Sleepless Beauties: A Rejected Mates Paranormal Romance (The Vampires Vendetta Series Book 1) by A.K. Koonce (best books under 200 pages txt) 📕

and those dimples are there at his lips once more. “It’s your birthday tomorrow? On the night of a full moon? How old will you be?”

I nod, trying to shake the thoughts of my sister out of my head for a single moment of my day. “Twenty-One,” I try to keep my voice steady when I reply, but it still dips a little anyway.

It really does feel like I’ve been alone without my other half for three years, rather than just a few short days.

“Twenty-One! You should have a wild party for a wild night. What do you want for your birthday?”

I look up at the perfect and charming man leaning over me. I have a nearly naked man alone right in front of me, yet all I can think about is Kyra’s ghost.

She’s all I ever think about these days. Her problems are my own now. They have been for the last three years, and if anyone really wanted to know what I want for my fucking birthday, it’s to feel some kind of normal.

To live for myself more than I live for my twin sister for once.

At that thought, I study the faint five o’clock shadow kissing Vuitton’s hard jaw. I follow the trail down to the curve of his chin and then over the soft line of his lips.

And suddenly my hand’s there. My palm brushes over the course texture of his stubble while my thumb hovers over his full lower lip. His bright eyes remain locked on mine all the while.

I don’t know when I lifted up toward him… but I’m just one bad decision away from pressing my lips to his and tasting that all-consuming euphoria I know he can give me so easily.

“What do you want, Kira?” It’s the way he says my name that breaks my will. He speaks it like it’s spelled heartbreak and remorse, one after another.

I know exactly what I want.

“I want to forget my guilt. I don’t want to think. For a little while, I just want to feel.”

His starburst eyes search mine. They hold me there, even as I lean closer and closer. Until his hooded gaze closes softly, and I press my lips to his and cherish every single heartbeat that slams in my chest without worrying that it might sound too loud, or too erratic, or too human.

A hungry breath slips between us just before his tongue claims mine. He kisses me deeper than the first time our lips met. He pushes for more, until he’s all in. And both of us know, nothing could make us turn back now.

Fingers thrust through my tightly pulled back hair and he tears away my hair tie there. My locks fall across my shoulders and back down while his hand trails through the length of them, pulling at the ends as he goes.

He stares at me like he’s thought about this for every day of his entire life, and now I’m finally here.

“Turn around,” he growls on a breath before trailing a path down my throat with the warmth of his mouth.

My head tilts to accommodate him for only a moment before I shift beneath him. Long muscular legs become entangled with mine. The hard outline beneath his boxers catches my gaze before I can fully obey his order.

My mouth skims over his smooth shoulder and then the curve of his pectoral… down the planes of his stomach… down the thin trail of hair that leads further down, down, down.

“I said turn around!” Vuitton repeats on a ragged breath.

He says that. But he also lifts up from me, kneeling for me to gain access to any single glorious part of him that I might want.

Slowly, I slide out of my heavy coat and sit before him in just the tight red dress. I hold his attention as I too kneel, but in a more devotional pose. In a sort of way that bows alllllll the way down.

I lower my head even more, and his curious gaze watches me intently as I pull back the elastic waistband of his tight black boxers.

The thick dry grass blows in the breeze with a soothing sound of rustling. I know that we’re concealed here… but anyone could just walk over if they wanted.

His pack could find us.

Fuck, they can probably hear us. Maybe even smell us.

But the need to feel what he’s offering is more important than my modesty right now.

I pull the thin material of his underwear down until the thickness of his shaft wavers across my knuckles. A smooth rigidness teases my fingers, but I never fully caress him in the way that he’s clearly desperate for me to take him.

My breath shakes over my lips as I peer down at the defined veins and the pulse that twitches through his cock.

As I stare, his big hand comes down. He coils his fingers around himself, not fully wrapping all the way around, then he strokes slowly up his shaft and ever so slowly back down.

“Is this what you want, Kira?” he asks in a voice like hot gravel.

My thighs shift with a sudden ache coursing through my center.

I don’t answer him.

Instead, I look at him through my eyelashes and tilt my chin up to where my breath fans over his head. A thick drop appears beads there at the tip of his cock, and I watch him like a hungry predator as his lips part with a wanting breath.

And in my own way of answering him, I turn his question back on himself. “Is this what you want?” I ask with my lips brushing along his cockhead, his hand still working in that slow, torturous pace.

He nods roughly, shaking his golden hair around his features as he looks down on me with a new kind of desperation.

A desperation I suddenly like.

My lips part wider, and I can just barely taste the slickness at the tip as I speak. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you,” I whisper against his flesh.

His jaw grinds.

“Fuck!”