want to end this here, as I do, Connor?"
"I do not want it to end here," she replied.
He took stock of that.
"We’re the last hope for the old feud, so I’m told,"
she went on, stepping closer to him, looking up, her sultry scent punctuated by that saucy touch of musk.
Hayden knew that scent, and what it meant. His heart missed a beat or two as his fangs fully extended.
Doubt melted away.
"Do you have an idea of how this is to go down?"
he asked, wrapping his fingers in her hair, gently tugging her those last inches closer.
"Don’t you?" she countered.
His mouth hovered above hers. She didn’t pull away.
"This feud could have been stopped at any time. All it took was for one Slayer to cross the line," Connor 74
Vampire Lover
pointed out, licking her lower lip to moisten it, then adding, "Or one Flynn."
Hayden’s fangs began to ache. Temptation was a millimeter away. When Connor’s warm hands caressed the sides of his face, he nearly came undone right there.
"What I have to say about the whole Dark Surrender thing, vampire, is dream on. Why should a Connor agree to give in?" she said.
"A vampire can’t change his stripes. I am what I am, by blood."
"As am I," Connor whispered, her mouth rising to meet his.
In the next second, Hayden had her on the ground, with her arms raised over her head and her body stretched out beneath his. Her heat burned right through his clothes. She didn’t resist, even when he looked longingly at her neck.
"Where is the necklace, Connor?"
"Safe."
When she smiled, Hayden smiled back. Looking into her eyes with renewed respect and more than a little awe, he moved his hips teasingly. "You’re saying you planned this, Connor?"
"Did you assume I’d also think like a girl, Flynn?
I’m a woman, as well as a Slayer."
"Truthfully, I didn’t care what you thought like."
"I get that now," she said, mocking his earlier reply. "You’re not one of the undead."
"Indeed not, since you didn’t use that stake."
"You’re capable of everything a normal man is."
Although she knew some of this already, firsthand, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
75
Hayden said, "And more. Much, much more. As long as my partner is a—"
"Slayer?"
"Maybe not quite a match made in heaven,"
Hayden admitted. "But it’ll do in a pinch."
His mouth silenced her response, hungrily. Meeting his drowning kiss with ardor of her own, she flicked her tongue sensually across his fangs…
Then Hayden was on his back, with Connor on top and smiling down at him.
"Just to be clear," she said, "I might not have known about the Slayer gig, but I’ve never been a weakling."
"Point taken," Hayden conceded.
"When I love, it will be forever."
"Most commendable."
"There will be no surrendering here, dark or otherwise, on anybody’s part. Just understanding. And plenty of sex."
"A Slayer after my own heart," he agreed.
Of course, he wouldn’t tell her that he had allowed her get the better of him, this once. That he had seen her move coming, and that his strength would always be superior to hers. Getting him on his back had been a concession to the future. His own kind of surrender.
And now she owed him twice over.
Trying not to laugh out loud over the hand Fate had unexpectedly dealt him, Hayden glanced at Kelsie Connor’s smooth neck, currently flushed pink, so very inviting and silver free. He watched her skin pulse over her blue-tinted veins with each excited beat of her heart.
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As her hips began to move against his, and she gave a low, sensual chuckle that he likened to the call of the wild, Hayden thanked those Fates again, seven times over, for this strange, lovely, unexpected, extraordinary gift.
With an answering growl, deep in his throat, and a firm hold on Connor’s hips, he decided that this old ruin on the cliffs of Clare was as good a place as any to show a Slayer what miracles a vampire could perform, if given the opportunity.
She’d find out later that a vampire’s libido,