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Arie didn’t disappoint as his hands spanned my ribcage. His hands only left my skin when I guided his unbuttoned shirt down his shoulders, down his strong arms, and then tossed it clear across the room. He grinned as I looked up at him because, now he’d straddled my hips and he was looking at me the way a kid looked on Christmas morning right before unwrapping the biggest, shiniest present underneath the tree. The one that you always saved for last because you knew it would be that damn good. I’d never experienced that as a kid, but my first holiday with the Ellis family that huge box had contained a ginormous flatscreen for my bedroom. But now the gigantic package that I intended to unwrap was clearly defined against the denim constraining it as he hovered above me. His hands came back to me, slid under my shirt, and spanned my waist. My breath hitched.
“God, you’re sexy,” he said.
“Oh? Which part?”
My hands explored his biceps, moved over his shoulders, and splayed across his well-defined chest. Oh, God. I couldn’t get enough of him. Arie would be my undoing.
“I love every part of you and I want to kiss, lick, and flick every inch of you with my tongue.”
I swear I could feel the heat in my cheeks all the way down to my toes, but I loved how Arie looked at me like I was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. It made a gal like me actually feel like I lived up to his words. He made me want to believe I was the sexy creature he described.
“You won’t get any argument from me on that matter. Lick away.”
His eyes darkened with desire, and I could feel him harden against my mound even through the stiff fabric of his jeans. Arie gripped the edge of my top and pulled it over my head. I sat up just enough to help with the process. My long wavy strands fanned out across the stark white pillowcase when I leaned back; Arie tangled his hand into its waves the way he always liked to do.
“I want you to close your eyes. This is about you, and I want you to feel everything I’m going to do to you. Relax. And just feel.”
His words were like a caress that sent tingles across my overheated flesh.
“Just feel...” The way he said it, his voice was so much softer than I ever remembered him speaking, miles away from the deep, husky voice he used most of the time. He brushed his thumb across my lips. “I want to memorize every curve of your body. I don’t ever want to forget.”
A lump formed in my throat. “You won’t.”
“Close your eyes, Holly.”
I let my eyes slowly drift closed. But I didn’t miss that moment before my eyelashes fluttered past my field of vision, where Arie looked scared that he might lose me, and I knew his recent lapse in memory haunted him more than he was willing to tell me.
“I want to memorize the swell of your breast.” Arie cupped one and he brushed a fingertip over my nipple, which pebbled in response.
He did the same with my other breast. I wanted to arch off the bed and press them into his palms even more, but I resisted the urge. Arie found the button on my jeans and unfastened it, sliding the zipper down. He tugged them down my silky legs and I could hear them fall off the bed somewhere to my right. I wanted to peek at him through my lashes, but I didn’t dare. Although I loved how playing with blindfolds or making me control the urge to open my eyes supercharged every touch, I was disappointed that I couldn’t look into his eyes and see the way I looked to him reflected there. I’d never really felt pretty before, but Arie made me see myself in a whole different light. I let my inhibitions fly when his skillful touch had taken me places I’d never known existed.
He gripped my hip and dug his fingers into the plump flesh of my backside. “I want to memorize the curve of your hip.”
I moaned when he planted a line of kisses across my other hip and stopped shy of my pussy, which ached with need to feel him.
Arie leaned up and his hair brushed against the top of my thigh, which tickled in the most sensual way imaginable.
“I want to memorize the shape of your face and how it looks right now.” He kissed my closed eyelids, my cheeks, my chin, and my forehead. It was both sweet and sexy at the same time. “So incredibly beautiful.”
“Please, Arie...”
I needed to feel him inside of me. I didn’t know if he was afraid of losing his faculties and that’s what drove the sweet frenzy that made heat pool between my legs, but he’d never felt so desperate or frenetic. His kisses drove me wild. He’d barely touched me, and yet the kisses that whispered promises across my skin could almost drive me over the edge. If his head would just dip a little lower...
“Shhh. Let me enjoy your body. I want to languish in it like a man lost in a desert who’s found an oasis.”
