“I can bury them if it’ll make you feel better,” Zack said.
Kaitlyn shook her head. “No. They don’t deserve a decent burial.”
“We’d better go,” Zack said.
Kaitlyn glanced at Zack and then at Stefan. Both men were covered with blood and gore. As was she. Her beautiful wedding gown and veil were splattered with blood. Her satin shoes were smeared with stains she didn’t care to examine too closely.
“Not the way you planned to spend your honeymoon, is it?” Zack asked ruefully.
“Not quite,” she admitted with a wry grin.
Stefan removed his bloodstained jacket and tossed it over one of the bodies. “The woman, Scherry,” he said. “Is she . . . ?” He cleared his throat. “Is she married or engaged, or . . . anything?”
“No.” Zack took off his own bloody coat and added it to the pile. “She’s not married, or anything. If it helps, she thinks you’re, and I quote, ‘a hottie.’”
“She told you that?” Stefan asked.
“No, I read it in her mind before the ceremony.”
Stefan grinned, obviously pleased. And just as obviously smitten by Zack’s bartender.
“I’ll put in a good word for you next time I see her,” Zack said. “In the meantime, I don’t know about you two, but I’d like to get out of these clothes and into a nice hot shower.”
“We never even got any pictures taken,” Kaitlyn wailed. “And now it’s too late. My gown is ruined. I’ll never get these bloodstains out.”
“I’ll buy you another dress,” Zack promised. “And we can get married all over again.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” Kaitlyn said as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “See if I don’t.”
A rush of preternatural power, a sense of being whisked through time and space, and Kaitlyn found herself in a room she didn’t recognize.
“Where are we?”
“Harrah’s.”
“But this isn’t our suite.”
He shrugged. “It’s a vacant room. Not quite as elegant as the other one, but it’ll do for now.” Moving around behind her, he began to unfasten the long row of buttons on the back of her dress.
Kaitlyn stepped out of her heels, shivering with anticipation as his fingers parted the fabric of her gown and slid it down over her shoulders. It pooled at her feet.
Turning her around, he eased her out of her petticoat, her lacy bra and panties. Her heartbeat increased as his gaze moved over her.
“Now you.” Her fingers trembled as she removed his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He obligingly heeled off his boots so she could remove his cummerbund and trousers.
“I think a shower is the first order of business,” Zack remarked while she divested him of his briefs. “You’re kind of bloody,” he added, running his fingers through her hair.
“So are you.”
“Come on,” he said, “I’ll wash your back and you can wash mine. If you’re good, I’ll even let you wash the front.”
“As if you could stop me,” she retorted with a saucy grin.
Showering with Zack was an experience like no other. He washed her hair and then, very thoroughly and slowly, he washed the rest of her, starting at her neck and working his way down. He had magical hands, she thought. His touches, his kisses, had her practically screaming with need.
Deciding that turnabout was fair play, she took the soap from his hand and washed him from head to heel. Running her hand over his stomach, she grinned, thinking he could be the poster boy for perfect six-pack abs.
He gasped when her hands slid lower, and she laughed out loud. She could hide what she was thinking and feeling. He couldn’t.
The water was nearly cold when he turned it off and carried her, wet and dripping, into the bedroom. Still holding her in his arms, he fell back on the bed, carrying her with him, so that she landed on top of him. One hand cupped her nape as he kissed her brow, her nose, her cheeks.
Almost frantic with need, she wriggled against him.
“Stop that,” he growled.
“Why? Don’t you like it?”
“Oh, yeah, but I was hoping to draw this out a little longer.”
“Next time,” she said.
“Whatever you want, darlin’,” he replied.
He rolled over effortlessly, tucking her neatly beneath him. He kissed her, his tongue dueling with hers while his hands stroked her damp skin, caressing her, arousing her. It was a good thing her skin was wet, she thought, or she probably would have gone up in flames. But, oh, what a way to go.
“Now, Zack.” She lifted her hips to receive him. It was heaven, pure heaven, to be in his arms, to feel his skin against her own as his body became a part of hers, two halves uniquely different, yet made to be one, each half incomplete without the other, each heart unfulfilled without the other. Heat suffused her. They were bound by more than the love they shared, she thought. They were forever bound by blood.
They moved together in perfect rhythm, a mating dance as old as time, as new as the love they shared.
She clung to him, breathless, weightless, as he carried her into a world filled with moonbeams and rainbows and pleasure beyond anything she had ever known. His own climax came hard on the heels of her own. Sheened with perspiration, she closed her eyes, sated and content as she slowly drifted back to earth.
With a sigh, she trailed her fingertips over his shoulders. “Next time,” she murmured, “I get to be on top.”
After the next time, they took another shower, then scurried back to bed and snuggled under the covers. Zack stroked Kaitlyn’s neck and shoulders. Her skin was soft and smooth, warm beneath his hand. Though she lay quietly beside him, her head pillowed on his chest, she was thinking so loudly, he had no trouble hearing her thoughts.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
She tilted her head back so she could see his face. “About what?”
“About your mother’s new lifestyle.”
“You must be reading my mind,” Kaitlyn remarked with a sigh.
“It isn’t necessary. I know you must be wondering about it.”
Kaitlyn turned onto her side, facing Zack. “Will she be the same? Will she still be my mother?”
“Pretty much. Of course, there’s no telling how she’ll react to her new life. I imagine it’s different when you’re born a vampire. You know what to expect, or at least you know what’s coming.”