she chirped.
“Pretty please?”
“Mmm,” she managed. “Vail, please.”
And then his finger was gone. The tingle at her nipple ceased. The heat of his mouth left her skin.
Lyric breathed, waiting. Her body hummed, wanting, desiring, needing.
“Name,” he said sternly.
Fuck. No. She couldn’t. She didn’t have—
She wanted. She needed to get off. Squirming on the bed, she couldn’t manage to bring her hips up to meet his hovering hand. The bastard wouldn’t bring her to the brink like this and then walk away, would he?
So the torturer did know his craft.
If her hands were free, she’d finish herself off and not be the least ashamed. Pressing her thighs together, she mined the sweet hum of orgasm. It remained elusive, demanding Vail’s direct and firm touch.
“Uh-uh.” He nudged her thighs apart. “Not that way, sweetie. You want to come? Name.”
“Vincent Lambert,” she blurted out. Hell, she’d seen the last name on a movie poster recently, and the first name was common enough.
The mattress jiggled as Vail stood and strode to the counter. Grabbing the cell phone, he punched in some numbers.
Lyric crashed, heaving and gasping as if tears would spill free. The high of arousal withered away and her flesh prickled again, not from desire, but from the lack of touch, of expected satisfaction. Her wet nipples cooled and the aching loss of heat softened them. She pressed her legs together.
No. Not worth it now without him directing the fireworks. And she wouldn’t let him witness her weakness. God, how had she managed to get herself into a situation like this? So vulnerable!
She twisted her wrists within the leather strap, to no avail.
Vail asked the operator to give him the address of Vincent Lambert.
Good luck with that.
“Thanks,” he said, and hung up. “You’re in luck. There’s a Vincent Lambert in the fourteenth quarter. Got the address.”
Seriously? Whew.
Vail walked to the bed and loomed over her, hands propped at his hips. “Now, what to do with you?”
SHE’D GIVEN HIM what he’d requested. He should head out for the fourteenth and nab the gown from the fence. Return the damned thing to Hawkes, hand over the girl to Mommy, and then he could finally get the information he wanted from his uncle. One problem.
The naked woman lying on the bed before him writhed and gasped with the need to get off. And he wanted to help her with that. Because those soft, round breasts surely required more licking. And her molten hot body demanded he fill her with the hard-on he’d suffered for the past twenty minutes.
What had become of his hatred for vampires?
You don’t have to bite her.
And there was nothing wrong with a vampire in general, just their nasty blood. Right? He’d never slept with a vampire. Had avoided them since arriving in the mortal realm.
But he didn’t have to bite when he had sex. It was a great accompaniment to the whole shebang, but unnecessary. And besides, who would know if he screwed a vampire this one time?
Vail unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside.
She squirmed and tugged against the leather belt strapping her to the headboard. “Too late, you junkie asshole. I don’t need it anymore.”
“Yeah?” He flicked open the button on his pants and tugged down the fly. His heavy erection sprang out. Her eyes widened—and not in anger. “We’ll see about that.”
Retrieving the knife from his back pocket, he sat on the edge of the bed. Knife in his fist, he skimmed his knuckles over her taut stomach, toying with her fear and desire at the same time. He let the hard ivory handle of the knife rub her nipple as he moved higher.
She reacted with vicious struggles. He’d lost her when making the phone call—a necessary delay from the torture—but he could get her back.
“Settle, Lyric, you don’t want me to cut you.”
“You wouldn’t,” she retorted. “Wouldn’t want to get any of my nasty blood on you.”
She was smart. But he could be smarter.
He pressed his other hand over her mons, fingertips lightly brushing the soft wet folds she kept shaved bare, and her body reacted by arching her back. Much as she thought she didn’t want this, her body did. She straddled a tightrope, and one wrong step would send her reeling into the stratosphere or crashing to earth.
He preferred the reel, because that would make it good for him, too.
He slid the blade under the leather belt securing her wrists. This particular blade had been forged in Faery and was sharper than any mortal metal could be honed. Her wrists, unbound, fell to the bed and she grasped for one to ease her fingers about it.
“Sorry, if you lost the feeling in them,” he muttered.
Vail dropped the knife on the floor and placed his fingers between her thighs. He pushed them deep into her while, with his thumb, he found the soft swollen heat he knew controlled her entire body. It was command central, so to speak, and he knew how to operate the controls.
Before she could struggle away, he flicked out a finger and rubbed it over her slick clitoris, sweeping the sensitive bud until he heard a gasp, followed quickly by a surrendering sigh. Her fingers clutched at the tattered old mattress. Her legs opened wider.
“Good girl. Now let me taste how sweet you are.”
Ignoring the aching pulse in his erection, he told himself patience would win him the reward as he slid down to kiss her cherry jasmine skin.
The first lick started a shudder in her thighs. He dipped his tongue around her clitoris and played with the hard bud of it, making his tongue pointed to trace it firmly.
It was the right move because her fingers released hold on the mattress and clutched at air. She moaned, “Yes,” and her fingers found his hair and gripped hanks of it tightly. “Right there.”
Steadily, he played her, stroking and dashing his tongue against softness, then hard, to follow with a firm lick. She smelled like a jasmine garden here, and he was reminded of the faery ritual before the bride walked down the aisle. The bride-to-be would spend the day being pampered and perfumed, at one point squatting over an incense burner to infuse all parts of her skin with heady scent.
Don’t think about that stolen moment. Concentrate. Or you’ll begin to regret.
Kicking the door shut on memory, Vail soared back to the present and into his captive’s lushness. Lyric’s scent dizzied him. It was almost better than a dust high.
The
