by Elisa Adams
“I have big plans for you, Amara. I can’t wait to get you home and get a taste of the hot blood I can feel pounding in your veins.”
She shivered. When she spoke, her tone was meeker, more uncertain. “If you let me go now, I promise not to press charges. I’ll pretend like this whole thing never happened.”
“When I’m through with you, my dear, I’ll make sure it will be impossible for you to forget.”
She whimpered and her legs seemed to give out. She leaned hard against him and he sucked in a sharp breath at the feel of her wrists rubbing against his cock. She had to know how hard he was, it would be impossible for her not to feel it. He shoved her away and paced the room, trying to get control of himself before he did something stupid like rip off her clothes and take her right there in her kitchen.
He grunted and slammed his hand into the wall. He would never allow himself to touch her intimately without consent. No matter how much he suddenly wanted to, he wouldn’t take her without her permission.
At least not in the sexual sense. He’d come here with the intention of taking her back to his house—keeping her there until she’d learned her lesson—and he wasn’t going to stop because of a stupid little attraction he felt towards the woman.
“Let’s go.” He grabbed her arm a little too roughly, trying to compensate for his uncharacteristic lack of control over his body.
“Where do you think you’re taking me?” She stumbled and he had to slow his pace so she could keep up. He drew in a few deep breaths to steady his rapid breathing. When he was finally ready to face her, he was able to plaster some semblance of an evil smile across his face.
“I can’t tell you until we get there. That would ruin the surprise.”
He led her out to his car and had to fight with her to get her into the passenger seat. At one point she opened her mouth to scream, but he quickly clamped his hand over it.
“That wouldn’t be a very wise idea.”
She bit into his palm and he dropped his hand. The second he let go she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Somebody help me!”
A few people stopped to stare.
He stuffed Amara into the passenger seat and held up his hand. Holding her in place with one hand, pressing hard against her shoulder, Marco motioned to the passersby on the street. “Move along folks. I’m a bail recovery agent. This woman skipped out on a bond, and I have to bring her in to the police station.”
They accepted his lie without question, going back about their business like they hadn’t just seen him put a woman with her hands tied behind her back into his car.
He laughed, thinking that couldn’t have happened anywhere but New York or L.A.
He buckled the seat belt around Amara and closed the door, walking around to the other side of the car and getting behind the wheel. Once he had the car on the road she turned to him.
“You’re a scumbag.” She shifted in the seat, adjusting her hands. “Worse than a scumbag. You’re…you’re…”
“Believe me, honey, I’ve been called so much worse than you can even imagine.” He stopped at a red light and turned to her. “You’d be a lot more comfortable if you faced forward and rested your hands flat against the seat back.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’ve already been there. It wasn’t so bad.” The light turned green and he turned left, heading toward the highway that would take them back to his house. “Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the ride? We’re going to be in the car for a while.”
She turned her nose up at him in a gesture that was almost comical and looked out the window. Her voice was haughty when she spoke. “If you’re not going to take me back home this second, I’m not going to talk to you for the rest of the ride.”
That was fine with him.
* * * * *
Oh, wasn’t this just perfect? It had been bad when she couldn’t find a job, but being unemployed was nothing compared to being spirited away to some isolated house in the middle of the woods with a lunatic that thought he was a vampire.
She rubbed her wrists, still red and sore from the rope he’d bound them with. He’d told her they wouldn’t hurt so much if she’d sat still instead of trying to work her arms free, but did he really expect her to sit there and allow him to kidnap her without trying to free herself? The fact that she didn’t have a master’s degree did not make her an idiot.
At least he’d untied her hands when they arrived. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was being totally at the mercy of a man—especially when the man outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds and was probably in desperate need of his daily medication.
She looked out the window into the fading daylight. Even if she had been able to get the window up, she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. Her room was three stories up and rocks littered the ground below. If she even survived a fall that far, she’d be too broken to get away. Until she could find a way downstairs, she was stuck.
“Are you hungry, Amara?”
She spun, startled. She hadn’t even heard him come in. She expected him to be standing in the doorway, but he was less than a foot away. She backed up until her back was pressed against the cool window.
