Free Night's Cold Kiss by Tracey O'Hara Page A

semi-naked curves covered only by tiny lace panties and a matching bra. The ivory lingerie against her creamy skin was more than he’d been prepared for. Her body was honed to Venator perfection by hours of martial arts training, yet soft in all the right places.
    A red and black dragon tattoo sat in the small of her perfect back, the tip of the tail disappearing into the crevice between her buttocks just beneath her panties. His pants suddenly seemed tighter and fangs nudged his gums on either side of his front teeth.
    He hadn’t lied when he said he’d seen a female or two. He’d seen literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of women in varying stages of dress and undress in his life time. But he’d rarely seen anything of such beauty. Antoinette was put together perfectly. Her muscles danced beneath her skin enlivening the tattoo dragon—he swore the beast watched him. What would it be like to run his lips across this skin art? Would it feel as alive as it looked? And how he’d love to trace that tail to its conclusion…
    “Well, now what?” she asked, her back still to him.
    Thank goodness his loose top covered the bulge in his jeans. “Um…lie down on the bed while I wash my hands,” he said, swallowing hard.
    He closed the bathroom door and leaned his hands against the counter, trying to regain a hold of himself. “She’s just another human—there’s nothing special about her.” But he could hear the lie in his own voice.
    “Did you say something?” she called from the other room.
    “No.” He glanced at his reflection before retrieving some medical supplies from the cabinet under the counter.
    He hadn’t lied about practicing medicine—although he purposely hadn’t mentioned that it was mostly during the American Civil War, and not on many women patients. Now that had definitely been a baptism by fire—or, should he say blood .
     
    Antoinette felt embarrassingly naked, something she’d never felt before. She’d grown up in a unisex Venator preparatory school where there was little room for modesty with communal showers, locker rooms, and absolutely no privacy. Now she had her own room back at the school dorms, but she still shared the rest.
    He didn’t say she couldn’t cover herself. As Christian rattled around in the bathroom she grabbed the bedspread from the end of the bed and drew it up to her chest. Unfortunately, the movement set off a wave of nausea and the pain flared again. She lay back against the pillows, breathing through the throbbing ache. It wasn’t nearly as bad as before, though, when he’d picked her up—she’d had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.
    She could endure pain; it was part of being a Venator. What she had trouble with was his hands on her skin. His cool touch felt too good against her fevered flesh, like a welcome breeze on a hot summer’s day.
    She clenched the blanket in her fists. Damn, she must be really sick to get all girly and poetic. Her stomach roiled. She wasn’t sure if this was nausea or the memory of the way he’d unceremoniously dumped her onto the bed. Bastard.
    Then again she had asked for it by punching him. And in a perverse kind of way, she’d liked it. Normally she had better control over her tongue and temper, but Christian seemed to bring out the worst in her for some reason.
    The bathroom door opened. Christian carried a tray into the room and pulled a nearby stool closer. As he sat down, he reached out and ripped away her covering and the old dressing in quick succession before she had a chance to prepare herself or argue.
    “Ow!”
    “Keep still,” he growled.
    She tried to sit up and see what he was doing, but he pushed her back against the pillows.
    “I said, keep still.” Christian’s stony face had a slight frown creasing his brow.
    “I just want to see.”
    He silenced her with a glare and she decided not to push it any further as he poked and prodded around the wound. Antoinette became suddenly aware of how