Blood Calls. Caridad Pineiro

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СКАЧАТЬ the struggling unknown who had unwittingly helped him carry out the deception.

      A sick feeling twisted her gut, and the chill that hadn’t left her all night made her numb inside, weak, she realized as she tried to stand, and found that her legs were a little wobbly. The anxiety and the late hour had taken their toll on her.

      “Ramona?” Diego questioned, but she couldn’t answer as spots began to dance before her eyes.

      She had pushed herself way too much, she realized as Diego slipped his arm around her waist, providing stability.

      “Let me get you home,” he said, and she didn’t argue, lacking the strength to make the trip on her own.

      Besides, she needed to conserve her strength for what would be a tough road ahead—proving that van Winter had sold forgeries, and even more importantly, clearing her name of any involvement in the crime.

      Chapter 2

      So maybe he was wrong to be taking advantage of the fact that she was feeling unwell, Diego thought. But it was the first opportunity to be close to her since Esperanza’s death. He had noticed Ramona well before that, but being an honorable man, unlike he had been in his human life, he had banked his attraction to her.

      Even now a part of him said this wasn’t right. She was human and he was undead. He could offer nothing, but he couldn’t deny that he liked the weight of her in his arms as he held her on his lap the entire cab ride home.

      She murmured a protest when they arrived at her loft and he insisted on carrying her upstairs. With his vampire powers, he barely registered her weight. Actually, even with just his human strength he could have easily managed. She was so petite. Thinner than she had been a few months ago, he belatedly realized.

      It brought out protective feelings in him that should have sent up major warning bells. The last woman he had felt this way toward was Esperanza, and look how that had ended. With death both times.

      But that didn’t stop him from depositing Ramona on the sofa in the living area of the large loft, and getting her settled. Despite her continued reassurances that she was fine, he insisted she rest while he prepared some tea, since he noticed yet again that her hands were ice cold.

      Way too cold, combined with way too pale…

      Diego opened up his vampire senses, but found Ramona’s energy to be totally human and a little frail. The hunter in him recognized she was easy prey, but he tamped down such a thought.

      He hadn’t fed from an unwilling human for quite some time. He wasn’t about to begin now.

      Although the look that she gave him as he approached with the tea hinted that Ramona might not be so unwilling.

      Handing her the mug with the honey-laced concoction, he sat on the coffee table before her.

      “Gracias, Diego. You didn’t have to do this.” She cradled the cup with her long fingers, her actions graceful as she brought it to her full lips and took a delicate sip.

      Desire rose in him again, much as it had the other day. Intent on fighting it, he said, “I need to take care of my investment, don’t I?”

      A crushed look swept across her features before she contained her emotions. “Of course. I understand how expensive it is for you to show—”

      “Your masterpieces,” he said, and because he couldn’t sit there any longer, staring at her wounded, doe-brown eyes, he rose and stalked across the loft to her work area.

      As he had two days earlier, he stood before her paintings, admiring the sweep of her brush as it almost made love to the figures she had placed on the canvas. The movement of the brushstrokes was so alive, he found himself laying his fingertips against the image on the canvas as if to prove to himself that they weren’t real.

      Ramona wondered what he was doing as he stood there, scrutinizing her artwork once more. When he raised his hand and touched the canvas, she had to go see what had drawn him. She set the mug on the table and joined him.

      When he ran his fingertips along the line of the woman’s hip in the painting, tracing the slender sweep of her waist, Ramona imagined his hand against her own body. Imagined how it would be for him to touch her the way he caressed the woman on the canvas—the woman she had imagined herself to be, lost in the throes of a lover’s embrace.

      As he shifted his hand upward, over the shadow beneath the woman’s breast, she felt his energy beside her. Sensed his growing desire and her own.

      When he looked at her, his ice-blue eyes blazed with fire. “Did you feel this way as you painted?”

      She had felt that way and more. But she couldn’t confess that with each stroke of the brush, she had imagined it was them together.

      “No,” she said.

      But he faced her and, laying a hand at her waist, murmured “Liar.”

      He bent from his larger height, but she was already meeting him halfway, wanting to experience him if only for this one moment. A moment that had sprung from nowhere, but was not to be missed.

      His lips were a bit cold, but wonderfully soft on hers. They sampled the edges of her mouth as he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

      The body she had admired from afar was much like she had imagined. Big. Strong. Firm.

      He was hard beneath her hands as she grabbed hold of his shoulders. Hard against the flatness of her belly as he swept his arm beneath her buttocks and drew her to him.

      She moaned at the thought of that hardness within her. Of his big body urging her downward into the softness of the bed that was just at the other side of the loft.

      Her whimper of need jolted Diego from the enjoyment of her response.

      As right as she felt in his arms, this was wrong, he thought, and slowly eased away from her.

      “Perdóname, Ramona. This should never have happened.”

      “You’re right. I’m sorry, too,” she said, and shifted away, nervously rubbing her palms up and down the front of the figure-hugging jeans she wore.

      He reached out and took her hands to stop the jittery motion. “Please don’t take this wrong, little one. It’s not you, it’s me.”

      “You’re gay?” she squeaked, obviously confused by his statement.

      “No, not at all,” he began with a chuckle. “I’m just a…heartbreaker. A cad.”

      “A cad? Fossilized much?” she teased uneasily at his choice of the rather old-fashioned term.

      “Let’s just say I’ll break your heart, and I’d rather not do that.”

      She slipped her hands from his and nodded. “I get it, Diego. No harm, no foul.”

      “Right,” he said, only he didn’t think either of them believed that there had been no harm.

      After the heat of that kiss, their relationship would never be the СКАЧАТЬ