Beauty's Beasts Read Free Page B

job so much easier. Fact was, though, Riley had a brain. In the thirteen years or so that she had been—euphemistically speaking—trying to date men, not a single man had noticed or taken an interest in the fact that Riley was actually intelligent. They saw only her beauty and were caught up in the determination to fuck her so that they could say they’d had her. It was like a fever, and she had learned to spot it in their eyes and faces.
    Neither Damian nor Nicholas had even so much as glanced at her that way. Damian had spoken of Nicholas wanting her, but in a tone that implied she was simply a desirable human. There was nothing of the fevered determination that drove so many men to the lying, the beatings, the schemes, the semi-rapes that she had suffered through in the past.
    Damian’s implication also answered another question she’d had. Clearly vampires could and did have sex with humans, and both Damian and Nicholas were bisexual…if such distinctions were even a consideration in their world.
    Their almost-indifference to her was a goad. She was “merely” human, barely intelligent and only the daughter of the great Natalia Connor, not Tally herself. They were going through these motions only because they swore an oath to her mother, otherwise it appeared they could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. It made her want them with a power that she’d never felt before. After a lifetime of having men begging at her feet, the novelty of wanting someone—two someones—who seemed disinterested made her squirm on the seat.
    “If it would help you relax and sleep, Damian or I could crawl back there and…help out,” Nicholas said.
    Riley grew very still, even holding her breath. Her heart accelerated.
    “Why do you say that?” Damian said softly.
    “She’s aroused. Powerfully so.”
    Riley heard Damian take a breath, sniffing. Her cheeks heated. She turned her face into the arm of her coat, humiliated beyond reason.
    “Ah, yes,” Damian agreed.
    Riley scrunched her face up inside the protecting crook of her arm and blew out the breath she had been holding. She kept very still for another few minutes, but when neither of them made a move, she relaxed again.
    Somewhere around Somerset her sleep grew genuine. She woke to find her head pillowed on a smooth shoulder and chest, her face pressed against a strong neck and her whole body resting against a firm torso. There was a cocked knee behind her back and a hand soothing her temple.
    She tried to sit up.
    “We are ninety minutes from New York. Relax.” Damian’s voice. In her ear. Rumbling against her shoulder.
    Her heart was pistoning. She was lying on top of Damian and he wanted her to relax?
    The hand stroking her temple dropped to her hip. “You have unpleasant nightmares.”
    “I do?”
    “You were not aware of this?”
    “I know I don’t sleep well,” she muttered. Then she frowned. “I’ve been asleep for four hours?”
    “More like six, actually,” Nicholas said, from the front seat. “I had to stop for petrol once and there was road work near Allentown. It’s sunrise in about thirty minutes.”
    She tried to sit up again and this time Damian let her. “You let me sleep on you for six hours ?”
    “You were not sleeping well,” he said, sitting up. He’d taken off his coat and the rounded caps of muscles of his shoulders gleamed in the low light of the car. “Your dreams were not being kind to you. We thought the touch of another might help you.”
    She bit her lip, frowning.
    Damian lifted a brow. She could just see the movement in the growing light. “What?”
    “I’ve never slept for six hours straight.”
    “You’ve never slept with a man before, have you?” Nicholas asked.
    Riley could feel her cheeks burning again. “I’m not a virgin,” she said stiffly.
    “In this day and age, I would be astonished if you were. That’s not what I’m asking.” His blue eyes caught her gaze in the mirror. “I mean