She frowned. “I know. It’s just galling to admit it.”
“Well, if Roland transformed you, our positions could very well reverse. You could be the one coming to my rescue when things got rough, because you would be stronger than I am.”
She tilted her head to one side. “Okay, I won’t lie. That does sound good.”
“Then you’ll consider it?”
She sighed. “I guess.”
“Don’t think that I don’t want to transform you myself. Because I do. I just want you to be safe and don’t want my selfish desires to impede that.”
“Okay.” She still seemed disappointed.
Reaching up, he brushed her hair back from her face. “Why is it so important to you that I transform you?”
“Sean told me how it’s done and . . .” She squeezed his hand. “If someone else’s blood is going to flow through my body, I want it to be yours.”
His hand tightened around her fragile fingers as his body went rock hard. “Would you think me strange if I told you that turns me on?”
She smiled. “A little bit, but I don’t mind.”
Grinning, he yanked her into his arms and fell backward onto the sheets.
She laughed as her hair fell down around them in a silky curtain, closing them off from the rest of the world.
“You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured.
“I find that hard to believe. You’ve lived for two hundred years.” And she wasn’t fishing for compliments. She really didn’t seem to understand her own worth, how unique and exceptional she was.
“It’s true,” he vowed. “Sometimes I fear this might all be a wonderful dream from which I will soon awaken.”
She kissed his stubbled chin. “If it is, I don’t want to wake up.”
He hugged her close. “I’ve been lonely for so long, Krysta,” he admitted.
“I have, too,” she said softly.
“I’ve waited two hundred years for you.”
“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” she murmured, brow furrowing.
He shook his head. “You’ve already surpassed the fantasies and expectations I compiled over the decades and centuries.”
She smirked. “You don’t want much, do you? Just a skinny girl to aggravate you every once in a while and put your life in danger?”
“You don’t aggravate me, you entertain me. Endangering my life keeps me on my toes. And I don’t know why you have issues with your body. The only issue I have with it is that it’s clothed far too often.”
Laughing, she wrinkled her nose. “I was mocked throughout high school for being flat-chested and spent four years watching every male except my fiancé, who was just my boyfriend back then, drool over all the girls with big boobs. So it’s hard not to be self-conscious.” Her face lit with an Ah-ha! expression. “Hey! When I’m transformed, will the virus make me beautiful like Sarah, Lisette, Melanie, and Jenna?”
“You already are beautiful,” he declared. He loved the way she looked.
She pouted. “It won’t change my appearance?”
“No. If you were older, the virus would reverse the damage aging had wrought and make you young again.”
She smiled. “Jenna seems very excited about her gray hair having turned brown again.”
He grinned. “Yes, she is.”
“But it won’t change my shape?”
He shook his head. “If you were emaciated, the virus would rebuild the muscle mass you had lost, heal the damage done, and render you a healthy weight once more. If you were obese, the virus would swiftly burn through your fat stores—”
“Let me guess. Heal the damage done?”
“Yes, and render you a healthy weight. Since you’re neither, there should be no noticeable difference.”
“So . . . no big boobs?”
“No big boobs. Not that you need them.”
She grimaced. “It just would have been nice to have an hourglass figure that wasn’t achieved by wearing a stiff, uncomfortable push-up bra.”
“I prefer no bra to a push-up bra, at least around me,” he mentioned.
“You are so easy to please,” she said with a smile, wiggling from side to side atop him in a way that sent shocks of pleasure darting through him.
His voice deepened. “And you please me endlessly.”
Her look turned flirtatious. “You know, the rest of me may not be too much to brag about, but I do happen to have a lovely mouth.” Lowering her lips to his chest, she tongued his nipple and delivered a love bite.
He hissed in a breath, pulse leaping. “Yes, you do.”
She moved to the other nipple and repeated the gestures. “A very talented mouth.”