Bite. Part 19

It had taken Dominic an hour of serious foreplay to make her burn like this.

Galahad tore his mouth free of hers and lifted his head, his blue eyes feral. "You sure we don't have time for more?"

Caroline stared blindly up at his extravagantly handsome face as she clung to his breastplate. "Oh, we've got plenty of time."

Fangs flashed in his smile. "Yeah?"

"What, you expect me to say I'd rather go fight vampires than have jungle s.e.x with you? What are you, nuts?"

"Guess that answers that question." He stepped back and took her shoulders in his hands. Spinning her around, he pulled her

back against his tall, armored body.

She stiffened. "What...?"

"I'm losing it." Galahad's breath puffed warm against her ear. "If we stay face-to-face, I'm not sure I can resist the temptation."

He pressed a burning, open-mouthed kiss to the leaping pulse in her throat.

Caroline caught her breath. "Is this going to hurt?"

He licked the straining cord in the side of her neck. "Did it hurt the last time?"

Nerves made her joke. "I'm not sure. About the time he bit me, I got lit up like a mosquito in a bug zapper by Merlin's Ugly

Practical Joke."

Galahad chuckled, the sound wickedly suggestive. "Ah-a virgin." Tauntingly, he raked the very tips of his fangs over her pulse.

She s.h.i.+vered in an erotic blend of arousal and fear. "Galahad..."

"It won't hurt," he interrupted, his hands suddenly sliding up under her T-s.h.i.+rt to claim her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Well...maybe it will, but you'll be too hot to care."

His hands felt very warm as they squeezed her through the thin lace cups of her bra. Skillfully, he hooked his index fingers into the fabric and tugged just enough to pop her nipples free.

Caroline looked down to watch as Galahad's clever hands found the tight little peaks. Plucked, rolled, stroked. She squirmed, unconsciously rubbing her backside over his armored groin. The steel codpiece jutted against her a.s.s, taunting her with the question of what his c.o.c.k looked like.

"Sensitive little nipples you've got there," Galahad whispered in her ear. "Bet they'd be fun to suck." He rolled the hard nubs. "Mmm. Are they, Caroline?"

"You're asking me?" Panting, she threw back her head and let it rest on his hard, armored shoulder. She was starkly aware of his height. You'd think he'd be short, given the times he'd come from, but he was a full head taller than she was. An image flashed through her mind-Galahad naked, all sculpted swordsman brawn. "Oh, G.o.d!"

He inhaled sharply. "Ahhhh. Getting nicely wet now. I can smell it." Releasing one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he reached down her torso, found the b.u.t.ton of her shorts. Flicked it open. The zipper hissed.

She tensed at the erotic antic.i.p.ation curling through her in s.h.i.+vering waves.

Galahad worked a hand down into her open fly and slipped into her delicate silk panties. As he found her s.e.x, Caroline groaned helplessly. Two long fingers pumped their way between her tight folds, eased by the thick cream of her desire.

"Oh, yeah. You're wet." He scissored her c.l.i.t between two fingers, and she arched her back, gasping.

"A little." Actually, a lot. She set her feet farther apart, knowing if he decided to push her down and take her, she'd welcome him. She was one deep breath from begging as it was.

"Mmmmmm. This is the good part." Galahad paused to trace his tongue over one of the whorls of her ear. "The antic.i.p.ation. I'm going to take you right to the edge. And then..." He lowered his head to lick her pulse. "...I'm going to bite." Strong fingers stroked right up into her core as his thumb strummed her c.l.i.t.

Caroline groaned. He'd discovered a delicate little bundle of nerves right over her pulse. He raked his fang tips across it as he played with her. She felt the o.r.g.a.s.m building, teased to unbearable heights by those clever fingers. She arched against him as he pumped both fingers into her depths, squeezed her nipple with tender brutality.

And bit into her straining throat as he flicked a skillful thumb over her c.l.i.t.

Her strangled gasp of pain spiraled into a cry of pleasure as her o.r.g.a.s.m burst free. That first sweet wave was followed by a second, and then a third. Writhing mindlessly in Galahad's arms, she came in long dizzy pulses as he drank.

H ER blood burned hotter than the whiskey had, flooding his mouth with its raw, intoxicating taste. Galahad tightened his grip in instinctive greed, wis.h.i.+ng he were naked so he could feel every silken inch of her long, supple body.

He drank hungrily, drank until it should be time to start tapering off, drank until his c.o.c.k ached. Caroline went right on pumping hard. It really had been way too long for her. She needed more drawn off, and he was delighted to comply.

