Renee’s back arched off the bed, her whole body alive with sensation. She built to a crest fast and hard, crying out as an orgasm ripped through her. He removed his mouth from her almost immediately, allowing her to swim in pleasure without fighting her own hyper-aroused body.

Rafe climbed up her body, watching her flushed face and panting breaths. He had never seen anything more beautiful than Renee succumbing to passion and her own desires. Her ability to throw herself completely and utterly into pleasure was what he clung to. If she could be devoted to him in passion, perhaps she could be equally so in emotion.

He found her mouth and kissed her deeply. Softly. Letting her taste herself on his mouth. He knew she appreciated the eroticism of it by the wicked little moan she released. Her hands were in his hair, mussing through it thoroughly, gripping at the strands with absent enthusiasm as his hands ran up and down the naked skin of her body. She was laid out for him, erotic and perfect, and he took advantage of her display of her charms. He petted her. Stroked her.

Renee began to do the same, only to realize he still had his clothes on. She tugged at the collar at the nape of his neck, stroked the shoulder of his jacket with frustration.

“Get undressed,” she demanded of him.

He had been placing lazy kisses down her breastbone when the demand interrupted him. He shifted upward and brought them face-to-face. He reached up and traced his fingers along her hairline, her curls having been dressed up that night. It left her neck, especially the back of it, tantalizingly bare. He traced over her ear and around to the back of her neck.

“I’m going to feed from you tonight,” he said huskily.

Her eyes widened.

“You can’t!” she cried, even as an excited thrill rushed through her, a wave of answering pleasure sparking along her highly aroused body.

“Are you denying me?”

“No. I mean…I’m dirty.” She frowned at him. “It’s not safe for you.”

“You’re not dirty,” he countered. “Usually it would take longer, but your system has processed the heroin out already. I can tell. You have your healthy lifestyle to thank for that. The only taint that’s left is what’s in your mind.”

Rafe rose up over her onto his knees and, keeping her gaze, he shrugged out of his jacket. He untied his tie and let it fall to the floor after his jacket. When he reached for the buttons of his shirt, she stopped his hands. She took over, smoothing her hands along the seam of buttons, releasing them one by one.

“I should be more concerned about the effects on you,” he continued. “Weariness, lowered immune system, taking from you too often in too short an amount of time. These are things you should be worried about, not the cleanliness of your energy.”

“It didn’t affect me like that at all the first time you did it. I’m not afraid of you doing it again. In fact,” she said, her voice lowering in register, “I very much want you to do it again. Only this time I want to be aware of every minute of it.”

He shrugged out of his shirt once she had all the buttons undone, all the while keeping her gaze.

“There’s something I haven’t told you,” he said, catching her hands where they were on his chest and holding them there. “Something about vampires and humans.”

“Oh?”

“It is possible, in rare instances, for a human to become an energy vampire.”

Renee went still with her shock.

“But I thought you had to be born a vampire!”

“How do you think e-vamps came about in the first place?”

“Well…I don’t know how,” she admitted with some consternation. Why had she never asked that question?

His hands went to his belt and he worked the buckle free.

“Once, a very long time ago, on a ship full of men and women, there was a terrible lightning storm. Lightning struck the metal hull of the ship and sent electrified energy throughout everyone’s bodies.”

“A metal ship? Over three hundred years ago they had metal ships?”

He smiled. “You are so smart,” he praised her.

“It doesn’t take a genius to know there weren’t metal ships when you were born. And since I assume there are other e-vamps even older than you are…”

“There are. And the metal ship…it didn’t come from this world.”

“Aliens! You’re telling me you’re aliens?”

“I suppose I am. We came about five hundred years ago, in a metal ship, two hundred of us. We landed in a terrible lightning storm, and the hull of the ship was struck and electrified. It electrocuted everyone on the ship, changed our alien DNA on a fundamental level. Made us the energy vampires you know today. And believe me, it wasn’t easy. First we were strangers in a backward world that didn’t have the technology and advanced space travel that we did. The electrical storm damaged the ship beyond repair and we couldn’t leave. We were stuck here. So we made a colony. A colony that began to die off quickly as we starved from energy malnutrition. It took an act of violent desperation for us to figure out what needed to be done to feed ourselves. But that is a story for another time. The point is this: We started out as close to human as you are, with only a few fundamental differences. It was the electrification that made us what we are, our alien DNA simply allowed us to survive the process. There are some humans that we find have this same fundamental difference.”

“Alien DNA?” she asked skeptically.

“Not that I know of. Simply a strong series of strands that would allow them to go through the same process that we did. It is possible that there were other aliens that landed here and mated with humans, leaving behind alien DNA. Maybe that’s what we are finding in those rare humans who are compatible. I don’t know. All I know is that some humans are capable of going through the change.”

“How do you know if a human is capable of surviving the change?”

“Well, any human who survives a lightning strike is a dead giveaway. Those people become e-vamps. Another sign is if a human is not weakened as easily by an energy vampire feeding from them. They regenerate quickly. Also they tend to be very strong people in life. In both physical endurance and in personality and self-sufficiency.”

“You mean…someone like me,” she said, understanding dawning on her.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Someone like you.”