Because he doesn’t want to find out he’s lost his mind and that it’s really a mirage.
I pushed the thought aside as Arie kissed his way across my stomach. Traveling south past my navel, he paused, and I opened my eyes.
He was grinning up at me. “I knew you couldn’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Keep your eyes closed. But I want you to watch me eat you out.”
My fists clenched the bedding beneath me. I’d never had anyone who could turn me on just with their words. I knew then if I ever lost Arie, if the only words I heard from those lips were some distant memory of a woman I looked like, it would break me. His eyes locked with mine before he bent his head and nipped at my clit. Tiny, teasing flicks drove my hips off the bed, and then his tongue was inside of me lapping at my juices. I gripped his shoulders. Oh, God. I was going to come if he kept it up.
“I’m getting close...” I whispered. “Please, Arie, I need to feel you inside of me.”
I wanted to feel that connection that meant so much more to me than our incredibly hot chemistry. That was the moment I realized that fast or slow, public or private, he’d touched my soul and stolen a little piece every time he took me. Oh, yes, he’d already taken me, taken my heart, and taken me beyond everything I thought I knew about love. And then the bed shifted and I watched as he unzipped and kicked off his jeans. I swallowed. He moved above me and then he was inside of me. Another piece of me...gone.
I closed my eyes.
“No, I want you to look at me.”
So I did. His eyes reminded me of winter, but right now it was like the snow was melting.
“I want to memorize how you feel when I’m inside of you.”
Our hips rocked together, slowly at first, and then the rhythm picked up. “Arie, I...”
But I couldn’t talk. All I could do was feel our bodies locked together and the sensations that began to knot at my core. His hips urged me on, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him into me, deepening his stroke. My hips bucked wildly as our bodies became one, our souls became one. In that moment time stood still; the world faded away. A fine sheen of sweat glistened between our bodies as we crashed into one another.
“I want to memorize how crazy you make me. How fucking hot you are wrapped around me,” Arie said, his voice thick with desire.
My heels pressed against his back, taking him deeper with each thrust, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until I felt that knot building at my core explode into a million pieces. The whole time, his eyes never left mine. He reached down to brush the side of my face with his fingertips. He caressed my face the way he’d touched the rest of my body, as if he were memorizing it, creating a mental map of my curves to remember. My throat tightened from the emotional thought that flitted through my mind: that he was making love like this might be the last time we ever would. Synapses fired, the earth moved, or for all I knew it didn’t even exist anymore, as I clenched and pulsed around him. My orgasm rocketed through me and then it took him over the edge.
“God, Holly. Do you even know what you fucking do to me?”
-I have a pretty good idea.-
Telepathy was about all I could manage as he continued to piston his hips, spilling inside of me. I moaned and wrapped my arms around his neck. Arie collapsed on top of me, and we stayed that way for quite a long time. Neither one of us wanted to move, and I enjoyed being trapped under his weight. It felt like a cocoon, wrapping me into a private world where he and I in this bed were the only things left.
-I love you, Holly-
“I love you too.”
Then he rolled off of me and propped himself up on his elbow. “You mean everything to me. You’re my whole world.”
I smiled. “When this is over we should go somewhere, just the two of us.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. I’ll go anywhere as long as it’s with you. You know I’ve never really been anywhere.”
“I do. That’s why I want you to pick.”
I laughed. “But there are so many amazing places that I want to visit. Do you know how hard it’ll be to pick just one?”
Arie grinned. “You do realize we have an eternity to go exploring.”
“Mmmm, maybe we should buy a globe and I’ll close my eyes and spin it. Wherever my finger lands when it stops is where we should go.”
“That’s very charming. And what if fate picks a place you don’t want to go and we end up traveling someplace with a grass hut instead of a hotel and vampire mosquitoes to keep us company?”
I laughed. “Then maybe it’s karma.”
“You amaze me.” Arie rolled onto his back and I rested my head on his chest.
His fingers tangled in my waves, and it wasn’t long before he started squirming. Finally he edged out from under me and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
“Where are you going? I was comfortable,” I teased.
