Then he slid his hands up her legs underneath her long gown, her skin soft and warm and smooth. He reached the waistband of her panties and slid them down her legs and off, tossing them to the floor. Taking hold of her hand, he pulled her up from the bed, then turned her around so he could unfasten her dress in the back, kissing her bare shoulders, the fragrance of roses in her hair and on her skin making him take another deep breath. He pushed her silky, red hair aside, kissed her back and neck with passionate kisses, and listened to her heart beating wildly, just like it had when he’d been dancing with her. The same as his was beating out of bounds both then and now.

  Then he helped her out of her teal gown and set it on one of the chairs in the bedroom. She turned around and started to unfasten his belt while he reached down to untie one of his dress shoes and dropped it on the floor. She was unzipping his dress trousers when he removed his other shoe. Afterwards, she pulled his pants down and he stepped out of them, but she quickly pressed a kiss on his cheek and then his throat before she proceeded. She put his trousers on top of her dress on the chair, while he reached behind her to unfasten her bra while she unbuttoned his shirt.

  He licked her breastbone, and she licked his collarbone, tickling him, making him smile.

  He slid her bra straps down her arms and once he dropped it, she pulled his shirt off his shoulders and tossed it on top of the chair. He cupped her breasts, enjoying the feel of the soft mounds in his hands, and she reached down and cupped his arousal. He would not be able to hold off and slowly seduce her when she did that. When he massaged her breasts, she did the same with his erection. He groaned. She smiled and slid his boxer briefs off, releasing him. He was beyond ready to make love to her.

  Jacqueline tossed the covers aside and climbed onto the bed, ready for Dane to make love to her. He didn’t make her wait any longer but quickly moved over her body like a sleek big cat and kissed her mouth with a passion that reached all the way to her toes. Their tongues stroked each other’s as he pressed his hard body against hers, and they rubbed their intimate parts together. Instantly, their fangs extended, and they enjoyed that part of them that was vampire now. Tongues touching, teasing their elongated canines. There was something hot and sexy about it that she couldn’t exactly describe.

  “Hmm.” She licked his lips and then gently bit his lower lip and pulled it toward her, not breaking the skin, enjoying the moment.

  With Dane, she felt everything was an adventure and dancing with him had just made their relationship so fiercely sexual. His mouth was hot and needy on hers again, deepening the kiss, hard and thorough. Then they were stroking each other’s tongues this time.

  She felt his erection pulse while she rubbed her body against him and she breathed in his scent—spicy male, testosterone, pheromones going through the roof. She heard his heart beating hard, the blood rushing through his veins, just like she could hear hers beating just as wildly, like they were both running a marathon.

  He moved his heavenly lips to feather kisses on her neck, then licked her, and mouthed her, as if getting ready to bite her. She often felt the urge when they were this intimate. He scraped his elongated teeth on her neck with a deliberate, sexy caress. And then she pulled his head to the side so she could do the same erotic thing to him. His erection jumped, his nipples fully erect, and he groaned. “Bite me.”

  She wanted to. She really, really wanted to. It wasn’t a case of needing his blood, it was just part of their vampire experience—part of who they were now, and part of their new sexual need. But she was afraid to hurt him.

  He rubbed her arm with a reassuring touch. “You can do it. Vampires and blood bonds do it all the time and they get extreme pleasure from it. I want you to do it.”

  She licked her lips, kissed his mouth, and then turned her head to nuzzle his neck again. Her teeth itched to cut into him. “Okay.” Then she dipped her teeth into his neck, but that wasn’t enough. She realized she had to taste his blood. It wasn’t a matter of want. It was a desire so powerful, she had to. She just hoped she didn’t drink too much of his blood.

  Her teeth sank slowly into his neck, and she tasted his blood. He moaned in a satisfied way and after she drank a little bit of his blood, she licked the puncture marks, and sealed the wounds.

  “Oh, man…” he said.

  “Good huh? Okay, I’ll go with it. Bite me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, you can’t have all the fun. Though I have to admit, that was so intensely erogenous.”

  “It was for me too.” Then he licked her neck, blew on it, and kissed her before he touched her skin with his teeth. Then he gently sank his teeth into her neck, and she arched against him and groaned. “Okay?” he asked.

  “Don’t stop.”

  He sucked from her blood, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, pressing her body harder against his arousal. He was right. This was incredible. No wonder blood bonds were eager to find a vampire who would give them this kind of pleasure.

  He finally sealed her wounds and kissed her. “Now that was incredible.”

  “Yeah.” She knew they would do it eventually, but every time they were intimate, the urge had become more overwhelming.

  Then he reached in between them and began stroking her clit, but just the blood exchange and sucking action had worked her up to a near climax. She was so ready for him, her blood on fire as he stroked her until she couldn’t hold on any longer and cried out with joy. Then he was shifting his body so that he could fill her with his erection and began to thrust.

