Chapter Twelve

For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening hours, Mac spent every moment that Richie wasn’t occupied with work, continually answering the question, "Really?" or "Are you sure?". Once he even said, "So, show me something cool."

Jon had given up on answering Richie. He would just shake his head at his friend and walk away. Richie might be having a hard time grasping the concept of Mac being a witch, but Jon knew it would eventually sink in. He was proven right when Richie approached him before the concert and suggested a song to be added to the set list. Jon laughed out loud at the idea, but quickly included the Eagles song, Witchy Woman, on the set list.

The concert went off without a hitch, but during the short after show meet and greet with radio station contest winners, Jon felt that familiar warning again. Quickly and cautiously, he searched the crowded conference room, but he didn’t see anyone who didn’t seem to belong. His eyes found Mac standing between Richie and David while they signed autographs and posed for pictures. Jon spent another hour smiling and signing his name, but continually kept an eye out for Mac. Whoever was lurking around, Jon didn’t want them anywhere near her. He wouldn’t feel completely comfortable until they left Portland. Jon knew whatever vampire was sneaking around to get a look at him wasn’t a friend, otherwise they would have already come forward.

The flight to San Francisco was short. By 2am local time, Mac and Jon were settled into adjoining suites. Once again, Mac was touched by Jon’s discretion, but there was still that nagging little thought in the back of her mind that his discretion wasn’t to protect her, that it was in fact to protect himself. He was, in the eyes of the world, a married man after all.

Mac was getting settled into her room, when there was a knock on the door between her room and Jon’s.

"Come on in," she called out.

He opened the door, but didn’t enter the room. Instead, he casually leaned one shoulder against the door frame. He was shirtless, with his arms crossed over his sculpted chest. His crossed ankles drew her eyes and she realized he was barefoot. Jon was wearing nothing but a pair of jogging pants, that rode so low on his hips she could see his hipbone. "You could’ve just told me in my head," he told her, smiling. The lines normally around his eyes weren’t there; he had dropped the glamour. Jon had been doing so whenever they were alone since the night he’d told her what he was, but it still threw her for a loop every time.

"I guess I’m just not used to communicating that way, yet," she answered him from the doorway leading into her bedroom.

To anyone else he would seem relaxed, but to Mac, he looked ready to pounce, standing there still smiling at her. His stance reminded her that he was a predator, and she felt like dinner. Somehow, that didn’t bother her as much as it would have before he’d bitten her earlier in the day. She blinked, and suddenly he wasn’t across the room anymore, but standing right in front of her and reaching up to pull the scrunchie from her hair. Her ponytail didn’t stand a chance against his long fingers, and her tresses fell around her shoulders.

"How did you...," she started to ask, but at his raised eyebrow she let the subject drop. He had crossed the room with lightening speed courtesy of his vamp powers.

She felt the fluttering sensation in her head right before his husky voice sounded in her mind. But, I want you to get used to talking to me this way, moglie mia. It adds intimacy, don’t you think? His fingers laced through her hair, as he combed it back off her shoulders. The smile was still on his face, but now it seemed like a lazy, sensual smile with his blue eyes ablaze with desire.

Refusing to give into his unspoken demand, she told him out loud, "I’ve been meaning to ask you what that endearment means in English. It is Italian, right?"

Yeah, it’s Italian, he answered her.

She waited for him to tell her what it meant, but his hand softly caressed her cheek and she looked up into his face. His eyebrow raised in expectation told her he wasn’t going to tell her until she asked him the way he wanted her to. She wasn’t ready to give in just yet. "I’ll look it up on the internet," she told him, grinning mischievously.

You’re so stubborn, he told her, still smiling, but I like that.

"Then you’ll...," he interrupted her in her head.

Nope, because I’m more stubborn. His warm fingers were tracing the neckline of her T-shirt, while the other hand lay on the curve of her hip, burning her.

She gave him a devilish smile, before turning away from him. She crossed the room to her laptop. Opening it, as she leaned over the table it sat upon. She braced one hand on the table top, and told him, "Curiosity is killin’ me. Just gimme a minute."

In an instant his left arm was snaking around her waist and she felt the heat of his body pressed close to her back. Even his thighs were rubbing the back of hers, as he ground his arousal against the curves of her bottom. His right hand pushed her hair aside so he could place a series of hot kisses on her neck. While in her head his voice rumbled, Are you sure you want to do that now, Mac? Jon was intentionally not thinking about what the word meant, otherwise with their minds joined she would get it.

"Absolutely," she answered.

His right hand stroked her shoulder before sliding around to gently caress her breast, even as he continued to kiss and lightly nip her neck. Mac was finding it hard to concentrate on her task, and finding it even harder to care if she ever found out what the damn endearment meant. With him in her head, whether she talked to him that way or not, she could feel what he felt, the enjoyment he felt over the simple act of kissing her neck and caressing her breast. She also knew that he could feel what she was feeling.

