“I haven’t thought that far ahead yet,” I admitted. “All I know is that right now, I want to be as close to you as I can.” At some point, perhaps I’d want to imagine what a long-term future with Frederick would require of me.
But not just yet.
We hadn’t even been on an official date yet.
Giving in to temptation, I pressed a chaste, closed-mouth kiss to his collarbone, reveling in the feel of marble-like skin against my lips.
“Cassie,” he murmured, his voice thick.
Moving a little, I touched my lips to the underside of his jaw, and then kissed my way down his neck to a spot where, many years ago, there had been a pulse. To the place I suspected another vampire once had bitten him, centuries before I was born.
“Frederick,” I murmured. I opened my mouth, letting my tongue dart out to taste him. His skin was salt and musk, desire and cool night air.
He whimpered.
“If you want to do this and I want to do this, why shouldn’t we?” I asked, though he wasn’t protesting anymore. I nuzzled at the sensitive spot where his neck met his shoulder, reveling in his sharp intake of breath, in the way his arm tightened around me, the way his fingertips dug into my side.
“Cassie.” His tone was half warning, half promise. On a shuddering breath his free hand came up to cup my cheek.
I sighed and leaned into his touch. Every nerve in my body was alight, sparking with anticipation. He had large, beautiful hands. Dexterous and strong. The thought of what they could do to me if he’d only let go . . .
It was a delicious torture.
“Please,” I whispered.
With that single word it was like a switch flipped inside of him. I could see it in his eyes as the remnants of his resolve cracked and crumbled away, and then all at once his lips were on mine again, his kisses as eager and as needful as they’d been at Sam’s party. He moved quickly, wordlessly, one hand at the small of my back and the other on my shoulder, gently guiding me backwards until I lay prone on the mattress once more.
“Oh, Cassie,” he breathed against my lips. He loomed over me, bracing his weight on his elbows, his forearms on either side of my head. He leaned in, pressing a kiss to my temple. Then he chuckled quietly, the sound so happy and full of relief it broke my heart. “I will never be able to deny you anything you want.”
When I’d imagined this happening, alone in my bedroom, I’d imagined Frederick as a quiet and tentative lover, as polite and refined with sex as he was in everyday life. But there was nothing quiet or tentative about him now. Now that I was lying beneath him atop his lush four-poster bed, his passion was a dam bursting in flood, as though until this moment he’d been holding himself back only with extreme effort. His relentless kisses left me breathless and reeling—and I welcomed it, my arms going around him as he kissed me, trying to pull him even closer.
“Cassie.” This time my name on his lips was a plea. He didn’t need oxygen, but he was breathing hard and fast against my neck like he’d just run a mile. Maybe it was muscle memory from the man he’d once been kicking in, now that we were here. His body lay almost entirely on top of me now, a welcome weight pressing me into the mattress. The feel of his breath on my sensitized skin made me shiver.
I wriggled beneath him, eager to feel him everywhere.
“Can I touch you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper, without lifting his head from where it rested in the crook of my neck.
I nodded, feeling like I might burst with anticipation.
His hand slid down the front of my shirt until he found my breast. I arched into his touch, and he squeezed—gently at first, and then, when he saw what his touch was doing to me, with firmer pressure. My breasts were a respectable size, but I fit easily and entirely within his large palm. My nostrils flared, my breathing coming hot and quick as sensation coursed through me.
“Frederick,” I murmured, intending only to encourage him to keep going. The sound of his name must have done something to him because he growled his response. All his formidable powers of speech seemed to have fled as his free hand came down and cupped my other breast. He thumbed roughly at my nipples through my shirt and bra until they pebbled up into hard little sensitized buds against his palms, and then he kept going, and going, and going, until I was nothing but pure sensation.
“Oh,” I said, incapable of articulate speech. The soft velvet duvet underneath me served as delicious contrast to the sharp spikes of pleasure coursing through my bloodstream, the placid and even ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway a stark accompaniment to my uneven, rapid breaths. Frederick tore off my shirt and bra impatiently, tossing them to the floor like the hindrances they’d become. His low, desperate groan when he saw my bare chest ratcheted the coil of desire in the pit of my stomach to nearly unbearable heights.