Almost as delighted as he would have been to thrust into the tight, creamy flesh he could feel gripping his fingers. He was hard as a

pole arm behind his armor.

But now was not the time, so all Galahad could do was work her with his fingers and drive her to another convulsing o.r.g.a.s.m while he drank. Her nails raked the engraved steel of his armor as he fed.

Finally, after long, delicious moments, the pressure eased off. Galahad lifted his head, cradling her, knowing she'd feel dizzy from the sudden decrease in that murderous blood pressure.

"Thank you," he said in her ear. His voice sounded hoa.r.s.e, and he cleared his throat.

"Oohhhh." She hung in his arms, panting. "That was...incredible."

Galahad grinned over her head. "My pleasure."

"I..." She stopped to swallow. "I've never come like that just from being..."

"Bitten?"

"That, too." She straightened in his arms as if making a deliberate effort to pull herself together. "Is it always like that?"

It had been pretty d.a.m.n intense. More so than the last time he'd...Well, actually he couldn't remember the last time it had been that hot. "You needed it more than most." Yeah, that sounded good. He turned her carefully in his arms, made her meet his gaze.

"How are you feeling now?"

She blinked, her cheeks a little flushed, her eyes glazed. "Good, actually. Better. Which is funny, because I'd expected to feel

weak after losing that much blood."

"That's because you d.a.m.n near waited too long. If you'd gone one more day without being milked, you'd have popped something that would have killed you." He laid a hand alongside her face to gather her floating attention. "Never do that again, Caroline. It's not something to fool around with. When you feel pain or weakness, don't just magic it away. Tell someone."

"Yeah, sure." She swayed against him. "Ummm. A chair would be good."

Galahad guided her over to one and tried to ignore the thoughts those long, bare legs inspired as she sat down. They had other fish to fry.

Bloodsucking vampire shark, in fact.

G ALAHAD spent the next half hour grilling her about the vision.

So much for lazing in the afterglow.

Not that she could blame him. They had a nest of vampires to kill. Focus, Caroline.

But it was tough, and not just because the amazingly gorgeous man questioning her had just drunk her blood. She knew she must

have climaxed harder at some point in her twenty-eight years, but d.a.m.ned if she could remember it.

And that was aside from the fact he was sixteen hundred years old and a knight of the Round Table.

What the h.e.l.l was happening to her? This time last year she'd been trying to teach sentence construction to a bunch of bored high

school juniors. Now she was supposed to help Sir Galahad clean out a nest of evil vampires and recover the Unholy Grail. What

did she look like, Sarah Mich.e.l.le Gellar?

Though she'd stack her eye candy against Buffy's any day.

Apparently satisfied he had as much of the story as he was getting, Galahad leaned against the bar and started scribbling on a

notepad she'd conjured for him. His handsome face drew into a scowl of concentration as he wrote in long, slas.h.i.+ng strokes.

He'd drank her blood. And she'd liked it.

Caroline was still mentally reeling from that when he finally lifted his head, running a harried hand through that silken hair of his.

"Obviously, we need to clean out that nest you saw. The thing is, I don't particularly like going into combat based on intelligence

from a vision."

"Yeah, I could see how that would be less than ideal." He looked all s.e.xy and grim and determined. She, on the other hand, felt like a giant rag doll with all the stuffing sucked out. Focus, Caroline.

"That's putting it mildly," he said, turning to pace, apparently unaware of her dazzled gaze. "Visions only reveal the big picture, and in combat, it's the details that bite you on the a.s.s. I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to just gate into some magical underground installation without knowing how many bad guys are going to object."

That particular mental image was enough to kill the last of her afterglow and start her stomach crocheting itself into sick knots. She rubbed it absently. "So how do you suggest we find out?"

"For one thing, we don't do this in one big go. It's going to take a series of strikes, just in and out. Fast."

Caroline nodded. It made sense. Not enough to keep her from wanting to throw up, but still.

"First order of business is to find that Grail you saw and secure it for Morgana to study," he continued. "Then we gate home to plan our next move. In the meantime, I want you to try to do a magical scan and get me a bad-guy head count. Find out where they are and what they're doing. Think you can do that?"

"I'll give it my best shot." Her palms were going damp. "Then what?"

"Based on that intelligence, we'll make a series of strikes to whittle down their forces."

Which was military speak for killing people. Oh, G.o.d. "Sounds good." An outright lie if ever she'd told one.

In her entire life, Caroline had been in exactly two fights. The first has been when she was ten and Jenny Peterson said she was a

stupid head. She didn't remember much about the resulting catfight beyond hair pulling and being told she hit like a girl. Originality