Because the top of his skull was surely going to blow the fuck off if she kept this up.

He started to pant with sawing breaths that went in and out of his mouth as his cock went in and out of her mouth.

Faster again. And then she gripped his sac and squeezed—at the very instant she popped his cock out of her mouth and opened wide.

As jets shot out of him, he watched himself come into her. At least until his eyes squeezed shut of their own volition—because it was either that or they popped out of their sockets, ping-ponged off the closed door behind her, and ended up on the floor.

Making moaning noises in the back of her throat, she finished him off nice and slow, sucking him in once more, helping him ride out the tides of pleasure that ebbed and flowed for what was about ten minutes.

Vampires males made big messes.

Fortunately, she liked cleaning up after him.

When things eventually wound down, she licked her lips, her pink tongue making a lazy round of her mouth like she had enjoyed the taste of him—and holy hell that was nearly enough to get him going again. But he was dry. At least for the next ten minutes.

His cock was known to rally quick.

As she sat back and stared at him from under those low lids, he wanted to thank her. Instead, he bent down and drew her up to her full height. Putting his lips to hers, he kissed her in the hopes he could communicate in that way how much it had meant to him.

In fact, he was glad his hands were shaking too much to sign. If they had been in good working order? Well … then he might have started to explain himself with words, and he would have been unable to keep from her the true reason for his gratitude at her erotic distraction.

He would have had to tell her that he’d been bitten by that reanimated corpse.

The cursory examination he’d given himself in the field had not been thorough enough—and on some level he must have known that because he had raced up here after the surgical unit had removed the civilian’s corpse from the scene. He had intended to check properly in this private bathroom only to relieve his mind.

But paranoia had proven to be prescient.

And he had the twin rings of teeth marks to prove it.

Keeping the injury from Xhex was wrong, but it made him feel like it hadn’t really happened. That he hadn’t seen the marks in his shoulder. That he hadn’t pulled a borrowed shirt closed so she didn’t see the wound.

Keeping it from her … meant he didn’t have to admit to himself that he was terrified he’d been infected with something evil.

The following morning, Sarah Watkins looked out her bedroom window without disturbing the venetian blinds. Given that the slats were closed, all she had to go on was the inch and a quarter vertical gap next to the molding. It was enough if she contorted her neck.

Across the street and down three houses, there was a car parked facing her property. American make. Pale, nondescript color. No parking or gate pass stickers on the windshield. Nothing hanging from the rearview mirror.

There was a person in it. She couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman, and that didn’t matter.

Looked like her hunch was correct. The question was whether the FBI was watching her from the back, too, but she wasn’t going to waste time answering that hypothetical.

Finally, it was light enough. She had never been a let’s-savor-the-sunrise kind of person. Daybreak had always been late, in her opinion, its inevitably lazy arrival meaning that she could finally go back to work, her brain always chomping at the bit to return to whatever she’d had to quit the night before. Prior to coming to Ithaca, she had liked that Gerry had been the same. Romance in their relationship had been rooted in mutual intellectual support; as a couple, they were a think tank that each could come to and vet ideas and solve problems in. To her, progress on research had always been so much better than bunches of flowers or lingering gazes in the moonlight.

So much more practical and important.

But BioMed had changed that, although not the part about her wanting someone to think work through with. No, Gerry had stopped talking to her about what he was doing, and had not given her any opportunity to share her own trials and triumphs. Once that previously two-way street had been closed off? Everything had fallen apart.

And she did judge him for that. She also still to this day had no idea what changed for him.

Straightening, Sarah pulled her sweatshirt back in place and padded across the carpet to her bedside table. Back when Gerry had been alive, they had each had their side of the bed. Hers was the one closest to the door because she had an irrational fear of burning to death in a house fire and couldn’t settle unless she was close to the exit. He hadn’t been picky.

Now that he was gone? She slept all over the place.

Too bad it felt rootless rather than an expression of mattress freedom.

As she picked up her cell phone and double-checked the time, she glanced over at where he would have lain. There were no pillows where he’d put his head. She’d had to stash his two away in a closet. She’d also bought all new bedding, down to the mattress pad, the bed skirt, the headboard. When she’d still not been able to get a good night’s sleep, she’d gone out and gotten a new mattress.

Nothing had worked. Even now, she tossed and turned.

Refocusing on her phone, she realized she’d looked at the time and not seen the numbers at all. Eight thirty. And given that it was a Saturday, she had nowhere she needed to be.

Out in the hall, she flipped the switch that turned on the overhead light.

The closed door to Gerry’s study was wood paneled, and not in a fancy way. It was just your bog standard, fairly cheap but serviceable, Home Depot special.

Facing off at it, she felt like the damn thing was a locked vault without a combination.

Her hand trembled as she turned the knob and the hinges creaked softly in a way that made her spine shiver. Musty air escaped like the oxygen molecules were getting off a crowded subway car.

It was darker than she remembered, and that was a problem. She didn’t want to turn on the crane-armed desk lamp given that nondescript car down on the street. But like the Feds knew the layout of her house? As if they’d see the light come on and suss out that she hadn’t been in this room for how long because it was where Gerry did his work for BioMed?

Besides, it was her damn house. She could go wherever she wanted to in it.

Stepping over the threshold, she nonetheless kept the lights off, leaving the door wide to let in as much illumination as possible from the hall.

As her shadow fell across the dusty desk, her head and shoulders created a blackened cutout in the middle of the fake wood surface. When the two security guards from BioMed had come to take Gerry’s computers, they’d left the monitors, the keyboards, the printer, the modem, all the wires. The discord and vacancies left behind in the workstation made her think of a corpse that had had its organs removed, the vital parts that had engineered life gone, the connective tissue and ancillaries all that was left behind.

Now useless.

Flipping on her phone’s flashlight, she made a fat circle with the shallow beam. Amazing how much dust there was. Probably meant she needed to change her furnace filters. Or clean, of course.

The chair Gerry had spent so many hours in was turned away from the desk, the seat and arms facing left. She could picture him pivoting with his feet, standing up … going to the bathroom. Had he felt odd? Had the need for insulin intruded on his concentration because he was hungry and about to eat?