Page 50 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

I put my hands on his chest.

“Are you going to kiss me or keep talking?”

He kisses me. His hand closes around my waist and pulls me against him, and I make a sound I absolutely hope the radio covers. His mouth is cool. His body is not. Or maybe that’s me. I don’t know anymore. I slide my hands up around his neck, and he backs me against the counter. Carefully.

Everything with Julian is careful. Especially this.

The counter catches the backs of my thighs. His hands move down, and then I’m sitting on the counter and he’s standing between my legs. He slides a big hand up my thigh and under my skirt and I go embarrassingly still.

“Julian—”

His eyes drop to the place where his fingers are resting on my hip, just above the lace edge of my underwear. His hand moves again, a slow light stroke along my leg, and his mouth goes to my jaw. I have to hold on to his shoulders.

“You did ask me to kiss you,” he murmurs.

His hand slides under my skirt and between my legs, barely touching me, and my hips go towards him before I have any say in it. His mouth is at my throat now, just below my ear.

“Julian, you said⁠—”

His hand presses more firmly between my legs, and I lose the ability to speak. The tip of one shockingly cool finger slides into me, and I make an involuntary noise. I push against his hand, and his mouth opens against the side of my neck. A low sound comes out of him as his careful control falters.

And then he stops. His forehead rests against mine. His hand is back on my thigh, and my breathing is completely out of control.

Julian’s isn’t.

Well. That isn’t quite accurate either, but I am absolutely not thinking about it right now.

“Why did you stop?”

His eyes open.

“Because there are a hundred and four cheese things behind you.”

I stare at him, and a hint of amusement crosses his face.

“That is not why,” I say.

“No.” His thumb moves once against my leg. “I am trying very hard to behave myself.”

That sentence does more to me than his hand did.

“I noticed.”

“Did you?”

“Oh, yes.”

His eyes close briefly.

I look at his hands. At the one on my thigh and the other braced beside my hip. At the deliberate care in every single thing those hands touch. I think about the fraction of a second when he pulled me closer. About the sound he made against my neck. About the way something in him slipped and was immediately put back. And I want to know what happens when he stops stopping himself.

I am thirty-two years old, and I have never in my life wanted to know something so badly.

Julian steps back. I stay on the counter for a moment because my knees and I are no longer affiliated.

“You are extremely inconvenient,” I tell him.

“I am beginning to understand that.”