He nibbled down the length of her neck, and each stroke of his tongue over the spot where he’d twice bitten previously sent a bolt of awareness through her. Alice’s back snapped straight, pleasure and heat and greedy need making her fingers fold into the material of his shirt. When he’d drawn from her last, she’d been prepared for the pain that had never come. The first and last time he’d bitten that place, the passion he aroused in her became a living thing, a part of her and him, creating a union from them both. God help her, she wanted to feel his bite again.
Alice made quick work of the buttons of his shirt, needing to savor all that warmth beneath her hands. His skin against hers.
She raked her fingernails over his chest, pride flaring in her as he hissed in a breath. When her touch went lower, stroking over the ridge of flesh tightening his pants, the same slow inhale became ragged.
“Not here,” he said in an abrasive voice.
The words managed to penetrate the haze of her mind. She kept stroking him. Memorizing the length of his promise. “Even if I want it? If I’m saying yes?”
“Christ, Alice. Not while we’re likely to be interrupted. Or overheard.” He kissed the tops of her breasts, which threatened to tumble from the confines of sensible white cotton. “This is as far as I dare.”
But his fingers belied his words, rubbing the burgeoning tip of a hardening nipple.
How quickly she’d forgotten about Pope. She looked toward the front of the plane and found him studiously occupied with cleaning individual specks of dust from the galley. His ears and neck blushed a deep crimson, and for some reason, that made her smile all the more.
Alice kept that slow, sensual rock of her hips steady. The grip of her hand on his cock sure. “What’s the matter, Sebastian?” she whispered, her breath against his ear meant to be as tantalizing as her words. “Don’t have a bit of exhibitionist in you?”
“You would torment the man?”
“If it meant getting closer to you? Yes.” The brush with the wolf had left her shaky, yet exhilarated. Trapped behind it, there had been a moment of paralyzing fear during which she’d made a promise to herself. Each day had just become her last. After she’d spent twenty-four hours with a vampire, the past two years with seizures that left her at their mercy, and then staring at death’s golden wolf eyes, she’d realized she had to start living in the now.
And here, the now was with Sebastian.
“Are you really all right?” He was serious. So serious. “I swear I’ll work quickly on finding another cure for my sickness. I won’t put you in danger again.”
“In twenty-four hours I’ve done and seen more than ever.”
“So you enjoy being this close to being eaten by a werewolf?”
The blood in her face drained in a rush. “A what?”
The smile on his face was grim. “And as much as I’d love to be with you, I think perhaps I should spend the rest of the plane ride explaining a few things about my world. The things you don’t know can get you killed. It might also help with some of the research you’re doing for me.”
She wanted to argue. To go back to what they were doing. To experience the feelings he roused in her. Her disappointment tasted bitter, but Alice nodded. Instead of leaving though, she rested her head against his chest, and listened to the deep timber of his voice as he began to talk about his life.
* * *
“So let me make sure I have this straight...”
Bast stared into her eyes, doing his damndest not to look at her lips. Every time his gaze dropped, they ended up making out like teenagers. Made explaining things a little on the slow side.
“Vampires, werewolves and other ‘fictional’—” said with air quotes, “—creatures exist.”
“Yes.”
“Vampires and werewolves don’t get along.”
“Right.”
“You’re in charge of the people who guard the vampire leaders just in case war erupts?”
“Succinctly said, but that explanation will suffice. So, yes.”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “And the reason you’re telling me all this is...”