by Marie Dry
He leaned over her, his attitude so intimidating she had a hard time staying upright and not cringing from him. “New rules. You never go out alone.”
“Why?” At least he didn’t turn scary looking.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “From now on either me or Samuel is always with you. When you’re here, Samuel will be at the door.”
“Oh joy.” She couldn’t imagine anything worse than having Samuel on her heels all the time. That man had a way of making her feel lower than a worm.
“You even feel vaguely threatened, you call him.”
“What’s going on?” What kind of enemies did a creature like Mark have? For that matter, what kind of creature was he? What would he do to her if he knew she’d seen his natural form.
“Nothing that needs concern you. You’re not in danger. I’m just being cautious.”
“Not concern me? We’re married. On top of that you just spent the evening with another woman.”
He brushed his hand over his hair. “Not that again.”
“Yes, that again.” She jumped up, groaned, and clutched her knee. Still glaring at him, she crumpled back onto the couch.
He knelt in front of her and gently massaged her knee, looked up at her, and she saw guilt. Every now and then, when she struggled with her knee, she’d seen guilt on his face. As if he blamed himself for her pain. It didn’t make sense, just as the glimpses of hatred she sometimes saw in his eyes didn’t make sense.
“What are you?” she asked him.
She didn’t think he realized, but for about a fraction of a second his hands and eyes had glowed. Her knee didn’t ache as much anymore. If he was something evil, he wouldn’t make sure she was safe. Would he?
“I’m your husband, that’s all you need to know.”
“Oh no, I’m not about to make like a mushroom.”
He suddenly smiled. “Make like a mushroom?”
“You know what I mean.” What was she supposed to do? She was married to some winged Dracula creature. You can’t divorce Dracula. Chills crept down her spine as if a needle scraped her back, leaving a drop of chilled blood to slowly bleed down her spine.
“I can read your thoughts,” he said with sibilant softness. He picked her up and stood, as if standing up with her in his arms took no effort at all.
“No you can’t.” Several times these last few weeks he’d said or done something that eerily echoed her thoughts. She didn’t want him in her head. Her thoughts were her own. “I don’t believe you can read my thoughts. You’re just trying to mess with my head.” Thinking of those wings and glowing eyes of his she added, “And if you could, I’d expect you to respect my privacy.”
He walked to the stairs and climbed them effortlessly with her secure in his arms. “You wondered if you can divorce Dracula. You’ll never divorce me, wife. Ever.”
A weak part of her loved that he was so adamant that they’d stay together. Being married to a winged Dracula that could read her mind, not so much. “I wasn’t thinking anything about Dracula. I don’t even like watching vampire movies.”
He set her down next to the bed. “Have you met supernatural creatures before?” There was a watchful tone in his voice now. She could almost feel him delving into her mind, had the feeling that he was frustrated.
“Yeah, I had tea with a werewolf just the other day.”
He slid down the zipper of her dress, but she stepped away from him. “I’m not making love with you.” She glared at him. “Ever again.”
“Are you sure?” His eyes glowed and she resisted taking a step back. “I could change your mind. You know you want me.”
Arrogant son of a vampire. Did he really think it would be that easy? “I want you to leave.” It cost her to say that to the man she loved. Even while she was this angry.
He ignored her statement. “Have you met supernatural creatures before?” he asked again.
“Of course I haven’t, and anyway there are no vampires in South Africa. They spawned in Europe and everyone knows they moved from there to America.” Now she sounded like an idiot.
He lifted a brow and his lips twisted. His eyes, that lately had been darkened by some intense emotion twinkled. “I stand corrected,” he said, his accent more pronounced. He lifted a strand of her midnight black hair. “I don’t want to talk. I want to make love to my beautiful wife.”
“No,” she whispered. “I won’t let you manipulate me with sex. You are to leave this house.”
He leaned down, spoke with his lips hovering above hers. “I didn’t touch Jo in any sexual way. She’s poison now.”
“What does that mean?”
Jo’s eyes had been dead, her skin oddly pale. Did he suck her blood and leave her a zombie?
“I don’t want to talk about her, I want to make love to my wife.” He pulled her against him, drew the zipper at the back of her dress down, and pushed her dress from her shoulders down her breasts and hips until it fell at her feet.
She slapped at his hands. “Stop that, I’m not done talking. You won’t manipulate me with sex.”
He didn’t even seem to notice her slapping his hands. “I’m impressed that you think I can.”
He cupped her breast and just that simple touch thrilled her.
“Don’t...uhm...don’t use my own words against me.”
His palm shaped her breast, his thumb very gently flicking over her nipple. It pebbled and she moaned, electric pleasure shocks coursing through her body.
“Stop that.”
“This?” He bent his head and kissed the nipple he’d stimulated with his thumb, kissed his way up. “Or this?” He claimed her mouth. Wine and bitter chocolate, seduction and delicious sin. His hand moved to give her other breast the same treatment.
What was she doing? Kissing the man who’d sent her home so he could stay behind with another woman. Sabrina pushed him back.
