His arms dropped to his sides and he slid down on the bed and rolled onto his stomach. And then he was gone.
“Vincent?” Lana called, just to be sure. But there was no response.
She tiptoed over to the bed, then wondered why the hell she was tiptoeing. She stood there, admiring the physical perfection of Vincent’s back—the muscles and tendons and the ripple of his spine, the upper curve of his tight butt. They were right out of an anatomy textbook. Feeling like a perv for staring, Lana quickly pulled the sheet up to his waist, but no farther. It was going to get even hotter before the day was over. She resisted the strong urge to drop a good-night kiss on his shoulder, and turned away, going over to her duffel and stripping down to her skin.
When she finally stepped into the shower, she discovered that, as in most of the other places they’d stayed, the water pressure was shit. But the water was hot and plentiful, so she took her time, washing away the sweat of a day spent hiking up and down hills, and hanging around in that horrible concrete box of a prison. She even took the time to shampoo and condition her long hair.
By the time she opened the bathroom door and peeked out to be sure Vincent hadn’t moved, she felt a thousand times better. Walking naked to her duffel, she considered her options. If she was sensible, she’d get fully dressed and sleep on top of the covers as she’d done at Marisol’s. But it was so very hot in this room, and Vincent wouldn’t know the difference as long as she got up and dressed before he woke for the night. She could set the alarm on her cell phone—which was fully charged since she and Vincent had taken turns charging their phones in the SUV on the drive here—to wake her well before sunset. And she had brought along a pair of silky pajama shorts and a tank top to sleep in, never thinking that she might be sharing a bed with anyone.
Still trying to convince herself, she went back into the bathroom and combed out her long hair, taking the time to dry it thoroughly and probably doubling the motel’s monthly electric bill in the process. And, as it turned out, it was that which decided her. By the time her hair was dry, it was like a warm blanket against her back. And, combined with the stifling air in the room, there was no way she was going to get fully dressed, not if she wanted to sleep. And she really needed to sleep.
So, after verifying the precise time of sunset on the schedule she’d downloaded to her phone, she set the alarm, pulled on her cool shorts and tank top, and slipped under the surprisingly clean-smelling sheets.
She exhaled a long, relieved breath when her head hit the pillow, and, before she could draw the next one, she was asleep.
Chapter Twelve
VINCENT WOKE TO the sound of Lana’s even breathing as she slept next to him. He opened his eyes. She was on her side, her back to him, so close that the firm swell of her butt would press against his thigh if she breathed too deeply, so close that if he moved his head the tiniest bit, he could bury his face in the clean scent of all her beautiful hair. He shifted carefully onto his side, and her hair caressed his skin like warm silk. He raised himself onto one elbow and froze at the sight of a bare shoulder, at the gleam of her skin in the low light from the cable box’s LED. Pinching the sheet between two fingers, he tugged it slowly downward and sucked in a long breath. This wasn’t her usual armor of T-shirt and jeans. She was wearing a pair of tiny, blue satin shorts, cut high enough to bare her entire shapely thigh. And with it, a stretchy tank top that outlined the swell of her round breasts, her nipples twin peaks of enticing color beneath the thin white fabric.
Vincent ate her up with his eyes as the copper glow of his hunger touched the sheen of her skin. Was he made of stone that she expected him to resist this? She wasn’t even pretending to put distance between them. At Marisol’s, she’d slept fully dressed and on top of the covers, and that had been a huge bed. This bed was barely big enough for the two of them, and yet she’d chosen to wear next to nothing and press the tempting curve of her ass right up against his side.
A flash of light caught his attention and he moved with vampire swiftness. In the blink of an eye he’d identified the source, reached across her, and disabled the sound on her cell phone before it could ring.
He looked down at the phone and smiled. So that was it. She’d set an alarm for what some data source had told her was sunset, thinking to be up and dressed before he woke. He’d told her he could remain awake past the official sunrise. She’d obviously failed to draw the corollary between sunrise and sunset and realize he would wake sooner also.
