"But where are you going?"
"Breakfast. Well, supper. Can't say when I'll be back."
She hadn't heard him cross the room, but suddenly his arm closed over her elbow.
"Rules of the house," he said simply, looking down at her with his storm-colored eyes.
"You have to eat what the host serves." He tugged the neck of his T-shirt down, exposing his jugular. "Me."
Chapter Ten
In a perfect world, she would have logically reasoned out why it wasn't appropriate to bite the boy, the infant—cripes, how old was he?
In a perfect world, she would have used her superior vampire strength to shake him off and gone traipsing down his porch and onto the beach, picked some drunken tourist and slaked her thirst, then come back and coolly discussed Pete's upcoming murder.
Neither she nor Burke lived in a perfect world; they yanked toward each other at the same moment (a clam between them would have shattered), mouths searching, tongues exploring, and then she reared back like the beast she was and bit him, pierced the vein with her teeth and sucked.
And nearly reeled; his blood was the richest, most satisfying drink she had ever had in all her years of being undead. In all her years, period. He tasted like salmon fighting upstream, like rabbits f**king under the moon, like wolves bringing down cattle.
They staggered around his living room in a rigid dance, fingers digging into each other's shoulders, and he pulled her (his, really) T-shirt off with one rip down the back. Not to be outdone by a mortal, she did the same. She hoped he had a stash of Clark Gable-type T-shirts somewhere, because he was now short two.
They tripped and hit the couch, Burke on the bottom, and she broke free and groaned at the ceiling. A bad idea with a full mouth; she caught a rill of blood with her thumb, then sucked on it.
"Good?" he asked.
"Burke. Oh man. You just don't know."
"It's my high-fat diet," he said seriously, staring at her tits. "Um. All ni**les. Come here."
"Your high-fat diet includes ni**les?"
"Shhh." His arm circled around her and he pulled her down, sucking greedily, even biting her gently, and she wriggled against him, pushing at her shorts, pulling at his.
She kissed the top of his head and shoved her br**sts harder into his face, delighting in the feel of his mouth on her flesh. "Oh, Burke." She sighed.
"Mmmph."
"Not to put any pressure on you. But Reagan was in the White House the last time I got laid."
Her nipple slid from his mouth with a popping sound and he replied, "That's the opposite of pressure. It's been so long, you probably don't remember what good sex is."
"Come on!" she screeched, delighted. "It's like riding a bike."
"Hardly," he grunted, seizing her by the thighs and levering her over his mouth. She clutched the back of the sofa to keep her balance and promptly went out of her mind as his tongue searched, darted, stabbed. She couldn't imagine the upper-body strength he had, how he could so effortlessly hold her entire weight just above his mouth. The sheer physics of it was—was she thinking about physics?
Get your head in the game or you'll miss it. Good advice. Not to mention, she could feel his tongue all over, not just where… where it actually was. Umm. She shuddered all over and thrust against his face, no more able to stop her movements than she could have given up blood. And her orgasm was upon her like the finest rush imaginable, surging out of nowhere and shocking the shit out of her—she had never been one to come in less than five minutes, never mind less than five seconds.
She lost her grip but he did not, and the momentum brought them both tumbling to the floor, smashing the coffee table in three pieces on the way. Neither of them especially cared. They had one goal, and that was Serena's penetration: a shattered coffee table could not have been more irrelevant.
Burke crushed her lips beneath his mouth and shoved her legs apart with his knee; she locked her ankles behind his back as he pushed into her with no niceties and no apologies—just what she wanted, needed, silently demanded. Their bellies smacked together faster and faster, and they clawed and bit their way to mutual orgasm.
"Oh man," she said when she could talk.
"Hush."
"I'd fall down, if there was anywhere to fall."
"I knew you'd wreck this by speaking."
"Aw, shut it."
He brushed splinters out of her hair. "You owe me furniture."
"Ha! After that, you owe me a hundred bucks."
"Is that the going rate these days?"
"I have no idea," she admitted. "I just said that to sound tough." She was silent, considering. "I have no idea why I just said that, either."
