The Immortal Hunter(37)

His own mouth now free, Decker immediately began trailing kisses to her ear, making her shudder with surprised pleasure as he briefly nibbled there. Dani bore the combined assault as long as she could, but hunger was beating at her brain, and she finally turned her face back to find his lips once more. The kiss this time was almost vicious with their mounting need, and then Decker began to shift beneath her, his hands stopping what they were doing to grasp her hips and lift her.

Dani didn't, at first, understand what he was doing, and then his knee slid between her legs and he let her settle back against his thigh. She was now riding his leg, her body farther up his. It forced her to bend her head at an awkward angle to maintain their kiss, but she managed it. When his upper leg pressed more firmly against her where all the strings of her desire were culminating, Dani began to suck at his tongue. She then shifted one hand to the carpeted floor beside his head and pressed herself back into the caress, grinding herself against his thigh, at the same time rubbing her own upper thigh across the hard proof of his excitement.

Decker's response was to release a low growl and squeeze her breast almost painfully, and then he eased his hold to pay special attention to her nipple. It was too much for Dani; she felt like she was drowning in the pleasure assaulting her and she tore her mouth away, throwing back her head to gasp for air. But Decker was relentless; he simply continued to rub his leg against her and caress her breast, and then raised his head to press his mouth to the neck she'd unthinkingly offered him. He ran his lips and tongue along the vulnerable skin, pausing to suck and nip and suck again. Dani never felt any pain, nothing to tell her that his teeth had sunk into her flesh; pleasure had filled her up and left her completely oblivious. It wasn't until her vision began to blur that she realized something was wrong.

It was only when Dani went limp in his arms that Decker realized what he was doing. Cursing himself, he retracted his teeth and caught her as she slumped against him.

"Is she all right?"

Decker turned a fierce glare to Justin just as he turned back to watch the road ahead. "Why the hell didn't you stop me?"

"I didn't know you were biting her until I heard your curse and looked just now," Justin said quickly, and then added, "I thought you were just... you know... groping each other."

Decker's mouth tightened at the crude description of what had been-until a moment ago-a beautiful, passionate moment, but Justin wasn't done.

"I figured after eighty years without, you probably needed to let off a little steam so I just kept my eyes on the road... and tried not to hear all the grunting and groans back there."

"Thanks," Decker said dryly, easing to a sitting position and raising Dani as he went. Decker then tilted her head back to peer at her face. She looked a little pale, but her breathing and heartbeat seemed normal. Hopefully it was just a faint.

"No problem," Justin said. "Though you do owe me one; it was hard to resist peeking. It sounded pretty H and S."

"H and S?" Decker glanced to him with confusion.

"Hot and steamy," he explained, and then added almost enviously, "It sounded like you two were really tearing it up back there."

Decker frowned at the words, his eyes dropping to the two puncture wounds on her throat. No tearing, just a case of his getting too caught up in the moment and not only biting her, but not even remembering to be careful about how much blood he was taking.

Shaking his head, he shifted to lift her back onto the bench seat.

"We should have had some blood the minute we got in the SUV," Justin said regretfully as Decker pulled Dani's seat belt around and buckled her in. "Speaking of which... why didn't you? You should have been ravenous after that gunshot wound."

"I had a nibble at the restaurant while I was waiting for Dani to come out of the bathroom," Decker admitted, his eyes shifting from Dani's pale face to the rearview mirror.

"Yeah?" Justin met his gaze and then said, "It's been a long time since I had anything but bagged blood."

"Let's hope you never do," Decker said at once. His being low on blood from the gunshot wound and without bagged blood available was one of those emergency situations when biting a mortal was allowed. He'd originally intended to just suffer the cramps attacking him and wait it out until they met up with Eshe and could claim the replacement SUV with its supplies, but when Decker had found himself just a little too fascinated by Dani's neck as he'd helped her out of the van, and then felt his fangs trying to push themselves out and down as he'd walked her through the mass of bodies in the busy fast-food restaurant, he'd realized waiting wasn't an option. After seeing Dani to the ladies' room he'd waited for the first lone person to come up the hall and lured her into the broom closet between the two bathrooms for a little snack. He hadn't taken much, just enough to take the edge off his hunger, and then had put it in her thoughts that she had blackfly bites on her neck, and had sent her in to see if Dani was still in the washroom.

"How was it?" Justin asked as he steered them onto the off ramp.

"Fast food," Decker muttered, reaching out to brush away a stray strand of hair that had fallen across Dani's face. His gaze then dropped to her chest, and he noticed that there was something wrong. Her chest looked kind of lopsided. It took him a moment to recall that he'd tugged her bra aside to free her breast for his caresses. It was still out under the T-shirt.