“Well, maybe you should take her to the dance, then,” she suggested, showing a hint of fang.

“Might want to sheathe your blades, my lady,” he responded with a twinkle to his eye. “We have an impressionable visitor.” She really needed to get in the habit of stripping his mind bare so he couldn’t tease her. A young girl of about eight approached them now, with a shy glance at Danny. Danny could see now that she’d come from a picnic area up on the beach, where she’d been sitting with her family. His wave toward them had obviously been the signal that he was done. Danny relinquished the toy to him, watching as he placed it in the child’s flat palm. He made it bound up her arm so she giggled. Taking a piece of twine, he tied it around the roo’s body and then made a necklace of it, putting it over her head. “There, love. You won’t lose it while you’re playing in the sand. Have fun with that.” He waved genially to the watching parents, as she thanked him politely and scampered back to show them.

“You have made quite an impression.”

He snorted. “They like to romanticize us bushfolk, you know that.”

“Like American cowboys.”

“Aren’t all Yanks cowboys? Saw enough of them in the war to think so.”

“Not all.” She gave him a smile. “It’s more a national spirit. The same way most Aussies identify with folk like you when they think of themselves as being Australian, but you couldn’t get them out of the cities with a crowbar. Can’t imagine why. Winds that raise up enough dust to block the sun, heat to fry your liver, rains that bring floods to drown you but rush away to drought, leaving your skeleton lying on the desert sands.”

He gave her a considering look. “Not fooling me, love. You’re drawn to it. Quite the bushie yourself, even when you don’t know enough to stay out of trouble.”

“Well, lucky I have you, isn’t it?” She swiped his hat and put it on her own head, cocking a hip against the door.

He laughed. “Don’t pout about the roo, love. I’ll make you one, too. Do you want children?” The question caught her off guard, but she shrugged. “Most vampire females can’t have children. That’s why born ones are so rare and so treasured.”

“Well, genetically speaking, you might be predisposed, though, right?”

She shook her head. “No proof so far that it works that way. And I really haven’t thought about it. Too young yet.”

“Too young,” he murmured. “A young woman at two hundred?”

“Exactly.” But she looked back toward the family. “You’re barely forty. It’s been over ten years since you lost your family. Why—

”

“I had that. Man only deserves that once, if he lets it get away.”

She stopped, not because it was a good explanation, but because of what she saw in his mind. He couldn’t do it. He’d be paralyzed, unable to leave them alone. He wasn’t like the smiling young father examining what his little girl had secured from one of those famous bushmen. Dev wouldn’t ever be able to get past the choking fear that when he left his family, he’d come back to the smell of blood and waste. That he would have to use his rifle to drive off the dingoes and buzzards circling the house, seeking a way in because they could smell the flesh, calling to them . . .

Abruptly, he rose. “I’ll be back.”

“No.” Before he could get away, she curled her fingers in the open neck of his shirt, pulled him to her. With his body half shielding hers, she let the sheet drop, the breeze from the ocean blowing her hair back in a ripple, drawing his attention to the expanse of breast revealed.

“Christ, you have no sense of decency.” Easing her into the room, he closed the door with a snap behind him. But she was already back onto him, sliding her arms up to his neck to bring his mouth down to hers, knocking the hat off her head. He surprised her this time, though, putting his hands over her wrists to still her. Lifting his head, he touched her cheek and jawline with his fingertips, studying her so hard in the dimness she knew even without looking into his mind that he was contemplating the day she’d no longer be part of his life.

Don’t do that, Dev. Don’t say good-bye, bushman, when you haven’t even said a proper hello, by my accounting of time.

Two hundred years is young for a vampire, remember?

That twist of his lips again, and it punched her low in her stomach, that sensual curve of mouth. His hands went to her waist, finding the small of her back, the rise of her buttocks. She brought all her soft curves and willing flesh against the cotton, denim and leather covering his. No wonder the little girl was enchanted. He was a romantic figure with the stock whip coiled at his hip, the handle fitted into a slim pocket along the thigh, the knives on the other side. Reaching up, she took off his hat, raking her hand through his copper red hair. “Did you used to keep it short for her?”

“No. I kept it short because that was the way I was raised. She liked it longer, like this, though. She understood I needed it the other way, for the heat and dirt, all that. But she liked it like this,” he repeated.

Danny nodded. “So do I.” Touch me, Dev. Kiss me. Hold me.

