I looked down to see his other hand resting on my hip. My legs had scissored open while I slept and he'd pushed a leg between them. The sight of his face and our entwined bare legs set my pulse throbbing.
"Morning?" I asked.
"The middle of the night. Now shhh. I'm busy."
He swept my left arm over my head, torquing my torso, lifting my breasts, almost pushing me onto my back on the pillows, but not quite.
The slight frisson of panic I felt at the position was ... fleeting.
"Busy?" I asked, looking down as he caressed me.
I'd finally got past considering my white skin as drained, lifeless, helpless vampire bait. Ric loved seeing it on his so-sleazy but right black satin sheets. I loved seeing his darker hands in stark relief on my pale skin, so visible wherever they roamed.
Him not still "only" a man after his near-death experience, as Snow, and now Sansouci, had warned me? Forget it.
"You're ravishing me again?" I asked.
"What else?" His hand stroked my inner thigh. "Slick."
"Your fault."
"Then I should pay for it."
His hand moved on, disappeared. I gasped with frustration, breathing hard now while his dark eyes watched my every breath. All black pupil, his eyes, with only a wire-thin band of silver around the left one. The irises of his eyes had always been so deeply brown I never could tell when his black pupils swelled with arousal. Now, the silver was a dead giveaway.
I gave away a little mew-purr of satisfaction myself.
But I wasn't the stage director here. Ric was watching more than my face. I felt a featherweight touch over my chest and breasts, then a circling at their center. Repeated.
Ready. So ready. My hips swayed. "I'm ready."
"I'm not."
Was he kidding? My navel flamed as though freshly pierced when the dowsing rod between his hips brushed my belly.
His eyes were downcast, his fingers circling as I arched my back.
"What are you doing, hombre?" I prodded him. "I'm going crazy. Loco."
His fingers moved to my mouth, tracing my lips, sliding over their sensitive inner slick. I tried to consume his fingertips, but one stiff forefinger pressed down on them, urged silence, stillness.
The room echoed with the sound of a panting trapped wild animal. Me.
He was being so damn slow the wanting had boiled down to a painfully tight, aching ring at the fork of my body.
Ric finally extended his bracing elbow and ran his free hand into the hair at my temple, bringing my face into the light as his finger stroked my lips again. Something deep crimson, thick and shiny coated his forefinger tip. It looked like blood.
"Ric?"
He read my suspicion and let me taste the fingertip.
I licked my lips. "Sweet."
"Very sweet," his voice corrected.
"Fruity. Ric, what the hell - ?"
"Smooth. Slick. Sweet."
"What is it?"
"The label's so tiny it's hard to read in the semidark, but I'd say it was our old friend Midnight Cherry Shimmer."
"Midnight. That it is. Cherry. You got mine weeks ago, bloodless as it was. Shimmer? No moonlight here. Lip gloss? You've been ... into my purse?"
"You don't want me delving in your purse for interesting things?"
"Uh."
His hand was back on my inner thigh. So close to that taut, throbbing hot spot ... my thoughts sounded like they belonged in a book with half-naked men on the cover. Nothing wrong with that, but I craved a less cliched vocabulary to express this wild, maddening overdose of desire. All I could get out of my throat was ...
"Finish it!" I would not add "for God's sake." I didn't want any deities peeking in on this action.
He laughed. Fondly. "Not even halfway there, Delilah. You do seem to be addicted to that naughty Lip Venom."
"Lip Venom? That tingle? There? You put Lip Venom on - ?"
"I put it on your lips, amor. And on your lips." His hand caressed my thigh, the thumb stroking deliciously near the source of my budding agony (the wait) and ecstasy (the forthcoming climax), but not nearly close enough.
"And my navel," I guessed.
"Always so fast with a deduction, but a little slow tonight."
"I am not slow tonight. I don't need more foreplay. I want ... closure."
The answer to my demands was his lips sliding over mine, inside, outside, but nothing yet in my lady's chamber. I was so glad I gagged Irma during these sessions. Just my own voice in my head was aggravation enough.
He kissed me from here to eternity. His face and mouth focused every erotic thought and feeling on