking her pants off before he could blink was sure to raise questions at a time when she didn't feel like talking.

"Absolutely in a good way." Nate bent over, dug around in his pants.

"What are you doing?" Back on her side, she leaned over and studied his bum. Very nice. Tight.

"I'm looking for a condom."

Knowing there was no way to convey to him that she could neither get pregnant, nor give or receive a sexually transmitted disease, she kept quiet.

"Shit! I only had one." Nate's face was scrunched up in frustration, his voice angry.

Gwenna felt the need to soothe him, despite her own very real disappointment. She had truly wanted him inside her a second time. But she was willing to get over it and focus on oral sex. That's how big about it she was prepared to be. She reached out and traced her fingers over his abdomen. "No matter. We'll still find things to do, I'm sure." Dropping her wrist, she enclosed his erection with her palm. "Now just relax. You've gotten tense."

His teeth were gritted. "That makes me tense. In a good way. I could run downstairs and get some condoms… there's got to be a store open somewhere in this place. It's a casino. You can buy everything twenty-four/seven in a casino."

But Gwenna was feeling too in the moment to bother. She just shook her head. "Don't worry about it. Come onto this bed with me, Nate." Letting go of him, she kicked the blanket off her body with her feet.

It was a moment of pure and total liberation, watching his face go dark with desire, hearing his breath hitch. No man but her ex had ever seen her completely unclothed like that, and she wanted to revel in the feeling, savor the sensation that Nate found her attractive.

"You're amazingly beautiful," he said, eyes sweeping from head to toe and back again. "I'm a cop, and not good at saying pretty things, but it's true. You're just… perfect."

Her instinct was to point out all the things that were wrong with her, categorize all the flaws, both physical and emotional. To tell him that she was too pale, too short, too sickly looking, and that she wasn't perfect because she had wasted nine hundred years of life doing virtually nothing of importance. But the point was to stop recriminating, to live in the moment, to accept each day as is and enjoy it, so she held on to that, smiled, believing Nate. "Thank you."

"Scoot over."

She expected him to climb on the bed with her, snuggle up alongside her, kiss her. But of course that would essentially be foreplay to penetration, and they couldn't do that. It was logical, the action he took, but she was still wholly unprepared for him to get on the bed on his side. In the opposite direction of her, legs by her face, so that his head was right down by her… "Oh!"

Embarrassed by both the action and her verbal reaction, Gwenna bit her lip as his tongue slid across her clitoris. She honestly had not been at all prepared for that. Nor had she anticipated his penis would be lingering in front of her face in a not so subtle invitation.

They were on their sides. They were head to feet, both ends, on a massage table. And he was a casual acquaintance, if you could even call it that. She should be astonished at herself. Absolutely and utterly ashamed.

Gwenna licked the head of his shaft with her tongue, tasting the sweet sticky fluid there. No, she wasn't feeling particularly guilty, regretful, or cautious. If she'd got this far, she was damn well going to experience all the night had to offer.

He made sounds of encouragement between his own ministrations. Gwenna was a little overwhelmed by the simultaneous sensations of him stroking between her thighs with his tongue while she took the length of him past her lips. It was delicious, heated, frantic. They quickly found a rhythm, him sliding inside her at the same time his cock went deep into her mouth, and Gwenna lost the ability to think rationally. Bloody hell, he was everywhere, filling every part of her, tripping off little pings of ecstasy all over her skin, her clitoris, her vaginal muscles. She could feel the tightness building, enjoying the echo between mouth and inner thighs. It was so good, it was almost too much, everything everywhere all at once, and she pulled back, knowing she was going to careen over the edge and lose control.

Nate's thighs were hard and muscular and she focused on them, reaching forward and giving in to the urge to nip at his warm flesh. Her fangs penetrated, tiny beads of his thick, rich blood dripping over her tongue. Nate jerked a little, his tongue pausing on her, but she squeezed his cock with her fingers, relaxing him back into motion, loving the intimacy of his flavor, his essence rolling back into her throat. It gave her a hint of his thoughts, too, a small mingling of his emotion with hers, the acute sensation of his pleasure blending and flowing over into her as she sucked, not drinking, just tasting. While his tongue stroked her, she broke contact with his thigh, licking her lips to take in the last lingering drops of his blood. At the moment she let him go, he plunged deep inside her and Gwenna gave in to her need and exploded.

It was an amazing feeling, that sensation of leaving her body entirely, of losing all muscular control and flipping around recklessly, wanting to back away from the acute pleasure and at the same time to sink more completely into it. He clamped on to her thigh to keep her from catapulting off the table as he stroked and tasted, and she wanted to scream with the delicious pleasure of it all.

This was what it was to feel alive.

