Midnight (8 page)

He looked shocked, but he relented. “Okay. I’ll see what I
can do.”

* * * * *

Marco watched as Amara finished off the last of the
cheeseburger. He was a little astounded when she’d requested something so
simple. She was most likely used to gourmet meals. Why would she want something
she could get at any fast food restaurant in the country?

She enjoyed it, though. The little noises she made while
eating it rivaled the ones she’d made last night in bed. His mouth went dry
just listening to her.

He was glad he’d had Ellie bring in some food, or else Amara
would have starved. He’d learned firsthand she wouldn’t eat peanut butter, and
that was about the only thing he ever kept in the cabinets.

She looked different sitting across from him at the kitchen
table than she did in the films, or even at the functions where he’d seen her.
Now she looked more relaxed, more natural, and less like the snotty bitch he’d
thought she was. He was learning a lot about her, and what he learned scared
him. He had less and less reason to hate her with every sentence that came out
of her mouth.

In fact, he was disgusted to find he was actually starting
to like her.

Wanting her body was one thing, but truly admiring who she
was as a person was out of the question. At this rate, the woman was going to
turn him into a softie by the end of the week.

“Tell me where you get your insight into my true nature.”

She shrugged and finished off the last of the burger. “Growing
up, my mother got married to a different man every other year. I had seven
stepfathers and quite a few
uncles
. I learned a lot just watching them.”

“You don’t have a very high opinion of men, do you?”

She snorted. “Are you kidding? Why should I? Every single
man in my life has proven to be a gigantic letdown.”

Maybe she just hadn’t found the right man yet.

“Where do you get off, asking a question like that?” she
continued, her expression irritated. “Your opinion of women seems pretty low.”

“Yeah, and I have a good reason for that, too.”

“What’s that?”

He studied her, debating how much to tell her. If he relayed
the entire story, he’d scare her off for good. Then again, that would certainly
solve the problem of unwanted emotional attachments.

“I was married once. A very long time ago.”

“Okay.”

“My wife was not exactly what you’d call faithful.” He took
a deep breath, the pain of what had happened still there, even though it had
dulled to a low throb.

“I’m sorry.”

She truly looked it, too. And he was sorry for what he was
about to say to her, but there was no way to do it gently. “Do you want to know
why I’m a vampire?”

She nodded, but she didn’t look so sure.

“I was to be executed for killing my wife and her lover.”

“You were
what?”

“You heard me right the first time. I’m not going to repeat
myself. I was convicted of killing the two of them, but before I could be
hanged my wife’s father took matters into his own hands and stabbed me. There
just happened to be a vampire living in our village. I guess the smell of my
blood must have been quite an enticement for him. He came to me and offered me
a way I could live in exchange for a meal.”

“The rest is quite a long story, and I don’t need to go into
the sordid details, but I think you need to know exactly what I am.”

She licked her lips and he had the sudden urge to suck them
into his mouth. He shook his head to remind himself he was trying to push her
away, not draw her closer.

He watched her closely, waiting for that mental retreat he
knew was inevitable. It never came.

“I see. But that doesn’t answer the question of how you
became a vampire.”

He blew out a breath. He’d anticipated fear, almost welcomed
it, but not her curiosity. “I explained how I came to be what I am. What more
do you need to know?”

“Not who, Marco,
how
. How does it happen? Did he make
you feed off of him?”

She sat on the edge of her seat, waiting for his answer. He
didn’t like her eagerness.

“Why do you need to know the technical details?”

“I don’t need to. I want to.”

He pushed away from the table. “Maybe sometime I’ll tell
you. But not tonight.”

She’d be surprised at how simple it really was. There was no
way he was going to arm her with that kind of knowledge. Before she could
protest, he stalked out of the room.

Men
!

Just when you think you’re getting somewhere with them, they
get all closed-mouthed and cranky.

Amara finished the last of the dishes, which Marco hadn’t
even bothered to help with, and laid the towel neatly on the counter to dry.
She’d asked a perfectly reasonable question. Was it too much for her to expect
an answer in the same night? She didn’t think so, but apparently the dark and
brooding one had other ideas.

Oh, well. His loss. If he didn’t want to talk to her, fine.
But he’d better not be expecting any bedtime privileges until he learned to
stop being such a jerk.

She settled on the couch with the remote, finally deciding
on the late night news. With three channels to choose from, the choice wasn’t
exactly difficult.

He wanted her to consider this a vacation. Well, it
certainly wasn’t her fantasy vacation. In her fantasy, she would be on a tropical
island,
alone
, with not a single man in sight to mess up her plans. She’d
spend the days soaking up the sun and the evenings relaxing on a hammock on the
front porch of her bungalow.

Without an annoying male to bring down the mood.

She would most certainly
not
be trapped in the middle
of nowhere, locked in a house where the only company was a man who changed
moods as often as she washed her hair.

She couldn’t stand this anymore. After living most of her
life in noisy trailer parks and then L.A., she needed some kind of noise.
Another couple of days here and she was going to be as crazy as Marco was.

