Despite his demands to the contrary (and her odious statement that she didn’t intend to give in to the urges she was projecting to him), she slid backward down his body, her nimble fingers unbuttoning the fall front of his breeches. “Sweet mother of seriously fabulous penises! You’re really…statuesque.”

She didn’t wait for an invitation—which was a good thing, since at that moment he fully believed that the power of speech and cognitive thought had abandoned him—she simply reached out and took him into both hands.

And I thought the thing with the nipples was good, he moaned into her head shortly before falling back on the grass, his hands twitching spasmodically as she stroked him.

Oh my god, you’re so very hot. And hard. Your dick is like steel or something. That has to hurt.

It does, it does. A glorious hurt, he moaned again, his hips moving in time to her hands.

I can’t believe you’re talking to me. Right inside my head, you’re talking to me. Thank god I’m not insane. Although maybe I am after all because, Nikola, I really, really want to bite you.

His hips froze for a moment while he opened one eyelid and looked down at where she straddled his thighs, his extremely happy penis twitching slightly in her hands. “Rough bedsport is not enticing to me, Io. Although I did enjoy you biting me on the neck. If you insist on biting me—and rest assured that I will reciprocate—then you may do so there, but nowhere else.”

She looked down at where he overflowed her hands. She looked up to his neck. Her gaze wandered back and forth between the two spots for a few seconds while the hunger in him surged and demanded to be sated upon her.

“Deal,” she said at last, releasing his arousal and crawling up his body, her mouth hot on his neck before once again, she gently bit the corded tendon found therein.

He thought he might pass out from the pleasure her touch gave him.

You really like that, don’t you? she asked, wiggling provocatively against him, her breasts still confined in their satin stays, some sort of matching undergarment clad about her loins. He wanted to object to that garment, but as the warm satin fabric covering her crotch pressed against his penis, he knew he was once again perilously close to emptying his stones.

I do, but not as much as I like this. He wrapped his hands around her delectable ass, moving her back and forth against him as at last he gave in to the hunger, biting the soft, silky flesh of her shoulder.

She moaned aloud while he drank, moving against him now with soft little urgent cries. His fingers slid beneath the material, around the soft globes of her ass to her warm, welcoming depths. She cried again, her body shaking as she shifted against him, pushing him past a point of all bearing. His fingers brushed against sensitive flesh, and sent her spiraling into an orgasm that triggered his own, his cry mingling with hers as it floated up into the predawn sky.

“Great.” Io’s voice interrupted his blissful sense of sexually sated oblivion. He opened his eyes and looked down to where she had pushed herself off his chest, her knees still clasping his hips. “Now I can add dry-humping a stranger to my list of sexual harassment sins. Thank you, Nikola, thank you so very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, sensing that for some reason she didn’t mean the words literally. She seemed slightly annoyed, as a matter of fact. He wondered why that would be when she had enjoyed herself as much as he had. Could it be because he had spilled his seed on her undergarment, thereby staining it? He frowned at the undergarment in question.

“What the hell are you doing frowning at my lady parts?”

Io sounded outraged.

“I’m not frowning at them.”

“You are. Your eyebrows are all pulled down between your gorgeous eyes, making me want to run my fingers along them to smooth them out. That, sir, is a frown, and it’s directed at my nether bits. There’s nothing there to frown at, I assure you. I pruned before I came to Austria, not that I expected to get it on with anyone, and especially not that we’re going to hook up.” She paused. “Other than what we’ve already done, obviously. But that’s not really going gung ho forward, is it? It was just kind of quasi there.”

He had absolutely no idea what she was going on about, so he focused on the one thing that did make sense. “My eyes are sufficiently smooth, thank you,” he corrected her, still frowning at that part of her that was so tantalizingly close. It was true that the entire front of the pale peach undergarment was wet with his seed, but that wasn’t what bothered him.

“You know what I mean. Why are you frowning at my crotch?”

“I am frowning at that ridiculous garment you are wearing to hide it from my view.”

She looked startled for a moment before looking down to where his penis—now succumbing to a restful state—lay against her pubic mound. “My…underwear?”

“Whatever it is called, I dislike it.”

