Darkened Days by C. L. Quinn

aren’t you looking at me?  Don’t you like what you see?”
    He kept his eyes averted until she laughed again.
    “Big, bad, old vampire…don’t you think you can handle me?”   Her fingers wandered down to caress herself, just to get a rise out of him.  It worked.  He shook his head as he glanced there.
    His eyes shot back up to her face.
    “It’s Jacob.  And I may have been around a lot longer than you, but don’t make the mistake that I’m too old or any less virile.  I could teach you things.  Do things to you that would make you scream for more.  You think those boys know how to make love to a woman?  One night in my bed and you would beg me to fuck you every night.”  He released a long slow breath.  “But I won’t.”
    Her finger slipped deeper and she laid her head back.  When she opened her eyes a moment later, she watched as his eyes darted back to her hand again.
    He’d had enough.  She should know better than to tease and tempt him.  A whoosh of air and he was on her, pulling her hands up and away from her crotch.  Starla leaned into him and pushed up on her knees to wrap her arms around his neck.
    He turned his head aside.
    “Starla, no.  I’m your protector.  I was sent here to bring you safely back to the villa where Eillia is waiting for you.  You can stop right now.  I won’t take advantage of you.”
    She grabbed his head and forced it around to face her breasts within inches of his tongue.
    “Sorry, protector.  It’s too late for safe.  And everyone else has taken a piece of me.  Come on.  You vampires love sex.  I’m not too bad for a novice.  I can give you a great hard-on and orgasm.  Been told I have a wicked tongue.  If I do that for you, will you show me what you meant?   About making a woman scream?”
    He looked up at her just as she surged forward to press herself against him again.  Her nipples grazed his forehead and he felt the rush of hot blood fill him.  This could not happen .  No matter how enticing, he would not become just another man who forced himself inside her to use her young body.  It made him sick that he had not been able to find her sooner. Now that he had, she was going back to Koen’s if he had to carry her the entire way on his back.  He smiled as he thought that it was probably exactly how it would go.
    Starla found him a challenge.   Every vampire and human man she’d met the past few months wanted inside her.  Jacob was the first one she thought she might want there.  And he was telling her no.  Pushing her away.  It was a rejection she couldn’t accept.  What made him different?  Because he thought of himself as some sort of hero?  Fuck that!
    He made a move to step back just as she lunged at him, her long legs curled around his waist, her arms wrapped tightly around his broad shoulders .  She could feel heavily muscled arms catch her before they both fell to the ground.  He was so much bigger than the cadre.  Why did she find that so stimulating?   And why the hell did she wonder if he would feel different inside her than the others?  The last thing she ever thought she’d want was to encourage a vampire to fuck her.
    Wrapped so close, his scent overwhelmed her.  Her lips were nearly touching his neck.  She shot her tongue out to taste his skin and felt his body jerk.  With no warning to either of them, Starla suddenly buried her fangs in his neck and began to draw.  It wasn’t her intention; she knew it was considered rude to draw blood from a vampire without consent.  Just suddenly she wanted to taste him so intensely, she didn’t even think about what she was doing.  She barely heard his deep groan of protest.  Funny, she thought, as she drew hard and fast on blood that tasted better than anything in her life.  Funny, how his groan of protest was more erotic than protesting.   She was stunned and thrilled when his arms tightened around her and he pulled her against his fully engorged