FIVE
“Perhaps our feedback was unduly constructive,” Sinclair said, closing our bedroom door and moving to sit on the bed, where I was sulking, facedown, into my pillow.
“Y’think?” I mumbled into memory foam.
“But as you said, this is a learning experience for all of us.”
“Ugh.” I could feel him stroking my back the way he knew turned me into a puddle of grumpy goo. But it would take a lot more than a back rub to oh yeah right there. “Mmmmm. Umph, gggnnn nnmmph.”
“Your endearments always make me melt.” He eased me over on my back and bent for a kiss. “Now complain about the dearth of ice in our home. The shriller you get, the more arousing you are and the more irresistible you become.”
I barely stopped the smirk in time. Whew! Close call. “You can’t seduce your way out of this one,” I warned, “so just— Hey, get back here. I want another one.”
He laughed and swooped back in, planting one right on my mouth, then moving lower to nibble at my neck. I brought my arms up around his neck and pulled him closer. “I still think it was a good idea to do the interview.”
“As you like.”
“I do, though.”
“Of course.”
“I think it’ll work out fine.”
“Time will tell.”
“Man, you’re just begging to be cock blocked, aren’t you?”
“Now, there’s a bluff I may call,” was the smug reply. So naturally my only option was to tickle the bejeezus out of him, which wasn’t unlike trying to tickle a tree trunk. When we called a temporary truce, he was on the floor and I was on my back on our bed with my head hanging over the edge.
“Plenty more where that came fr— Yeek! Argh, get off. If you stretch out my sweater, I’ll set your suits on fire!”
“Well worth it.”
“It’ll be an inferno in there! Kids will come over and roast marshmallows!”
“A small price to pay for the pleasure of your company.”
“You know how deeply nuts you are, right? You’re the only man I’ve ever known who finds shrill to be ‘maddeningly arousing.’”
“Soon all vampires will love you as I do.”
“First off, that’s a truly alarming thought. Second, you know they won’t.” The playful mood had vanished, because when it came to predicting vampire behavior, Sinclair was nearly always right. Something was coming and it was going to get worse before it got better. If it got better. “You know what we’re going to have to let them do. And then what I’m going to have to do.”
“We,” he said softly. “What we will have to do.”
“Yeah. We. I just wish—”
“No point to it, beloved. Wishing is a time waster. Focus on doing. Focus on we. You see? That makes all the difference. And in the meantime . . .”
“Yeek! God, your hands are freezing!”
Soon enough the room filled with threats, giggles, more threats, and flying clothes. Sinclair’s dark eyes basically became my whole world, and that was fine, because my much less dramatic eyes were his world, too.
* * *
After, he leaned over and picked up the book off my nightstand. “Book of Shadows?” he read aloud, then started flipping through the book. “Banishing spells, cutting cords, banishing negativity? This is a book for Wiccans.”
“Duh, I’m the one who checked it out of the library. Hey, be careful! Don’t bend the pages; you do not want to mess with the Dakota County librarians.” They were super pleasant and helpful . . . right up until you damaged a book. Then it was a bit like “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” I mean, they didn’t do that work because the pay was so great. There wasn’t a librarian on the planet who was in it for the money. It was strictly out of love for books. So when you hurt the books . . . I shivered. It was one time, I’d been fifteen and had dog-eared a dozen pages (all the sex scenes in The Flame and the Flower), and the resulting lecture haunted my nightmares for years.
“Darling, you’re not a Wiccan.”
“Again: duh. Why are you telling me things I already know? I just liked the looks of the book and wanted to do some research. You remember when I banished the devil from Hell?”
“Exquisitely.” The dark throb of his voice hit me nice and low; if we hadn’t just finished, we’d be going again. After I’d given Satan the boot, Sinclair and I had come back to the mansion and he’d taken me on all fours in front of the full-length mirror. It had been . . . memorable.
“Well, I get the feeling that kind of thing might come in handy. So I wanted to study up. And don’t give me that look. You know I can do research when I have to.”
“I know you enjoy research. It’s one of your more charming secrets. You are the only woman I’ve ever known who takes offense when people assume she’s intelligent.”
“I don’t like raising expectations,” I muttered. And I didn’t like this conversation, either. I took the book away from him and put it back on the nightstand.
“You like taking people by surprise,” he added. His hands skimmed over my buttocks, and then he rolled on his back and pulled me on top of him. I braced my palms on his chest so I could look down at him. “God knows that’s all you’ve done to me since the moment we met.”
“You love it,” I accused.
“I adore it. And you.”
Well. When you put it that way . . .
“Round two?” I ran my palms over his nipples, feeling them harden.
“And then three. And four.”
“Oh, that’s a bluff I’ll call,” I teased.
(It wasn’t a bluff.)