Page 26 of Wanted 2

“Miss Kassandra?”

Leonard’s long, narrow face floated before me, and as I watched, his nose grew longer and longer, until it had to be at least six feet long.

I frowned.

Something was wrong. Really wrong. But I couldn’t remember what, or how. In fact, I couldn’t remember anything.

Then, suddenly, the Count stood before me, looking like a sculpted Greek god in a half-unbuttoned shirt.

“Why just half undone?” I giggled, swaggering toward him. “Just take it all off. No silly fig leaves foryou.” I said, poking my finger into his muscled chest for emphasis.

The Count’s dark eyes latched onto mine, and the more I stared into them, the more I began to feel the pain, taste the blood.

“What happened?” he asked, his deep baritone sounding so strangely far away.

Whathadhappened? A jumble of thoughts crowded into my brain at that. Images of Don. A troll? My car in a ditch. Don’s fist punching me in the jaw. All that alcohol…

Then, the blackness running beneath it all reared its ugly head once more, and suddenly I was tired. Just so. Damn. Tired. I was battling something, but I was too exhausted to figure it out anymore.

It was time to close my eyes.

“Kass,” the Count’s voice vibrated beneath my breasts.

Hmmm. I must have fallen? I didn’t care. Not anymore.

“Don’t go to sleep.” This time, it was Leonard ordering me around. I liked him, but he wasn't compelling enough to keep me awake.

And anyway, I couldn’t open my eyes. They were too heavy. Just like it was too heavy to move my lungs to breathe.

I began to float, then. Or was it the Count running with me? I decided to go with that. It was much more exciting.

The next thing I knew, I lay on a bed. Candles surrounded me in a beautiful symphony of flickering light. The silk sheets felt so soft against my skin.

A body lay behind me, hard and strong. Warm lips suckled my neck, lips that pulled at my flesh in time with my beating heart. Lips that, with each passing second, drew me back from the blackness and into the candlelit realm surrounding me.

A different kind of haziness washed over me, a sensual one, and I moaned, arching back against chiseled chest and powerful thighs that cradled me.

The lips moved up the column of my throat and then over to nip the lobe of my ear.

“Like an instrument,” the Count whispered.

I didn’t think. I just reacted. I leaned back, pressing myself against him, wanting to feel every inch of his body connecting with mine. Safety. Lust. Understanding. I felt it all in his skin as it melded against mine. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there, but I didn’t care. I was there, where I belonged, and that was all that mattered.

He buried his nose against my skin and breathed deeply of my scent. “There’s still more,” he whispered.

As his palm outlined the curve of my hip, his mouth returned to my neck. I felt his teeth grazing my flesh, and a nip, like two needles, breaking the skin, and as he began to suck, I gasped in pleasure.

Never had I felt such heat running through me, pulsing with the need building in my core. I needed him. All of him.

Yet even as I began to writhe, pushing myself against his hardening flesh, images paraded through my head.

A dreamlike creature with troll hair.

My car in a ditch.

Don.

Hell, why would I want to think of Don now? I frowned and shoved him back into the recesses of my mind. But he wouldn’t stay there.