She got up from the couch and walked to the front door. She
jiggled the doorknob a few times, but couldn’t get the door to open. She
jiggled harder, ready to break it down if she had to. For God’s sake, the man
didn’t even have a stereo, at least not one she could find. She
had
to
get some noise in her life.

She was considering putting her fist through the glass inset
when a hand closed around hers and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Are you going somewhere, Amara?” Marco’s voice was a low
growl and his breath hot against her skin. A little too hot. He was angry.

Oops.

She winced. “I, uh…”

“You expect me to trust you, when the second I let you out
of my sight you try to leave?” His hands came up to cup her breasts. “Were you
even going to say goodbye?”

She shook her head. No goodbyes for this girl, not ever. She
preferred clean breaks. Not that she’d be able to break away from Marco, not
completely anyway. He was the kind of man who burrowed himself under a woman’s
skin for life. She wondered if he was ever planning to let her go.

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No.” But she was now. Just a little. It was that confession
that had done it. He’d killed his wife, and her lover. That was something she
wouldn’t easily forget. No matter how good he was in bed, the man was capable
of murder.

He was a vampire. Weren’t they all capable of the senseless
destruction of human life? Or was that just in the movies? Reality wasn’t the
same as it used to be.

“Why do you insist on lying to me?” He nipped her earlobe. “I
can tell you aren’t being truthful.”

He turned her around to face him, pushing her back into the
door. “Do you really think I would let you go this easily?”

She shrugged, trying for casual. “A girl can hope, can’t
she?”

“You want to leave?”

The funny thing with that was, if he wasn’t holding her
hostage she wouldn’t mind getting to know him a little better. Being kidnapped
kind of took the fun out of it. “It doesn’t matter what I want. You aren’t
giving me any choice.”

For just a second, he actually looked upset. But he covered
it quickly. “We all have choices.”

“And the one you made when you brought me here wasn’t
exactly a sane one.”

He sighed, his eyes closing briefly. “I told you why I did
that.”

Yeah. He’d been telling her his reason since he brought her
here. It was starting to lose its edge. “You have yet to tell me exactly what
you plan on doing to me.”

“I haven’t decided that myself.” He pulled her up against
him. “I thought I’d start with this.”

His mouth crushed hers in a kiss that was anything but
gentle. He forced his tongue into her mouth as his teeth grazed her lips and
his body pressed against hers. When he released her, he looked as shaken as she
did. This time he didn’t even try to hide it.

A man had never looked at her quite like that before. She’d
seen lust, heat, amusement, and boredom—sometimes all in the same night. But
this was a first for her. This wasn’t about sex. Well, it wasn’t
entirely
about sex. Marco wanted
her
, not a warm body to sink into every night.
He hadn’t gone looking for someone else last night after they’d had sex.
Actually, he’d given her pleasure and didn’t even ask for anything in return.
She’d never met a man like that in her life.

Maybe this could be more of a vacation than she thought.

After what Derek had put her through, she deserved a man who
would put her needs first. She deserved a little pampering, a little fun, and
who better to give her what she needed than Marco? If she could just forget
about the whole kidnapper-captive problem, she’d be fine.

“Would you really continue to hold me here against my will,
even if I really wanted to leave?” She asked him.

He said nothing, but the look in his eyes told her all she
needed to know. He felt guilty for what he’d done, even if he couldn’t own up
to it. She looped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for another
kiss.

He seemed surprised, but he got over it quickly. He had her
back against the door almost immediately, his hands all over her body. She
squirmed against him, knowing she was torturing him and loving every second of
it.

Marco ran his hands up her sides until he was once again
cupping her breasts. She moaned as the tips of his fingers skimmed her nipples,
making them instantly hard. Her panties were soaked in a matter of seconds.

He was so close that she could feel his heartbeat against
her chest. She ran her hands along his abdomen, admiring the hard ridges of
muscle under his shirt. She dragged her fingernails over his waist, eliciting a
low groan from him.

He grabbed her hands and pulled them away from his body when
she reached for the waistband of his pants. “Why are you doing this to me? Are
you
trying
to kill me?”

“Don’t you like it when I touch you?” She struggled against
his hold, finally able to pull her hands away.

“That’s not what I mean.” He paused and drew a deep breath
as her fingers skimmed over his fly. “I don’t know what’s going on here. One
minute you want to stay, the next you’re trying to sneak out the door.”

She hardly knew Marco. He had yet to give her a last name.
She’d know Derek for five years before she’d accepted his proposal, and he
turned out to be someone different than she’d thought.

“I’ll stay, for now. But only if you promise not to lock me
in the bedroom anymore. I was so bored I was ready to pull out my hair.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t up there for
that
long.”

“I have a very short attention span.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He kissed her hard and fast, his
hands working on ridding her of her pants. He cupped her mound in his palm, his
thumb skimming through her curls. He separated her folds with his fingers and
lightly played with her clit.

Her knees nearly gave out right then and there. She clutched
his shoulders to keep from falling. His touch was like a brand on her sensitive
flesh. His fingertips seared right through her until the sensations consumed
her and there was nothing left but the two of them. She angled her hips against
his hand to give him better access.

