Tall, Dark and Paranormal: 10 Thrilling Tales of Sexy Alpha Bad Boys

by Opal Carew

  She pulled her head back and found my mouth with hers. I moved my hand up her back and cupped it against her head, feeling the braid there. The words I couldn’t say poured out through my lips and hands. I wanted her to feel my veneration.

  After a while I realized we were the only ones still out on the deck. “Come on. Let’s eat,” I said, wanting to take care of her every need, even if it would cause me discomfort to dine with her. She nodded and, hand in hand, we crossed the deck in the direction of the dining room.

  I was amazed at how right the whole day felt and how good it was to confide in her. And everything I perceived from Samantha told me she felt the same way.

  Chapter Ten

  Samantha and I spent every free moment of the following month together, sometimes alone, often with Ollie. Few days were as jam-packed with activities as our date day had been. But the hours spent at the playground, watching movies, playing games with Ollie, taking walks, or just talking—the small moments that for most people made up the unnoticed fabric of life—meant so very much to me.

  My love for Samantha deepened. We connected in ways I hadn’t experienced in over a century. She let me comfort her on the second anniversary of her mother’s death, and she climbed up on my lap and held me tight when I’d admitted I couldn’t have any more children.

  I just hadn’t found a way to explain why that was. And this mother of all omissions was eating me alive from the inside.

  Finally, the first weekend of August arrived and I could reveal the surprise—our first overnight trip—I’d planned that July morning when I’d returned from New York. I had made two special arrangements for the trip during the weeks beforehand. First, I surprised Samantha with an iPod and assigned her with loading it with enough music to last on a “very long” car trip. The only guidance I offered was I wanted the music to include her favorites and help reveal to me who she was. She balked at first at such an expensive present, but to her chagrin, I kissed her into accepting.

  The second special arrangement I made was more of a long-delayed gift to myself: I bought a new car. The occasion of our trip justified the purchase as far as I was concerned. Samantha came along to help me pick it up. Since I’d known for years what I’d want if I allowed myself this indulgence, I’d already preordered the vehicle to my exact specifications. The black metallic Maserati GranTurismo S was a dream come true.

  Samantha thought I was crazy, but since she got to ride in it, she decided it was a good kind of crazy.

  By six in the morning on the day of the trip, I was already packed and ready to go, which was a problem since we weren’t leaving until eight or nine. I tried but failed to be patient: I was too distracted to play and couldn’t concentrate enough to read or watch TV. Finally I grabbed my phone and started typing: “Are you up?”

  Several minutes passed without a response. Samantha was either still asleep or in the shower. I growled my impatience. My phone beeped.

  Yes! What are you doing?

  “Trying to restrain myself from coming over there and grabbing you so we can leave now.”

  Restraint is overrated.

  Moments later, I stood outside her bedroom window with several small stones I’d found on the curb in front of my house. I tossed the first one up. It clicked against the glass. I tossed three more before Samantha’s face appeared at the window.

  She lifted the sash with a wide grin. “What are you doing?”

  “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  Her wet hair clung to her face and shoulders. I swallowed hard at the picture of her glistening skin. Her scent was sweet and clean. Her love warmed me.

  “Me either. But I want to have breakfast with Ollie, and she won’t wake up for another half hour at least. So you have to be patient a little while longer.”

  “I thought restraint was overrated.”

  She smiled and bit her bottom lip. “It is. But, in this situation, it’s necessary. Now, go away so I can finish getting ready so we can leave right after breakfast.” She blew me a kiss and pushed the sash back down.

  “Sam!” I said loud enough for her to hear but hopefully not loud enough to disturb her neighbors.

  “What?” she whispered loudly as she pushed it back up a little.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Now go home so I can get dressed!” She lowered the sash, then flattened her palm against the window in a gesture that bid me both good-bye and stay close.

  I crossed the field with a stupid grin on my face.

  I recalled the first time we’d exchanged those words. Maybe two weeks after our date day, Ollie fell asleep in the oversized chair in my living room while we all watched a movie together. Amazingly she stayed asleep when I lifted her into my arms, so I carried her back over to their house and put her in bed. Samantha stood in the doorway as I arranged the covers around Ollie, kissed her forehead, and offered my now regular words: “Dream sweet dreams, Ollie.”

  I stepped out of Ollie’s room into the hallway as Samantha closed the door, then she took my hand and led me into her bedroom. She pulled us down to sit on her bed and looked serious. I smelled the scent of her anxiety.

  “I just wanted to say something. I only say it now because I have Ollie to think about, too. And I know she feels the same. And I—”

  I placed my fingers over her lips. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

  She blushed as she looked up at me. “I…Lucien, I’m falling in love with you.”

  I groaned in delight and pulled her into me as I kissed her. “That’s good,” I murmured around her lips, “because I fell weeks ago.”

  Her breath caught in her throat, and she pulled back to look at me. “I love you, Lucien.”

  The warm satisfaction of her words filled me up. “I love you, Samantha.” The freedom of giving voice to those feelings was like a weight off my shoulders.

  “Will you stay? I’d just like to wake up with you by my side.”

  “I’d like nothing more.”

