Or maybe he'd already passed out.
"Five."
She braced herself and kicked the door, pleasantly surprised that it swung inward on the first try. Lousy craftsmanship. And for fifty bucks a night? Not great security.
She peered inside.
The room was pitch-black.
She stepped over the threshold. "Quinn?"
"That was a mistake."
"I think you have me confused with some weak floozy who's scared of the dark." She stepped deeper into the interior of the room.
The door slammed shut and she jumped.
No, she wasn't nervous. Not at all. However, it would be nice to have a little light so she could pinpoint exactly where the starving, injured vampire was standing.
"So, what now, Janie?" he asked quietly from the darkness. "Are you offering yourself to me? Are you baring your neck to me so I won't die?"
Her eyebrows raised. Was that what she was doing?
"I'm sure we can think of something to help you—"
A hard-muscled body flew at her, grabbing her wrists and pressing her flat against the wall. She could hear his breathing, loud and irregular, the warmth of his breath against her face. She had a stake tucked into the back of her pants in a special stake holster—a Christmas present from Lenny—but she didn't make a move to try to grab it. Not yet.
Soon, probably. But not yet.
"Do you realize that I already know what you'd taste like?" He breathed against her neck. "Just by how you smell. It's my heightened senses. Usually it's so subtle I hardly notice it, but sometimes, like right now"—his lips grazed against her throat—"it's unbelievably overpowering."
Then she felt the wet heat of his tongue slide along the line of her neck, and something happened to her that she didn't like at all—something that scared her more than anything else that had happened that night.
Her damn knees weakened.
She was crushed up against a wall by a hungry vampire, who apparently already knew what her blood would taste like, and it wasturning her on .
How completely embarrassing.
Even though she knew what it felt like to get bit—and how very close to death (or worse) she'd come last time something like this had happened—all she wanted Quinn to do was sink his fangs into her.
His fangs. Yes. Just his fangs.
He continued to tease her neck. "Got nothing to say?"
"You want to bite me?"
He groaned. "Oh, yes."
"I thought you said you'd never bitten anyone before."
His shoulders stiffened. "I haven't."
"Do it."
"What?"
"Bite me. Just… try not to take too much."
His breathing became even more erratic. "What am I doing? What are you saying to me? This isn't right.
Go away, Janie. Just go away."
He pulled away from her. Her eyes had become adjusted enough that she could see the outline of him in the darkness.
And he thoughtshe was stubborn?
She wasn't going to let him die out of principle and misplaced morals.
She slipped off her jacket and pulled her tank top off over her head until she was standing there in the dark in her tight black jeans and lacy black bra, her neck and shoulders now completely exposed to the air. She closed the distance between them and grabbed his face, pulling it down to her neck.
"Bite me or I'm going to kick your ass," she hissed.
"You're such a sweet talker, Janie."
For a moment she thought he was going to pull away again, and that would have been it. She would have realized what a crazy, dangerous thing it was she was doing and grabbed her shirt and run away to her own room. Figured out a plan B, as it were.
But that wouldn't be necessary.
The scent of her bare skin was enough to do it. She felt him press against her, aroused now with more than simple blood lust. He slid the bra strap off her left shoulder, then his hands traveled down the bare skin of her back. He pulled her closer against the hard length of his body, flattening her breasts against his chest. Just as she was adjusting to how surprisingly good he felt against her, she felt his fangs pierce her skin.
She started, gasping with the sudden pain but remembering that she'd offered this. This was her idea.
She twisted her hands into his hair and held his mouth to her in case he tried to pull away again before he got enough blood to help him. His hands kneaded the backs of her upper thighs, actually raising her off the ground as he fed from her. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
A small sound escaped from him. A satisfied, aching groan as he ground his body against her.
She knew that it took five minutes until the toxins exuded from a vampire's fangs were enough to offset the balance of human blood and infect that human with vampirism. Janie counted, trying to concentrate,
deciding to hold on and let him feed for three full minutes. That should be enough. Then she would make him stop any way she could.
She didn't need to. He stopped at just after two minutes and then ran his tongue over the wound he'd made on her neck. The feel of his mouth was making her writhe against him, only then realizing that they were now horizontal in the dark, on top of the soft motel bed, and her bra had somehow magically disappeared. His mouth moved downward, along her collarbone. He kneaded her breasts in his hands,
and her back arched off the bed.
"Janie…" he murmured, as he captured her right nipple in his mouth.