Free Cherry Stem by Sotia Lazu

pillaged and made love for hours.
    That was definitely not how I should be thinking of him.
    I couldn’t move, couldn’t enter the room or back out of it and run like I wanted to.
    He reached out, much like Alex had when I’d left him earlier that evening, and beckoned me to him with his index finger.
    For a moment there, seeing his bare skin gleam in the candlelight, I forgot everything. I forgot how he’d crushed my heart underfoot after I’d given it to him. I forgot that he was a cheater and that he’d filled me with insecurities even before I knew he was sleeping with someone else. I shut the door and stepped closer.
    His smile—his beautiful, sexy, promising smile—was what snapped me out of it. It was too self-satisfied for my taste. That lift of his sensual lips was saying, I knew you’d come to me . Once upon a time that would have been enough for me to strip and jump him. Now I was glad I’d taken the time to go by my apartment and change into a pair of blue jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers before visiting him. It was a small victory that I hadn’t dressed up for him.
    I stopped at the foot of the bed and said, “We have to talk.”
    He pouted, and I admit I felt like a loser for wanting to pull his jutting lower lip between my own. “Do we have to?”
    Why would he still have an accent? I knew he’d been in the States for a couple of centuries, long enough to speak like he’d been born here. Was he keeping it only to make me want him?
    “Yes. We do.” Go me for sounding so sure.
    “Can’t we kiss hello, first? That’s what my people do.”
    “You’re not Italian, Constantine.” That wasn’t even his real name, not that I could talk. He’d told me he’d changed his name when he’d moved here, going for something more sophisticated. “Your people probably decapitated one another as a greeting.” Okay, I was being stupid, but all that hotness had put me on my defensive mode.
    He laughed, and the sound felt like a caress. He used to laugh like that when he’d reduced me to a pile of goo after hours and hours of amazing sex. Gah ! Could I stop thinking about that, please? I hadn’t been the only one he’d liked goo-ifying.
    “How about a kiss because you want to, then?”
    I scowled. I didn’t want to kiss him, did I?
    “I guess that’s a no.” He raised his arms in defeat. “Fine. We’ll talk, then.” Just when I was about to sigh in relief, he folded the quilt back from his legs and slid out of bed.
    He was naked.
    And hard.
    And walking toward me.
    Telling him to put something on took all the self-control I possessed, and I felt drained by the time he finally draped a dark blue robe over his shoulders. It didn’t hide anything, but if I opened my mouth to tell him that, I’d drool.
    There was nothing in the room we could sit on except the bed, so I reluctantly parked my butt at its edge. I had to hop a bit to manage that, but I did so as gracefully as possible and locked gazes with him. Big mistake. He was the only vampire I knew whose eyes changed color according to his mood. Their current violet meant he was hungry…and not for blood.
    That was the way his eyes had looked every time his lips had sought mine, every time I’d taken him inside me.
    That was the way his eyes had looked the day I’d found him balls-deep inside the woman who’d created him.
    I definitely didn’t need the visual that came to mind uninvited. The she-devil had been on her knees, facing the door, and he was slamming inside her, making her breasts bounce. She’d seen me first, smirked, and urged him on, which he’d had no objection to until he’d noticed me. Even then when he’d frozen, she kept fucking herself onto his cock.
    I had to focus on what was important, not the way he’d had his face buried in her golden mane. “I need you to arrange a meeting with the council.”
    “I need you too.” He covered my hand with his and brought it to his chest, over his heart. “This almost beat when