“Hungry. Seems like making love to you made me work up an appetite.”
He winked over his shoulder as he headed toward the kitchen. Food was an extraordinary experience with the taste sensations that danced across our oversensitive palates, but we didn’t need it for sustenance. No, I knew that when he said he’d worked up an appetite that what he really meant was that he needed some Puncture.
“Want anything from the kitchen?” he asked.
He was already halfway down the stairs.
“No, I’m good.”
I rolled across the bed and looked at the red digital display. We still had several hours before Luna’s shift started at HFC. The tips of my fangs tingled. I was hungry, but for something else entirely.
* * *
MY EYES DRIFTED IN that semi-sleepy post-coital bliss that always followed making love to Arie. I’d never known that feeling until he showed me what it meant to be desired. I heard footfalls on the stairs as he returned from the kitchen. His weight on the edge of the bed shifted it. I opened my eyes to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at me intently, both fear and love twisting his features into a perplexed and vulnerable mess.
“What?”
“You don’t want me to look at you,” he said. “You’re beautiful. I can’t help looking at you and I don’t ever want to stop.”
Thank the heavens I didn’t need oxygen because I stopped breathing right then and there. Arie grabbed my hands, pulling me up. I thought he was trying to pull me into his arms, but I was wrong. He grasped both sides of my thighs and drew me to the edge of the bed, swinging my legs over the side. He searched my eyes as if pleading for an answer, and I hoped that it would be one he wanted to hear.
Arie bent forward and kissed my knee, his eyes never leaving mine. He took my hand, and somehow I knew what he was going to say before the words were even out of his mouth. “Will you marry me?”
I didn’t know what to say or how to respond. I hadn’t expected him to propose to me. He’d given me the promise ring, and that was enough. Was it enough? I’d wanted more, but I was fine with it because that wasn’t in the cards for us. And I’d accepted a promise because at the time it was all he had to give. But now? How could I say ‘yes’ if he might not remember asking me, let alone remember my answer? Maybe my answer doesn’t matter, then...
“I say...yes.”
Without saying anything he slid the promise ring off my finger. Then he gripped my hand and opened his other palm. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t believe, and certainly couldn’t speak, but then he was sliding a gorgeous princess-shaped diamond ring onto my finger.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Like it? I love it. It’s beautiful beyond words.”
“It’s not as beautiful as you.”
I blushed. “When did you get it?”
Arie gave me a wry smile. “I’ve had since the night of the gala. I knew since the first time I saw you that you would be mine. I just wasn’t ready to admit it.”
His admission was puzzling. I looked down at the ring. “Then why give me the promise ring instead?”
“Holly, you have to remember how hold I am. Courtships take time, and I didn’t want to scare you off by asking you the moment I fell in love with you.”
“And when was that exactly?” I teased.
“The night your cat broke the vase in your apartment was the night that I knew I could never stay away from you even if I wanted to.” His voice was completely serious.
It had been the night that he’d revealed that he was a vampire, and at the time we’d barely known one another. And yet he was kneeling at my feet, telling me that even then he’d loved me. Oh, and he’d tried to push me away. Once I found out his past with Katarina was the cause, I could understand his need to keep me at a distance. My throat felt tight. His powerful admission made all the times he’d tried to hold back worth it.
“Why now? I mean...I was okay with a promise. There’s no one else for me, and there never could be.”
“Time hasn’t mattered to me because I have plenty of it.” He squeezed my hand. “I don’t know if that’s true anymore. At the diner...”
“Shhhh.” I stood and pulled him to his feet. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I know.”
His eyes searched mine again, pleading. His kiss was a slow, reverent, silky caress and his tongue explored my mouth as if trying to memorize that part of my body too. We just stood there kissing one another; agonizingly slow, gentle kisses. We got lost there for a while, his hands in my hair, and my arms around his neck. With each kiss, my body responded to his sweeping tongue, and I knew we’d soon tumble back into bed. And I fully anticipated yet another body-shivering, earth-moving explosion.
