“Jane!”

I shrugged. “OK. You’re totally heterosexual.”

“You’re enjoying my discomfort right now, aren’t you?” he growled.

“Immensely,” I told him, snickering as I bit down on his bottom lip. “This is my proposal, simple and to the point: we track this Jeanine twit down and kick her ass.”

Gabriel sighed again, burying his face in my hair. “That’s my girl.”

I would have gotten into a long-term relationship years ago if someone had told me about the almighty power of makeup sex.

We talked long into the night about our months apart. We seemed to see it as a competition, who missed whom more. I described my bathrobe-encased moping. He countered with the fact that he let Zeb take him to karaoke night at the Cellar to sing sad break-up songs, including “There’s a Tear in My Beer.” I told him about my evening of drinking with Dick, carefully omitting the bar fight, for Dick’s sake. Gabriel confessed to keeping one of my T-shirts in bed with him so he could smell me while he slept.

“You are now officially a sixteen-year-old girl.” I giggled, stroking his back. “Wait a minute, what did you do with the panties you stole in the alley?”

“It’s best we don’t discuss that,” he said, nuzzling my collarbone. “We’ve already established that I missed you more than you missed me. Let’s leave it at that. I am the truly pathetic winner.”

“I wouldn’t call it winning, per se,” I said, shaking my head. “But I think I have you beat.”

“What can be more pathetic than sexually objectifying your New Kids on the Block T-shirt?” he asked, arching a brow.

I rolled, letting his weight pin me pleasantly against the mattress as I held his face over mine. “My body craved you so much that I couldn’t sleep for all the sex dreams I was having. Full-color, surround-sound, waking up in the middle of multiple-orgasm extravaganzas that tortured me every single night. I didn’t know whether to be angry at my subconscious for not being able to let you go or grateful that I was able to hold on to you even in that empty, barely satisfying way.”

Gabriel’s mouth went slack, and I think I heard his brain shatter like glass. He wheezed, “Tell me.”

I launched into detailed descriptions of my dreams, because I figured, why suffer alone? I told him about what was basically a reimagining of my losing my virginity in college, only it was Gabriel hiking me up against the stacks of the Russian folklore section of the university library. And we ended up christening the special-collections room as well as the reference section. He groaned when I told him about the one where he was my boss and I had to be “disciplined” against his desk for improperly filing a report. I recounted the scenario involving him and a pint of Chocolate Overload ice cream just to be mean. When I got to the Victorian dream, I left out the bloodier, upsetting aspects to focus on the setting and the fancy clothes. I stumbled over the, um, oral exam, because I was new to the dirty talk and couldn’t seem to find the balance between sexy-dirty and gross-dirty. Seriously, Naughty Jane can only keep up the façade for so long.

“Don’t stop now,” Gabriel said, his eyes dark and slightly unfocused. “I’d like to know how this one ends.”

“It’s a little embarrassing,” I confessed, suddenly wanting the bed to open up and swallow me. I’d gone from wet and ready temptress to stuttering novice in three seconds flat. If I could have blushed, my face would have lit up like a flame. “I will say that you kissed me somewhere that you’ve never kissed me before.”

“Like in the backseat of a car?” he asked, his tone teasing.

“Yes, you kissed my Honda.” I snickered, slapping at his shoulder as he spread kisses in the valley between my breasts, the little dip in my belly button. When he nudged the tip of his nose to the lace waistband of my panties, my hips bucked up from the bed. “What are you doing?”

“I told you, I want to know how this one ends,” he said, peeling my underwear away. I let out a slow, jittery breath as the cool air hit my damp, trickling flesh. I made a noise between a yelp and a sigh when Gabriel’s tongue made that first long, achingly slow slide against me. Gabriel murmured, “How will we know if the dream was accurate unless we let it play out?”

My hips bucked up, pressing me against his mouth as his lips danced across my center. His hands slipped under my butt and lifted me closer, my legs slipping over his back. He nipped and kissed and teased while my body pitched. Hot spikes of pleasure coiled in my belly, stretching each nerve until every stroke of his mouth was almost painful. And just like my dream, the moment the tip of his tongue flicked at that little elusive pearl of nerves, I came, howling.

Pushing my thighs apart and settling between them, Gabriel slid up the length of my body, kissing and nipping until he reached my mouth. As his tongue, still tasting of my own arousal, swept into my mouth, he filled me to the hilt. Whatever breath we had left was released in one long sigh.

He spread my knees wide, tucking my ankles around the small of his back as he withdrew. I whimpered just as he snapped his hips and drove deeper. He brought me to my peak over and over and then pulled back, drawing out our release. I lost track of time, of rhythm, of anything but the delicious friction. Gabriel brushed his lips over my closed eyelids. My eyes fluttered open as his fangs peeked over his lips. He smiled, bending his head to my throat and delicately scraping his sharp teeth against my skin. I arched my neck. He sank his fangs into my skin, drawing blood to the wound with insistent, gentle pressure. I turned my head toward the palm cupping my face, biting down on the skin just below his wrist as his movements became more frantic.

