I smoothed my hands down his back. "I'm sorry, Richard. I'm sorry."
"I won't change during sex, Anita, but this close to the full moon, it's hard." He turned his head to look up at me, and his eyes were still amber. His hands began to re-form, shrinking back to human. I watched them change, felt the rush of energy like a wave of dancing insects on my skin.
I knew that if I left him like this, he'd never recover. It wasn't my loss, not really. It was that this would confirm his deepest fears: that he was a monster and only fit to be with other monsters. Richard was not a monster. I believed that. I trusted him not to hurt me. I trusted him more than I trusted myself sometimes.
"Roll over," I said.
He just looked at me.
I rolled his h*ps over, and he let me. He wasn't completely hard now. Nothing like having your lover scream for help to take the fun out of it. I touched him, and he shuddered, eyes closing. I held him in my hands and stroked him until he grew warm and hard.
I slid over him, and he was almost too big from this angle, almost too much. It was more intense with me on top, sharper somehow. A small moan escaped him.
"I love you, Richard. I love you." I moved above him with him so deep inside me, it felt like I should be able to taste him.
His hands slid around my waist, then to my br**sts. The feeling of his hands on me while I rode his body was almost too much. I moved my h*ps gently at first, then faster. I forced him into me, hard and fast and deep, until I wasn't sure if it felt good or hurt.
I felt the orgasm growing. I felt it filling me up like warm water in a cup, filling from the bottom up. I felt it flow over me in small spasms.
Richard's breathing changed, quickened, and I knew he was close. "Not yet," I whispered, "not yet."
He dug his hands into the bed on either side of me. I felt his hands go. I felt them slip their skin. I felt it like the small release it was, like an echo of what his body was doing inside of me. The claws tore into the bed like nails. I heard the mattress material make that heavy ripping sound, and it was too late.
The orgasm caught me in a burst that bowed my spine and made me cry out. It washed over me in a skin-shifting, nerve-jumping dance as if every part of me were trying to leave every other part behind. For a shining second, I felt skinless, boneless, nothing but the warm roll of pleasure and the feel of his body underneath me. Only his body anchored me, only the feel of him going inside me in one great release reminded me where I was, who I was.
I opened my eyes and found his eyes brown and human. He raised his hands to me, and I fell against his body. I laid my head on his chest and felt his heart beating against my cheek. I lay there feeling his body pulse underneath me. His arms holding me.
He laughed, and it was joyous. He raised my face to his and kissed me lightly and carefully. "I love you, too," he said.
28
Warm. He was so warm. He? My eyes were wide open, and sleep fell away like a crash of glass. I was left lying in bed with my heart pounding and a tanned arm flung across my stomach. I stared up that arm and found Richard on his stomach, hair flung over his face like a curtain. I was lying on my back, sheets down past my waist, trapped under Richard's arm.
I raised my head back and found Van Gogh's Sunflowersabove the bed. Richard's cabin. We'd done too much damage to mine.
I had a very strong urge to pull the sheets up and cover my br**sts. Okay, okay, Richard had seen the whole show last night, but this morning, I wanted to cover up. I was embarrassed. Not big, awful embarrassed, but little, confused embarrassed.
I realized I was lying there with my arms tucked across my chest, as if I was hiding. Richard's arm looked very dark against the pale white skin of my stomach. Jean-Claude had remarked that my skin was almost as pale as his. I'd had enough moral problems with premarital sex with the undead. My one comfort had been that I was monogamous. Now I didn't even have that. Whoredom had finally arrived just as my Grandmother Blake had always warned. In a way, she was right. Once you have sex with anyone, sex becomes more of a possibility with others.
The drapes in the cabin hadn't been pulled completely. Morning sunlight fell through the white sheers and spilled over the bed. I'd never seen a man's body by morning light. I'd never slept with a man and awakened beside him. Oh, once with Stephen, but fully clothed with guns and bad guys about to come through the door isn't quite the same thing.
I reached out towards Richard's arm, tentative. You'd think after what we did last night, I'd be braver, but I was almost afraid to touch him. I'd had sexual fantasies about Richard, but this -- this was the big one. To wake up beside him, warm and alive. God forgive me, but I valued that.
I touched his arm lightly so that all I really touched were the small golden hairs, no skin. I brushed upward just above the skin until there was nothing but the bare skin of his upper arm and shoulder. I drew my fingertips over the warmth of his skin. He was incredibly warm. Warmer than skin temperature, almost fevered.
I felt him wake, a tension in his shoulder and back that hadn't been there before. I turned my head, and his brown eyes were staring at me through the thick curtain of his hair.
He rose up on one elbow and smoothed his hair back from his face. He smiled, and it was the same smile that had melted me into my socks a hundred times. "Good morning," he said.
"Good morning," I said. I had pulled the sheets up over my br**sts without thinking about it.
He wiggled closer, which made the sheets at his waist slide down to reveal the smooth expanse of his bu**ocks. He kissed me, soft, tender, then rubbed his face along my cheek until his breath was warm against my ear, then farther back into my hair. He was giving me a wolf greeting. He kissed lightly down my neck and stopped at my shoulder, which was about all that was uncovered.
"You seem tense," he said.
"You don't," I said.
He laughed, and the sound made me shiver and smile at the same time. It was a laugh I'd never heard from Richard. It was very masculine, very ... something: possessive, satisfied maybe.