Sex and the Single Vampire

"Which is probably why it's a good thing I'm not your woman," I answered, giving more orders to my mind to stop imagining what it would be like to be with him. He might be sexy as hell, but he was also domineering and arrogant, two traits that can be very dangerous.

"I said that you were not my Beloved; I said nothing about you not being my woman."

I shivered at the undertone of dark promise in his voice. I thought I remembered reading somewhere that vampires could seduce with their voices alone—of that I had no doubt. I clicked on the digital voice recorder. Maybe someone back at the UPRA offices could analyze his voice and see what made it so beautiful and evocative. "So were you born this way, or did another vampire snack on you and turn you?"

"You are also too independent and obstinate, and you lack self-confidence."

I ground my teeth and turned on the EMF counter, making notes of the readings. I would not let him goad me into—Hey! I squinted my eyes at him in the meanest possible manner. "Obstinate? Lacking self-confidence? Well, aren't you just full of the insults?"

"They are not insults, just statements."

"Fine, well, let's try on a few more for size, shall we?" I set down the EMF counter and limped over to him, poking a finger into his chest. He captured my hand with his, refusing to let it go. I ignored the wonderful things his touch did to me, and let him have it with both barrels. "For your information, Dracula, women have been emancipated. We can think on our own, make our own choices, and even—heaven forbid!—live our lives in comfort and happiness without any know-it-all males telling us what to do. Furthermore, I am a Summoner. It goes with the territory that my mind is strong. Strong is not obstinate. And as for self-confidence, I'm very confident in myself and my abilities. Just because I haven't had a lot of success Summoning doesn't mean that I can't do it. I can, I know I can, but it's not an exact science and there's a lot of elements that come into play when you're dealing with ghosts."

"I wasn't speaking of your self-confidence relating to your skills; I was referring to the fact that you find your appearance lacking."

There's nothing I can do about my appearance," I snapped. "I'm well aware of my shortcomings, if that's what you mean. I don't consider dealing with what I've got as best I can as expressing a lack of self-confidence."

"You hide your very feminine body behind the cover of shapeless male clothing just as you hide your eyes behind dark glasses."

"I wear pants because they're a heck of a lot more comfortable when crawling around haunted houses than a skirt and heels. I wear dark glasses because being called a freak gets a bit wearisome after the fiftieth time. Any more questions, Sherlock? Or can I get on with taking a few readings?"

"You hide your attraction to me behind denial."

I grinned and checked him for any ultrasonic emissions. "Oh, so now we get to the truth of your complaints. You're just pissed because I didn't respond to your kiss. Your smug masculine pride has been hurt. Poor little Christian, used to swooning maidens whenever you lay a lip on them, is that it? I guess the real test of a man's attraction comes down to what he can do without the enhancement of a little mental push to aid a seduction, eh?"

In hindsight, I saw that baiting him was not the wisest course of action. Lesson to the smart: Never challenge a vampire's masculinity unless you're made of marble, or are dead. You just can't win.

He was on me before I could take a breath, my body slammed up hard against his, his arms immovable and impossibly hard behind me. But it wasn't his arms that worried me; it was the look of determination in his beautiful (now a rich walnut) eyes.

"You are impossible," he said against my mouth, his body quickly becoming aroused. Mine answered the call despite my sending out the fire department to extinguish all the delightfully tingly fires he started. "You mock me, you abuse me, you do not respect the power that I hold, and yet you make me feel things I've not felt for centuries."

For a moment he slipped into my mind, and I felt myself go soft against him at the recognition of his need. I hadn't forgotten the torment I'd felt both in the dream about him and in the inn, but I had assumed it was greatly exaggerated in my mind. Now I knew it wasn't; Christian was a deep well of desperate need, the need for the purity of love to salvage his soul, to pull him from the abyss of anguish and despair that filled him. I closed him out of my mind more as a self-preservation tactic than anything else, and rallied my strength to resist the lure of his lips just as his mouth closed on mine.