With a Kiss

by Kim Dare

  Suddenly, Liam had words. They fell from his lips so quickly he could barely make sense of them himself. Words like “please” and “sorry”. Even while he had no idea what he was begging for, he couldn’t quite stop them from pouring out—not even when he knew they would do no good.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out, you stupid little slut?”

  Ralph lunged forward and caught hold of Liam’s shirt when he’d have fallen, half keeping him on his feet and half choking Liam with the garment.

  “I didn’t,” Liam babbled. “I was at the hospital, I—”

  “You were visiting your sleepy little pal?” Ralph demanded, jerking Liam forward, so they were almost nose to nose.

  Liam nodded rapidly.

  “And when exactly did you plan to tell me he woke up?”

  The world spun as Liam tumbled back onto the sofa. Scrabbling at the cushions, he tried to pull himself to his feet, but he was too late. Ralph was right there in front of him, looming over him, his massive form blocking any route toward the door.

  “Did you beg him too, Liam?” Ralph taunted. “Did you beg him for his cock? Plead with him to fuck you harder?”

  Liam shook his head. He glanced over his shoulder, but the sofa was set right back against the wall. There was no escape, no way to retreat any farther. His spine pressed hard against the rear of the sofa. Holding up his hand, Liam cringed into the cushions.

  “I’m going to make sure you never want to look at another man again…”

  Physical escape impossible, all Liam could do was close his eyes and pretend he was somewhere else, pretend he was somewhere safe—maybe even in the hospital at Marcus’ side. Yes. As the first real blow for the day fell against his skin, that was where Liam went.

  * * * *

  “You’d never do anything like that, would you?” Liam asked the sleeping form.

  He was about to return his gaze to the magazine lying open on his lap, when he hesitated.

  “You’re a good man, I can tell,” he whispered to the vampire. Liam looked down at his fingernails as he toyed with the edge of a magazine page. “I know you’re going to laugh, but I often think about the day when you’ll wake up.”

  He risked a glance at Marcus. The sleeping form showed no signs of humor.

  Liam leaned forward a little in his chair. His words became more confident.

  “I imagine that your eyes open and you turn your head toward me and you tell me to shut the hell up, because you’re trying to sleep. But you’re smiling as you say it, and I know you’re not really angry.”

  Liam smiled too, but the expression soon faded away. “I know you’ve got a life to get back to, you’ve probably got a family and everything… I wouldn’t expect you to let me keep hanging around you or anything, I just…”

  He sighed as he leaned back in his chair.

  “It would be selfish of me to want you to stay like this forever, just so I could keep visiting you, wouldn’t it?”

  Marcus said nothing. There was no reprimand, no sarcasm, no slap.

  Liam scraped up another smile as he turned to the next page in the magazine. Perhaps, if he just enjoyed the time Marcus could spend with him, that wasn’t as evil as wanting more.

  * * * *

  Marcus turned his head toward the door leading into his hospital room. If that was another damn doctor coming to try and poke at him, he wasn’t sure he had enough control to resist tearing their jugular out—not to feed, but just to make a point.

  “Jenson!” At last, a human he could rely on to show at least a modicum of common sense!

  Marcus frowned as his butler of over thirty-five years stood in the doorway and gawped at him as if he’d never set eyes on a vampire before. “Jenson!” he snapped.

  Several seconds passed before, with a slight shake of his head, Jenson seemed to focus back into the world before him. The butler stepped into Marcus’ hospital room, his movements as neat and as precise as they had ever been.

  “I need you to find a man for me,” Marcus said.

  Jenson blinked in that slow butlery way he had, that implied that he had seen and heard everything in his years of service and wasn’t about to let his profession down by appearing shocked at anything his current employer could throw at him. “Certainly, sir. Do you have any particular requirements in mind? Hair color, build, blood-type…?”

  “Don’t be a fool, man!” Marcus snapped.

  “My apologies, sir.” Jenson gave a little half bow. “It seems your sudden awakening has gone quite to my head.”

  About to speak again, Marcus paused and considered the man standing in front of him more carefully. It would have been easy to say that he hadn’t changed in the slightest over the last three years, but it wouldn’t have been entirely true.

  There was more than a little extra gray in Jenson’s hair. There were some extra lines around the other man’s eyes, too, and they didn’t hint at years of laughter.

  Jenson cleared his throat. “Your affairs have all been taken care of in your…absence. I hope you will find they are to your satisfaction.”

  “Jenson,” Marcus cut in, impatiently.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I have no doubt that my bank balances are all flourishing and there isn’t a speck of dust in any property I own. I know how well you’ll have served me while I wasn’t available to give specific orders. I haven’t once doubted it. Now, I would appreciate it if you would stop fussing and obey the order I am trying to give you at this moment!”

  “Certainly, sir. You wish me to locate a specific gentleman for you?”

  Marcus nodded, leaning back against the pillows piled high behind him as his energy waned. “His name is Liam Bates. He’s twenty-eight years old. Short, dark blond hair, brown eyes. Submissive as hell, although he hasn’t got a clue about that, and if you so much as mention the word in his presence I’ll see to it that you’re hanged for it.”