She crossed her arms over her breasts and stepped away from him. Considering everything that had happened this evening, it shouldn’t be this hard to resist him. “Don’t think you can just kiss and touch me and I’ll forget what you did with Jo, all the crazy things you said. Your eyes glowed.”
Damn, she didn’t mean to admit that.
“Did they?” he asked.
He sounded as if he barely concentrated on their conversation. Pulling her close again, he kissed the space between her shoulder and neck and she shivered.
“Yes, and your hands glowed too, my knee stopped aching.”
“It’s all you, Sabrina, you make me burn, let’s see how much of me we can light up.” His smile was wicked temptation.
“You can’t seduce me into forgetting that you’re whatever you are. That you sent me home tonight so you can spend time with Jo.” Never as long as she lived would she forget having to walk out of that door alone while everyone there witnessed her humiliation.
He tightened his hold, not hurting her, trapping her crossed arms against his chest. “Jo is the absolute last woman I’d ever want to spend the night with.” He kissed her neck, moved to the spot behind her ears that always made her knees weak. “Trust me.
“I wish I could believe you.” She wasn’t this weak creature that could be seduced out of a discussion. “I’ll never trust you again.”
He bit gently on her ear and pleasure raced down her spine. “I need you to trust me.”
He kissed her, a determined kiss that conquered and seduced and she forgot about vampires and strange creatures and only remembered that the man she loved with every fiber of her being made love to her.
No! She wouldn’t be this weak. Sabrina pushed him back. Or tried to, he didn’t even rock back on his feet. “You go off with another woman and I should trust you?”
“Sabrina, I didn’t touch Jo.”
“I don’t believe you, get out.” Anger so intense she could kill him suddenly shook her body.
He picked her up, put her on the bed, and lay down with his body half over her.
; She glared at him, at this rate her eyes would explode from the flames she was sure was shooting out of them at her arrogant husband. “Let me up.”
“Make me.” He played with her hair, for all the world as if he didn’t just pick her up and put her on the bed in the middle of an argument.
“You’d force me?” She’d stake him with a wooden ruler.
“Never.” He leaned down and kissed her. “But I will seduce my wife into making love with me.”
He kissed her again and this was the man she loved. His bitter chocolate and red wine kisses seduced any thought but pleasure from her.
“Are you a vampire?” she asked when he lifted his head at last. She didn’t realize she was going to ask him that, had been lost in his kiss and then the question just popped out.
“No, I am not a vampire.” He stood and slowly took off his clothes. Seeing his beautiful dark body, with its light scattering of hair revealed so slowly was a seduction in itself. A seduction that excited her body, in spite of her resolve to remain unaffected. She frowned, what resolve? He’d lied about not being a vampire and still she lay here, waiting for him to make love to her.
“This doesn’t mean our discussion is over.” She could barely force the words out. He might be a vampire, but there was something worse wrong with her, because she couldn’t resist him.
He kissed her neck and she pushed his head with all her might. “Stay away from my neck.” Just in case.
His lips twitched. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
He moved away from her neck, down to her breasts. She knew, with a strange intuition that he had no intention of discussing anything with her. He planned to keep her safe, but in the dark about what was going on.
“All right, oh yes there, touch me there.”
He’d found the spot behind her knee that sent tingles through her whole body. Tingles of pleasure. She was such a pushover. One sucking kiss behind her knee and she was gone. He moved up, kissed her thigh and she grabbed his head.
“Don’t kiss there either.”
There were arteries there that would be a feast for a vampire. She’d seen it in a vampire movie once. She didn’t want to go to that movie, but Mikaela pleaded until she gave in. Sabrina didn’t sleep for easy for a long time after that.
He sat back and smirked at her. “Maybe you should point out the safe zones.”
He might be a vampire or some other creature, but at that moment, with him crouched between her legs, that teasing look on his face, she fell in love with him all over again.
“Can I kiss here, or here?” He touched the inside of her knee, moving closer to the juncture of her thighs and then retreating to caress the sweet spot behind her knee again. “Maybe I can kiss those beautiful breasts you so diligently barricade.”
His hot words seduced her more than the way he worshiped her breasts. She still had her arms clasped over her chest.
“Maybe.” She wasn’t sure what kind of veins ran through her breasts and in that moment didn’t want to know anything that would force her to stop him kissing her there.
He kissed his way up over her hips and sneaked under her crossed arms. “You are so beautiful, you make me forget my duty.” His eyes narrowed and then something flared in the dark depths. Something so hot it could melt steel. “Offer me your neck.”
“No, why should I? What do you want to do?” The temptation to offer him her neck was overwhelming, her own desire to do it shocking. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you using vampire mind tricks on me?”
“Yeah, vampire mind tricks. Not chemistry at work,” he said with awful sarcasm.
In spite of his teasing words, he sounded so strained, almost needy. As if offering her body to him would save his sanity. His gaze burned her, staring at her hands cupping her breasts.
He lifted a hand, already cupped to shape her breast, then clenched his hand into a fist and lowered it.
“If you really don’t want this, say so now. We’ll go to sleep.”
She could see the offer cost him.
“I want you.” She couldn’t hold back the words.