Lightly, he grazed her neck with his fangs, and she shivered all the way to her toes. The arm at her waist shifted, and soon his fingers were softly stroking the soft skin of her stomach just under the waistband of her jeans.

"I can look tomorrow," she announced, before turning in his arms.

Her hands skimmed up his muscular chest, lightly flicking his nipples before moving up to clasp his face. Their lips met, tongues tangling, breaths coming in quick pants. Mac knew she would never get enough of this man.

I won’t ever get enough of you either, Mac, he told her, even the voice in her head sounded husky and heavy with desire.

His hands cupped her bottom, and she felt her feet leaving the floor. She wrapped her legs around his lean waist and let him carry her to the bed in her bedroom. The pleasure he was feeling combined with her own and was almost more than she could bear. The thought crossed her mind that she just might die of pleasure.

No, you won’t die, he told her, without breaking their kiss, but if you did...What a way to go, huh?

She wanted to agree with him, but didn’t want to break the kiss, or give in and communicate the way he wanted.

Too late, he told her, satisfaction dripping from the voice in her head, I heard that.

"Are you going to gloat, or make love to me?" she asked, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

I can do both, tesoro mia, he told her as his lips met hers again, trust me. I’m good at multi-tasking.

She unwrapped her legs from his waist and slowly slid down his body until her feet touched the floor again. He continued to devour her mouth as his hands caressed a hip, her waist, then a breast, before they came to rest on either side of her throat, his fingers splayed and his thumbs stroking her jawbone on either side of her face. Jon broke the kiss long enough to pull her shirt off over her head, but he didn’t go back to her lips. Mac’s head fell back as Jon again began to nibble on her neck, placing little kisses here and there, lingering on the sensitive spot right below her ear. His hands skimmed her heated skin, tracing the bottom of her bra around to her back where he deftly unhooked it. She barely noticed as the scrap of satin and lace slid down her arms and fell to the floor, because his hands had already moved to the fly of her jeans.

Jon was lost in the sensations of touching her satiny skin, reveling in the pleasure that she was feeling as well. The world narrowed down to just the two of them as her hands moved to his waist and slowly untied the drawstring that would loosen the sweat pants and allow them to fall to the floor. She gave the pants a little persuasion to get past the slight swell of his hips, but then they fell the rest of the way on their own; his cock springing free and standing at attention.

Mac heard his sigh of pleasure echo in her head when her hand clasped around his staff. His hands smoothed down her back, under the loosened material of her jeans, to grab the globes of her bottom and pull her tighter against him, before those same hands pushed her jeans off her hips so that they pooled in the floor around her feet. He picked her up then, leaving her jeans behind, he quickly stepped out of the pile that was his own pants and took the one step necessary to lay her gently on the bed.

His name escaped her lips on a breath as he joined her. She was completely lost to the pleasure they created, the pleasure that started in each of their own bodies but then echoed to the other’s mind. He wanted to bite her, and he would, but he was putting it off, enjoying the anticipation.

Mac realized his desire to bite her thanks to the link between their minds. "Go ahead, Jon," she urged, in a breathless imitation of her usual voice. She remembered the pleasure that had engulfed her when he had bitten her before, and longed for that again.

No, Mac, his gravely voice echoed in her mind, it will be so much better if I wait. Just enjoy this now. He placed a hot kiss on that spot below her ear, his moist breath ghosting across the skin of her neck as his tongue licked a path from there to her jugular. His tongue circled her pulse point as he entered her.

"Oh my God," she gasped, raising her hips to meet his thrust.

Jon controlled the urge to just pound into her, moving slowly, wanting to prolong the pleasure.

"Yes, do it," she encouraged him, "faster, harder."

He looked down into her face. Her eyes were squeezed tightly closed and she had her fuller bottom lip clamped between her teeth, as she tossed her head from side to side in wild abandon. Her face glistened with a thin layer of sweat. He bent his head to lick at the beads on her upper lip, before kissing her deeply again.

"Jon," she pleaded. He knew she was teetering on the edge, that line that separated the real world from that other place that only lovers could enter. That place where souls had wings and lovers soared together, free and boundless, for those few seconds that seemed to last an eternity but ended all too soon. While she balanced precariously on that border between earth and heaven, that’s when he bit her.

"God, Jon," she screamed, as she fell. Her soul took flight, even as he held her tightly in his arms.

Her pleasure washed over him, igniting his own orgasm. He continued to move inside her as he drank. Drawing deeply, he took what he needed, in more ways than one.

Mac’s winged soul flew higher as his orgasm washed over her. Lights exploded like fireworks in her head, until there was nothing but black.

Jon gently laved the bite with his tongue, knowing it would heal soon. He realized Mac had fainted from the pleasure that had taken them both higher than they had ever been. So, he carefully moved her farther up on the pillow, trying to make her more comfortable. Pulling her tighter against him, his chin rested on the top of her head, and soon he fell asleep.