  “Understood, sir,” Jenson said.

  Marcus relaxed slightly. Yes, completely unshockable and not the least bit intimidated by his employer’s species. It had always been reassuringly difficult to scare the man who’d practically raised him, who’d known him back before his fangs had developed.

  “He was a volunteer visitor at the hospital. Someone somewhere must have contact details for him. If not, try asking about him in all the cafes close to the hospital. He said he used to work in one of them.”

  “Mr. Bates is a human gentleman, sir?” Jenson asked, taking a notebook out of his pocket and jotting down several lines of information.

  Marcus nodded. “Yes, human.”

  Jenson looked up at him for a moment, a question in his eyes.

  “Yes, he’s gay too, although probably not openly so everywhere. Don’t out him.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir. And when I find Mr. Bates?”

  “Bring him here,” Marcus said.

  “And would you like that done politely or impolitely, sir?”

  “Politely,” Marcus specified. “Very politely. No one is to lay a hand on him. No one may even raise his voice to him. Just bring him here.”

  “Very good, sir.” The notebook disappeared into a pocket. “I’ll attend to it at once.”

  Marcus nodded his approval. There was something very wonderful about a perfectly trained vampire’s butler. No task too big, too small, or too bizarre.

  Jenson once more folded his hands neatly behind his back. He seemed about to turn and leave the room, when he paused.

  Marcus had rarely seen the older man hesitate in all the time he’d known him. He frowned, not liking the sight at all.

  “May I just say, sir, that—”

  “I heard every word you said to me while I was asleep,” Marcus cut in quickly. “You have nothing to explain.” He remembered the other man’s words very clearly. His recollection of the pain he’d heard in the butler’s voice when he’d explained that, while there was no way for him to be of service to his employer at his be
dside, he’d be turning his attention to managing his affairs until such time as Marcus was able to turn his mind to them once more, was perfect.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jenson said, dropping his gaze for a moment as he turned away.

  “One more thing,” Marcus called out, as he managed to drag his attention away from his own worries for a moment. “Mrs. Jenson?”

  “A picture of health, sir. If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, she’s already started putting your townhouse in order in anticipation of your release from hospital.”

  Marcus nodded, just once. “I look forward to seeing her again.”

  “Good of you to say, sir.” Jenson stepped out and silently closed the door behind him, sealing Marcus alone in the hospital room once more.

  Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he half expected to see Liam sitting there next to his bed, head no doubt bowed over some trashy magazine.

  Marcus’ fingers clenched around the blankets at his side. Not knowing where the boy was seemed unnatural. To be awake and to have as little power as he had when he’d slumbered through those years, to be so exhausted that he felt the hands of sleep pulling him back, dragging him down into the hell he’d only recently escaped.

  He forced open his eyes, making a point of not looking at the empty chair by the side of his bed. His mental picture of the room hadn’t been too inaccurate, apart from the colors.

  The machinery had been switched off now, but it was all where his audio map of the room led him to expect. The various warm and cool drafts he’d felt brushing against his skin had informed him where the windows, doors and heaters were.

  The curtain around the bed was pushed back, but he’d known where the rail would be just from the noise the nurses had made when they pulled it open and closed each day. Marcus turned his head and glanced through the glass panel in the door, looking out into the corridor.

  He’d been wrong about how the nurses would look. That was somewhat annoying to discover. Their voices had been quite deceiving. The pretty little redhead had the clipped tones of a far more matronly lady. He’d never guessed that the woman with such a dirty laugh or the huge collection of saucy jokes would have looked like quite such a sweet, innocent grandmother either. And as for Liam…

  Marcus turned his attention back to the ceiling. The Liam in his mind had been very different.

  The fact the boy’s hair wasn’t as golden a blond as it had been in his mental image, or that he wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as Marcus might have imagined him to be, was neither here nor there. The fact that chocolate brown eyes peered up at him rather than big blue ones couldn’t have mattered less. He’d been prepared to be wrong about such insignificant details.

  But Marcus hadn’t been ready for the fear he’d seen in Liam’s eyes, hadn’t prepared himself for the way the boy flinched away from him in something far too akin to terror, in those first few moments after he woke up.

  Marcus swallowed down the bitter taste in the back of his throat. His mental picture of Liam had been so comfortable in his leather bondage, so confident while he knelt at his master’s feet and…

  He shook his head. It wasn’t the time for that. Maybe one day. No. Certainly one day. But not today. Today, he simply had to find Liam and bring the boy back where he belonged.

  Shifting his position slightly, Marcus tried to make himself more comfortable. Even that minor exertion exhausted him. A glance at the bag that had contained blood, hanging empty on the stand by his bedside and he pressed the buzzer for a nurse.

  His teeth ached for a real feed, but Marcus pushed away the idea. He’d waited this long, he could wait for Liam’s return.

  Chapter Five

  Intense light shone against Liam’s eyelids. Pink and red blurs filled his vision. Frowning, he tried to turn his head and close his eyes tighter to escape the brightness.

  A wave of agony rolled through him. Liam immediately stilled, fighting down nausea. Trying to move again was out of the question.

