She looked around her. Where were her clothes? Her panties. Ohmygod. She was naked. Naked. Without panties. On a sleeping bag. With a stranger. He had to be a vampire. He had to have cast a spell over her. She was so far above this nonsense, but her body refused to move. Refused to stop quaking and rippling and feeling his magnificent . . . um . . . Her mind refused to do anything but give her a picture. That was burned in her brain. And she swore she had skid marks deep inside. He’d branded her there.
“We are going to our graves with what?” Fane asked.
He’d better not be smiling. She looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “You’d better not be smiling. I mean it. Wipe that self-satisfied male smirk right off your face. You will not tell a single soul that this happened. And it is never going to happen again. I’m dressing and going down the mountain and getting on a plane.”
She took a deep breath. He hadn’t moved. He was still locked inside her and she could feel him. So big. Stretching her almost painfully, but in a good way. He should be letting her go. He got what he wanted. Surely he was finished with her. He could have any woman he wanted whether he was centuries old or not. After all those years, she was certain to have cobwebs in her . . . um . . . That was it. He was stuck because cobwebs were sticky.
“Lifemate. You are just a little crazy,” he said. “I think I am going to have to stop your mouth and your mind in very creative ways.”
There was amusement in his voice. Laughter. He didn’t seem in the least afraid of her lecture, her snarky voice or her narrowed eyes. He bent his gorgeous head to hers and took her mouth, his tongue moving right past her parted lips to sweep in and claim her. To shut her up. That’s what he meant. To shut her up.
She tried to hold on to her tizzy fit, but her body melted and her mouth caught fire and she lost her train of thought completely. He kissed her thoroughly, his body moving gently in hers before he finally pulled out. He lifted his head. “You can walk around the grounds, but do not enter any of the buildings. I mean it, Trixie. They are dangerous. Other ancients reside here. I have to see to them.”
He did not just say that. He really was going to give her the slam, bam, thank-you-ma’am treatment? He wasn’t going to hold her? Or talk to her? Or reassure her that she wasn’t the complete idiot she knew she was? Of course he was. Men did that. Sixteen-year-old boys did it—of course grown men did. They got what they wanted and they left.
“Trixie. Stop.” Fane said it gently. His hands framed her face. “I will return as quickly as I can. You are exhausted. Go to sleep and wait for me. When I return we can talk.”
She hated his voice because she loved it. She felt it under her skin. Inside of her. She was afraid she’d never get him out. Mostly she hated herself for being such a fool. “Go do whatever it is you have to do.” She wanted him gone. She’d been a fool at fifteen, and clearly she was still a fool. There was a reason she didn’t have anything to do with men.
Fane sighed. “Do not think you are going to leave the moment I am taking care of business. You would endanger all of us by opening the gates.”
She glared at him. Gave him the killing glare. He didn’t go up in smoke like he should have. “I have the right to leave.”
“Actually, you do not. You entered the monastery of your own free will. You walked right through the safeguards and you left a trail behind for others to follow.”
She looked around for the vial of holy water. She probably needed to douse herself with it. His sexy voice was beginning to have a “tone” to it, one she didn’t like. She wasn’t a child to be scolded, although lying there buck naked made her feel vulnerable. She caught up her shirt and pulled it over her head without even looking for her bra.
“There is no need to talk to me in that tone. I warn you right now, I’m not a child you can boss around just because we had great sex. I haven’t had sex in so long, it’s possible anything could have been called great sex.” Of course there was the outstanding kissing, but she wasn’t going to mention that. Instead, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she sat up to wiggle the shirt over her back.
“Lifemate, you are a child to me. Your age is just about the time we are considered adults. Clearly you are feeling shame.” There was an edge to his voice now and his eyes had gone hard. Smoky. “You are my lifemate. My lifemate should want to be with me, not feel shame because we expressed our joy in being together.”
“Joy in being together?” she echoed. She looked around for her stake gun. And she wasn’t subtle about it. “I haven’t been with a man in decades,” she hissed. She snagged her panties and her cargo pants and dragged them close. “You seduce me and then decide you have to go to work and I can stay here and sleep. Then you accuse me of leaving a trail for the others to follow right through your safeguards. In a tone.”