He gasped as I swallowed the first mouthful of blood. The connection, the flow of blood seemed to open up some little window between us. I’d never caught so much as a hint of what Gabriel was thinking before. And now I could feel everything he felt—the love he had for me, his relief at being able to touch me again, the pleasure I was giving him. It was all laid open for me. And when I thought, “I love you, too,” he gasped again, as if he heard me. The thought sent him toppling over the edge and dragged me with him.

In my head, the lesser, dream version of Gabriel was sent packing with his stupid tuxedo jacket thrown after him.

13

There comes a time to accept that some relationship patterns will never change. The problem with being a vampire is that it can take hundreds of years for that time to come.

—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less

Destructive Relationships

Mama had outdone herself.

With little effort or prompting on my part, my mother had pulled together a baby shower that would have made Martha Stewart turn chartreuse with envy.

“Oh. … my.” Jolene sighed as I helped her waddle through the front door of my parents’ house.

Since the ultrasounds had been unclear as far as the twins’ gender, Mom had kept things charmingly gender-neutral. A hand-sewn banner shouting “Congratulations!” in appliquéd pink and blue letters hung over the foyer table. On the table, guests could “sign in” by autographing a little baby album for Jolene and offering her an invaluable piece of parenting wisdom. To our left, the parlor’s chairs were arranged in a circle around a small pile of beautifully wrapped presents. A clothesline was strung on one side of the room, artfully hung with little gender-neutral baby outfits, matching socks, and hats I knew Mama wouldn’t have been able to resist buying for the twins. To our right, Mama had dressed the dining table with little votives of wildflowers between plates of rattle-shaped cookies and candy-colored petit-fours.

“It’s all so beautiful.” Jolene sighed again. “And no one’s naked.”

“Well, if that’s not a baby shower prerequisite, it should be,” I said, shuddering as Mama came into the dining room with a huge bowl of her special strawberry “shower punch.” I groaned. Every Southern woman prides herself on her own special shower-punch recipe, whether it’s combining lime sherbet and ginger ale or creating a frozen ring of pulverized pineapple in a bundt pan and letting it slowly melt in a punchbowl full of orange juice. Mama had never revealed her secret punch formula to me. Personally, I’d never understood the appeal of combining bizarre ingredients in unnecessarily complicated ways when popping the top of a Coke can was so much easier.

That’s probably why I wasn’t in charge of the shower.

“Oh, Mrs. Jameson, it’s so … thank you.” Jolene sniffled, throwing her arms around Mama’s neck. Mama, who was not familiar with werewolf strength, winced in Jolene’s grip but patted her on the back.

“Oh, honey, I’m happy to do it. Zeb means a lot to John and me. That means you do, too,” she said, gently peeling Jolene’s arms away so she could breathe. “Now, Jane said you’d had a pretty hearty appetite lately. So I made you a little snack to pick at before everybody gets here. Why don’t you go make yourself at home in the kitchen?”

I arched an eyebrow as Jolene followed her nose into the kitchen. Through the door, I heard her squeal, “She baked me a ham!”

“Zeb told me Jolene could go through a lot of food,” Mama said, carefully placing the punchbowl on the table. “You sure do have an interesting group of friends, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Mama,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Really, it’s beautiful. Hey, what did you mean by ‘everybody’? It’s just going to be me, Gabriel, Dick, Andrea, you guys, Aunt Jettie, and Mr. Wainwright. You’ve put together a gorgeous spread for a bunch of people who don’t eat.”

Both Jolene’s and Zeb’s relatives were conspicuously absent from the guest list. I think we can all agree that was for the best.

“I may have invited a few more people,” Mama said. “There are a lot of parents who know Zeb from school, people my age who knew him when he was little, who want to help him celebrate the babies. Plus … I may have sent invitations to all your aunts and cousins, making it sound like Jolene was somehow related to them.”

“Mama!”

“Well, I had to go to all their showers and their daughters’ showers,” she huffed, looking slightly embarrassed. “And you’re not going to need one, so I’m calling in all your chips for Jolene. No one can remember half of the names in this family anyway. They’ll show up, give her a present, and walk away thinking they’ve done their duty for a distant relation.”

“That’s …” I laughed. “Actually kind of brilliant. I underestimate you.”

“Constantly,” Mama told me. “Now, I don’t want you to worry about the boys. Your daddy’s got a card table set up out back with enough beer and poker chips to keep them entertained for hours. He’s actually pretty excited about spending some time with Dick and Gabriel. He has this list with all kinds of questions about the Civil War. And I’m so glad you and Gabriel have come to your senses, honey. You’re perfect for each other. All you have to do now is get him to put that ring on your finger …”

“Mama, I’m not legally allowed to get married,” I told her. “There wouldn’t be much point in our getting engaged.”

“Honey, I know this is a sore subject. I would just feel better if I knew you were settled.”

“Mama, I’m going to live forever, and so is my boyfriend. I think that’s about as settled as you could expect, considering the circumstances.”

Mama considered that for a moment and seemed satisfied.

“Besides, I think we have a more immediate problem. As much as I appreciate you planning this expanded shindig for Jolene, what are we going to do about the extra guests? What if people don’t want me around because of the undead issue? This would be the first time I’ve seen a lot of the aunts and cousins since … Oh, wait, is Grandma Ruthie coming?”