neck with the new knot of scar tissue resembling a miniature star gone nova.
"No," I said.
I couldn't miss how shallow, excited breaths lifted his bare chest up and down even as he kept his face and throat immobile for my view. The provocative contrast was playing crazy with my libido.
"No, amor," I coaxed. "This isn't a game anymore. That Sonoran desert bat bite left two tiny marks on your neck. I could play ferocious vampiress and leave you unchanged before. Now, real vampires have used that same spot as a spigot. They sucked your blood out. I can't 'pretend' to do that anymore."
"It was a vampire bat bite, Delilah, on the neck, a natural site for the tiny beast. I can't help that undead beasts favor the spot too, or what I feel. Your mouth has made the welts on my back into a road map of pleasure points. Think what your lips could do for the new scar here."
Help me, Irma! I couldn't plead that I didn't do oral sex. I couldn't deny that we all had idiosyncratic turn-ons and turn-offs. I'd overcome my distaste of early attacks from predatory half-vamps to feed Ric's harmless thirst for a bat bite rerun. He'd led me to overcome a lot of my hang-ups. How could I deny his one little long-standing kink?
"Por favor," he whispered. "I can beg ..."
I studied his beautiful, beloved features. Like I shouldn't be begging him to let me touch him, love him.
I launched the most passionate kiss of my being at the damned vampire scar, pouring love and tears on the wound, as I had before when I had healed, sensing the pleasure shivering through his entire body and mind and soul, breathless at the power I had to shake him ... and at his power to make me abandon myself and my fears.
IT WAS ONE of those paralyzing nightmares, where you know you need to move, change the scene, wake up ... and you can't.
Yes, I was reliving my old alien abduction scenario. Me pinned on my back to an examining table, or an autopsy table, like Lilith. Me in the glare of a sinister overhead light hovering like a pale manta ray. A trio of vampire nurses fencing me in along each side of the table.
Vampire nurses? Howard Hughes's various Vegas venues had finally crept into my old Wichita nightmares.
An alien figure still stood at the foot of the table, ready to inject me with ... some giant needle device. Yes, the alien was the black-and-white CinSim of Dr. Frankenstein, who wore far too much gel on his thick black hair.
And then he became the gold-glimmering black figure of Anubis, the Egyptian god of the underworld ...
Really, I had too many alien entities to worry about to stay frozen in this dream ... and so I awoke. I couldn't move for several seconds, my heart beating as if the captive-on-my-back abduction experience had been real.
And then I remembered that ... it had been. I'd actually lived through scenarios like this since hitting Vegas. I'd already experienced this in real life, surreal as Vegas was.
Was I finally outgrowing my childhood phobias by living through them?
Beside me, I noticed Ric thrashing on his black satin sheets. I softly stroked his upper arm. Where I feared to lie on my back, he'd made a habit of doing it to hide the whip scars of his childhood. Now he lay on his stomach, his exposed back and hips twitching with the phantom lashes of his deepest memories and nightmares.
"Ric," I whispered into his ear whenever his head thrashed my way. I ran my fingertips over the pale scars, each stroke quieting his shudders.
He awoke groggy and purring at last.
"You can't leave a man alone, Delilah," he murmured. "Magic Fingers. Put in a quarter."
I smiled, recognizing a reference to massage beds in cheap motels.
"Are we really going to stay in motels on our road trip?" I asked.
He turned over onto his side. Revealing his back had been a big achievement. Someday we'd make love in the missionary position, my own phobias no more too. Who'd believe a modern woman would want to be on the bottom. Oh, yes.
"God, I had a horrible nightmare, Del," he said, blinking as the memories flooded back.
"Tell me."
"Unlike you, I haven't dreamed like this in years. Mama Burnside pretty much reprogrammed me."
"I wish I'd had someone like her in the group homes of Wichita."
"We'll get back there and look them all up, paloma. And