  She had her legs around his hips and was moving against him hard, wanting him as deep as he could go. He leaned over and kissed her mouth and she cupped his head and kissed him, her tongue lathing his in a stimulating way. She admired his strength as he maneuvered and lifted her onto his lap and began thrusting that way, his hand free to coax another climax from her. Ohmigod, she had found her hunter vampire for life. He was the one. No other huntress was going to have him, she was thinking. Right before she had another orgasm that took her to the moon.

  And he groaned with release. “Man, you’re the only one for me.”

  She smiled. “I was feeling the same thing about you.”

  Then they took a shower together and when they finished, dried off, and headed for the bedroom. They found Princess on Dane’s side of the bed. Jacqueline laughed. “At least I can still climb into bed.”

  “So you think.” He made her move to the center and climbed in on her side of the bed so Princess was on his usual side, but at least she wasn’t in between them.

  “That was a great maneuver,” she said.

  “You bet. Nothing was separating me from you tonight.”

  16

  Early the next morning, Dane and Jacqueline woke to Princess purring and pawing at him. He chuckled. “I take it she wants to eat.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’ll get her food for her.” Princess would do the same thing to Jacqueline when she didn’t get up early enough for her liking. She hadn’t thought she would bug Dane since he didn’t usually feed Princess. She hoped Dane didn’t mind that Princess was plaguing him to get her food instead of Jacqueline. From the very beginning, Princess had bonded so much with Dane.

  Dane leaned over and kissed Jacqueline. “No, I’ll get it. That way she likes me better.”

  She laughed. “As if she doesn’t already. Go for it.” But she wouldn’t let Dane go until she gave him another deep, toe-tingling kiss.

  Princess was insistent that she got fed, but Dane was totally locked into the kiss with Jacqueline, and it took him a few minutes to finally let go. “Damn, Princess, I hope you know how much of an inconvenience this is to your momma and me.”

  “Nope,” Jacqueline said, stretching in bed. “She’s all about wanting you to herself, as a means to an end.”

  “Food.”

  “Yes.”

  “After I feed her, I’ll make us breakfast.”

  “Add bloody Mary cocktails to the meal.” She was so tired. She felt she didn’t have any energy at all. Sure, she’d been up all hours of the night and several hours during the day fighting vampires or dancing with a hot and sexy one, but she wondered if it was due to not taking in enough blood over too long a period. It was something she had to remember to do. She would feel fine, and then suddenly, not. It was just hard getting used to that part of the business of being a vampire.

  “Gotcha.” Dane had been feeling like he needed some blood, and he was glad he could share that need with Jacqueline. He couldn’t imagine being with a huntress who wasn’t a vampire like him. And with them both being more newly turned, they had the same needs. He reached into his bag and pulled out a pair of boxers, then put them on, all the while Princess was rubbing her furry body against Dane’s legs.

  “She’s persistent.”

  Dane agreed. “See you in a bit.”

  “Wait. Take Princess with you if you’re going to teleport or she’ll bother me mercilessly, believing you abandoned her and now I have to feed her.”

  Dane laughed and finished dressing. He lifted Princess off the floor and held her close to his chest. “Okay, your royal highness. Ready for a trip out of this world?” Then he teleported.

  In the kitchen, Dane put food out for Princess, and then she was happily chowing down. Dane made ham and cheese omelets, toast, and bloody cocktails. When Jacqueline didn’t join him by the time he had finished making breakfast, he took the tray up to the bedroom using his vampiric transportation.

  When he reached the room, he believed she looked pale, and he realized she really did need her cocktail. She must not have had much blood during the last couple of days, if any. “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just feeling really tired.” She perked up when she saw the Bloody Mary.

  He helped her sit up and then gave her the drink, but steadied her hands until she was able to take a couple of good sips from her glass. “You must not have been drinking enough.”

  “I forget about it,” she said.

  He drank from some of his too then. “I was too, until my brothers found me passed out on the floor of my living room when they couldn’t get hold of me. When I have a craving for blood, I often ignore it. I want to have control over my life like I was used to.” He sat next to her on the bed and stroked her pretty red hair.

  “Oh, yeah, don’t I know it. I just can’t stand feeling that it controls me.”

  “But it doesn’t. Not all the way.”

  She finished her cocktail. “Thanks so much. I feel so much better already.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “So what happened when your brothers found you passed out in your home?”

  He chuckled. “Well, of course they were truly upset. They thought I had died! So they made me drink some blood and I was doing great, but they also made me set up regular feedings on a phone app so that I wouldn’t miss them. Of course, sometimes I’m in the middle of a fight or—” He winked at her.

  “Dancing with a huntress and making love to her?”

  He smiled. “Exactly. So that means drinking earlier before we’re off to do some new adventure, or right after. It’s hard to think of it when⁠—”

  She leaned over and kissed his lips. “When we’re in the moment.”

  “Absolutely. So we’ll have to make sure that we don’t neglect that.”

  “If we had been at a vampires’ club, we could have ordered bloody cocktails,” she said. “But of course not at a hunters’ club.”

  “Yeah, so before we go to the hunters’ club, we’ll have to have a refreshment. Otherwise, my brothers—should they find us both passed out—will give us both hell.”

  She laughed. “At least they care about us. My family would never even know that I was blacked out at my home.”

