Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One) Read Free

hands over his chest, playing with the light mat of hair down the center. He lowered his head to kiss her, and her mouth welcomed his with heat and passion, melding into one.
    Then the voice spoke. “Forgive the intrusion,” she said, and her voice was like the cool brush of silk across bare flesh, both enticing and chilling at once. Isabel looked around and saw a young woman standing beside the bed. She was small and slim, nearly frail, with skin like thinned milk and silky golden hair fanned out in cornsilk strands across the wine-dark dress she wore. Almost conservative, it was a simple scooped-neck dress with capped sleeves and a long skirt, but its deep wine color was a startling contrast to her milk-pale skin.
    “Just in time,” Duane said with slight difficulty. “What’s your name?”
    “Elyse,” she said, stepping forward. “He is Ryan.”
    Isabel looked around, but didn’t see anyone else. For that matter, she hadn’t seen Elyse enter the room through the only doorway.
    “I am Ryan,” said another voice, and suddenly Isabel saw him, standing in the shadows beside the bed. The first thing she noticed was his hair, dark and cropped close, but with a touch of wave to it that almost seemed as though it was meant to grow long and curl about his shoulders like a man in a romance movie. Then she looked at his face, into his dark eyes, and wondered how she could have noticed his hair first. His was a face that belonged in an old photograph, dark and intense, as though he were in sepia tones in an old family album. His eyes were dark in the dancing shadows. But as he moved into the light, she saw they were a deep azure blue like the sky on a clear summer day.
    “Me first,” Duane said. “So she can see how it goes.”
    “As you wish,” Elyse said, gesturing to the chair. Duane led her over to it and quickly slid off his slacks. He sat in the chair, his legs slightly apart. Isabel stepped close to him, a little shy with other people in the room.
    “They’re not there, not really,” Duane whispered, and Isabel nodded. She drew the sleeveless top over her head and let it drop. She kept her eyes on Duane, pretending that there was no one in the room but him, and vampires didn’t exist.
    Isabel stepped closer to Duane, unzipping her skirt and letting it drop to the floor with her panties. She started to slide the strap of her black lace slip off her shoulder, but Duane shook his head. “Keep it on, baby,” he said pulling her onto his lap.
    Isabel straddled him in the chair, feeling the hard branch beneath the thin cotton of his shorts press against her. He rubbed it against her gently and she pressed hard against him, her hands clenching involuntarily against his shoulders. She wanted to dismiss the vampires and make love to him, but he stilled her rocking hips, holding her steady.
    “Elyse,” he said, and the pale vampire slid up behind him. Her translucent-pale hands glided down over Duane’s arms and across his chest, between his body and Isabel’s. It was strange, as though Elyse were intruding on a private moment between them. But as Elyse’s hand passed close to Isabel’s bare arm, she could feel something pass over her skin, an electricity generated by the vampire as she moved over a living body.
    Elyse moved around them, standing behind Isabel for a moment, and Isabel fought the urge to turn and watch the vampire. “Look at me, Duane,” Elyse purred, her voice cool as silk sheets on a rain-pounded night. Isabel watched Duane’s eyes meet Elyse’s, and there was a sudden calm, an almost beatific trance over his face.
    Elyse slipped back behind Duane and lowered her mouth to his neck. She breathed lightly, and Isabel felt Duane grow harder and hotter beneath her thighs. Elyse licked along the juncture of his neck and shoulder, delicate as a cat licking cream.
    Elyse smiled, revealing the sharp white points of her teeth. Her head darted downward in a swirl of cornsilk hair and she plunged