Sable’s eyes narrowed as he unzipped his bio-suit. Her fangs descended as she hissed at him. “I’m grateful, but I’m not that grateful. You just cost me one hundred and fifty thousand credits, that’s payment enough.”
Her frame was stiff, her glare unwelcoming but the scent of her arousal permeated the air. Sweet and ripe like cherries, it was intoxicating. The hard-on he’d avoided before swelled with a vengeance, his cock hardening instantly and painfully.
“If you’d shown a little patience, Ione would have left City Hall eventually.”
“I can’t afford to have patience, Atkinson, when you’re hunting the same bounty as I am.”
Derek let his suit drop past his hips to pool on the deck. He watched with satisfaction as her eyes darkened at the sight of his rampant erection.
“Stay away,” she said in a choked voice.
“Come on now, baby. Be honest. Staying away is the last thing you want me to do.”
Sable backed away warily. “You may be thinking about your dick, but I’m thinking about my accounts. And right now they’re in need of a credit infusion.” She tried to race past him to the cargo bay door, but he’d anticipated the move and easily blocked her exit.
“Since you took Ione right out from under me, I need to capture Castle,” she snapped. “He’s worth almost as much. I don’t have time for this if I want to pay my bills.”
Derek reached out and slowly lowered the zipper of her suit, giving her the opportunity to wrench away, if that’s what she truly wanted. He growled his approval when she didn’t move and then shuddered as the lush valley of her cleavage was revealed to him.
“We’ll get our man, baby,” he assured her in a voice made husky with desire. “I have it on good authority that Castle will be at Deep Space 12 in two days. We’ll catch him then. In the meantime, we have some time to spend together.”
His fingertip drifted across the soft swell of her breast. “I know you feel it, too,” he breathed, “this need between us. We’ve got two days, we’re going in the same direction, why shouldn’t we have a little R&R and burn this thing out. I don’t know about you, but it’s starting to affect my job. I can’t think about work when I’m thinking about you.”
“My ship—”
“I’m towing it,” he said quickly, jumping on that telltale bit of capitulation.
“You planned this!” she accused.
“Now how could I know you’d break the law in Windemere?” he pointed out innocently. “Don’t blame me for taking advantage of an opportunity you presented me with.”
As he studied the creamy beauty of her exposed skin, his voice lowered further. “Can I help it if watching you work makes me hot?”
She swallowed hard, her blue eyes wide. “It does?”
“Hell, yes. All that power and stamina. You think fast and act faster. It turns me on.”
“I’ve known men who are threatened by my work.”
“You’ve known idiots.”
He stepped closer, suppressing a smile as she continued to hold her ground. Sable was staying put because she wanted to, not because he was making her. He’d tried in the past to use his sensual call on her, a vampire survival mechanism that helped them subdue prey so they could feed. He was much older than she was and therefore more powerful, but she was always able to throw off his calling with ease. He didn’t mind, it meant she was seduced by him and not the vampire within him.
He, in turn, was seduced by everything about her.
Sable was too much of novice in the ways of vampires to know how to use her calling, but she had it just the same. Swirling around her like a thick fog, she radiated sex and desire. As he stepped closer, he was pulled into her sensual spell, pulled into her until he could think of nothing else. Wanted nothing else.
His hands reached out and tangled in the long silk of her hair. Clenching his fists, Derek pulled her head back, exposing the ivory column of her throat. He could hear her blood flowing and could see it pulsing the large vein under the nearly translucent skin. He leaned over her and stroked it with his tongue in a slow, deliberate back-and-forth glide. Sable moaned softly, her pose almost one of supplication, if not for the predator’s fangs that betrayed her true nature.
It was her very nature that most appealed to him and in celebration of that, his mouth moved upward over her jaw. He licked her lips and then her fangs, growling when her tongue reached out and brushed against his.
With a quick tap on the cuffs they released and fell to the deck. He reached between the open flaps of her suit, slipping his hands over her shoulders and pushing the bio-suit down her arms. The touch of her skin burned his palms and he knew she would scorch him alive when he fucked her. The mere thought of it made sweat mist upon his skin.
“Tell me to stop now,” he groaned. “If that’s what you want.”
She bit her lower lip, her fangs causing tiny droplets of crimson to appear. The scent of her blood drove him to madness. The rest of her suit came off in shreds as his mouth lowered to hers.
Consumed by his frenzy, Sable gripped his shoulders and returned his kiss with equal passion. Her nipples, hard and peaked tight, stabbed into his chest. He pulled her closer until she spread her legs and rubbed the slick heat of her sex along the length of his cock. The warmth of her body, the sultry scent of her arousal, the sweetness of her blood, all combined to make restraint impossible. But he didn’t need restraint. This was Sable, a vampire with the heart of a warrior and a body to back it up. He didn’t have to coddle her. She wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to.