  “Yeah, that’s scary. You know we should probably mention that in the therapy group, especially for those who don’t have any family or friends’ support.” He began eating some of his omelets.

  She was eating some of hers and smiled. “You are a great cook.”

  “Thanks. My mother always said it was important for all her sons to cook well so they could prepare meals for their huntress mates also. Dad loved to cook too. His mother hadn’t insisted on him learning to do so, but our mother did.”

  She smiled. “Even breakfasts in bed?”

  “Absolutely. After having four sons, she needed a break, and he was proud of her for being a great huntress too. They fought together on hunts and trained all of us. Some hunters and huntresses have private instructors, but my parents wanted to teach us. Plus, my brothers and I had each other to practice fighting.”

  “My brother felt I wasn’t enough of a challenge when practice fighting. He wanted to fight with all his male friends. So I understand that. On the other hand, I needed to fight males too so that I could fight male vampires. Though females can be just as powerful and difficult to fight. That’s why I like practice fighting with males in addition to females.”

  “Well, you’ve got four of us males to do workouts with.”

  She ate some of her strawberry-coated toast. “I will take all of you up on it.”

  “I might have to fight them just so I get in enough time to playfight with you,” Dane said.

  She laughed.

  Then Princess jumped up on the bed and Dane grabbed the tray of their empty dishes and left the bed. “I forgot about her.”

  “I know. She’s not used to me eating in bed. She’ll think this is a regular routine.”

  “It could be.”

  She smiled. “We’ll have to shut her out of the bedroom then when we do it, or she’ll think that she can join us for a second breakfast.”

  Dane smiled. “Yeah, I agree with that. I’ll take our dishes downstairs.”

  “I’ll join you in a moment.”

  Holding onto the tray, he vanished. He really liked that part where he could move like this with a tray of food and not spill anything. He didn’t think he could have managed the stairs otherwise. Not with two full glasses of bloody cocktails when he carried them to the bedroom in the first place.

  He ended up in the kitchen and was cleaning up the dishes when she suddenly wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed his back, his neck, and he loved it. He dropped the pan and scrubber in the sink. And turned around in her arms, leaned down, and kissed her mouth, his hands cupping her face. “You are not conducive to cleaning up the kitchen.”

  “Hmm, neither are you,” she said, kissing him again. But then she pulled away and started putting the dishes in the dishwasher. “It feels so strange to be doing such normal things as vampires, when we did all these same things as hunters.”

  “Yeah. Some vampires have staffs to do the minimal tasks. I haven’t felt any need to hire anyone to do housework or anything else.”

  “Me either. But then I’m not interested in having blood bonds.”

  “I don’t want blood bonds either. Picking up blood at blood banks works for me.” He finished scrubbing the pan he’d cooked the omelets in. “What do you want to do today?”

  “We could check for some postings for rogue vampires. Then we can sign up for one of them and do some research to find where he or she is located. But I was thinking for tonight we could take a moonlit walk in the park?”

  “I should have suggested it first.”

  “No way. We can both plan intimate outings,” she said.

  They finished cleaning up the kitchen and for the first time ever, he and she got on her computer to search for rogue vampires the police had posted for elimination. They found listings for all of Texas and the nearby states, though they could search for anywhere in the event they wanted to travel that far or had trips planned and wanted to eliminate a rogue while on a vacation.

  Before they could pick a viable rogue, she said, “On second thought, let’s go to your pool and swim.”

  Now he hadn’t expected that. He was glad she wanted to just spend some more time with him and not just go on another hunt. He enjoyed the time he was spending with her.

  “Yeah, that sounds great to me.”

  “Good. I’ll change into a bathing suit and be right down.”

  “What about Princess?”

  “She can stay at home. We can return home for lunch and feed her.”

  “All right.”

  Then she vanished and he found a furry mouse toy and pulled it along the floor. Princess immediately started to chase it. Princess was too fast and caught it with her claws extended. “You are quite the hunter,” Dane said.

  “She is,” Jacqueline said, appearing near him wearing a teal bikini, and carrying a beach bag that probably had her change of clothes in it.

  “Man, you look great. I’m so glad Van is history with you.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, he’s the past.” Then she pulled Dane into her arms, and they were suddenly in his living room.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, needing to change into his swim trunks.

  “I’ll be in the pool.”

  “Meet you there.”

  He was in his bedroom, tearing off his clothes as fast as he could, and then he threw on his swim trunks and appeared in the swimming pool room. She was in the middle of the pool swimming a lap. He dove into the pool and swam to her as fast as he could. She was smiling at him and that encouraged him to enfold her in his arms.

  “You are the light of my life when I thought I was living in darkness once I had been turned,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.

  He loved this with her. His ex-fiancée didn’t care for swimming in the pool. She didn’t like getting her hair messed up. With Jacqueline, she was like a water sprite, diving under the water, coming up, swinging her hair like a wet whip, and smiling. He loved the water too so this was a fun way to enjoy the day with her when they weren’t working.

  He chased her in the pool and just when he was about to grab her, she vanished. Holy shit! That was cheating!