Blood Kiss Read online

  But he’s a vampire, a little voice inside my brain insisted. Yes, but he was still a damn nice guy. He didn’t deserve to go out like this, not when I could help him. Besides, I had a gut feeling that I was going to need him down the line. We needed to find out about this prophesy thing The Monsignor had been talking about and more importantly, I wanted to know more about the man I had worked and killed for the last four years and why he wanted me dead. You have to know your enemy before you can defeat them.

  What it all boiled down to was that I had to keep Michael around. And I could only do that by giving him blood. My wrists and arms were out. That left the femoral artery in my inner thigh and the jugular in my neck. That was a no brainer—the neck for sure. After one bad experience, I had sworn off letting guys put their mouths south of my personal border. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to go cutting my own throat. Which meant that Michael was going to have to do the cutting, or in this case, the biting.

  I sighed. What I was about to do was dangerous but I couldn’t see any way around it if I wanted to save him. And I did.

  “Michael,” I said, “scoot over so I can sit beside you.” I pushed on his shoulder but though his eyes fluttered weakly, he didn’t budge. Just great. Giving up all pretense of doing this neatly, I crawled up between his legs and straddled his hips. His blue jeans felt rough against my inner thighs and I felt suddenly exposed. It was an intimate position to be in, but I told myself I had no choice and tried to ignore the warmth of his body under mine.

  “Michael,” I said again, leaning in close to him. “Can you hear me?”

  “Kate?” His eyes fluttered open and he looked at me uncertainly. “Why…why are you on top of me?”

  “I can’t cut my wrists,” I told him. “The right one still has stitches in it and the left one has traces of silver nitrate. So you’re going to have to drink from my neck.” I leaned down, trying to find a good angle to offer my jugular. The way he was slumped on the bed, I had to practically plaster myself against him. Again I told myself it was embarrassing but necessary.

  “Here,” I said, nuzzling the side of my neck against his mouth. I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs at the warm press of his lips on my skin. God but this was hard. I couldn’t believe I was doing it. Couldn’t believe I was actually offering my neck to a vampire to bite!

  “Wait a minute.” His voice was muffled by my neck and I pulled back so I could get a good look at him. He looked slightly more alert although still pale and exhausted.

  “What?” I asked. “Drink.” Inside I was thinking, Get it over with!

  “Drink?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you serious? Aren’t you the same woman who threatened to ‘pop my eye like a grape’ when my mouth got too near your throat a few hours ago?”

  I scowled. I didn’t need a reminder that the irony factor was pretty damn high.

  “Look, do you have any idea how hard this is for me to do?” I asked him bluntly. “I’ve spent practically my whole life trying to avoid becoming a vampire hors d'oeuvre and now I’m offering you my jugular on a silver platter. Or not silver maybe but—”

  He raised a hand weakly to stop me.

  “I get it. You’re nervous.”

  “How could you tell?” I snapped, not bothering to hide my sarcasm.

  “You’re babbling.” He smiled at me. “I haven’t known you long, but I’m pretty sure that’s not something you do very often.”

  “I just…never expected to be doing this,” I confessed. “And I don’t like needles, remember?”

  He ran his tongue lightly over the tips of his fangs which had lengthened considerably.

  “Not needles exactly.”

  “Anything hard, sharp and pointy piercing my skin equals a needle to me,” I said. “So can we please just get it over with?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “Are you sure you want to?”

  “Let’s not start that again.” I reached up and pulled my hair away from the side of my neck. I wished that I’d gotten a haircut recently because it was almost down past my shoulders and getting in my way. Then I realized that the collar of the tee-shirt might pose a problem too. I pulled it over my head, narrowly avoiding a wardrobe malfunction with the sundress which I had to tug back up into place. Damn strapless elastic band.

  “How exactly do you want me to do this?” he asked, as I leaned down and offered my neck again.

  “I can tell you how I don’t want you to do it,” I said. “You know how sometimes when you go to give blood you get a nurse who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing? And she pokes around with the needle like it’s a divining rod and she’s hoping she’ll strike oil?”

  He laughed weakly, his breath puffing against the side of my neck.

  “In other words, I get one shot.”

  “Pretty much,’ I said. “But you should be able to do it. You’re a trained medical professional—right?”

  “Right,” he said. “But I usually do my best work with my hands, not my mouth.”

  “That’s going to have change right n—” I began, but my words ended in a breathless sort of moan as his mouth opened against my throat.

  It was more like a kiss at first, the hot, wet sensation of his lips against my throat and the play of his tongue over my skin. I could feel him tasting me, tracing the cords in my neck.

  I wanted to remain cold and objective—he was thirsty, I was giving him a drink, case closed—but I couldn’t. My breath began to come in little pants and it was all I could do to hold still against him as he explored my neck with his mouth. Michael seemed to sense my anxiety because I felt his large, warm hands stroking over my back.

  “Kate,” he whispered, pulling back from the kiss for a moment. “Relax. I have a feeling I’m going to be good at this.”

  “I can’t relax,” I muttered. “Not with you doing…that.”

  “You mean this?” He planted another hot, open-mouthed kiss on my neck, making me squirm against him. If only I didn’t have to be so close for him to do this! If only the damn sundress wasn’t so thin and his body wasn’t so hard and masculine under mine. If only he didn’t smell so damn good.

  This wasn’t supposed to be erotic, I reminded myself fiercely. This was a necessity, nothing more, nothing less. So why did my body react to his warm hands all over my back and the slow hot kisses he was trailing over the sensitive flesh of my neck?

  His mouth on my skin was making me hot in ways I didn’t want to think about—stirring up things inside me that hadn’t been stirred up in a very long time. What saved me from melting completely was fear. Every muscle in my body was tense, waiting for the bite. Waiting to feel him sink those three inch fangs into the side of my throat. That was what all my experience with vampires had led me to expect—pain, not pleasure. And I knew as long as I could hold onto my fear, I could keep control of myself. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator.

  But Michael was as good with his teeth as he had been with a needle. I know it’s hard to believe but when his fangs did slip into my flesh, there was only a brief moment of bright pain that was over almost before it began. In a way, it reminded me of losing my virginity, although the guy I had been with when that happened wasn’t nearly as gentle as Michael was being.

  Once he’d pierced my neck, I knew the worst was over and I allowed myself to relax, just a little. He would drink from me, he would recover, we would put this behind us and never talk about it.

  Then I felt it.

  At first it was just a pulling sensation as he drank from me. Then something else—a tingling that seemed to start where his mouth met my throat and ran the entire length of my body. Soon the tingling turned into a heat, making me feel flushed and hot in all the wrong places. The elastic top of the sundress was suddenly too scratchy against my newly sensitive nipples—it rubbed against me with a pleasurable kind of irritation. Between my thighs, I could feel myself getting wet and hot—I was nearly throbbing. The cotton bikini panties I had on were begin