  So I’d stayed that night, and many after. But we’d agreed to take our physical relationship slow. Both of us had been seriously hurt by previous relationships, and Samantha had a child’s welfare to think about, so slow seemed in everyone’s best interest.

  But there was no way I could keep my hands to myself entirely. Dio, I loved the feel of her. Her breasts were warm and heavy in my palms. She made the most seductive sounds in response to my caresses. And her taste—salty and sweet at the same time. I’d explored quite a few of her erogenous zones with my mouth—her neck, wrists, and the back of her knees were particularly sensitive. Being with her was a salve and a torment all at once.

  By far, though, the most incredible thing was seeing her come, and knowing I’d caused it. The first time it happened, she was actually asleep. She’d moaned and writhed, making it apparent she was having an erotic dream. She was fascinating and glorious in her arousal. I’d tried to wake her, but she was so deep into it. I’d kept my hands to myself but finally succumbed to the heat of her lust and whispered soft encouragements that soon coaxed her to orgasm. I was utterly captivated by the magnificence of her euphoria.

  After that I needed more, needed to touch her in that most feminine place. I craved the feeling of her slick skin against my fingers, and finally I had the opportunity to discover the possessive satisfaction of using my hands to pleasure her. And, Dio, how I relished the scent of her arousal on me.

  As good as these moments were, it was so fucking hard to be with her and restrain my vampiric instincts. My nature had caught me off guard the first time she’d brought us to orgasm together. She had straddled my clothed lap and ground herself against me. I hid my identity that time by clamping my lips shut when my fangs elongated and biting through the inside of my bottom lip. She gasped when she saw the blood, but it was easy to explain away, plus it healed quickly.

  Worse, I didn’t even need to climax to find myself struggling for control. The first time she took my shirt off, she sa
w the Blood Mark on my chest and gasped. Every vampire emerged from their change with a tattoo-like mark made of blood pooled under the skin on their left breast. Deep crimson in color, Blood Marks were unalterable designs that reflected a vampire’s lineage. Mine was a pair of mirror image S-like symbols, the first facing forward and the second facing backward, centered over a truncated cross.

  I didn’t know who or what it represented, but I’d always interpreted the S’s as representing myself before and after my transformation: the forward- facing S was my human self and faced the right way, while the backward S was my abnormal vampire self. I’d never seen another mark like mine, though I’d searched for it. It was one of the few clues I’d had in my failed search for my maker.

  Samantha was captivated by the mark that first time she saw it and said she found tattoos sexy. I was so overcome with the immediate lust of her response I didn’t realize what a perfect opportunity the moment might have represented to reveal myself to her until it was gone.

  Because of the amount of blood pooled so close to the surface, the skin around the mark was extremely sensitive, and I sucked in a breath and flinched when she stroked her fingers over it. Then she ran kisses down my neck and over my collarbone and brushed it with her soft lips. The sensation of her tongue tracing my Blood Mark elicited a nearly primal reaction. She moaned and cried out as I flipped her over on the bed and channeled my blazing hunger into a series of orgasms for her. She was so far gone she hadn’t seen me rip into my free wrist to avoid sinking my fangs into her.

  So, our physical relationship progressed, but it progressed slowly, out of caution and necessity.

  Of course, there was another argument for “slow” I hadn’t shared with her: I wasn’t sure I could make love to her without her being able to make a fully informed decision about me, which meant knowing who—what—I was.

  So that night we first shared our words of love, I just spent the night. And I spent many nights thereafter, but we hadn’t taken it much further than the use of our hands despite our bodies’ aching readiness to do so.

  The buzzing of my cell phone pulled me from my daydreams and reminded me of my impatience to get our trip underway.

  Done packing.

  I grumbled a sigh. Every few minutes, I’d get another one- or two-word text message from her.

  Ollie up.

  Fixing breakfast. Eating.

  Then at 8:10 a.m.: WAITING FOR YOU! I had the Maserati in front of her house in less than a minute. She emerged laughing. Ollie trailed behind, still in her pajamas.

  “Good morning,” Samantha said with a kiss as she handed me her overnight and garment bags. “How’d you make it over here so fast? Were you sitting in the car waiting?”

  I laughed. “Something like that. And, yes, it is a very good morning.” I walked back to the car and put the bags in the waiting trunk.

  “Hi, Lucien!” Ollie stood on the curb and gingerly laid one finger on the car’s pristine fender.

  “Good morning, Ollie. How did you sleep?”

  “Really good.” She opened her arms to give me a hug as I walked around from the back of the car.

  I knelt down and embraced her. “What did you dream about?”

  “Santa.”

  I laughed and she joined me. “Well, that’s good, I suppose. Be good for Joe, okay? We’ll be back tomorrow.” I kissed her on the forehead.

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Samantha walked over to Ollie and picked her up. “Bye, big girl. I love you. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Okay, Mommy. Love you.” Samantha put her back down.

  I walked over to Joe who stood on the front porch. “Thanks again for this.”