“Amara?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t seem to make a sound. She shook her head, hoping he’d just go away. Food was the last thing on her mind right now. She just wanted to be home, relaxing in a warm bubble bath with a good book and a pint of her favorite ice cream.
“You don’t want anything?” His voice was low, almost seductive in tone. She blinked, not sure where that thought had come from. The last thing she needed to be thinking about was seduction.
Although, if it would save her life…
No. That was a bad idea, no matter how she looked at it. Even if he wasn’t a total nutcase, she didn’t even know his name. “I’m not really hungry. Being kidnapped by a man who threatens to suck the life out of you tends to do that to a woman.”
He laughed. “Suck the life out of you? I would never do that.”
“Isn’t that what vampires do?”
“Of course not.” He shook his head, his expression annoyed. “Why is it that you humans will believe anything you read in a book or see in a movie? In my opinion, real life experiences always count for so much more.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re some kind of authority on the lives of real vampires?” She snorted, getting a little irritated herself. “Tell me this, hot shot. If you’re the vampire you seem to think you are, how could you come to my house, in broad daylight, and push your way inside without an invitation?”
“Ah, the wonders of Hollywood.” He took a step closer and she wished there was some way she could melt into the window and disappear. “Tell me, Miss Daniels, do you always believe everything you see on television without question?”
“No. That would be a stupid thing to do.”
“Then how can you pretend you know about my kind? In truth, most of you closed-minded humans have no idea.”
She rolled her eyes. In spite of her fear, this conversation was getting out of hand. “You seem to be forgetting a very important fact. Vampires are fiction! Everything about them is make-believe.”
“You think so?” His lips curled into a humorless smile, revealing gleaming white fangs that had to be almost an inch long.
She blinked hard a few times, sure those hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Laughing shakily, she tried to make light of the situation. “Wow. We could have used your makeup artist on the last film. Those are good. They look almost real.”
“Almost, huh?” He walked forward until his body was just barely brushing against hers. “What would you do if I told you they’re very real?”
He ran his tongue along the fangs and she gulped in a breath. They couldn’t be real. Vampires were just like every other thing termed supernatural, a byproduct of someone’s vivid imagination.
“What if I told you I’ve seen better?” She sco
ffed at the fangs, but there was a little voice of doubt inside her. She stomped it to death without much effort. “You have to let me go. Someone will come looking for me sooner or later.”
He shrugged. “I don’t see why. You’ve done nothing but yell since you got here. If I were someone close to you, I’d be happy for the vacation.”
“You can’t talk to me that way! I’ve got an agent. I’ve got a huge townhouse and a really big car. I’ve got a whole line of Midnight merchandise with my picture all over it.” She narrowed her eyes for effect. “I’ve got action figures!”
He laughed outright at that. “How nice for you. It must be wonderful to be immortalized in eleven and a half inch plastic.”
She didn’t find any of this very funny. “Say whatever you want. You’re not even real. I probably bumped my head when I fell, and I’ll wake up in my own home with a splitting headache.”
“Trust me. I’m very real.” He leaned closer until his lips brushed her neck. “And you may not be very hungry, but I am. I’m thinking you would make a very nice meal.”
Oh, God. This man was crazier than she thought. She’d faced rabid, demented fans a time or two in her career, but she’d never been about to be turned into someone’s bedtime snack.
“Wait! Don’t do anything rash. Whatever it is you want from me, we can work it out.”
He said nothing, but she could feel his lips curl into a smile against her
throat. She gulped, wondering what it would take to get him to back off.
Or what it would take to get him closer.
She took a deep breath and willed herself to concentrate on the situation at hand. If she remained rational, she’d be able to find a way out of this without getting hurt. Probably. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Marco.”
“What’s your last name?” Maybe she’d recognize the name from some of those demented fan letters she got every so often.
He shook his head. “Just Marco. I don’t normally use anything else.”
“Okay, Just Marco. Why don’t we make a deal.” She struggled to keep the quiver out of her voice. He had to feel how hard her pulse was pounding.
“No deals.” He pressed his hands to the window, one on either side of her head.
