Dark Ones - Even Vampires Get The Blues Part 11

"Yup. Although my dad says he thinks my mother's pointy ears are s.e.xy. He likes to nibble on them. Mom says that to an elf, ears are an erogenous zone, but I've never found that to be true."

He unbuckled his belt, dropping it and the sporran on the chair. "Would you like me to nibble on your ears?"

"They're not pointy," I answered, a little shiver of mingled antic.i.p.ation and excitement doing a number on my nervous system.

"Are you purposely stalling? Are you not dropping kilt because you suddenly realize that making love is a hundred times better than just plain old f.u.c.king?"

"No," he said, his hand on the waistband. "Why, are you having second thoughts?"

"You asked me that before. I said no then, if you recall."

"That's right. Well..." He hesitated for another moment, then with a quick move unb.u.t.toned his kilt and let it drop to the floor.

He wasn't wearing underwear, something that mildly shocked me. "There. I'm naked and you're dressed. Now it's your turn."

"Don't rush me," I said, not sure where to look first. Oh, OK, I looked there first, but just because I wondered. But once that curiosity was satisfied, I gave the rest of him the once-over. "I'm guessing you have no body issues whatsoever."

"You guess wrong. Are you going to just stand there and stare at me?" he asked, picking up his kilt and neatly folding it to sit on top of his shirt.

"I'm an elf. I'm a visual person. I like looking at you."

"You're human," he said, marching over to me and pulling me up against his naked body. "You're also one of the s.e.xiest women I've ever met, bobbed ears and all. Now take off your clothes before I rip them off."

"Oooh. Aggression. Dominance," I said, my breath catching as my hands slid up his ribs. He was warm, hard, and male. My senses went into overload as I rubbed myself against him, stroking all that lovely flesh.

"Does it arouse you?" he asked, nibbling a path up my neck toward my ears, his hands moving down my sides, around to my b.u.t.t.

"Not really-oh dear G.o.d!"

I've had boyfriends who've done a little earlobe nibbling before my mind took its usual coital walk, but never has anyone ventured beyond earlobe territory to the rest of my ears. When Paen bit gently down on the top of my ear, I just about pa.s.sed out from the bolt of arousal that zapped through me. My legs literally shook from the tremors of pleasure that were coursing down from the touch of his mouth. "Rip them off!"

"Hmm?" Paen asked as he nibbled the top arch of my ear. My knees buckled.

"Rip my clothes off! Right now!"

He pulled back a little to look at me. "You want me to rip your clothes off?"

"Yes! Right now! Rip them off, then ear me again!"

"I thought you didn't find aggression and dominance-"

I slapped a hand over his mouth. "Too much talking, not enough action."

"Very well," he mumbled under my hand. "But I want you to remember that the destruction of your clothes was your idea."

In the end, he didn't rip my clothes off, although he did help me out of them in a time that would do a quick-change artist proud. "There, I'm naked. Now do my ears again!" I demanded, lunging at him as I kicked off my underwear.

He chuckled as I turned my head for maximum ear position. "Changed your mind about ears being s.e.xy, have you?"

"You have no idea," I said, quivering as his hot breath touched my ears. Something occurred to me then. As his tongue swept a long stroke up the side of my ear to the top, I sent him the sensations of sheer, utter arousal that he was generating, alongside a hunger that I hadn't known existed in me. For a moment I could feel an answering hunger in him, and then gently I was closed out, as if a door had shut between us.

Stop doing that!

"I thought you liked this?" he asked, nipping my ear. Every bone in my body turned to pudding.

I do. I mean stop shutting me out of your mind. It's not fair. I'm willing to let you into mine. I just want you to feel what I'm feeling. I want to know what it is that I do to you, too. Why won't you let me in?

He stopped nibbling long enough to take one of my hands, place it on his belly, and slide it down the intriguing trail of hair that led to points south. "Does that answer the question of what you do to me?" he asked as my fingers closed around his erection.

Only partially, I answered, wanting more from him, but unable to express what I wanted without sounding like an idiot. I wanted to tell him that I needed some sort of emotional attachment, but I knew what his answer to that would be. And since I had agreed to his ground rules, I couldn't change them now.

I'd just have to make him realize how shallow s.e.x was without anything behind it, my inner elf decided. The human in me wanted to point out that most men were completely and utterly happy with nothing but a physical relationship, but I squelched that thought. Paen wasn't most men. He was different, in more ways than the obvious. He was so... needy. He needed someone to show him how much more there could be to life.

