the button popped off the shirt and fell to the floor, and the gentle pressure of her breasts strained against the opening. He gazed down at the hollow between the curves and forgot how to breathe.
“I—I did agree,” she whispered, and when he looked into her eyes, they were fever-bright.
“So you did,” he said, dropping the knife to the floor, and then he said nothing else, because his mouth was busy.
He pressed his lips to the swell of one breast and was rewarded by the way her body trembled beneath him. When she tightened the hand holding his shirt and then clutched his shoulder with her other hand, he gathered her into his arms.
“I don’t understand this,” she murmured when he finally, regretfully, raised his head, since he’d only bargained for one kiss per question. “How is my entire body on fire like this, just from a kiss? I don’t even particularly like sex.”
Bane smiled. “You don’t like sex? Your body is so responsive that you were clearly made for sex.”
She blushed again but then frowned. “Don’t…you don’t have to do that. The false flattery thing. I know it’s what men do when they want sex—”
“I give a compliment when it’s true and only then, believe me.” He traced the curve of her shoulder with one finger, delighting in her shiver. “Ask me another.”
“What?”
“Another question. Ask me another, so I can kiss you again.”
“Tell me about being a vampire. How does it work? Are you all magic? And you can disappear, like you did in the hospital. How did you do that? Did you wake up with magic powers? Will Hunter Evans be able to do all those things?” She paused to draw breath, and he held up a hand.
“I think that was more like five or six questions.” He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned forward to whisper into it. “So I’ll answer them one at a time.”
He ran his hands down her arms, watching her reaction. Barely suppressing a shout of triumph when her eyelids fluttered shut at his touch. “Yes, all vampires have magic, as far as I know. Or we are magic. Either way, the vampires that I know all gained certain powers when we Turned. None of them are exactly the same, either, and I don’t know how or why that is the case.”
He leaned forward again, closed his eyes, and inhaled. Reveled in her scent. Her warmth.
“But I—”
“No. My turn.” He put his mouth on the curve of her neck, just over her pulse, and touched his tongue to her skin. When her heart rate sped up, he found himself fighting to keep from plunging his teeth into her vein.
He yanked his head away from her neck, panting. Shocked at his loss of the control it had taken him three centuries to develop.
Then taken her three minutes to demolish.
He put his hands on the table on either side of her hips and touched his forehead to hers. “I don’t know what Hunter will be able to do. As you’ve seen, his Turn isn’t progressing in the same way that I’ve seen before. I don’t know why, before you ask.”
“What about the others? What can they do?”
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and her hair mussed. She looked like she’d just been thoroughly bedded, and he wanted nothing more than to make perception into reality.
But not here.
Not on an old wooden table in a room designed for weapons of war. It would not be war they waged between them, when he took this woman into his bed.
No, it would be something far older and more passionate than mere war.
“Bane?”
“No,” he said abruptly. “I won’t tell you secrets that aren’t mine to tell. But now you answer me: in your home, you told me to take off my clothes. Is that offer still open?”
She blinked and glanced around. “I—here? I mean—”
“No. Not here. It would be the matter of a minute to take you back to my bed,” he rasped out, skin and flesh and nerve endings all aching at the idea that she might say yes.
Unexpectedly—although what about this woman was ever expected?—she laughed. “I’m not the kind of person that this happens to. I’m old Reliable Ryan. Men as beautiful as you are never take notice of someone like me.”
“You find me beautiful.” He wondered if a face could crack from smiling so hard. “Clearly, you’re a very perceptive and intelligent human.”
She actually growled with frustration, and he wanted