“We did? When did we do that? You mean—” She gasped, sucking in a huge quantity of air. “Oh my god you bit me! You’re a vampire and you bit me! You drank my blood! I’m going to turn into a vampire now!”

“It doesn’t work like that, I’ve found,” he said, steering her forward once more. Honestly, if she shouted any louder, the neighboring towns could hear, as well. “I believe you have to be cursed to this state, as I was. I’ve fed off of many women over the past twenty-five years, and none of them have ever turned into a Dark One.”

“You bit me!” she repeated, her voice warming slightly as she obviously remembered the experience. It would certainly remain high on his list of memories. Just the thought of her warm, silky softness beneath him had him hard and aching, the hunger deep inside him rising to claim his mind, leaving him extremely aware that she was just a few inches away from him.

He wanted her, wanted her in more ways than just to satisfy his hunger. He wanted to touch and caress and stroke every inch of her. He wanted to feast on her with all his senses, tasting and touching and licking. He wanted to join with her in the most fundamental way a man can with a woman, and he wanted it all right that very instant.

“Holy shit,” she said, her eyes huge as she looked at him two seconds before she suddenly lunged, her arms and legs wrapping around him, sending him rocking backward into Demeter.

The horse sidestepped him, dammit. He hit the ground with a loud whump, but even Io’s head impacting his chin didn’t stop her. She tugged at his neckcloth until it was freed, baring his throat. He had just enough presence of mind to say in what he hoped was an outraged tone of voice, “Madame! Unhand me! I do not find seduction on the road within view of town in the least bit arousing.”

It was a lie, of course, since he didn’t believe he could possibly be more aroused than he was at that moment, but a man had to have some standards, and making love to this delectable, enticing woman in the road was not one of them.

Now, if they moved onto the grass, that would be an entirely different situation.

Io froze, her eyes growing large as she looked down at him. “Oh my god, I did it again! I attacked you! I can’t believe I attacked you a second time!”

“It wasn’t quite what I think of as an attack, although I would have appreciated a softer fall.” He got to his feet when she rolled off him, her face suffused with color.

“I’m so sorry! I can’t believe I just jumped you like that. I have no excuse at all, except all of a sudden I was so…and I wanted to…and it was like I was hungry of all things, which I guess now that I think about it, I am, but this was a different kind of hunger. It was red, and pulsing, and so overwhelming that I just wanted to touch and taste and lick you—” She stopped speaking, snapping her teeth together before adding, “I’m sorry again. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s like I’ve suddenly become Ms. Wholly Inappropriate Sexual Harassment.”

He finished brushing himself off, looking at her and wondering. “It was red?”

“My face? Oh, yes.” She marched off, her hands briefly rising to her cheeks, which he had to admit were a dusky rose. “I can’t tell you how embarrassed I am. I just seem to lose all control around you.”

“No, the hunger you felt. It was red, you said?”

“I’m never going to be able to live this down, absolutely will never be able to live—what? Oh, yes, red and hot and…and…” She stopped and slid him a curious look. “I’m not going to continue or I’ll end up shaming myself again, and really, I think I’ve about reached the limit of things I can cope with in one night. Between unexpected time traveling and sexual moves on a man I don’t know, who just happens to be a vampire who drank my blood…hey, do you think that could be why I want to jump you so bad? Maybe it’s your fault. I think it is. I think you did something to me to make me want to do wholly inappropriate sexual things to you. Anyway, between that and the whole going-back-in-time thing, I think my brain is pretty much going to explode if I do anything else out of the ordinary, so I’m just going to walk quietly and meditate to calm myself down. Om.”

“I wish to try an experiment,” Nikola said after a few minutes’ thought. He glanced around, making sure they were out of view of the town. Dawn was less than an hour away, and he knew the townspeople would be stirring with the coming light.

“What sort of an experiment?” Io asked suspiciously.

He pulled her off the road and into a field that had been left fallow, tall grasses skirting the edges of it. He leaned into her, not touching her, but allowing her scent to sink deep into his pores, the hunger immediately responding with urgent demands that he claim her.

She growled low in her throat, and flung herself on him again. This time he was ready for her, and braced himself, rocking back only a little as her body slammed into his. He thought for a moment or two that he might just die of pleasure when she bit his earlobe, his neck, and his chin, all the while scattering kisses, and murmuring words that didn’t make any sense, but he felt such an extreme act on his part might be interpreted as being unappreciative, not to mention rude, so he held his ground and allowed her to have her way with him.

