Excerpt:

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"I need to understand what’s changed, Dell. Vampires can’t normally get that close to me. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know exactly why. I only know—"

I sat up. "I think I know why."

"You do?"

"Magic."

Alex became very quiet. I watched as a myriad of emotions fluttered across her face.

"I know it sounds crazy but—"

Alex shook her head. "No, it doesn’t sound crazy. It is magic. Strong magic I was told. A curse."

"Who told you that?"

"Someone…"

"Someone?"

She looked away, embarrassed. "She works in this shop, in downtown Los Angeles. They do readings there. I was—"

I reached up and cupped her cheek in my hand. "I know a bit about magic, Alex. More than a bit, actually. This isn’t a curse. It’s a protection spell, a very powerful protection spell."

"Did you use magic to get close to me?"

It was a fair question.

"No."

She leaned in toward me, slowly.

"What then?" she asked, her lips grazing mine.

Did she intend to kiss me? My entire body hummed with the anticipation of her lips pressing firmly against mine, her tongue sweeping into my mouth. Kisses like that were dangerous. They brought with them the possibility of accidental blood spill and that was something I couldn’t risk, something we couldn’t risk.

In one swift move I grabbed her shoulders, turned her body and laid her down on the bed, pinning her to the mattress. I had her wrists pulled up over her head, secure in my hands and her body stretched out enticingly under mine.

"You’re involved with someone, remember?" I reminded her.

She looked away. "Yes. Sullivan Cross."

"You’re seeing Deputy Director Cross?" Sullivan was the head of the profiling division, he was infamous.

"I guess," she sighed.

"You guess?"

Alex looked at me and admitted, "As soon as we return from assignment I’m planning to break it off with him. It was inevitable. And now…"

"Now?"

She looked away.

"Seems like Sullivan would be a pretty good catch. Successful, athletic, good-looking."

She scowled at me. "You date him then."

I laughed. "Sorry, sweetheart, men don’t do it for me." I started to move so she could get up.

"Me either."

That stopped me.

"You’re gay?" I gasped. "Because you could have fooled me the way you were responding."

"I’m not gay."

"I don’t understand."

She wouldn’t look at me. Her face was burning crimson. In fact her entire body was on fire. The smell of her arousal was strong and it was getting stronger by the second. Sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake.

"You crave the touch of an immortal. You like vampires."

She didn’t answer. My mind was spinning as a flood of questions came to me. I started with the one I thought would be the least threatening.

"Alex, when you said vampires can’t normally get that close to you, what did you mean exactly? It could be important. Maybe even important to the mission."

She looked up at me for several long moments. I could tell she wanted me. She wanted me badly and my body’s reaction to that need was not only obvious to me, it was obvious to her and pressing hard into the softness of her lower belly.

"If you’re going to make me talk about sex, can you let go of my wrists and sit up?"

It was my turn to blush. I let go of her wrists and did as she asked.

Alex eased up onto her elbows. "It varies. Sometimes it happens at first base, sometimes second. With one I got all the way to sloppy thirds before he couldn’t hold back, tried to take a little nibble, and…bam!"

"Bam?"

"It’s like a charge of lightning or something. I tell them up front no biting or pain of any kind, but do they listen? No. It always ends in disaster," she moaned, flopping down on the bed and throwing one arm over her face.

"There are vampires who don’t feed, Alex. Lots of us," I offered helpfully.

"I seem to convert them after a few dates without even trying. They start out nice enough, then they go all Count Dracula on me."

"Hmm." That was me. I didn’t know what the fuck to say. My mother is a psychiatrist and she says hmm a lot. It seems to work for her.

"Is that all you can say?" she asked, leaning up on her elbows again, her temper revving her up to a slow boil. Apparently the hmm thing only works for shrinks.

"What I can have I don’t want," she moaned. "What I want I can’t have. So here I am, this huge mess of unsatisfied, frustrated… And all you can say is hmm? Never mind."

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

"Are you saying you’ve never had sex?"

"Define sex."

"Intercourse."

"Yes."

"Yes, you’ve had sex or yes, you’ve never had sex?"

"I’ve never had sex."

"You’ve never had sex? Are you sure?"

Alex screamed and pushed me off of her. Actually, it was more like a growl. I reached out to grab hold of her and we both ended up rolling off the bed and onto the floor, wedged between the side of the mattress and the wall. She was on top, draped across my body in a way I was certain I was going to have fantasies about later.

"You know," I began casually, "if you were getting some you probably wouldn’t have such a bad temper."

Alex started laughing. I felt her body relax against mine. Her face was buried in my neck.

I laughed too. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Because in pretty short order her laughter began to give way to tears, then the tears turned into sobs, heartfelt sobs that tugged at my very soul and made me feel like an ass.

I hadn’t been trying to upset her, honestly. It was too unbelievable. Not the part about her being Sophie, which I was pretty convinced she was. Not the part about her being under some big-time protection spell, I figured that was true too. I even bought into the wacky irony that she had a thing for vamps and that somehow the spell identified most of us as a threat. It was the fact she hadn’t had sex with anyone, ever, I seemed to be having a hard time grasping.

