Free Longest Days (The Firsts) by C.L. Quinn

Hamid’s forgiveness, and then fuck this man until neither of them could move.  But she wouldn’t.
    She still felt Hamid’s presence, and never more than right this moment as she considered sex for the first time in many centuries with someone other than him.  For a moment, she let herself imagine what it would be like with this man.  It wouldn’t be the same.  But that was as it should be.  She’d been with Hamid so long, how would it feel to have Daniel’s hands on her?   To feel him move inside her?
    She shook her head.  She’d never know.  She wasn’t ready.
    “Okay, well, rest…or keep yourself amused.”  Eillia walked to her bedroom and closed the door, leaving the comforter by the fire.  Damn.  She’d be pretty cold in here without it but she couldn’t go back out there.  She’d decided she wouldn’t jump him, but she didn’t fully trust herself right now.  A good rest should shore up her resolve until she could get him out of here when she woke.  
    She’d already decided to vampire-speed him to town, compel his memory, and get him out of her life.  Her intense sexual reaction to him made that necessary.  As she pulled her flannel sheet tightly around her body, she thought about their meeting at the bar.  She hadn’t forgotten how she, too, had felt that somehow he wasn’t a stranger.
    Rolling onto her side, she let her hand move to her breasts and delicately circle her erect nipples.  She was ready for him.  It proved she was healing.  Six months ago she would never have been tempted.  Now, she had to fight her own nature to stay away from a beautifully cut body and pale eyes that seemed to see into her soul.  He was just so fucking male!   Soon, she wouldn’t have a choice.  Blood and sex were primal, and now that she was drinking again, and deeply attracted to this man, it would happen if he stayed near her.
    She moaned as her own fingers excited her desires even more.  She’d hoped to get a good blood meal from him before he left, but now she knew she couldn’t.  If she drew blood from him, her sex drive would be uncontrollable.    Even now, with her own hands sliding against her sex, she closed her eyes and an image of his lips there instead pushed her to climax.  Eillia turned her face into her pillow to muffle her cry.
    It wasn’t enough.  She wanted to rip the bedroom door off its hinges and go to him.  With a deep sigh, she rolled onto her stomach and tried to relax and sleep.  Shit!
    Even through closed eyes, she saw him waiting for her.
    She did not sleep.
     
     
    Daniel felt completely blown out.  After the woman disappeared behind the scarred door, he dropped onto the couch, sinking too low as the broken springs tried to deal with his weight.  He pulled his feet up and stretched out, then reached for the comforter a few moments later.  It was too cold in the room without it.  The newly stoked fire was gaining size, but it still wasn’t generating enough heat to raise the temperature in the room above “fucking cold.”
    He had a lot to sort through.   This woman, she couldn’t be the one he buried a year ago.  Just…how could two women look so exactly alike?  Her face was burned into his memory, every detail.  It was possible, but it still knocked him off balance to see this woman alive and speaking to him.  He wondered at how the world worked sometime, to bring him to this extremely isolated place to try to heal from his culpability in so many deaths, particularly hers…and then bring her doppleganger to him.  Was the universe laughing at him?  Was it a lesson?  Torture?  He couldn’t know.  He just had to deal with her existence.
    This woman was as beautiful and graceful as he knew his dead angel would have been.  He’d had an immediate physical response to her, but that was because of the dreams he’d had of her for the past year, and many of them had been very sensual.   His dates with Joey D’s mother had been less