Until one of her hands snaked its way into his shirt and touched his bare chest. Then the hunger that he’d been keeping so carefully leashed slipped his control.

“Woman! You push me too far!” He lowered her onto the soft grass, shredding her gown from where it hid her body from his eyes. She shrieked a little shriek that turned into a moan of pleasure when he bent over her, nuzzling his face in two delectable mounds of breasts where they were contained in some sort of abbreviated stays.

“Oh my god, yes!” she cried, then suddenly began to struggle, shoving him over onto his back.

He stared at her in surprise. Did she not want him the way he wanted her? “You say yes, but you thrust me away from your breasts and belly and those thighs that are begging for my mouth? I begin to believe your claim that you are deranged!”

She stared at him for a moment in utter disbelief, then pounced on him, just as if she were a cat and he something hard and manly and about to spontaneously combust with the need to bite and taste and claim her once and for all. She bit and licked and murmured some more, all the while tugging and pulling at his coat and shirt until she had his upper parts bare. He thought of protesting such liberties, but in fairness, he had shredded her gown first, so he felt it was only right that she should have equal time with his garments.

“Not the breeches, though,” he told her when her hands wandered down to the buttons that kept him from bursting out into the open. “My daughter made them for me for my last birthday, and she would not like it if you, in your wild and unfettered female lust, ripped them off my body.”

“Too much talking!” Io snarled, and, straddling him, leaned over his chest to take one of his nipples in her mouth.

He arched up, unable to articulate the sensation of her mouth, hot and sweet and so wonderfully wicked, on a purely mundane piece of his personal equipment. Yes, yes, there is entirely too much talking! Cease it immediately and do the other one!

She moved along his chest, her mouth burning a path over to where his second nipple was waiting impatiently for its turn. You taste so hot. Spicy hot, like the fire that burns inside of me. I want to bite you and taste you and ride you like you’re a bucking bronco.

His eyes, which had rolled back in his head at the touch of her mouth on his nipples, promptly rolled forward again so as to enable him to stare down at the top of her head in surprise. What the devil? There was a voice in his head, a foreign voice, one that hadn’t been there before. What was going on? Had Io somehow infected him with her voice-in-head derangement? Was that even possible?

She froze, slowly pushing herself upright. I’ve infected you? That’s…you? Nikola? You’re talking in my head?

Goose bumps rolled along his body at the touch of her mind to his. This was extraordinary! He must, at once, take notes on the phenomenon, detailed and lengthy notes about exactly what was happening to him. Only by keeping the strictest scientific control over the situation could he learn from it. He would write a paper about it, and submit it to the best of the scientific journals. He would no doubt become the world’s most preeminent expert on mind-talking.

How the hell are you doing that? Io asked, shifting backward.

All thoughts of the acceptance speech he would make when granted an award by whatever university first recognized his brilliance faded to nothing when Io’s ass, her round, warm, so incredibly tempting ass, pressed his extremely erect penis, making him see stars for a few seconds. Her eyes opened wide a scant second or two before she rocked backward again, nearly causing him to spill his seed right then and there.

I don’t know how I’m doing it, but if you do not cease tormenting me with your derriere, I will do all those things you are thinking about, including the one where you are on all fours. And that one, as well, although I can’t imagine being upside down like that would be very comfortable for you.

Aiee! she shrieked into his head. You can read my smutty thoughts! Oh my god! I’m sexually harassing you and I’m insane! Wait…if I’m insane, then you are, as well, and you’re thinking just as many naughty thoughts about me as I am about you. Oooh! Especially that one, Mr. Likes the Cowgirl Position. And for the record, don’t knock the Kama Sutra, because that wheelbarrow position is made of all sorts of awesome. Er…so I’m told.

“The what?” he managed to gasp out as his mind was filled with the most erotic images he’d ever in his life entertained. That they had their source in Io just made them all that much more irresistible.

“Kama Sutra. Old Indian sex guide. Not that I’m going to have sex with you, because I don’t do that with men I just met, even if my mind has coped with a lot of crap in the last few hours, and thus I’d be excused to give in and jump you as you obviously wish to be jumped.”

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