With a gentle almost reverent move, he pulled her arms away from her breasts. Cupped and squeezed and flicked his thumbs over her nipples. He pinched them until they were pink and stiff on her plump breasts. “Offer me your neck. I’ll be gentle when I bite it,” he teased.
If he had asked her to offer her breasts, it would’ve been less shocking and filled with danger.
From the beginning, their love life had been perfect. He’d been generous and just adventurous enough to be slightly shocking. Dominant enough to excite her, but he never hurt her. Now his demand that she offer him her neck, so vulnerable now that she suspected he was a vampire, excited her instead of frightening her as it should.
Her hips twisted with need, his hands aroused her beyond bearing. “Mark, I need you.” She needed his hands, his lips on her. His body merged with hers.
He paused in the act of leaning toward her, his hands on her breasts, squeezing and thumbs alternating between flicking her nipples and stroking the underside of her breasts, driving her wild. “How much?”
“So much I can’t bear it.” He started to smile and she hastily added, “Not enough to offer you my neck.”
“I wanted you the first time I saw you,” he said. “You, not your blood.” His grin was pure evil. “But if you want to offer, I’m sure it’s delicious.
“Is that true?” Some part of her doubted him. He’d married her for reasons of his own. The tender kisses, the walks on the beach, the dinners over candle light. The evenings they played music and talked about their favorite artists seemed unreal somehow. How much of that did he manipulate? “I know you married me for reasons of your own.”
He looked almost violent. “I will pay for this, I will burn in hell and take it, but I have to make love with you. Tonight I will show you how much pleasure your body is capable of.”
He kissed her and it was violent, passionate, the dominant male staking his claim. When they came up for air they both breathed too fast, his harsh breaths loud in their bedroom.
“What do you mean? Why would you have to pay for making love with me?” Her body was on fire with need for him. She knew his words were important, but couldn’t concentrate.
He kissed her neck and she was tempted to let him linger, but pushed him away.
“One day soon you’ll offer me your neck and I’ll know you’ve forgiven me, that you trust me at last.”
She frowned up at him. “Promise me you didn’t sleep with Jo.” Even with her body clamoring for his, she couldn’t bear the thought. Didn’t know if she could forgive him the humiliation she’d endured.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t even stand next to that...woman if I could help it.”
She’d expected him to sound mad or disgusted, instead he seemed unbearably sad.
Sabrina frowned up at him, her desire and need for him receding. “Is that the truth?”
“Kiss me, Sabrina, kiss me as if I’m a man entitled to this,” he said. He took her lips and it was desperate, as if he wanted to lose himself in her.
She reached out and touched his chest with a trembling hand. “You’re so beautiful.” Every muscle clearly defined. Not an ounce of fat on him. He had dark olive toned skin. She still sometimes pinched herself to make sure it was real, that this man belonged to her. No matter what, she didn’t think she could give him up. If he needed blood she’d provide for him or find a synthetic alternative. She pulled his head down and kissed him. “You’re mine.” She deepened the kiss. “My beautiful man.”
He snorted. “Women are beautiful. I’m manly and muscled.”
In spite of his humorous words, she thought she saw disappointment in his eyes. She should tell him she loved him. He was her husband. She did love him, but somehow the words just wouldn’t come. He’d married her without telling her what he was. What else was he keeping from her?
She smiled and shook her head at his
irreverence. Maybe he had a split personality. The one crazy and under the delusion that he was a vampire and then this Mark, passionate and tender and funny. With sadness buried deep beneath the fearsome white light that sometimes burned in his eyes.
After what he did that night, she should push him away. Fight him tooth and nail. Not admire his manly chest.
“Manly chest?” He lifted a brow.
She slapped said manly chest. “Stay out of my mind.” She shook her hand. “Ouch.”
She may as well have slapped her hands against Table Mountain. It was just one more reminder that he wasn’t quite human.
He rubbed her hand between his. “Only flesh and blood.”
He kissed her, red wine, bitter chocolate, and decadence, a kiss so potent she melted into the bed, her bones the substance of jelly.
“Tell me your darkest fantasy and I’ll make it come true,” he said in a deep dramatic voice, sounding like Bela Lugosi.
She giggled, a soft girlish sound and his face softened. Brick wall, think brick wall, she chanted in her head. She didn’t want him to see her darkest fantasy.
He threw back his head and laughed. “The classic brick wall. It doesn’t work against a vampire.”
She pounced on his words. “So you admit it, you’re a vampire.”
He shrugged. “Just giving you what you expect.
He stilled and smiled a wicked sensual smile, as if he’d discovered something very naughty in her mind. “Why would you try to hide such an innocent fantasy from me?”
“Innocent,” she exclaimed, her face on fire just thinking about it.
“Very innocent,” he said.
When his eyes twinkled with humor like that, it was hard to believe they sometimes had a backlit glow, or that his teeth could lengthen like a vampire’s. Or that she sometimes thought she saw hatred glaring at her. And that he could read her mind.
Still smiling he moved down her body, kissing her breasts, her naval. “When did this particular fantasy come to you?” he asked as he kissed his way over her stomach.