But she didn’t beg any man, so she held those thoughts in her own mind only, began to draw away, giving him a coy smile when his hands tightened, drew her back, close enough that muscled leg found the seam of her thighs and pressed, so he rode her on it as he leaned back against the door and brought his head down to nibble on her lips.

“Hold still, love,” he murmured. “Let me enjoy you. Give you pleasure.” Was it to make up for his roughness before? Whatever his reasons, this was pure devastation of thought, everything given to her senses as he teased her mouth over and over with his. Lips, tongue, working intimately to explore her mouth, her lips, the wetness just inside them, the tender, moist flesh so like another part of her body. He eased up her sides, tracing her rib cage, sliding around to her back again to play in her hair, following it to where the tips teased the tops of her buttocks. When his hands formed a butterfly shape, the thumbs pressed together in her cleft, up against the sensitive opening, his other fingers spread out over her cheeks to grip with the right firmness.

He moved against her then, his leg insinuating farther so she held on to his shoulder and he took her off her feet, working her against his thigh, a delicious pressure to her clit that had her tossing her head back and giving him access to her throat for more of the magic of his mouth, moving down her sternum, his stubble scratching her breasts, his hair brushing her skin. She gripped his arms, the loose stuff of his shirt, undulating against the hard column of his thigh, rubbing his cock with her hipbone. When he turned his head to her shoulder, nuzzling the point of it with his lips, his pulsing artery was there, before her eyes, her mouth. He’d registered her hunger.

She brushed the offered area with tender lips, a thank-you before delicately piercing him, using only one fang so she could sip from the bite area. Feeling his cock grow harder against her, she knew how much it aroused him, she feeding on him, he serving her needs, even if he didn’t think of it that way. Giving something simple, life sustaining. No gray areas to consider. Just pure, red blood.

Hitching her up on his body as she drank, he moved them to the bed. As he took her down, she watched him fan out her hair with his fingers. This intense attention was an irresistible seduction, the way he looked at her, his only focus her. Whether he was doing it deliberately to force out other memories or not, the only thing she felt in his mind now was his absorption in her. She liked it, and pushed away her own discomfiting thoughts, not wanting to remember her reaction when she thought he’d been flirting and making friends with a town girl.

A stroke of sadness came with the thought. No matter how he denied it, he needed to have a family again. He needed that to heal.

Which meant, third mark or not, he wasn’t going to be hers forever, no matter how much she wanted him to be. When it came time to leave, she wouldn’t hold him. It was what was best for him.

But for now, she focused on this. Divesting himself of his clothing, he came down upon her on the bed, sliding his arm under her waist to move her up, adjusting her where her head could rest on a pillow. He entered her, slow, sweet, pulling everything in her yearning body toward that joining point, taking his body all the way down on hers so they were simply intertwined, their gazes holding, so much going on that wasn’t being said, even in their thoughts.

Dev might be right. A woman’s heart was a woman’s heart, no matter whether it rested in a human form or a vampire’s. It could break in either vessel. It just couldn’t kill the vampire, much as she might wish to avoid the pain. And it made her wonder if the desolation of having loved her father and never found a replacement for him was what had sent her mother walking out into the sun, that last dawn of her life.

This was a thought she didn’t want, couldn’t be having, not at this moment. But she couldn’t prevent the wave of feeling, as vast as the ocean so close to their door, when he leaned down, kissed her lips again and spoke to her in that tender whisper. “Gate to my soul, love. That’s what you are.”

She drew him down to her then, clasping her arms over his broad shoulders, pressing her face into his neck as his strokes began to quicken and her body began to lift to his, to demand, to come closer to that pinnacle where both of their unsettling thoughts would be swept away by the incoming tide. She would take it, even knowing that things washed away by tides had a way of returning, again and again. Marking the beach with their impression so they could never be forgotten as well as never kept, temporary and yet eternal marks in the sand.

18

ANOTHER plus, he was a man quite comfortable with dancing. At the hotel, he handled himself handsomely in a waltz, his hand sure on her back, fingers supporting hers.

“So, did the aborigines teach you to dance?”

“Aborigines don’t dance.” He gave her a smile as he turned her. Most had turned out for the hotel’s entertainment, so the waxed and swept wooden floor was semicrowded. “They imitate animals or hunting scenes. They use music as part of the ceremonies, so people think it’s dancing.”