“It’s Victoria’s Secret, you boob! It’s very expensive! I got it for myself last Christmas, before I was fired by my asshat of a boss. Besides, it matches the bra.”

“I don’t care what it matches, or whose secret it is, I dislike it because it keeps your flesh from meeting mine as is right and proper. Remove it immediately.”

“Look, I may have done things with you that I never do with a man I’ve just met, but that doesn’t give you the right to demand I remove my undies even if they are a bit ooky now because you got all excited on them. Not that I’m holding you entirely to blame for that, since your vamp-biting thing made me crazy wild with lust. But still, it’s not going to happen, so just get over it already.” She got to her feet and stalked over to where the remains of her gown lay on the ground.

Nikola stared up at the lightening sky and considered and discarded a number of scenarios in which he showed Io that he was not the type of man who cared what others thought or felt, and decided, in the end, to be magnanimous. He would allow her to continue believing that she had every right to speak to him in that wholly irreverent manner, but only so long as it took to write his brilliant paper and receive his award. In the meantime, he would sate himself on her, giving in to the siren lure of her delicious person, and take his fill, then simply walk away from her and continue on with his life.

July 13

I’m a bit embarrassed to write what happened early this morning. Oh, it was totally Nikola’s fault, because it’s obvious that he did something to my brain when he sucked my blood and all, but even with the vampire compulsion or thrall or whatever it is that vamps do to ensnare innocent women’s minds and make them their love slaves, it was still me that jumped his bones. Repeatedly.

And enjoyed every damned second of it.

“You are wholly to blame for this,” I pointed out to Nikola a short while after the scene on the side of the road.

“A fact which I have admitted, and reassured you that I will replace your gown,” he said in that yummy British accent he had. That voice seemed to do something to me, make all of my innards vibrate with happiness every time he spoke. I told my innards to cool it, that we’d shamed ourselves enough for one day.

“I was actually talking about the fact that you enslaved my mind with your lustful thoughts rather than the fact that you ripped my brand-new sundress to shreds,” I corrected him, glancing down at myself. With my dress in tatters, I wore his shirt and coat, the former of which reached down to my knees since it was exceptionally long.

“I didn’t enslave your mind.” Nikola rode next to me, the rosy fingers of dawn managing to caress his bare chest and arms in a way that made my breath stop in my lungs. “I cannot enslave anyone’s mind.”

I cleared my throat and dragged my eyes off him.

“Then you enthralled me or did something to make me your love slave.”

He sighed. “I’ve just told you that I cannot do that. That’s not to say I wouldn’t if I could, because the idea of being surrounded by love slaves appeals to me, and being a man, I am naturally in need of many women to attend to my varied sexual needs, but unfortunately, I have not yet discovered that a Dark One can enslave minds.”

“You’d love a herd of love-struck women swooning over you,” I said with a glare at him. The dawg!

“It is the way of things,” he agreed.

I was about to tell him what I thought of that sentiment when a thought occurred to me. “You said your wife has been dead for a bit?”

“Seven years, yes.” He shot me a curious look.

“How long were you married?”

The look got significantly more pointed. “Sixteen years.”

“And what did your wife think of you messing around with this great big herd of women that your manful lusts demanded?”

He stiffened in the saddle, making his horse do a little side step that he quickly got under control. “Madame, I can assure you that my wife never had complaints about me in that regard.”

For some reason, his outrage made me want to giggle. Oh, I had his number all right—he was all bark and little bite.

So to speak.

“However, I have been without a wife for many years, and it is a well-known fact that men have sexual needs greater than those of women.”

My amusement faded. “You are so—that is utter and complete bullshit! It is not a well-known fact! It’s a well-known fallacy put around by a bunch of horny men who want to justify having sex with every woman they can sweet-talk into bed, that’s all. For your information, women have the same amount of sexual needs as men. Boy, you guys really did have some messed-up ideas about things.”

“I have read many scientific papers on the subject, and they all agree that men’s needs are more prevalent and varied than women’s.”

“You can stuff your scientific papers where the sun don’t shine as far as I’m concerned.”

“Doesn’t.”

I gawked at him for a few seconds.

“The correct grammar is ‘where the sun doesn’t shine.’” He frowned as he thought. “Although that is an odd thing to say. If you meant night, why did you not simply say ‘at night’?”