And as her convulsions slowed down, she leaned over and took Nate back into her mouth to give him the same feeling. Gwenna could admit she wasn't the most skilled with this form of sex, especially not lying on her side on a massage table, but Nate seemed to appreciate what she was doing with tongue and lips, so she kept at it, indulging her own curiosity by wrapping her hand around him and sliding up and down as a follow-up to her mouth. He felt wonderful, hard and tight with strength, and when he tried to pull back, she held on, not wanting to let go.

Her eyes were closed, but she knew when he was about to come, felt the tenseness in his body, heard his strangled groan. Then he was there, and Gwenna held on, enjoying the thrill of knowing she'd pushed him to that point, feeling the power of the pleasure between them, appreciating the taste and feel of him.

After a solid sixty seconds of them both just lying on the bed panting, Gwenna's mind a blissful blank, her body undergoing happy little aftershocks, Nate stumbled off the table. By the time Gwenna could formulate the question to ask what he was doing, he had climbed back on, this time his head by hers, and pulled the blanket over them. There was no hesitation on his part, he just moved in right next to her, pulling her tight against him, his arm securely across her chest, stroking the side of her breast.

He kissed her hair, above her temple, which suddenly made her want to cry.

"It's good to be alive, isn't it?" he said.

Gwenna knew what he meant. Knew that he saw death on a regular basis, knew he had to struggle with the finite nature of people, the constant sense of loss. She suspected that he didn't understand how to deal with a personal loss, like that of his sister, when he was so used to emotionally distancing himself with homicide victims.

"Yes, it is." She wiggled backward, getting closer to him, wanting that warmth, wanting that feel of his naked flesh pressed against hers.

They lay in silence for a minute, Nate's mortal heart beating even and steady, his chest brushing hers as it rose and fell with his breathing.

"A few months ago, I had this guy use me as a hostage." Gwenna wasn't sure why she spoke, but it seemed like if anyone would understand what she had been feeling, it was Nate.

"What? Are you serious?" Nate gripped her a little tighter. "What happened?"

It was easy to remember that moment when Gregor, a Russian vampire, had used her as a bargaining chip with Roberto. What wasn't easy was admitting how it had made her feel. "I stood there when he grabbed me, and he put this knife to my throat… and I have to tell you, at that minute I wanted to die. I wanted to just let him take my life and take this pain and guilt and boredom and make me go away. And I am so very ashamed of that."

Gwenna wasn't sure what she expected or wanted Nate to say, maybe acknowledge she was a horrible person for having such thoughts, but he actually said, "I doubt that's how you really felt."

"Excuse me?" Gwenna tried to move out of his grip, but he held on tighter. How could he dismiss what she had just said? It was a deep confession and he had the utter nerve to say she didn't mean it? "I absolutely did feel that way."

"You don't want to die, Gwenna… if you did, you would be dead already. But he played into your guilt, your sadness, and for a minute, maybe, you thought it would be easier to just let it happen, let it all go, leave this world. But he didn't and you were glad, weren't you?"

She sighed. "Yes. I'm glad to be alive."

"You've been through a lot." It wasn't a question, but a statement, his lips brushing over the top of her head.

"No more than anyone else." That was where her shame came from. She had held on to her grief, her pain. "After it happened, I realized how very selfish and shortsighted I've been… I can't and shouldn't control the length of my life, but I can control what I do in the time that I'm here."

Nate gave her a small squeeze. "Amen to that, Gwenna."

Gwenna stared at the wall, reflecting how odd, yet how right, it felt to be there, to have taken an opportunity and seized it, how interesting and intriguing it was to talk to someone she hadn't known for five hundred years. How pleasant it was to let her sexuality back out to play after keeping it in check for three centuries.

She wanted to say something, to think of some way to say thank you to Nate without sounding like a complete idiot, but she suddenly realized something else.

Nate was asleep.

And her phone was ringing again.

Gwenna listened to the phone ring and wrestled with her conscience. It had to be Roberto. Which meant she wasn't obligated to answer it. But she should turn it to vibrate so it didn't disturb Nate.

Reluctantly leaving the warm bed, and the warmer man, Gwenna slid out from under the blanket and searched for her purse, which was somewhere on the floor. Feeling a little odd scrambling around in the nude, she grabbed on to her panties and wiggled back into them. Then she added her T-shirt for good measure.

Her phone stopped ringing, then started again. She found it and was about to switch it to vibrate when she saw on the screen that it was Alexis calling. Her sister-in-law didn't ring her all that often, so Gwenna found it odd. She answered, horrible visions of something tragic having happened to Brittany, the baby, or Ethan.

"Yes?" She kept her voice low, very conscious of Nate two feet away. But he was sleeping hard, not stirring at all.

"Okay, we have a girl crisis. Are you busy or can you come over?"

Alexis always cut right to the heart of things. "What crisis?"

"Kelsey is here, crying her eyes out, and babbling about her marriage being over… she's totally destroyed, her mascara is all bleeding down her face, and I don't know what the hell to do with her. You know I suck at comforting people. Cara's back in Ireland, Brit's in the hospital, so you're all I've got. I need you to come and say the right things."