"Is there anything I can say, anything I can do?" I asked, uncertain.

Alex lifted her head just enough to look into my eyes. Hers were red and still brimming with tears. It wasn’t her most attractive moment, but that didn’t matter. I took one look at those beautiful green eyes and knew I’d do just about anything she asked.

"I want you to try to bite me," she said, offering her neck to me as if it were the most natural and simplest thing in the world. "No vampire has ever been able to put his mouth on my neck. Maybe the spell is broken."

I reached up to cup her cheek in the palm of my hand. "I’m flattered, tempted even. But you don’t understand what you’re asking. Besides, I can tell you the spell isn’t broken. Raif tried to have himself a little taste tonight and was blown clear across the room. I thought it was my anger adding a bit of extra juice. Maybe it was, but it was also you."

Alex started to panic. There was no other word for it.

"Oh, God!" she gasped as she tried to place one hand over my mouth and pushed up with the other, her eyes darting about the room and her knee grinding painfully into my thigh and way too close to my dick.

I reached out and gave the bed a shove, providing us with more space to move. I rolled, removing her hand from my mouth.

"What the hell—"

Alex wrapped her arms around my neck and brought my ear down next to her mouth.

"They could be listening," she whispered. "What were we thinking?"

"The room’s been shielded."

"What do you mean by shielded?"

"It’s magic, Alex. What’s said in this room stays in this room. It’s safe."

"What if I screamed?"

"No one would hear you," I assured her.

"What if I made you scream?" she asked, brushing her lips hesitantly across mine.

God help me, the word scream had never sounded so enticing. Maybe it was the fact that I’d suddenly realized in all the commotion her wrap-around dress had become unwrapped. Maybe it was the fact that she was playing with the hair at the back of my neck. Or, maybe it was that she’d parted her legs and lifted her knees so my hips had lowered and the only thing separating my cock from the pull of temptation and the promise of rapture was my well-worn jeans and those wicked black lace panties.

"Whatever happens between us, it doesn’t have to mean anything," she said as she pulled my T-shirt out of the back of my jeans and slid her hands underneath, lightly grazing my back with her nails.

I sat up and quickly pulled the shirt over my head. If we were going to do this, if I were going to do this for her, I wanted to feel her, skin on skin.

I didn’t want to look into her eyes, I was afraid if I did I might stop. I didn’t want to stop. So instead I focused on the belt still tied around her waist. I focused on loosening it and peeling back the dress.

"Sit up," I commanded, and she did. I slid the fabric off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. I eased her back down, my hand skimming the length of her throat, across her collar bone, over the full mounds of her breast. It came to rest on her stomach. I hesitated. I never hesitated.

She’d thrown my own line back at me and I could smell the lie in it. If we did this, it would mean something. Maybe some girls could give it up and have it mean nothing, but Alex wasn’t one of them.

I leaned down slowly and placed a tender kiss on her belly. It quivered under my lips. She laced her fingers through my hair and chuckled nervously.

"Your beard, it tickles."

It was getting late and I’d shaved early that morning. I looked up into her eyes. "I can shave if you want."

She shook her head and smiled, only the smile was a bit shaky.

"I would never hurt you Alex," I assured her. I stood and offered her my hand. With a confused look on her face she took it.

"That’s it, isn’t it?" she asked as I pulled her to her feet. "That’s why you can get close to me, why others have been able to get close up to a point."

I pulled her into my arms and began to nuzzle her neck like I had earlier that day. I may have felt the pull of her blood earlier, just like I was feeling it now. I might even be tempted by it. But I wasn’t going to take it. Not now, probably not ever.

Did I say probably? I meant definitely, definitely not now and definitely not ever.

"Yes," I growled, sliding my hands into the back of her panties and kneading the round globes of her delicious ass. I squeezed and pulled her toward me, rubbing my still-encased cock into her stomach, my jeans now a prison. I turned her around so she faced the bed, her back pressed into my chest. My own nipples were already hard with arousal.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"Etu," I murmured, shrouding the room in darkness.

"Dell?" there was an edge to her voice.

"I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna give you what I can," I told her, placing a kiss on the back of her shoulder before falling to my knees behind her and tracing the top edge of her underwear with my tongue.

I hooked my thumbs into the sides of her panties and began to slide them down her long, slender legs all the way to her ankles. She was still in her heels and I wanted it that way. No stockings, just bare legs. A part of me wished the lights were on, but another part was grateful they weren’t. I could tell I’d already started to change. The anticipation of what I was about to do called my beast forth.

"We’re going to do this nice and easy," I promised her, shaking back my beast as I reached up and slid my hands up her legs, over her ass, then around to her front until they found the tangle of soft curls at the apex of her thighs. "I’m going to make you come, give you some release. It’s what you need now, yeah?"