Love Bites by Cari Quinn Page A

one.”
    “And you’ve been with many women?”
    “Are you asking how many I’ve bitten or how many I’ve had sex with?”
    “Both.” Tell me everything. Even if I can’t stand to hear the truth .
    “Yes.” He met her eyes squarely. “There have been many, though not many I’ve tried to wipe. I normally have control. With you, I had none.”
    Her heart tumbled as images flew through her mind. The two of them touching other women as they’d touched her. Making love to them, sharing them, drinking from their throats as they’d drunk from her.
    Lucas had mentioned their freaky vampire orgies. Maybe he hadn’t been kidding. After all, they’d picked her up on the side of the road, hadn’t they? Even if she’d known Kellan, sort of, their behavior—and hers, she realized, heat staining her cheeks—didn’t bode well for their sexual responsibility.
    God, what had she done? Multiple times?
    She took a step back. She knew nothing about these men, but here she was having unprotected sex with them. They’d said they didn’t need to use condoms, but she was still human. Maybe they could carry diseases, even if those diseases didn’t affect them. Who knew how many lovers they’d had? Many could be a thousand or ten times that. Hell, maybe they even screwed each other, though the vibe she’d picked up from them suggested otherwise.
    “Do you have company over a lot?”
    “Only when necessary.” Kellan bent to pick up his jeans. To her shock, he was almost as hard as he’d been before they’d had sex. “We have needs, sweetheart. We can’t deny them even if we try.”
    “But you don’t try.”
    “No.” Lucas looked at her steadily when Kellan didn’t answer. “He doesn’t. He had no reason to, because he was still looking for his mate. The only way to find her is to search. That’s how he found you.”
    Sydney shivered as the butterflies in her chest divebombed into her belly. As much as she liked them—and she was beginning to wonder if her feelings for Kellan already went beyond like—she wasn’t sure if she was ready to be anyone’s “mate.” Especially not a horny vampire’s. Sure, the last day had been exciting, but could she really keep up this pace long-term? She had a job. Two, actually, if she counted her mystical duties, but only the coffee shop had set hours. Still, any kind of job would interfere with what these two seemed to require.
    “You’ve found yours,” she said to Lucas, sidestepping his comment about Kellan.
    His features tautened. “Yes.”
    “But you haven’t slept with her?”
    “No. She doesn’t want me. So when I can hold out no longer, I do what I must. The urge for sex is nearly as strong as the thirst for blood.”
    “I’ve noticed,” she said dryly, lifting her brows at the two unflagging erections in front of her. At least Kellan had put on his jeans, but Luke stood happily nude. “You’ve said you don’t use condoms, so vampires must not be able to get sexually transmitted diseases? And I’ve gathered you can’t impregnate me.”
    When they remained silent, staring at each other without meeting her gaze, she tried again. “Right?”
    “No.” Lucas glanced at her briefly before returning his attention to Kellan. “Unless you truly are latent. Normally vamps can’t impregnate humans or vamps, because our semen is incompatible with human eggs and the eggs of female vamps die upon the change. But if you’re latent, the changeover wouldn’t require drinking you to the brink of death, as it normally does when making a vampire. Your heart would still beat at the rate of a human’s, yet you’d be one of us, for all intents and purposes. As soon as vampire blood was introduced into your bloodstream at a sufficient rate, the change would begin. Eventually, all reproductive activity would cease, including things like menstrual cycles. But for a brief time, until your eggs died, technically you’d be both human and vamp and possibly susceptible to