Free Passion Bites: Biting Love, Book 9 by Mary Hughes

the usual guy issues, or something deeper?
    You idiot. Who cares? Sex is a nice release of endorphins, and that was better than nice. Be grateful there’s no fuss, no muss, no commitment.
    I snagged my bra and blouse and began to dress. As I buttoned, my fingers wandered to my throat. My skin was smooth, whole, as if he hadn’t given me that orgasm-inducing bite. “Aren’t you wondering how I’m aware of…?” I clacked my teeth together.
    “A lot of Meiers Corners women are in the know. I figured one of the mates told you.” He shrugged, his broad shoulders sexy as hell. He’d turned but didn’t seem to be interested at all, staring past me, his mind obviously somewhere else.
    I stifled a pang. I was a rational being, not clingy or emotionally needy. Great sex was just that. Didn’t mean I had to live with the man. Some guys you bang, some you marry.
    Luke was certainly bang-worthy, but as nice as paradise had been, it was time to move on.
    I left without another word.
    Luke gripped the doorjamb as the luscious doctor slid through. What the hell just happened?
    His groin throbbed. He didn’t have to look down to confirm it, but glancing at his pants surprised him yet again. He’d had a hard time concealing it from her. Not just a woody tented his fly, but a whole oak tree of an erection, or maybe a giant redwood.
    She’d done that.
    Alexis ambled down the hallway, golden hair waving, hips swaying with a liquid roll, as if her joints had been oiled by the orgasm. He stood there, fighting the urge to go after her, his whole being almost glued to her until she disappeared up the stairs.
    Damn it, how did she do that? How did she attract him to the point of madness?
    How did she give him an erection, when he hadn’t had one since his wife died?
    For centuries, he’d been the next best thing to impotent. He’d put around the rumor that he was only interested in ménages to scare off potential lovers. And so the few sexual encounters he did go through with, he had multiple partners for multiple distractions from his flaccid tool.
    Centuries of utter disinterest, gone the moment he’d kissed Alexis.
    He’d been shocked, and at first, overjoyed. Then, as he’d lapped the elixir of Alexis’s blood and felt the judder of her sweet climax on his fingers, he’d forgotten his wife.
    Totally. Forgotten.
    He’d vowed he’d never forget. Spent centuries honoring that vow.
    Wiped out by the mere whiff of hair like strawberries.
    He slapped the jamb. The sooner he could get this babysitting obligation over with, the better. Then he could get back to Iowa, to Elias’s household. Erections and Alexis would never happen again.
    Clamping his eyes and turning inward, he sought his brother’s blood scent/taste, the sense a vampire had of every human or vampire ever tasted. Luke could sense his donors within a half-mile, his brother farther than that. Alexis pinged instantly, only a few hundred feet away… He clamped down on the need to pursue her and worked to locate his brother.
    Logan was in the public meeting room in the basement of the second townhouse. Luke hunched his shoulders and headed out the door, through the underground parking and into the next basement over.
    Julian sat at one end of the glossy table, black head bent to a pile of papers, Logan next to him, model’s face smug. As Luke entered, the lawyer flicked a glance at him then returned his gaze to the pile on the table before him, expression mournful. “Look at this. Reece printed us a copy of the diags because I couldn’t believe it. Clean. Now I have to believe it, but I still can’t understand it.”
    “Told you my system was faultless,” Logan said.
    Luke glided up. “The alarm diagnostics? That’s what I came to talk with you about.”
    Emerson’s eyes returned to him, his gaze sharp. “What do you mean?”
    To make absolutely certain no one was within hearing range, Luke tested the air. He smelled no one nearby.
    Still, he leaned in and