“Not really,” Jimmy said.
I gave his thigh a final lick—the wound had already healed—then straddled him, allowing his erection to slide exactly where I needed it to. “Tell me more of what you’ll do if I release you.”
His lips curved, though the smile never reached his eyes. “Grab those hips, pull you down, push myself up so deep you’ll remember me for days.”
“Mmm, and then?”
“Sink my fangs into your breast, drink from you as you come. The usual.”
“Yesss.” I took him in, rode him beneath the moon; he lasted a long, long time.
The chains rattled. “Let me go.”
I was so close to an orgasm, I listened, sliding my palms down his legs, up his arms, snapping his restraints into pieces. Then I waited, breathless, for him to touch me. And he did.
His hands at my hips, he pulled me close; then he arched and filled me up. He rose from the sand, his lips took my breast as promised, and he suckled, the rasp of his teeth almost, but not quite, enough to send me over.
He put his hands around my throat, squeezed just a little. They were rough. I liked how they made me feel. Breathless, on the edge of life and death, blood in the air, on the ground, on me. It didn’t get much better than this.
“Mmm.” I let my head fall back, my eyes slide closed. “Harder.”
He wouldn’t kill me. I wasn’t sure anyone could.
“No problem,” Jimmy muttered, and in his voice I heard something disturbing.
My eyes snapped open just as the catch of my jeweled collar snapped closed. I let out one furious shriek at the moon, and then I was me again.
As always, once the vampire was back in the box, I cringed at what I’d said and done and been. My breath caught, a sound very like a sob, except I didn’t cry, had learned long ago that crying did no one any good.
Jimmy and I were still wrapped together; he was still deep inside me. He was hard; I was wet. Despite the change in my mind and my heart, my body still trembled on the edge of orgasm, and so did his.
His hands slid from the collar to my shoulders, clenching for an instant. I thought he meant to push me away. I didn’t blame him. What I’d done to him, what I’d forced him to do to me . . .
I tensed, prepared to move before he made me. I tried to see his eyes, but he pulled me close, buried his face against my breasts.
“Jimmy—”
“Don’t talk.” He traced his hands from my shoulders to my hips and cupped them. “Just . . . don’t.”
I swallowed, tasting things I didn’t want to think about. But an instant later I forgot everything else as his body moved against mine.
We’d always had this. No matter how much time passed, when we came together we couldn’t help but touch each other, and when we touched . . . sex happened.
I rocked against him, his hands showed me the rhythm, his breath against my skin, my cheek against his hair; only a few slick movements and I came. As I clenched around him, he did too, shuddering in my arms as the silence twirled around us like mist.
When it was over, I lifted my head; he lifted his. We disentangled ourselves. Our eyes did not meet. Would it be like this between us forever from now on?
Our clothes were nearby—a little torn, a lot bloody. We’d left the car on the road maybe a quarter of a mile east. In the trunk we kept clean jeans and shirts, a jug of water, some towels.
We’d done this before; we knew what would happen. If we lived, we’d look like the lone survivors of a mass murder. We’d need to clean up before we could find a hotel and then . . . clean up some more.
Jimmy snatched our things, and I followed him to the car. He still wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Are you going to be like this forever?” I asked.
Jimmy dug the key out of his pants, hit the button for the trunk, tossed everything in. “Forever? Doubtful.”
“A week, a month, a year?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Nice job, by the way.”
He frowned, but he didn’t glance up. “Glad you enjoyed it.”
“I meant pretending to be into it, then snapping the collar on.”
“Someone had to.”
And that someone was usually him.
In the past we’d always had love, shared memories, Jimmy and me against the world. Now, I wasn’t so sure what we had and it bothered me.
“You hurt me too,” I murmured.
A few months ago, Jimmy had been possessed by his demon of a vampire father. Jimmy had kept me as a sex slave, drunk from me until I nearly died, until I wanted to.
“You think I don’t remember?” Jimmy’s fingers clenched on the open trunk of the car. “You think I don’t hate myself still? But you of all people should know what it’s like to be forced to do things you don’t want to. To have your body betray you while your mind screams, ‘No.’ ”
I did know. I also knew I’d had no choice.