Shadowflame by Dianne Sylvan

his arms around her and picked her up. She heard the faint clunk of the piano lid closing, followed by the sound of the lights clicking off, and turned her face happily into his chest, inhaling the scent of his shirt. There was something in the way he smelled—some undertone of great age that would never have registered to her mortal senses—that she found deeply comforting, like leaning against a mountain or red-wood or some other nearly eternal thing.
    Doors opened, doors closed; the guards at the suite door gave their greetings. Inside the suite was warm from the hearth that Esther had stoked before they arrived.
    David deposited her on the bed and sat down, taking one of her legs and removing her boot, unconsciously running his hand along her shin as he had Osiris’s. She chuckled.
    “I’m not a horse,” she said without looking up.
    “I’m well aware of that,” David answered wryly. “Horses are far less stubborn than you.”
    “That’s why you love me.”
    She could hear him smiling. “As a matter of fact, it is.” He pulled off her other boot and then set to removing the rest of her clothes with deft, practiced hands. “That, and about a thousand other reasons.”
    “Such as?”
    “You’re willful, smart as hell, courageous, and you look good in red,” he said, touching a finger to her Signet, then lifting a tendril of her hair from her forehead. “You also have a tremendous heart, and, if I may be so bold, absolutely perfect breasts.”
    Miranda’s eyes popped open, and she saw the wicked glint in his. “Flattery will get you seriously laid, Lord Prime,” she said.
    “I was hoping you’d say that.”
    She sat up long enough to put her hand around his neck and pull his mouth to hers, and then she rolled back, hauling him onto her with a growl. He braced himself on his hands to keep from knocking the wind out of her, then tore his lips away and leaned down to kiss a slow line from her throat to her breasts, still bound in black lace.
    She arched her back to let him unhook the offending garment, then shifted her shoulders from side to side to strip it off and toss it aside. Meanwhile her fingers ventured in between the buttons of his shirt to find the muscle underneath and, with only a little fumbling, managed to push the shirt off. She moved her hands up his back, feeling the slightly raised lines of the hawk etched into his shoulders.
    She loved the sensation of sliding her hands down into the waistband of his jeans and around to the front to unzip them. His skin was like silk over stone and warmed under her palms and lips.
    She would never have expected in a thousand years to want so much, to crave both the taste of his blood and the deep aching pleasure of their bodies wrapping around each other and joining. That first second of contact when they could finally touch without barriers of space or fabric was the same every time: a shock to her system, like coming in from freezing rain to the edge of a volcano. Her body was still surprised at how badly it needed his.
    The first time after the battle had frightened her. She hadn’t realized just how much he’d been holding back that night in her apartment. A human body was so easy to break . . . and two vampires without restraint could easily break furniture, her screams practically peeling the paint off the walls. The intensity of it had been almost too much, but the trust between them was so complete, and the joy of being reunited so overwhelming, that her fear had evaporated.
    He alone could touch her. In all of eternity, all the world, there would never be another. She had no desire to ever look at another man—she didn’t even feed on them. Her time in hell had made sure of it, and the amulet around her neck sealed it. He alone . . . he alone.
    Forever.

Three
    Tuesday evening began with the arrival of a blustery cold front that swept through central Texas leaving frost in its wake . . . followed by the arrival of a black stretch limousine