  “You’re welcome. Have fun now.” Joe was a man of few words, and he still had reservations about me. But he loved Samantha and Ollie and wanted them above all else to be happy, which was enough for me to respect him. Ollie asked Joe if they could play a game. “Duty calls,” he said, as he turned to go back in the house with Ollie.

  Within fifteen minutes, we were cruising west on Interstate 96. Samantha plugged in the iPod and adjusted the volume low so we could talk. She looked out the windows for a few minutes and hummed along with a ballad. Finally, she rolled her head against the seat back toward me. “So, do I get to know where we’re going yet?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on! I’m dying over here!”

  I smiled at her outburst. “On the contrary, you look quite healthy to me, dolcezza.”

  She swatted my arm with the back of her hand but smiled at my now-common nickname for her. Sweetness. I grabbed her hand before she could pull it away and kissed her, then I rested our hands on the console between us and continued to hold onto her.

  We alternated between long periods of comfortable silence and animated conversations about everything under the sun. She recounted stories from her childhood and funny things Ollie had said or done. She asked me to tell her more about Isabetta. I told her stories about my family in New York, and we talked about the possibility of going to visit them sometime.

  Every once in a while she would pause the iPod and offer an explanatory introduction to a particular song. Some made her think of important times in her life, others made her think of me, and yet others made her think of us together. With each explanation, the space I had for her in my heart grew.

  Occasionally, one of her song choices would so resonate with me it was overwhelming. When my favorite Beatles song filled the car, I surprised Samantha by getting off at a rest area on the side of the highway. I pulled abruptly into the first available parking space and released my seat belt.

  Samantha looked alarmed. “Are you ok—”

  My mouth cut her off as I landed a rough kiss on her lips. I pushed her back into the seat with the weight of my upper body and stroked her hair and face with my hand as I worked my lips over her mouth, jaw, and neck.

  “Lucien?” Her heart hammered in her chest, and amusement and lust radiated off her in equal amounts.

  “Hmm?” Her face drew into a smile, so I pulled back.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Kissing you.” I nuzzled my lips against her ear.

  She smirked. “Yes, I got…that much. But was there something in particular that elicited such an urgent need to pull off the road and do that now?”

  “Do I need a reason?” I licked the shell of her ear.

  She shuddered. “No…but…”

  “Besides, I always have an urgent need to kiss you.” She laughed and I sat back, my heart full with the rewarding sense of how well she seemed to understand me. “‘In My Life’ is one of my all-time favorites.” I shrugged. “I’m touched it made you think of me.”

  She beamed and leaned across the console to kiss me. “A lot of people have come before for both of us, but, for me, it finally feels okay. Because I do love you more.”

  With both hands buried in her hair, I pulled her lips to mine. “God, I love you,” I murmured before the words were lost to the kiss.

  Other songs elicited a more contemplative reaction, although I was a little surprised to hear “Somewhere to Belong” blare from her speakers. She leaned forward and turned the volume down.

  “Linkin Park?”

  She twisted her lips and shrugged as a mild wave of embarrassment washed through me. “You don’t like them?”

  “Actually, I really do.” I had no problem identifying with the anger and angst and yearning in their songs, this one in particular.

  “I might’ve listened to this song on replay quite a few times after I lost my mom.”

  “Yeah.” I squeezed her hand where I was holding it between us and sighed. Samantha knew more about loss than I wished she did. “Sam,” I said many miles and songs later, “no one has looked at me the way you do in so long. And you’ve helped me start to believe I deserve to be looked at that way again.”

  “Of course you do, Lucien. Why would you think you don’t?”

  “I…I just hav
en’t always been as good as I am with you. I haven’t always been the best…person. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things I would give almost anything to take back.” I’d expressed sentiments like this to her before.

  “We all have, Lucien. We all have.” She released her seat belt and reached her body over to press a kiss to my cheek as she spoke.

  I didn’t sense the least bit of suspicion within her at my words, which was remarkable. I could tell from her pulse and heart rate her body occasionally reacted instinctively to me, more like other humans. But more often than not she reacted to me as if I were a man, which is what she did at that moment.

  And it meant everything.

  ***

  Hours into our trip we were north of Chicago—which she thought for certain was our destination—and the expansiveness of Lake Michigan stretched out like a dark mirror on her side of the car. She’d shifted in her seat so her legs were partly underneath her, and she leaned toward me. As a sultry love song began, she brought my hand up to her mouth and kissed each finger individually.

  My head felt like the world was spinning. “Dolcezza, if you don’t stop doing that, we’re not going to reach our destination.”

  “Is that a threat or a promise?” She slipped the tip of my middle finger into her mouth.

  My chest rumbled softly.

  “Did you just growl?”

  When I trained my eyes on her, her heart rate picked up noticeably. I would’ve bet the hair on the back of her neck raised too. “If you don’t stop, I won’t be held responsible for my actions.”

  She shivered, then looked me square in the face and did it again. Purposely. And this time she leaned her head forward to take my whole finger into her mouth.

  Madre de Dio. Heat roared through me as her lips wrapped around my knuckle. I closed my eyes at the sensation of it and concentrated hard on keeping my fangs retracted.

  “Eyes on the road, Lucien,” she whispered as she ran her tongue up the length of my finger.