Kiss Me Forever/Love Me Forever. Rosemary Laurey

and heat. She heard a groan like an echo in the night and reached around his neck as his hands framed her head.

      His hands seared trails of sensation through her hair and his tongue half-scrambled her brain. She wanted more. She wanted everything he had. She wanted the night, the world, and the morning and she found them here among the overgrown roses and the ankle-deep grass. Her heart raced. Her breathing quickened as if trying to outrace her heart. She felt heat and need and want and satiation. When he pulled back, she gasped for air. The pulse in her neck throbbing and her body screaming for more.

      “You don’t know what you’re doing,” a hoarse, ragged whisper warned as his arms locked behind her back.

      Why waste words? Kisses like his came once in a lifetime. Her fingers locked behind his neck. She stretched up and met his welcoming mouth. His arms held her. Without them she’d be a wobbling heap on the front step. His hands smoothed her back, sending racing streaks of heat up and down her spine and then lower, until need sank deep into her belly. She leaned into him, wanting the feel of his hard body against hers. Needing his touch and his lips.

      He pressed her against the doorjamb. His hands cupped her upturned face. “Oh Dixie,” he whispered and gently covered her face with kisses hot as a thousand honeyed brands. Her knees shook. His legs felt like iron as she stood between them. She felt him hard against her belly. She had no breath to ask him in. All she knew were kisses that turned her mind to mush and her blood to fire. His lips brushed her forehead; they dusted her eyelids and caressed her cheeks. His tongue explored one ear and sent her nerve endings into orbit. A trail of kisses down her neck wrung a groan from her lips and a sigh from her constricted lungs. A shudder of delight whipped through every fiber in her body. His lips reached the base of her neck. He nipped, her body melted against his as stars and comets collided. He caught her as her legs gave way.

      “Dixie!” Anguish sounded in Christopher’s voice. She had to be grinning like a fool and she didn’t care. Besides, it was dark and what was a grin after what they’d just shared? “Are you all right?” He sounded worried. He shouldn’t be. That kiss alone made the whole trip worthwhile.

      “I will be when I touch planet Earth.”

      “Look here…I didn’t mean it to…I hadn’t planned on that.” He was embarrassed. He shouldn’t be.

      “If that’s unplanned, your seduction routine must be something incredible.”

      “Don’t joke, Dixie.” He sounded hurt.

      “I’m not. I meant it.”

      “Look here get in the house. I want you safe.”

      “And I’m not, with you?” The back of his hand brushed her cheek and then caressed her neck. She couldn’t repress the sigh that rose as his hand brushed the base of her neck. “Get in the house, Dixie.”

      “Good night,” she whispered.

      He unlocked the door and handed her back the key. In the light of the hall, he looked drawn and wan.

      “Sleep well,” he said and closed the door with a dull thud.

      She turned the lock and started up the wide, shallow stairs. The mahogany bed waited with its crocheted bedspread and down pillows. She was alone but not lonely. Not with the memory of a kiss like that. She’d thought stories about climaxing while kissing were wild imaginings. She’d been wrong.

      A sudden weariness soaked her bones. The day had taken its toll on her. She dropped her clothes on the floor and stopped only to brush her teeth and wash her face. In the mirror, she noticed a mark on her neck. An insect bite? A mosquito maybe?

      Lying between the cool linen sheets, she was all too aware of her body and the warmth between her legs. She caressed her neck, remembering. Her fingers traced the trail of his kisses. At the base of her neck, just above her shoulder, her fingers danced a memory, plucking chords of response. Without warning, her body leaped in reply and then her head sank into the soft pillows. The moon rose an hour later and Dixie slept a quiet dreamless sleep.

      In the morning she saw it all differently.

      Chapter Five

      The click of Dixie’s lock brought Christopher to his senses. Four hundred years of discipline and he’d fallen for shining green eyes and a smile that made him forget he was no longer a man. She was honest, open and giving, and he’d seized like a soulless vandal and violated every promise he’d made himself. With the taste of her blood, heady and sweet as aged mead, on his tongue, he knew one taste of her would never be enough. His body hungered and his mind yearned for more. Her richness and warmth acted like potent drugs.

      Despising himself, he moved to the back of the house and watched as upstairs lights went on and then parted the curtains a few inches. She slept. A pale figure, her auburn hair spread like a warm halo on the pillow.

      Lust roared through every fiber of his being as her blood sang to him. He fought the urge to cross the windowsill, beat back the desire to taste her again, and killed the need to feel her scented skin under his lips. She’d trusted him, offered him friendship, something he’d never expected except from his own kind.

      His own kind. That was what he needed. There was his strength. With a last wrenching glance, he stepped from her window ledge and took himself thirty miles east.

      “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Kit,” said a voice from the wingback chair. “I would like some warning. What if I were entertaining company?”

      “Any company you entertain here would be friends of mine,” Christopher replied, as he stepped from the open window and sank into the companion chair the other side of the marble fireplace.

      “Who’d want to be your friend? You bury yourself in the wilds of the country and only come up to town when you want something. Not like the old days when you couldn’t wait to come to London.”

      Christopher nodded, “You’re right, Tom, as always. I need something now.”

      His old friend smiled. “And I thought you came to share a glass of port. I’ve got a nice vintage ruby in the decanter.”

      Christopher poured himself a glass, swirled the dark liquid and sipped. After Dixie it tasted like water. He sighed and leaned back in the chair, pressing his shoulders and hips into the upholstery. “I’m in trouble, Tom.”

      “The books?” Tom Kyd asked, raising his cigar to his mouth. He exhaled with deliberate slowness, watching Christopher through a haze of smoke.

      “Not the books. I found what we expected and a few more. She’s perfectly willing to sell. They’re getting valued and I offered to pay market price. It’s…” He looked across at Tom blowing smoke rings. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke those things.”

      “Worried about my health? Who introduced me to Walter Raleigh?”

      “Cut it out. I’m not in the mood for your humor.” He stared at the empty grate, angry at himself and his bad manners. “Tom,” he said at last, “I’m falling apart.”

      “That, I doubt,” Tom replied. “Seizing up seems more like it. If it’s not the books, what is it?”

      Christopher told him.

      “You fed from an unsuspecting human and now you’re riddled with angst. Why? Did you harm her? Did she resist? Does she feel violated?” Remembering the moonlit gleam in Dixie’s eyes and the smile on her sleeping face, Christopher shook his head. “Stop worrying. You fed. Survival demands that. When did you last feed?”

      “I didn’t feed. I tasted her. I never intended to feed. It happened.”

      “When did you last feed?” Tom repeated.

      Christopher leaned an elbow on the chair and dropped his forehead into his hand. “From a human—three years.”

      Tom’s eyebrows rose. “How do you manage?”

      A