Forget going upstairs. What was wrong with right here? The
door seemed sturdy enough. “Marco, please.”

He leaned his forehead against hers, his breathing ragged. “Please,
what? What do you want, Amara? Do you want me to stop? This is the last time I’m
going to ask. I don’t want you to feel like this is an obligation, because it’s
not. It has to be what you want. It’s your choice, but you’ve got to make it
quickly.”

She shook her head. “No. I’d die if you stopped.” She almost
believed that she would. If he stopped touching her, she felt like her heart
might give out. She needed this, she needed him. She’d probably look back on
this whole thing and wonder if she’d been insane, but it would be well worth
it.

“Upstairs…”

“No.” She shook her head. “
Now!
”

He stripped off her remaining clothes and dropped them next
to the door. Her bare back touched the cold glass of the inset and she
shivered. The cool, smooth glass behind her coupled with his warm, rough hands
proved more arousing than she would have ever imagined. At the same time, she
felt entirely too exposed to the world.

She’d done some wild things in her younger days, but nothing
compared to this. There was a big difference between throwing a couple of keg
parties and having practically nonstop sex with an immortal kidnapper.

“The window…someone will see.”

“No one is anywhere near here. We’re all alone.”

This coming from a man who lived his life in relative
seclusion and had no idea how far the press would go to get pictures. She’d
lived that life for the past ten years. It wasn’t exactly fun.

Then again, maybe something like this was just what she
needed to jumpstart her sagging career. Sagging? Ha! It was more like it was
completely dead, rotting away on the side of an old dirt road. Still, scandals
worked for other Hollywood types. Why not her?

She could see the headlines now—
Washed Up Starlet
Kidnapped by Crazy Vampire and Forced to Have Sex in Semi-Public Places
.

That wasn’t right. First, she wasn’t really a starlet. Sure,
she had her fans, but the circles were relatively small. It was more of a cult
following, really.

Second, if she ran around screaming that a vampire had
kidnapped her, she’d be committed.

Third, he wasn’t
forcing
her into anything.
Everything they did, she walked into consensually. It helped that he was so
sexy it made her wet to just look at him.

He didn’t even bother to undress himself, he just lowered
his zipper and released his cock. He lifted her legs and wrapped them around
his waist, thrusting his cock into her cunt. He pulled her down hard, impaling
her completely. She moaned and clung on to him, letting him control the pace of
his thrusts. She was already close to orgasm, the intensely pleasurable
sensations hovering just out of her reach. She tried to hold herself off,
wanting to savor everything about the moment.

She kissed his shoulder and licked the skin of his jaw. Near
the pulse in his neck she paused, her mouth watering. She could almost swear
she heard the blood beating in his veins just below the surface of his skin.
She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and her pulse kicked up a few
notches. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, almost believing she could
smell
his blood. It wouldn’t take a lot of effort to get to it. All that warm blood,
so close…

Shit
. Was she going to think about acting like him
every time they had sex? She could go for a little biting, but actually wanting
to draw blood was a little strange, even for her.

The friction of Marco’s thick cock sliding in and out of her
cunt, her clit rubbing against him in such an enticing way, brought on her
orgasm much sooner than she would have liked. She came hard, her body melting
into his as she clawed at him and begged for more. Wave after wave of fire
burned through her until she thought she couldn’t take it anymore.

He came soon after, his body stiffening as he pressed her
tightly against the door. He nipped her neck, but didn’t go any further than
that. She lifted her chin to expose her neck, silently begging him for more. He
kissed her throat gently, but pulled away. Instead of giving her what she
really wanted, he set her back down on her feet. “If you give me a minute to
catch my breath, we could take this upstairs to a more comfortable place.”

She nodded. “Mmm.”

He smiled wickedly. “Good. I still haven’t tasted you yet
tonight. I can’t go a second without thinking how incredible your flavor is.”

A thrill ran through her when she remembered the last time
he’d fed off her. She’d been scared, but if she’d known it was
that
good
she would have found a vampire lover a hell of a lot sooner. She didn’t look
forward to going back to the real world and finding a mortal lover.

“Is the feeding a necessary part for you?”

“Not all the time. Sometimes.” He paused and looked down at
her. “Does it bother you?”

Was he out of his mind? “No. I just wondered.”

“You seem to be doing a lot of that lately.”

“I guess.”

Now that she thought about it, she had. Where had this
sudden curiosity come from? Probably it had a little bit to do with the fact
that she’d played a vampire for so long, and according to Marco, had been doing
it all wrong. Some small part of her had actually become Midnight Morris, and
it hurt in a way to have that part of her challenged.

She also wanted to be able to understand Marco. He was a
mystery to her, and she somehow felt connected to him. She wanted to learn all
she could about what he was.

Or maybe she was just spending way too much time with no one
for company but a cranky vampire. His habits were growing on her. She shook her
head, thinking that when this was over they’d probably
both
need to be
committed.

Marco picked her up and carried her upstairs to his bedroom.
“I want to stay with you tonight. All night.”