His smile broadened as he dropped the phone onto his side of the bed then lowered his head to draw in her sweet, warm scent. She was unusual, his Lana. A woman who was smart and courageous enough to sneak into the compound of a drug lord in order to rescue a vampire she barely knew, and generous enough to feed that vampire her own blood, even though she’d probably never even considered doing such a thing before. A bounty hunter by profession, she was armed to the teeth and accustomed to taking down fugitives, sometimes dangerous and much larger than she was, in the course of her business. But for all that, Lana was all woman, with satiny, sweet-smelling skin, and a whole lot of warm, silky hair that he wanted to wrap around his fist and hold on to as he pounded deep into the wet heat between her thighs.
He dipped his nose into the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply. He could smell the delicate bouquet of her blood, could hear it rushing through the veins beneath her skin. He barely touched his lips to the swell of her jugular, hearing the change in her breathing and knowing she would soon wake and slip away from him. He brushed her hair back with his cheek and had just begun to put some space between them when she gave a soft moan that shot straight to his dick. He held his breath as she lifted her hand and reached over her shoulder to cup the back of his head, caressing him, urging him to come closer. Vincent bit back a growl of possession. His tongue slipped between his teeth to taste the sweet saltiness of her neck, a taste he remembered from the previous night when he’d awakened in the human prison, a taste that had his fangs emerging hungrily, that hardened his cock even further until the tip was pushing into her silk-clad hip.
“Vincent,” she whispered and rolled over to meet him, lifting her face to his kiss, her lips soft and full, her tongue hesitant as it slid into his mouth, scraping the edges of his fangs.
Vincent did growl then, soft and low, as he deepened their kiss, sucking her tongue into his mouth, tangling it with his own as he caressed her lips, moving slowly, luxuriously. Vincent loved to kiss a woman, love the glide of their soft lips against his, the taste of their mouths. There was little better than that first touch of a woman’s mouth, the first kiss that told him so much about her. Was she a hesitant lover, was she passionate, insecure, confident?
Lana Arnold was both. A woman of deep passion who was afraid to give too much, afraid to surrender control. But then, he’d known that before he’d ever touched her. The kiss was just a delicious dot on the exclamation point of what he already knew about her.
And he wanted more.
He wrapped the fingers of one hand around her hip and pulled her into the curve of his body, letting her feel the hard length of his arousal, covering her with his much greater weight.
“Vincent,” she whispered again, her body undulating against him, her fingers twisting in his hair.
And then her eyes flashed open and she froze.
Fuck. Vincent realized in a rush that she’d been asleep. Dreaming of him, maybe—probably—but definitely more than half asleep. And she wasn’t happy to wake up in his arms.
“Vincent?” she said in a very different tone of voice, her cheeks flushing hot with embarrassment in the instant before her hand dropped away and she rolled out of bed.
“What was . . .” she started to ask, then, belatedly, seeming to remember what she was wearing, rushed over to the cheap dresser and bent over her duffel to dig out some clothes. “I didn’t mean, I mean . . . I was asleep . . . dreaming. Not of you, but . . .”
Vincent relaxed against the pillows and admired the view as the tiny, satin shorts pulled up to reveal the swell of one firm cheek. He drew in the fragrance of her arousal. Yeah, sure, he’d rather have been buried in her pussy right about now, but the view was nice, and it gave him great pleasure just to know that Lana Arnold wanted him badly enough that she was dreaming about him. Which meant he’d have her before long.
Lana clutched her clothes to her chest and escaped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Vincent took her cell phone and placed it back on the bedside table where she’d put it, so she wouldn’t suspect anything. Then he lay back and stroked himself off, listening to Lana in the bathroom and imagining slipping up behind her and pulling those pretty, little shorts aside, sliding his cock into her wet and ready pussy, then fucking her until she screamed.
He came with a groan, and a smile on his face.
“I’M SORRY ABOUT . . . before. I was still asleep,” Lana said, pretending to be engrossed in packing her clothes. She was too mortified to look Vincent in the face. It would have been easier if she could have claimed that he’d taken advantage of her, that she hadn’t wanted him. But she knew it wasn’t true. She’d been dreaming about him, about exactly what they’d been doing when she finally woke up. Dreaming of rolling over to find Vincent’s powerful body crushing her into the mattress, his knee between her legs, spreading her thighs as he made love to her with his mouth. In her dream, she’d known that was just the beginning of what he’d do to her, and she’d welcomed that knowledge.