Undeniable (18 page)

When he raised his mouth from hers, she let out a whimper,
then reached up to grasp his head and drag it back down.

“You have to get out now, Diana,” he said between clenched
teeth. “Now.”

Her eyes flew open. “Sebastian—”

“Please, Diana. I’ve already brought us further than I
should.”

“But—”

“Diana, go!”

Diana turned and stared into his eyes. Rising up on her
toes, she kissed him and slid her tongue between his lips.

Sebastian pulled away. “Out!”

After wrapping herself in a robe, Diana went to her father’s
room and retrieved his robe. She returned to the bathroom and, resisting the
urge to peek, hung it on the hook behind the door. Grabbing Sebastian’s
clothes, she turned to leave.

A long, deep groan stopped her. She chastised herself as she
glanced through the gap in the shower curtain. When she saw his hands clutch
the knob and spin it as far toward cold as it would go, she grinned. Leaning
forward, she drank in the sight of his muscles flexing over his broad back and
firm buttocks. His hair clung to his broad shoulders. Water raced down his
spine, his thighs, calves. She clenched her hands in the clothes to stop
herself from reaching out and sliding her fingers down his slick skin.

Standing there with his hands flattened against the mirrored
wall, he looked too perfect, too beautiful to be real. She reached out for one
touch, just to prove that this night had not been just another dream.

“You’re not helping, Diana.” Sebastian tipped his face up
and arched his back.

Diana flicked a glance at the mirror in front of him and
felt the floor drop beneath her feet. Telling herself she’d seen more than was
there, that the water swirling down the mirror had distorted his size, she
swallowed the lump in her throat and swiftly left him alone.

When he entered the living room a short time later, she had
two steaming mugs of coffee ready and the image of his cock imprinted
permanently onto her mind.

Sebastian joined her on the couch. After taking a mug, he
draped his arm around her shoulders and drew her against his chest. “What you
do to me, woman, could wipe out an army.”

Diana smiled. “Cold shower help?”

He kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t think it would.”

Snuggling closer, Diana brought her lips to his Adams apple.

Sleep.

* * * * *

The doorbell rang. Thinking her father had returned, Diana
sat up and gasped when she realized that somehow she had ended up in her bed.
Alone.

Sunlight stabbed at her eyes but didn’t blind her to the
dozens of roses filling her bedroom. Vases of every shape and style covered her
dresser, desk and shelves. More were scattered over her floor.

A card propped against a vase on her nightstand caught her
eye. She smiled as she read it aloud. “Tonight.”

The doorbell rang again. Grabbing her robe, Diana ran to her
window. The twins, Mary and Cindy, stood on the path leading to her porch.
Cindy dabbed her eyes with a tissue as Mary glanced up. When Diana waved,
Mary’s mouth dropped. Instead of waving back, she grabbed Cindy’s arm and
practically dragged her to their car. Diana frowned as she watched the car
screech away from the curb and speed down the street. “What the hell was that
all about?”

All concern about Mary and Cindy’s behavior fled when she
turned around.

“No,” she whispered.

She moved from vase to vase, shaking her head in amazement.

Sebastian had removed every thorn.

Chapter Seven

When Sebastian’s teeth clamped down on one of her pebbled
nipples, Diana whimpered from the sudden stab of pain even as she thrust her
breast up and silently begged for more. He complied, biting down, piercing the
sensitive skin. Suddenly, a painfully bright light obliterated her view of the
top of his head. She blinked until her eyes adjusted, then glanced down. “No!”

A loop from the lace edging of her sheet, not Sebastian’s
teeth, held her nipple captive. After slipping off the lace, she squinted into
the glaring rays streaming in through her window and cursed the sunlight for
intruding upon her dream.

Glancing at her clock, she groaned. She’d climbed back into
bed only an hour ago. She rolled over, covered her face with her pillow and
tried to slip back into her dream, but the heat of the sun beat on her back,
snatching her away from Sebastian’s waiting arms.

A gentle breeze flowed through the open window and cooled
the sweat covering her body. She wrapped the sheet around her and ran to close
the window. Her hand hovered on the window sash. Birds chirped excitedly,
heralding the dawn.

