right, Sleeping Beauty. Let’s figure out how to get you inside. I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment, until the world stops spinning, and then we’ll definitely do…something.”
She curled up against him, her body still pulsing with aftershock, and closed her eyes. Just for a moment.
She was so tired…
When she woke up two hours later, Bane was still sleeping. She watched him for a while, unable to understand how her life had gone from dull to dangerous in the space of so short a time. How a man—a vampire—had blown through her safe, ordered world like a gale-force wind.
She wanted to touch him. To kiss him. To hold him.
Instead, suddenly shy, she very quietly and carefully opened the car door to discover to her great relief that they were in a dimly lit garage, not in a parking lot in broad daylight. She’d find help getting Bane out of the car or find out if she should leave him here, and then she’d go to her place and the hospital for clothes and supplies.
She nodded to herself, decisive, ignoring the bizarre reluctance she felt at the thought.
I don’t want to leave him, even for a little while.
She was in serious trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The second Ryan started to leave the car, Bane’s eyes snapped open.
“Usually guys only fall asleep after sex that they, ah, participated in,” she said, feeling her face heat up.
He breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of her arousal—her pleasure. His cock, which hadn’t fully subsided during his brief slide toward unconsciousness, stood at attention again, ready and willing to take what it had been so cruelly deprived of.
He wanted her again. Wanted to make her silky skin glow again. To drink the champagne of her blood. In all his centuries, he’d never tasted anything like her blood.
Or were his feelings for her making him hallucinate? Were taste hallucinations even possible?
He discovered that he didn’t care, not even a little
Leaning forward, he slid his hand around the nape of her neck, drawing her to him. “If you think I didn’t participate in that, you’re really, really wrong. I may need to give you a refresher on your anatomy classes. That was me between your legs, with my mouth on your—”
“I know!” She smiled so brilliantly it lit up the darkest part of his heart. “I was there, too. I mean, I was sort of there. Mostly, I was floating somewhere in space, out beyond Saturn, watching supernovas cartwheel through the sky, while my brain exploded. Not that you need more fuel for your arrogance, but…wow.”
Damn, but she was beautiful when she blushed. Her cheeks and chest turned the exact color of an English rose in the springtime sun, a sight he hadn’t seen in far too long. He had to kiss her. He had no choice.
And so he did, bending his face to hers and gently taking her mouth. Where before it had been all passion and heat, this kiss was softer. Gentler. A simple reminder that such goodness existed in the world—in his life—and he could reach out and touch her in such a way.
She can never leave me.
The thought shocked him, as much for its intensity as its meaning. He’d only just met this woman, and now he wanted to keep her forever? He had no more right to possess this woman than he did to possess the sun itself.
And yet, to bask in her warmth…forever…what wouldn’t he sacrifice for that?
“Bane?” From her tone, it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken his name. “Are you okay? We should get you to your, ah, coffin?”
Her nose wrinkled, in spite of her obvious attempt to keep her expression neutral, and he started laughing.
“No. No coffin, no grave dirt, no turning into a bat. I can fly, but never in the shape of a rodent, or any other shape, for that matter. What you see is what you get.”
Her mouth fell open before he finished speaking, and her eyes lit up with pure glee. “You can fly? Not just, you know, hover?”
“Yes—”
“Do you grow wings?”
He blinked. “No, I’m not an angel. I—”
She clutched the front of his shirt and shook him. Actually shook him. “There are angels? Oh. My. God. Annie is going to die! Can you fly with somebody? Like Superman and Lois Lane? Can you take me, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, rational thought insists that there is no possible way you can do this, but can you take me flying? With you?” She