Free Kiss Me Deadly by Michele Hauf Page B

do.”
    His exit from the bed left a warm hollow against Ravin’s back. Too quickly it cooled. She turned away and didn’t watch as she listened to the man pull up his pants and button his shirt. Well-worn leather pants and a dark cotton shirt conformed to his every muscle and bulging bicep.
    Mmm, Ravin snuggled her head into the pillow and closed her eyes. After sex always left her drowsy and sated. An entire day of sex left her depleted, but giddy. Like alchemy, he’d performed sex magic on her. Incredible sex. Really. She’d never before had the like.
    The thought that she should be arming herself and blasting away at a vampire left as quickly as it had disturbed her.
    He leaned in to plant a kiss on her eyelid, and she snuggled into a tight ball of smiling comfort. “Think you can make it until I return?”
    “Return?”
    “Nothing could keep me from your warm bed, sweetness. I’ll give you a chance to catch some shut-eye, and then be back for round two. Or did we already do round two?”
    “Don’t come back.”
    “Easier said than done.”
    “Because of the spell.”
    “Because…I love you, Ravin. See you soon.”
    The front door closed. Ravin rolled to her back and spread her hand over the wrinkles on his side of the bed.
    Why did something so wrong have to feel so right?

Chapter 10
    T he vampire had gone.
    Ravin sat up in bed and stretched out her arms. Her legs ached and her wrists were sore from Nikolaus pinning her down as he’d slaked his lust. She hadn’t minded being pinned down. In fact, it had turned her on more than she’d thought possible.
    Most of her sexual encounters had been brief affairs with near strangers. Not the kind of men who knew how to satisfy a woman, much less care about her satisfaction.
    After two centuries it now took a lot to impress her sexually. She’d once chosen her lovers for their handsome appearance and roguish manner, and then had graduated to wealth and a certain unavailability that came from a married man. Over the centuries, such vain, selfish requirements had ceased to matter, and, not sure anymore what she needed, she lately resorted to one-night stands. Quickies.
    So why did she do it?
    Contact. Validation. Every woman required connection, if only for a few moments of bliss.
    Sure, she’d had some great lovers in her history. Daniel had been a printer who aspired to engrave monograms, but his eyesight wouldn’t allow him to do the detail work. Hadn’t kept him from learning her body with his lips, though.
    Dominique San Juste, a faery changeling, never left her memory. Unfortunately, he’d been more in love with absinthe, and the memory of his dead wife, than Ravin. She hadn’t told him about the pregnancy, a surprise to her at the time. There had been no need to tell him.
    The miscarriage brought up an awful longing. Ravin had never considered herself maternal, but with a child in her belly, she’d quickly taken to the prospect of becoming a mother.
    She still didn’t know if it was because a faery and a witch should not procreate, or if it had simply been her womb, unable to carry to term.
    Was it possible, after so long, that she may have finally found a man who could satisfy her in every way?
    She felt sated. Beyond satisfied. A slip of skin lying on the sheets, empty and waiting to be filled again.
    “Sex magic,” she suddenly said. Ravin sat up abruptly and sat cross-legged on the sheets. “Blood sex magic.”
    Her heart started to pound. She pressed a hand over her chest.
    “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
    It had always been mere legend to Ravin. Tales told and passed down over the ages, from one witch to another. The history of their kind. The reason why vampires and witches rubbed against one another like oil to water—and the result of what could happen should the two succeed in coming together.
    Blood sex magic. When a vampire drank the blood, and/or had sex with a witch, he took into him some of her magic. It made him