He licked the edge just above that spill into even more intimate parts. He teased back and forth, tracing the edge of me without ever going deeper, until I whispered, “Please.”

He rolled those midnight-blue eyes up at me, and then rose back just enough to say, “Please, what, ma petite?” But he slid his fingers across the parts of me I’d been wanting him to kiss, and that stole my words away. I couldn’t think; all I could do was feel what he was doing between my legs. I fought my way back to being verbal, opened my mouth, and he plunged one finger inside me. I managed to gasp out, “Not fair.”

“Oh, I think it is very fair,” he said, smiling, his eyes full of that dark light that has nothing to do with vampire powers and everything to do with being male. He used his free hand to lean me so hard against the desk I was almost sitting on it. He moved his finger back to playing with the intimate bits that weren’t inside, and lowered his mouth back to me, so that he was licking just in front of where his fingers caressed. That delicious pressure began to build where he was licking and touching. I breathed his name like a prayer. He started licking faster, over and over on that one sweet spot, while his fingers played lower, and I was suddenly over the edge and screaming my orgasm before I’d had time to think about whether I wanted to be quiet here in the office.

He kept licking, drawing out the orgasm, and slipped his finger inside me, making it go in and out of me fast, reaching for that spot just inside, so that while I was still writhing from the first orgasm he brought me with the second kind, and I stopped screaming, because I was too lost to sensations. It was almost as if my body couldn’t decide which orgasm to follow. As if he understood that, he stopped licking and just used his fingers, driving them in and out of me fast and solid until I screamed a new orgasm for him. I felt his lips on the inside of my thigh, his free hand gripping the outside of it, but his other hand kept going in and out of me, like juggling multiple balls. I stared down my body at his dark hair, his face buried against me. I felt his hand on my thigh tense, a moment of hesitation from his other hand, and then he bit me, and a second later I felt the fangs pierce me, but it was lost in the orgasm so that the feel of his teeth, his mouth locking on my skin and sucking hard and tight was just part of the pleasure until I wasn’t sure which was making me orgasm: his fingers, or his bite. Then he was standing, pushing me back onto the desk with my legs dangling over the side. My panties were lost on the floor somewhere as he pulled himself free of the leather pants, so I had a moment of seeing him long and hard and ready, before he pushed himself inside me. His voice came out strained. “So wet, so tight, so sweet, ma petite.”

I rose up just enough, like a version of an ab crunch, so I could watch him slide in and out of me, but as his rhythm sped I had to spill back along the desk and just let my body ride the sensations of him inside me. I looked up into that face, and he stared down at me so that we were drowning in each other’s eyes as he fucked me on the desk, my body moving with the push and pull of him, his hands tight on my hips to keep me on the edge of the desk. That deeper pleasure began to build like a weight of anticipation in a part of my body that he couldn’t actually touch, but it felt as if every deep thrust, every pull-out over that one spot just inside, touched things that no light would ever see, no hand could ever touch, but he could; Jean-Claude could find all the dark happy places inside me.

His eyes bled to vampire glow, as if a night sky could blaze with its own light and let you know that even in the darkest hour the sky is still blue. The press of pleasure built and built as he conjured it closer and closer to the surface, and then from one moment to the next, one stroke of his body to the next, he brought me screaming, my hands scrambling across the smooth empty surface of the desk.

He held on to his rhythm until he’d brought me multiple times and I was almost boneless on the desk, my body half-conscious from the pleasure of it all. Only then did he let himself speed his thrusts for himself without aiming at the sweet spots inside me, and finally let go of all that control. I watched his face through half-closed eyes as his head came forward, all that hair spilling around him, hiding his face, and then his spine bowed backward, taking his head with it so that he was curved above me, face slack with his own pleasure.

His breathing was ragged, and I could see his pulse against the side of his neck. The sex brought him to “life” more than almost anything else. I loved watching his body react like any man’s with a light dew of sweat on that pale, muscled chest. There was a faint pink shine to the dew of sweat on his chest from the blood he’d drunk from me. He might not be able to wear a white shirt to work tonight. I was okay with that, and I was pretty sure so was he.

8

JEAN-CLAUDE AND I cleaned up in the half bath that was in the back of the office. Ever the gentleman, he let me clean up first, but also because he’d take longer in the bathroom than I would, and he knew patience wasn’t my greatest virtue. The compromise was that I came out of the bathroom in my bra and undies and would dress out in the office, so he could fuss in the bathroom longer. I checked my phone before I put on anything else, but there was no message from Manny, no missed call. Screw it. I called Manny again. My first phone message had been simply, “Call me.” This one needed more details.

It went straight to voice mail, so he was on the phone. Damn it. “Manny, this is Anita again. I really need to talk to you about a case. I need your input.” I stopped short of mentioning Dominga Salvador for two reasons. One, I tried not to share any information about ongoing federal investigations that I didn’t have to, and two, his wife, Rosita, checked his phone regularly. She knew he and Dominga had been lovers once. She’d never forgiven him for sleeping with any women besides herself, even those who were years before she and Manny met. I didn’t really understand jealousy to that degree, but I didn’t want to make his life hard if I could avoid it. But if he didn’t call me back soon, I was going to have to mention the name, because I knew that would make him call. She was dead, but it was like talking too much about the devil; you always wondered if they heard you. In Dominga’s case, hearing us from hell seemed totally reasonable. Yes, she had been that kind of evil scary.

I sat there staring at the phone and thought about texting him, but Manny was like a lot of people over fifty. He had a smart phone, but he treated it like it was still just a portable phone. He never returned texts. I wasn’t even sure he read them.

My phone rang, but I knew it wasn’t Manny, because it was Micah Callahan’s ring tone: “Lovefool” by the Cardigans. “Hey, short, dark, and handsome,” I said, and was smiling as I said it.

“Hey, beautiful.” And I could hear the smile in his voice, too. “I heard that the jewelry appointment was cut short.”

“Wow, that’s fast gossip.”

“I told Lisandro I needed to talk to Jean-Claude and you if there was a free moment, so he told me.”

“Okay, but I will have to leave in about forty-five minutes. I can’t leave clients waiting for long.”

He laughed. “They get nervous if you leave them alone in graveyards, I know.”

“Cemeteries are actually damned peaceful. They just spook themselves,” I said.