"I'm going to lick you from head to toe," he mumbled against my neck, his voice thick with desire as he backed me the couple of steps to the bed. "Then reverse the route until I end back at those tasty little ears of yours."

"Sounds like a plan to me," I agreed, grabbing a foil packet from my nightstand drawer before beating back the mosquito netting and getting into the bed-without allowing his mouth to break contact with my skin-as gracefully as possible.

One eyebrow twitched at the sight of the foil packet.

"For later," I said, pulling him down onto me.

"We don't need that," he said, his tongue making a swipe across the top of my ear. I shivered with ecstasy and rubbed my hips against his erection. "You're immortal."

"No, I'm half elf. That means I have approximately double a human life span, but I can still get diseases. Not to mention pregnant. And since I'd like to avoid both at this time, we'll just have to do this my way."

"If you insist," he said, pausing to suck his breath in when I trailed both hands down his sides to find the proof of his interest again.

"No more ears. I'm on the verge of an o.r.g.a.s.m now, and I don't think I could stand much more," I told him as his head dipped toward mine.

"As you like. No. No more of that right now, either," he answered, plucking my hands from his crotch.

"Am I too rough?" I asked, worried for a moment that my (relative) inexperience was causing me to do things wrong."Not at all, but tonight is for you. I want to give you pleasure, and if you keep touching me that way, it'll all be over and I'll just go to sleep."

"You're a vampire!" I said, nipping his shoulder. "You're supposed to be above that sort of mortal behavior."

"I'm also male," he said with a grin that made my toes curl. "Let me do it my way this once. Let me give you pleasure."

"You can try, but no promises I'll be here to enjoy it."

His head dipped again and he took one of my suddenly impudent nipples in his mouth. "We'll see."

Streaks of pleasure blossomed in all sorts of interesting spots, making my body hum with interest.

Unfortunately, my brain had other ideas. The feeling of disa.s.sociation washed slowly over me, a feeling that I knew would end with me drifting off while my body enjoyed the benefits of Paen's attention.

"No!" I yelled, desperately trying to grab his head to anchor myself. My hands drifted bonelessly to the bed despite my efforts to fight the lethargy that filled me. "No, dammit, not this time! Paen, stop! It's not working... G.o.d d.a.m.n it all!"

My being floated gently out of my body, hanging over the figures on my bed for a moment, just long enough for me to appreciate the fact that Paen might be a vampire, but he had the nicest a.s.s I'd ever seen on a man. While I sobbed in silent, impotent rage at being taken away against my will, I drifted out of the room and into our living room.

Which was in the process of being burgled.

"Paen!" I shrieked, trying to grab the doorframe as I drifted through the room toward another. I dog-paddled wildly to get myself back into the living room, somehow managing to keep myself from being sucked into the tiny kitchen. "Clare! Burglars!

Help! Someone! Oh, this is just fine and dandy. Son of a poodle, what are you?"

A glimmer of light from a streetlamp that peeked in through the blinds touched on the dark figure of a man as he moved around the bookcase where we stuffed bills and a.s.sorted items of a sundry nature. At first I had thought it was someone intent on robbing us, but the light revealed that this man evidently had six arms. As I watched, he flitted from one object in the room to the next, examining everything almost soundlessly-almost, because each time he moved an item to look at it, there was a soft pattering sound.

"Look, I don't know what you are, but I don't want you here. So leave and... hey!"

A loud groan audible from Clare's room caused the whatever-it-was to pause for a moment before it started toward her bedroom door. I lunged toward the figure, but it pa.s.sed right through me, sending me spinning toward the other side of the room in a cold eddy of air. I screamed silently in sheer frustration at my helpless state. "Stop it! You can't go in there! Clare!

Something's coming in! G.o.d d.a.m.n it! Paen! PAEN!" Paen!

Samantha?

There's something out here, something cold. And it's going into Clare's room- I didn't even have time to finish thinking at him. In the time it takes between seconds I was back in my body, naked and extremely warm.

And alone, the door to my room slamming back against the wall.

Be careful, I yelled, grabbing Paen's shirt and yanking it on over my head as I ran toward the door. It's got six arms.

"It doesn't have any now-it's gone." Paen's voice rumbled out of the darkness of the living room. I felt along the wall for the light switch, but he was right-the room was empty of all but him. He started toward me. "Are you sure you saw-"

"Yes, I'm sure I saw him. It. Whatever."