A light rain must have fallen sometime during the night. The
scent of dew-covered grass and damp soil mingled with the aroma of coffee and
bacon coming from her neighbor’s kitchen. But the roses filling her room cast
the sweetest scent. Lifting one, she ran her fingers up the smooth stem.

Glancing down at the front lawn, she frowned. Only Mary and
Cindy’s odd behavior marred the beauty the morning.

Their early, obscenely early, visit would have been enough
to shock her, but what really stumped her was the way Mary had grabbed Cindy
and pulled her away. Just before she’d dozed off and entered her delicious
dream, Diana had figured the visit had something to do with Cindy crying, but
that didn’t explain the twins’ obvious shock at seeing her wave from her
bedroom window and it didn’t explain why they would flee as if the devil
himself had appeared. Or why neither answered their cell phone when she tried
to call a few minutes later.

Shrugging, Diana slid another rose from one of the vases on
her floor and held the crimson blooms up to her lips as she crossed the room.
The petals felt like satin, like Sebastian’s lips had felt each time they had
brushed over hers last night.

Sitting on the window seat facing her backyard, she stared
at the pond and pictured her and Sebastian swimming in the sun-dappled water,
lying naked on the grass, making love beneath the heat of the sun. Her skin
tingled. The reflection she’d seen in the shower flashed before her eyes.
Sebastian standing behind her, his mouth on her neck.

Her stomach lurched. She bit her lip and shook her head. She
saw
his reflection. Even if she hadn’t, she’d lived twenty-five years
before discovering a vampire. It would probably be twenty-five more before she
encountered another. Her gaze swept over the blood-red roses filling her room.

Every thorn. Hundreds, maybe thousands.

It would take hours.

The stems clenched in her hand bent.

“Stop it, Diana Nostrum,” she muttered, staring down at the
ruined flowers. “If your soul mate was a vampire, Nana would have told you.”

Her hand trembled. While Nana had never used the word
vampire, she had implied that Diana’s soul mate would not be accepted as Frank
Nostrum’s son-in-law. Cradling the bloom, Diana whispered, “Dad hated all my
boyfriends.”

Other long forgotten conversations with her grandmother came
back to her. One where her grandmother had warned her that it wouldn’t be easy
to accept her soul mate for what he was, to accept the life he led.

“No. Sebastian is a man. Nothing but a man!” She stood and,
letting the sheet fall from her body, strode to her closet to get dressed for
work.

By midmorning Diana clutched her pounding head and prayed
the Advil would start working soon. It amazed her that her lack of sleep had
left her so sensitive to the blinding sunlight. Donning sunglasses stopped her
eyes from tearing, but did little to alleviate her headache. By noon, her
strange hunger returned with a vengeance. Two hamburgers and a double order of
fries sated it for all of one hour.

Realizing she’d never get rid of whatever bug she’d caught
without sleep, she talked Stan into giving up his office for a couple of hours
and took a quick nap. Still, by late afternoon, she could barely find the
energy to walk.

The side of her neck pulsed and fluttered, nearly driving
her mad. She scratched at it, welcomed one of Stan’s painfully rough massages,
gently rubbed her knuckles over it like Sebastian had and scratched it some
more, but nothing helped. By the time she clocked out, she had blood crusted
beneath her fingernails. The twitch remained.

As she crossed the parking lot, her cell phone rang. Seeing
Nana Lina’s number in the display, she flipped the cell phone open and sat on
the hood of her car.

“I had another vision,” Nana Lina said before Diana could
even say “Hi”.

“About me?” Diana touched her neck. She could feel her vein
pulsing beneath her fingers.

“It was so strange, Diana. You were Medusa…you had snakes in
your hair.”

“Snakes?”

“I’m not sure. It was all misty. And I kept seeing a loofa.”

Heat flared over Diana’s cheeks. Her heart skipped a beat.
Nana Lina’s ability to capture bits of the past never failed to amaze her. Or
embarrass her. “How odd.”

“And I saw your soul mate, Diana. You met him, didn’t you?”

“I think so.” Diana chewed on her lower lip. “We’re supposed
to see each other tonight. I…well…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Diana moved her cell phone to the other ear and
glanced around the parking lot of the ranch.