  “Liam? Are you with us?”

  The voice was right on the edge of his hearing. It seemed to come from a long way away.

  Was he with who? He didn’t know. Liam tried to focus, tried to make his thoughts travel through the thick wadding that filled his brain. He’d been…thinking about Marcus. He remembered that much. He’d been thinking really hard about Marcus and the way it had felt when the other man’s arms wrapped around him and held him close in the tiny hospital bed.

  He’d been thinking about how wonderful it would have felt to have been able to snuggle in closer and take deep breaths full of the other man’s scent, to be allowed to tilt his head back and offer up his lips to be kissed.

  “I was…” he mumbled.

  Liam lifted a hand and rubbed at his face in an effort to clear the sleep and the fog from his view of the world. Pain exploded in his eye. There was only one thing he knew of that could lead to that kind of throbbing agony.

  Yes… He remembered now. Pain. There had been a lot of pain. Even as the memory brushed against the edges of his conscious mind, Liam gasped, his body somehow hoping that enough oxygen would allow fight or flight to be more successful this time.

  “Liam?”

  Blinking, Liam looked up. A man swam into focus in front of him. White coat. Stethoscope. Doctor.

  “The runner at the top of the stairs,” Liam whispered, his words slurring despite all his best efforts. “I…my lace came undone, it got caught in the loose runner. I must have fallen. I don’t really remember much…”

  The doctor didn’t even blink. His lips narrowed into a thin disapproving line as he made a note on his chart. “This particular fall has left you with some pretty serious injuries.”

  Liam nodded his head very slightly. “My ribs,” he whispered.

  “Yes,” the doctor said, staring at another page in the file. “For the third time, apparently.”

  “Broken?” Liam asked.

  “Cracked. Four of them,” the doctor said. “Those stairs kicked you pretty hard. Their shoe imprint is quite noticeable. Luckily you seem to have escaped without any internal bleeding…”

  Liam kept his eyes on the back of the file. It wasn’t quite as thick as the file that hung on the bottom of Marcus’ bed, but more pages had been added every time he turned up there. It probably wouldn’t be long before his file overtook Marcus’ now that the vampire was awake.

  “There’s also a nasty concussion we want to keep an eye on.”

  Liam once more nodded his understanding.

  “Now that you’re responsive, I’ll need to examine you for—”

  “No!”

  The doctor had barely taken a step forward before Liam had his back pressed hard against the sloping frame of the hospital bed. His ribs screamed in pain. His head felt as if it were being split open. Other injuries quickly made themselves known. His wrist caught fire. A sharp stabbing pain sliced up through his rear.

  There was no way he could let the other man lay a hand on him.

  The doctor hesitated for a moment, a touch of sympathy joining the impatience in his eyes. “I’ll make everything as painless as I can, Liam, but this needs to be done.”

  Liam nodded his understanding, but there was no way in hell he could make his heart stop racing or release his painfully tight grip on the bedding.

  As the doctor cautiously approached him once more, Liam stared down at his knuckles. He focused as hard as he could on the cramp that spread through the hand and up his arm. That was the only thing he allowed into his mind.

  Everything else was happening to someone else, someone who was a long way away, someone who wasn’t even a little bit scared of having another man’s hands on him, someone who wasn’t reminded of an even more painful touch with every movement. It was someone else who was being moved so that intimate parts of his body could be examined, someone else who was finally rearranged again so he lay on his back again.

  “You can relax now.” The words must have b
een spoken to that other man. Liam did his best not to eavesdrop on a conversation that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him. There was no way in hell anyone could be stupid enough to order him to relax—to think he was capable of obeying such an order.

  “Liam.”

  A hand came to rest on a shoulder. It shook him very gently. One brain cell at a time, Liam turned his attention away from the hands he’d been staring at for the last fifteen minutes.

  Yes, he remembered now, those were his hands. And that was his shoulder that someone was shaking, wasn’t it?

  He looked up, into the doctor’s eyes.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  Liam cleared his throat before he even attempted to speak, but the words still came out in a thin rasping sound. “Which hospital am I at, please?”

  “St. Luke’s,” the doctor said. “Does it matter?”

  Yes, it mattered. Liam could barely stop himself from looking over his shoulder as if he might find that some fluke had led him to be sharing a room with Marcus. But, of course, he wasn’t. Marcus was probably long gone now.

  “I…” Liam swallowed down the lump in his throat and tried again. “When may I leave?”

  The doctor peered at him over the top of his glasses. “We’re still waiting for a few test results to come back. Even if we weren’t, you’re in no condition to go anywhere. I’m putting you under observation for twenty-four hours minimum.”

  Liam looked down. He was just as trapped there as he had been back in Ralph’s house. It didn’t look like there were steel bars on the doors and windows, but there might as well have been.

  Turning his back on the door as the doctor finally left his bedside, Liam curled up into as small a ball as his injuries allowed and pulled the blankets tight around him. It was all he could do not to give in to the temptation to tug them up even further, all the way over his head, as if he were a little kid who could escape the monster who’d shared his bed as easily as he’d evaded those he’d thought might live beneath it.