But there was one thing she wanted to get to quickly now, and that was his bed. “I’m glad you live so close.”
Wyatt laughed. “Me, too. And I’m also glad I don’t have a roommate. I don’t know how Cort and Drake stand living together.”
“I think they play a lot of Guitar Hero.” Stella watched Wyatt stick his key in the lock and push the door open. “You have a nice place, you know. Johnny was such a slob.”
Saying her brother’s name still caused a stab of pain in her heart, but she didn’t want to stop talking about him, especially not with Wyatt, who had cared about Johnny as well. Who had been there for her the minute her grief had exploded.
“He was totally a slob.” Wyatt pulled her inside. “But I like things clean. I left the dust behind when I left the Wild West. I’ve been in this place ten years and you’re the first woman to set foot in my bedroom.”
“I’m not there yet.” Stella kicked off her shoes by the front door and closed it behind her. She set her flowers down on his coffee table. “And your bedroom leads to your courtyard. A lot of women we know have walked through at parties.” It was being nitpicky, but she wanted to clarify. She was fishing for compliments and he seemed to know it.
“That’s true. A few women have used it as a hallway, but no one has ever been in my bed.” His palm cupped her cheek and she turned into him, her skin sensitive to his touch. “No other woman ever will be.”
She sucked in a breath. He was talking forever. That should scare her. But at the moment all it did was thrill and arouse her. She reached out and tugged Wyatt’s T-shirt up so that she could run her hands across the hard planes of his sculpted chest. Five nights a week she watched him play his bass guitar and she never tired of it, the way he mastered the instrument, the way he kept his arms low and relaxed. Bass was sexy and Wyatt was even sexier, and she was very much aware of that at the moment. He helped her take his shirt up over his head, then he shook his hair loose. It was just the right length, brushing the shoulders, perfect for musicians and models alike.
Wyatt’s jaw was too square, his nose a little hooked, for the perfection of the runway, but as a musician he was perfect. And he was hers.
His gun medallion fell against his chest and she toyed with it before letting her fingers trail down past his pectorals to the smooth skin of his abdomen. She popped the snap on his jeans.
Fingers stilled her before she could take down his zipper. “You’re overdressed,” he told her.
“I can fix that.” Stella dropped her purse on the hardwood floor. Then she peeled off her own shirt and tossed it on top of his.
Wyatt reached forward and traced the top of her black bra with one finger. “You’re beautiful.”
She was average for a vampire, but with him, she felt beautiful. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
“Come here and kiss me.”
But he didn’t wait for her answer or for her action. Wyatt ate up the space between them and buried his hands in her hair. His mouth took hers in a passionate kiss that had her inner thighs aching and her ni**les beading, desperate for attention.
“Oh!” she said, stunned at how shattering the impact of skin on skin, lips on lips, hips pressed against hips was.
It was like the volume had been turned up, like their acknowledgment of what they felt had stripped down any barriers of reserve that had remained and allowed their passion to scream at its highest setting. Desire amplified.
“Stella, God, I want you,” he murmured, his teeth nipping at her earlobe before reclaiming her lips.
His hands were everywhere, caressing from her shoulder blades to her ass, giving it a thorough squeeze, then slinking around to the front to tease at the seam of her jeans before heading north to taunt her ni**les. Just when she adjusted, accepted his touch somewhere, he retreated, and she moved restlessly, unable to keep up, his sensual assault setting her body and nerves on edge. It felt decadent and urgent and out of control. Normally she didn’t like out of control, but this . . . this was divine.
He popped her bra open.
She yanked his zipper down.
But before they could go any further, he scooped her up into his arms and swung toward the kitchen. “I promised you a bed.”
A wall, the floor, a bed. She wasn’t sure at the moment she cared, but she did have to admit, being carried was a novelty. A hot one. Stella put her arms around his neck and flicked her tongue across his nipple.
There was a brief pause in his step while he cursed, but then he continued to move through the kitchen to the bedroom. His bed wasn’t made. He dropped her down onto the rumpled blankets. She turned her head and buried her face in the cool cotton sheet. It smelled like him, masculine and earthy. Whiskey. With a tug, she stripped off her unhooked bra with her hand between her br**sts and tossed it aside.
Wyatt descended on her, taking a nipple into his mouth with enough ferocity that she yelped in both pleasure and near pain. Then he went to the other one, plucking at it like the strings of his bass with his fingers, then his tongue. Somehow he managed to slide into her jeans at the same time, wiggling his way into the dewy dampness of her inner thighs.
“That feels good,” she breathed, figuring she was stating the obvious but not really caring. The bed was soft beneath her and he was hard over her and she was in love.
The moment needed words, even small ones.
“I’m glad you like it. I think you’ll like it even better with your jeans off.”
She wasn’t going to argue with that. Or the skill with which he divested her of the pants. Before she could do much more than nod, she was bare before him. Wyatt nuzzled up the inner side of her knee, his lips and nose teasing and tickling her. Gripping the bedsheet, she waited in deep anticipation, her womb aching with the need for him. For him deep inside her.
But that wasn’t what he had in mind and she knew it. After a leisurely route up her thigh, Wyatt stroked her curls with both thumbs, staring at her most intimate spot with a great deal of intensity. She didn’t mind him looking. She would just prefer he were touching. He blew on her clitoris and she jerked on the bed, her backside tightening in reaction.
Stella lifted her hips a little in invitation to urge him to put her out of her misery, because she was starting to think this was one of the very few ways a vampire could die, and her number was just about up. “Wyatt . . .”
“Yes?” He spread her folds and brushed his lips lightly over her.