He bent to pick something up.

"It had six arms and moved really quickly, like he was being fast-forwarded. It was really creepy, and I couldn't do a thing to stop it-what's that?"

"Stones," he said, an odd thoughtful look on his face. I touched them. They were small and round, as if they'd been washed up on the sh.o.r.e, about the size of a penny.

"Stones? Where did they come from?" I looked around and noticed a couple more near the bookcase. "What the heck?"

"They're apports," Paen said, turning as Clare's door opened. I flung myself forward to stand in front of him as Finn loomed in the doorway, a sheet wrapped around his waist, Clare peeping anxiously over his shoulder. "The being you saw was a poltergeist."

Chapter 7.

"Is something wrong? We heard noises," Finn asked from Clare's doorway, grinning when he noticed Paen was naked and I was wearing his shirt. "Ah. Never mind, then."

"Sam? What are you doing?" Clare asked.

"Standing in front of Paen. He's naked," I said, a little annoyed that she didn't have the decency to look away. "Do you mind?

Stop ogling him and look at your own. No, wait, don't."

Clare frowned. "You're not my mother, Sam. If I want to look at Finn, I will. You have your own boyfriend-you can't tell me what to do with mine."

I waved that away. "I'm not talking about that. We have poltergeists!"

"What?" she shrieked, trying to push past Finn. He mumbled something over his shoulder at her. She disappeared for a moment to reappear in her silk bathrobe. I s.n.a.t.c.hed a pillow off the couch and shoved it at Paen before running to my room for his kilt.

"Sorry, it must have fallen into a plant," I apologized as I dusted off the kilt, blocking the view of him long enough for him to put it on.

"Poltergeists? We have poltergeists? You mean like the little blond girl in the movie?" Clare asked, going straight for the bouquet on the bar that marked the division between the living room, and kitchen. She popped a couple of lilac blossoms into her mouth.

"She was an actress, not a poltergeist," I answered, slowly walking around the room, picking up small stones. "This was a man.

Or man-shaped. And he had six arms."

"Six arms? Definitely a poltergeist," Finn agreed. "Did he leave apports?"

Paen held out his hand. His brother took the stones and nodded.

"What's an apport?" Clare asked, munching lilac. "Six arms? Are you sure, Sam?"

"Six arms are kind of hard to miss," I said, bringing back a handful of stones to Paen. "They look the same."

"They are. An apport is the result of a poltergeist manifesting physical energy. I'd heard of them, but never seen one until now,"

Paen answered.

"They look like normal stones," I said.

"They are normal. It's a physical reaction to the poltergeist interacting in our world. Did you find them around the things you saw him touch?"

I nodded, rubbing my arms, cold with fear, the remaining chill of the poltergeist, and most of all, from the loss of Paen's body next to mine. "What does a poltergeist want with us? I thought they just inhabited old houses?"

"I have no idea what he wanted, but I'm going to find out," Paen said grimly, handing me back the stones as he strode over to the phone in a swirl of pleated blue and green plaid.

"Who are you calling?" I asked, half joking. "An exorcist?"

"No, someone better," he answered, asking the directory a.s.sistance for a number. He wrote it down, punching in a new number as he added, "I'm going to call a Guardian."

"Oh, no," Clare gasped, her eyes widening, a lilac blossom halfway to her mouth.

Goose b.u.mps marched up and down my arms as Paen held a quick one-sided conversation with someone. I slumped down onto the couch, watching him worriedly. I might not have had too much experience with dark beings, but even I had heard of Guardians. They were bada.s.s warriors, protectors of the portals to h.e.l.l, the people who wrangled demons and their ilk.

Guardians were good guys, but they were also seriously powerful people who were single-minded in their duties, and didn't particularly care who got in their way while they performed them. Jake told me once he'd been called in to a.s.sist a Guardian with an algul (night-feeding ghoul) who'd kidnapped a living child. The Guardian was evidently perfectly happy with using Jake as a sacrifice in order to destroy the algul, but fortunately, he had managed to escape the experience with his life intact (although he had nightmares about it for six months afterward). "Er... is it absolutely vital to have a Guardian? I could try scrying the location of the poltergeist-"

"No!" shouted Clare. "G.o.ds above, Sam, the thought of what would happen if you should try to tap into the dark powers..."