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Please, please don’t stop. Don’t let me — or that bitch, Angelina — ruin this.
Thank goodness Erin was Erin and never, ever left things half finished. After five long seconds of reset time — and a look that asked,okay?— she plunged into a deep, hungry kiss. A few heartbeats later, we were panting…grinding…unraveling. Erin leaned farther and farther back, trusting her balance to my grip.
In the distance, thousands of cottonwood leaves rustled in the wind.
Then,bam.I exploded, and Erin cried out in her own racking orgasm.
We hung on and on, riding a wave of pleasure into a world of hot, achy bliss. When we finally eased apart, panting, Erin crumpled over me. I looped my arms around her and closed my eyes, basking in the remnants of our high.
All those rules broken, yet I’d never felt so honest. All those limits crossed, but I’d never felt so free.
Well, maybe not one hundred percent, but ninety, at least.
I frowned. Free of what?
Angelina,my dragon grumbled.
That’s when it finally hit me. Ever since she’d tasted my blood, her presence had followed me like a shadow. Now, the shadow was more like a cloud — still there, but farther away. Thinner, too, with streaks of sunlight breaking through it.
Hesitantly, I peeked at my wrist. The puncture marks were still there, but they seemed fainter. Or was that wishful thinking?
Erin sighed and melted in my arms, curling in as perfectly as yang to yin.
I rubbed my chin along her shoulder, then touched the scars on my wrist. No sting. No warning burn. Nothing but a faint, ominous throb.
Huh.Once bitten, forever chainedwas one of those hard-set vampire rules.
I stared a little longer. Was that another rule that could be broken?
“Mm…” Erin snuggled up like a koala.
I smoothed her hair back and kissed her, pushing every other thought away.
* * *
We stayed intertwined for a long, long time and eventually dropped off to sleep. A damn good thing, too, with that early alarm setting. But nature’s call woke me first, and I had no choice but to feel my way down the ladder sometime later.
I headed back to the ladder when I was done, but something made me detour to the porch for the second time that night. Opening the door quietly, I sucked in a lungful of air. Cold as it was, the stars were amazing, and the wind was back to a whisper.
I spent a minute there, peeking back every few seconds in hopes that Erin might wake and join me. But her breaths remained soft and slow with slumber.
Stepping to the edge of the porch, I looked around. To the left, cliffs zigzagged away from the house in a long line that reached for the stars. The creek was straight ahead, marked by a line of trees. The main house was way over to the right, along with the paddock and barn.
I sniffed, suddenly tempted to shift and fly, if only for a short time. It had been a while, and the crisp winter air promised a beautiful flight. Plus, I was already naked, so there’d be no clothes to bother with.
I glanced back toward the loft. Maybe just a short flight…
I hesitated a minute longer, then made up my mind. I took off right from the porch in the kind of showboating shift I hadn’t been inspired to try for a long time. That meant leaping up and away in human form, arms wide. Needles of winter air freeze-burned my skin, but a heartbeat later, I was protected by thick dragon hide, and my arms had morphed into huge, powerful wings. My ears and nose stretched into streamlined dragon form, and flesh and bone groaned. It hurt, but it was exhilarating too. A little like sex, I supposed.
My dragon grinned.Both feel really, really good.
The porch was only a couple of feet off the ground, so my belly nearly scraped the brush for the first few bodylengths of flight. But bending to the back edge of my wings provided lift, and soon, I was soaring above the roof…above the cottonwoods…above the mesa at the west edge of the ranch.
Racing along, I circled to the far side of the mesa. Then I turned sideways, skimming the cliff in another of those hot-dog moves I’d loved as a kid — one wing pointed straight down, the other up.
Ha. Haven’t lost my touch,my dragon preened.
I grinned. God, was it nice to feel good.