"Well. You are tough." He gently disengaged from her limbs, picked her up like a doll and put her on the couch. He looked rueful as he examined the various shredded cloth that had been two outfits only five minutes ago, then said, "I'm ready for a
burger or a steak or something. Are you—" He touched the bite wound on his neck. "Full?"
"Sure. Like I said before, we only need a little bit. But maybe you shouldn't be jumping around like that," she warned, getting up to put a hand on his arm—too late, he had already darted into the kitchen. "Sometimes vie—people are a little light-headed after I—"
He snorted, his head deep inside the fridge. "Eggs would be good. Eggs with a side of eggs. And a hamburger. Two hamburgers."
"I can hear your cholesterol going up, just listening." She was amazed at how energized he was. Werewolf, she reminded herself. All the time, not just during the full moon.
He brought down a bowl, rapidly cracked a dozen eggs into it, found a fork, and started whisking.
She came over to him and stared at the eggs. "Do you miss solid food?" he asked.
"No. The smell of it makes me ill. I can't believe you're going to eat half the food in the house."
He cocked a dark brow at her. "Half?"
Chapter Eleven
"It's good that we got the sex out of the way," she said as they sped toward Eat Me Raw. "Now we can focus on—you know."
"The murder?"
"Right." She was a little taken aback at how coolly he said it, like it was a fact of life, something unpleasant but unavoidable, like taxes. "The sex thing would have just distracted you."
"That's probably true," he said cheerfully.
"But you know," she felt compelled to add, as she was compelled to ruin all good things in her life/death, "there's nothing in it for us. I mean, no future."
He was silent, concentrating on the road.
"It's not like I can give you a family. My ovaries quit working the same day everything quit working. Not that I ever wanted a family," she added in a mutter. "I hate kids."
"Me, too."
"Liar!"
He blinked at her. "Well. I don't hate them. I don't hate anything. But I must admit, they bug the shit out of me."
"Me, too! I mean, I know we all had to go through it, and kids have to learn, blah-blah, but do they have to learn right next to me? You can't go to a restaurant anywhere and have a nice glass of wine without some toddler throwing Saltines in your hair."
"And the parents…" he prompted.
"Oh, man, they are the worst! Always obsessing about when their kid takes a shit, or doesn't take a shit, or is a slow talker, or talks too much, and showing you meaningless crayon scribbles and going on and on about what geniuses their little Tommy or Jenny is. Ugh!"
"Try being in a pack, and knowing the baby barfing all over your shoes is destined to be your boss someday."
The sheer horror of the idea consumed her for a moment. "Okay," she said at last, "that's bad."
"Making nice to a toddler who takes a dump in the corner, because she's going to be the pack leader someday."
"Man!"
"And the parents, who are your bosses right now, think it's swell when the kid breaks a window by throwing her baby brother through it. So there's broken glass everywhere, the baby's laughing and shitting, the kid's laughing, and the parents are all 'isn't she a genius?' and 'isn't he a brave little man?'"
"I don't know how you stand it!"
"That's why I live alone. Lived alone," he corrected himself.
She let that pass. "Is it weird for a werewolf to not like kids?"
"Extremely. As in, perversion. We're supposed to be married by the time we can legally drink, and have two or three cubs by the time we're twenty-five."
She snickered at "cubs."
"But, I like my privacy. I like the beach. I like being able to sleep late on Saturdays and watch dirty movies on HBO whenever I want."
"Sing it."
She settled back in her seat and enjoyed the ride. He had an old pickup truck, beat-up blue with new tires and sprung upholstery. He had had it, he told her, for fifteen years.
Then she thought: I am riding in a blue truck with a near-stranger to go kill Pete, and I'm… happy?
Postcoital happiness, she decided. Strictly hormonal. She used to get the same high from eating chocolate.
"So, what's the plan?"
He blinked at her again. "You're asking me?"
"Okay. We go to the restaurant. We find Pete. We take him out back and kill him."
"With the handy stake you happen to have in your—pocket?"
She glared at him. She was dressed, once again, in his gym shorts and a T-shirt, one so old it was no longer black, but gray.
Barefoot. He was slightly more respectable looking in faded jeans, loafers, and an orange T-shirt the color of a traffic cone.
"It's a restaurant," she said, faking a confidence she didn't feel. "We'll find a big sharp knife and cut his lying head off with it."