Immortals After Dark 03 - No Rest for the Wicked

thought this beauty might actually receive him.
    The loss of sexual pleasure had never bothered him before. His experience as a human had been limited—very limited—by war, by famine, by the need merely to survive, so he’d never felt that his turning had deprived him of much. Until now.
    He’d never been attracted to small women, because he’d known if he did somehow manage to bed one, he’d dread hurting her. Yet with this one, the most ethereal and fragile female he’d ever seen, he found himself wondering what it would be like to carry her to his bed and gently undress her. His mind began to riot with imaginings of his big hands cupping and stroking her slight body.
    His eyes dropped to her slender neck, and then to her high, full breasts pressing against her dark blouse. Now, this part of her was far from slight. He wished he could kiss her breasts, run his face against them...
    “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked in a halting, baffled tone, taking a step back.
    “Can I not admire you?” Amazingly, he took a step forward. Where was this coming from? He’d always been awkward and unsure around women. In the past, if he’d been caught staring like this, he’d have turned his face away, muttering apologies as he left the room. Perhaps he’d at last found freedom in imminent death.
    Then again, he’d never stared, never hungered, as he did now for this slip of a woman with her lush breasts. “A dying man’s last wish?”
    “I know the ways a man looks at a woman.” Her voice was sensual, a voice from dreams. It seemed to rub him from the inside. “You’re not merely admiring me.”
    No, he was thinking at that moment that he wanted to rip open her shirt, pin her shoulders to the ground, and suck on her stiffened nipples till she came. Pin her shoulders hard and lick her—
    “How dare you play with me, vampire!”
    “What do you mean?” He met her gaze. Her eyes flicked over his face as though she were attempting to read his thoughts. Could she begin to guess the battle inside him? That in one instant the idea of being gentle was replaced with the impulse to cover her on the ground?
    What is happening to me?
    “I know you can’t feel this... this... ”—she made a small sound of frustration—“you can’t feel what you are appearing to. It’s impossible, unless—” She gasped. “Your eyes... they’re turning black.”
    Black? His brothers’ eyes had turned black with sharp emotion. He hadn’t known his did as well. Was it because he’d never felt anything so sharply as his desire for this mysterious female?
    He felt like he’d die if he didn’t act on that desire—
    A sudden explosion of sound made him swing his head around, his body tensing. “What was that?”
    She took a quick glance around her, eyes alert. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.
    “You do not hear that?” Another shaking like that, and the castle would collapse. He had to get her away, even into the morning daylight outside. The need to protect her had suddenly become critical, undeniable.
    “No!” Her eyes went wide, her expression aghast. “It can’t be!” She backed away from him, moving gingerly, as if he were a snake about to strike.
    Another explosion. He traced to just in front of her, and her sword shot up in a blur. He snatched her wrist, but she struggled. Christ, she was strong, but he seemed to be stronger than usual himself, more powerful than he ever could have imagined. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He pried the weapon from her hand and tossed it to his low bed. “Do not fight me. The roof is about to fall—”
    “No... no!” She stared at his chest—at his heart—in horror. “I am not a... Bride.”
    Bride ? His jaw slackened. He remembered his brothers explaining that when he found his Bride, his eternal wife, she would blood him. With his blooding, his body would come back to life. He’d always believed they’d lied to dull the bitter sting of what they’d made him.
    Yet it was true. The sound he’d heard was the rush of his own heart beating for the first time since he’d been turned into a vampire. He rocked on his feet as he inhaled deeply, breathing at last after three hundred years.
    His heartbeat grew stronger, faster, and his sudden erection was tight and throbbing, pulsing with each beat of his heart. Pleasure seemed to course through his veins. He’d found his Bride—the one woman he was meant to be with for eternity—in this