“Diana. You know I can always tell when something’s
troubling you.”

“Well,” she flopped back onto the hood and stared at the
purple swirls rising up into the sky as the sun set. “It’s not something you
normally talk about with your grandmother.”

“You can talk to me about anything, Diana. You know that.”
After a moment’s silence, she added, “Even sex.”

“Yeah, well I…” Recalling just how good Sebastian’s soapy hands
had felt as they slid over her skin, she nearly groaned. “God, Nana, I…I…”

“You’ve been waiting, and…?”

“And waiting, and waiting.” She rolled onto her stomach. The
hood, still hot from hours beneath the sun, warmed her nipples through her
shirt. Her neck pulsed. Her stomach growled. A group of ranch hands passed on
their way to the only other cars in the lot. Diana waved, then cupped the phone
to her mouth and whispered, “Okay, okay. I want to, I really do. So much it
hurts. But what if he’s not the one? What if I’m wrong and I…you know…and it
turns out that I’m wrong?”

“Wait, are you saying you didn’t yet?”

“I just met him.” She thought she heard her grandmother
mumble something about losing her touch and frowned. “You can’t know
everything, Nana Lina. Nana?” After what seemed like a very long stretch of
silence, Diana glanced at her phone to make sure she hadn’t lost the
connection. “Nana Lina?”

“Shh.”

Rising up to her knees, Diana held her breath. She could
almost see her grandmother closing her eyes, inwardly reaching for her sixth
sense.

“All in black,” her grandmother asked in a hushed voice.

“Not last night. But the night before, when I met him, he
had on black.”

“I see a tattoo.”

Diana slumped down onto her heels. “Not that I saw. Look,
maybe your vision is off…”

“Some bird. A raven, I think. Did you see him naked?”

Pleasure swirled in her pussy as she once again saw the
shower spray Sebastian’s back, saw the water pour over his firm buttocks. “No,
I just saw his back.”

“Well he has one. You just haven’t seen that part of him
yet. Did he kiss you?”

“Oh, yeah.” She blushed at how husky her voice sounded.

“You’ve been kissed by quite a few men over the years,
honey.”

“What’s that got to do with it,” she asked, oddly annoyed
that they should be compared to the unbelievable kisses she’d shared with
Sebastian.

“Well was his better, special?”

“Special? I’d say his blew the others away.”

“And now, after all these years, you’re considering giving
this man your virginity after—what?—one date,” her grandmother asked, her voice
rising with anger.

Diana moaned. “God, Nana, I don’t know what’s come over me.
If he hadn’t kicked me out of the— Well I would have last night.”

“Look, you don’t need a psychic, Diana. You’ve always said
you had no problem stopping men when they went too far. But with this man, it
only takes a few kisses and you’re out of control. He’s your soul mate.”

She leapt off the hood and started pacing around her car.
“Well it was more than—” She suddenly noticed the sun had finished its descent.
A knot formed in her stomach. Darkness enveloped the parking lot. She glanced
up at the lone light pole. “Come on. Light, dammit.”

A second later the sensor kicked in and the light buzzed to
life. “Nana?”

“Are you alone?”

The sudden question brought her pacing to a halt and raised
the hairs on the back of her neck. “Yes, why.”

“Where are you?”

“At the ranch. Next to my car.” Her voice boomed in her ears
although she barely spoke above a whisper.

Diana glanced around the empty parking lot. The shadows
between the lofty pines abutting it encroached on the scant circle of light
from the weak bulb. “I have to go.”

“Listen, Diana. I’m going to tell you one more thing, then I
want you in your car and out of there.”

“What? What?” Slowly turning, she searched the dark depths
for some sign of danger. Someone was out there. She felt eyes watching her
every move. Her lungs seized.

“When the time comes, remember everything I ever told you
about your soul mate. Everything, Diana. And then, if what I told you makes
sense with what you see, try to hold on to the fact that he
is
your soul
mate. Try to accept—”

A sudden gust of wind kicked up sand and pebbles from the
makeshift lot and hurled them in her direction. Diana ran around the car, one
arm flung over her face. The mini-sandstorm seemed to follow her, pelting her
back as she flung open the door. “Accept what?”