"Okay. Attraction is a mild word for it. I wanted to fuck you right there in the graveyard."

"That's kinky."

"It could be."

"Some would say sleeping with a vampire is insane."

He expected her to laugh, but instead her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Her lower lip trembled just a little. That satiny curve tempted him to sin.

She cupped his face with one hand and slid her palm over his beard. "I can't believe this is happening. It doesn't seem entirely real. You're a vampire and I just made love with you. It's amazing and incredible and totally unbelievable."

"Think of me as just a man."

She rolled her gaze to the ceiling, then tested the muscles in his shoulders. "Right. You just made love to me for longer than any man ever has." A flush spread over her cheekbones. "I mean...you're supernatural, Ronan. No man I've been with has ever been able to manage that many thrusts for that-"

She gulped as her face turned more crimson.

He laughed, glad the tears had left. "Remember what I told you about vampires while we were stuck in the elevator? That we can fuck as long as long as it takes to get a woman off?"

Her nose was cherry red now. "Yes."

"That we can draw a woman's orgasms out and give her dozens at one session?"

"Yes."

"Then you know what we did earlier was just a start."

She shook her head, looking amazed. "I don't believe it."

"Well, believe it." When silence settled over them, he looked deep into her eyes.

"I have a strange question." One of her eyebrows quirked up. "Well, maybe it isn't a strange question. I thought vampires drank blood during sexual arousal."

He couldn't blame her for asking. "Sometimes they do. Disciplined ones who aren't interested in hurting mortals don't bite them on the neck."

"Oh." The quiet syllable sounded amazed.

"You wondered why I didn't bite you during sex."

She nodded. "Yes."

"Because I've had centuries of practice at not biting."

"Would you ever bite again?"

He brushed his fingers over her cheekbone then down to her chin. "I don't know. Sure, and it's very dangerous for a vampire to try and stop once he's taken blood from a mortal."

"Yet the ancient one did when he bit Lachlan, Micky, and Jared."

"More by accident than design. They were lucky. Their blood must have been rich and thick enough to satisfy him. It surprised me when they survived the attacks. You know how many people have died in this town since this mayhem started at the beginning of the month."

He remembered too well the fright in her face mixed with defiance on the first night he'd met her. She would be a worthy opponent for any vampire, but he didn't want her within ten feet of the ancient one.

She yawned and wriggled against him slightly. Her skin slid over his with sensuous results. A jolt of lust heated his body like a firestorm. His cock spiked into one of the most intense hard-ons he could remember having.

Shit.She would drive him insane.

The serene, trusting softness in her exquisite face drove him mad with need. He could barely keep from parting her thighs now and plunging deep inside. He knew she had to feel his cock against her, almost begging-hell, almost whining for entrance.

A tiny smile hit her lips. "Come inside."

"What?"

With gentle urging, she brought him over her. He melted with pure pleasure as he realized what she wanted, and he couldn't help but smile. Without hesitation he touched his cock to her soft creamy slickness, then pushed. When he rested fully inside her, he wanted to shout with joy. She felt amazingly hot and wet wrapped around him. With a staggering jolt he acknowledged heaven was anywhere he could be with her, inside her.

Her eyes widened as he looked down on Clarissa, their blue structure drawing him down, down into a sea storm. Sensations lifted him up and away from thought and into the corporeal.

Instead of moving inside her, he licked across one nipple with slow, sweet consideration.

One lap, two-he tasted her like she was the most exclusive delicacy. With one slow taste, he drew her nipple deep into his mouth, then feathered it with his tongue. She arched against him, moving her hips, but he refused to thrust. Instead he kept his cock buried high inside her and continued the torture of his slow, slow licking. He pulled a nipple deep between his lips, then suckled. On and on he licked, going from one nipple to the other with agonizing attention. He gently cupped one breast, then twisted the aroused nub. Moments later he settled in to suck hard and long while he tweaked the other nipple between thumb and finger.

Moans caught low in her throat and broke free as he devoured her breasts. When he felt her wet tightness start to clench around him, to shiver with approaching climax, his hips moved into a measured thrust. Push deep, pull away, push until his balls were tucked up against her buttocks, drawing out until just the tip of his cock remained inside her. He moved his hips in a stirring rhythm and she moaned each time he pulled back, then sank deep.

She came with a harsh inward breath as her silken walls tightened over his cock. Her eyes fluttered shut and her lips parted as her body gripped his. Her entire body quaked as a low gasp left her.

Music seemed to sing in his head, the gentle voice of an angel calling him to dance with her in the most ancient ritual of man and woman merging as one. Divinity resided in this motion, in the way he discovered light within her. Ronan continued his need for her, unwilling to let her body take his seed just yet. Although he could never have children with Clarissa, he ached for what couldn't be. He wanted to make a child with her with fierce need.

What would it be like for her genes to mix with his? To share in the generation of something new that only the two of them could create?

Tasting her lips, he kissed her thoroughly, willing to prove she belonged to him. With deep, stabbing thrusts he made another claim on her, one that any other vampire could detect. Unrelenting and without mercy his body danced inside her, worshiped her body as a holy place.

He felt the snarl rising in his throat as he jammed high inside her one last time and all restraint within him broke apart. He roared and spilled inside her. With a ragged sigh of satisfaction, he rolled to the side and brought her into his arms.

She glanced at the bedside table. "Nine o'clock."

"I have to get up. I can't believe I even slept at night. That doesn't happen often for me."

"Just after you've had sex?"

"Not just any sex. Mind-altering, out-of-this-world sex."

Her mouth, as tempting as any sin he could imagine, turned up at the corners. "Ronan we have to start thinking about what we're going to do. We don't have very long. Things are happening as we lie here. Bad things."

"Have you had any more visions?"

"No. Just feelings. I'm jittery and restless. I feel like something big might happen at any time."

He touched her chest with his index finger and drew a slow path around her right nipple.

When she wriggled, he threw a leg over her thigh so she remained still.

"I feel it, too, Clarissa. There's edginess in the air."