She sighed, a little too close to the edge of insanity herself. If she let her rational side slip one more notch, she was going to totally lose it. “Please listen to me for a second. My life has been really, really bad lately. I lost my job and my fiancé in the same day, I haven’t been able to find a decent job in months, and now this. I’m about a second away from losing my mind, and I don’t think you want to be dealing with a hysterical female right now.”
“I really don’t care.” He brought his gaze up to meet hers, his expression indifferent. “Yell, scream, and cry— whatever you need to do. No one will hear you all the way out here. It’s just the two of us.”
She blew out a breath. She’d just about exhausted her options here. “Are you trying to scare me?”
He lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “Maybe.”
She was scared, but she was also getting angry. She had a feeling he was toying with her, taunting her to purposely get her upset. He was taking some kind of sick pleasure in her confusion. She wished she had something around to hit him with. She didn’t dare use her hand—the man looked so solid she’d probably break her knuckles.
“Tell me something,” he said. “What’s the fascination you humans have with vampires?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What does it matter to you?”
“Watching everything being done wrong is getting a little old. I can’t believe anyone would actually want that kind of a job.”
“Look, buddy, I needed that job. It doesn’t really matter why I did it, just that I was good at it.”
The corner of his mouth rose in a half-smile. “That’s not quite the word I’d use to describe your performance.”
She sucked in a harsh breath, fisting her hands at her sides before she did something irrational like attempt to break his nose. “I had to do what I was told. That was the nature of the job.”
He laughed. “And I’m sure someone held you at gun point, forcing you to dress in next to nothing and run around like a brainless sexpot.”
“Oh, and what would you have liked me to do, continue living in a rat-infested studio apartment, waiting tables at a trashy bar to pay the bills?” She’d done that for a long time before she got a break. She wasn’t about to give in to some psycho with delusions. “The Midnight series was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
This was just crazy. She’d heard some horror stories about stalkers before, but this beat them all hands down. It was her own fault for opening the door and inviting him to take over her life, but in the end it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have found another way in. He didn’t seem like the type to give up easily.
Vampires were fictional. If she kept repeating that, maybe she’d be able to ignore the fangs that protruded from between his lips and the hungry gleam in his eyes she doubted had anything to do with food.
“Marco?” Her voice was more of a whisper than the forceful command she’d intended.
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“You don’t actually drink blood, do you?”
He smiled slowly. “Do you want to find out?”
Chapter 4
She shook her head. “No!”
Marco did something unexpected. He burst out laughing. “You look like you’re going to pass out again. Please don’t do that. It was bad enough the first time.”
Indignation rose in her, sharp and fast. She wasn’t some sissy girl who couldn’t handle herself when things got a little rough. “I did not pass out. I…I was faking it.”
“Not at first, you weren’t.”
No, she hadn’t been. But what did he expect? Getting kidnapped by an escaped mental patient with a vampire fixation wasn’t exactly an everyday occurrence. “Yes, I was. And stop laughing at me.”
“I’ll stop laughing when you stop acting like a fool. I’m not going to hurt you. I told you that before.”
“Much.”
“What?” His expression was confused.
“Much,” she repeated. “You said you weren’t going to hurt me much.”
“Did I?” He shook his head, his eyes clouding over. He looked mildly alarmed for all of five seconds before the smile was back. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
His smile widened and she noticed the fangs had gone away.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?” He leaned against the footboard of the gigantic bed that took up a good portion of the room. His stance was casual, but she had a feeling he was baiting her.
“Make those fake fangs go away.”
“I have control over them. They come and go as I want them to. At least, most of the time.” He winked at her. “I know you’re having a hard time believing this, but they’re not fake.”
“Oh, okay.” Yeah, this made a whole lot of sense. Not only was he a vampire with razor sharp fangs, they conveniently disappeared when he didn’t want them there.
“I can prove it.”
She shook her head, not sure she liked the sound of that. “Just knock it off, okay?”
She turned away from him and looked out the window again. It was now completely dark outside, the inky blackness a sharp contrast to the bright lamps in the bedroom. Her eyes widened at the sight of her reflection in the glass. She looked like she’d been run over by a dump truck.
Her hair was matted in some places, snarled in others, her clothes were impossibly wrinkled, and there was more mascara running down her cheeks than there was on her eyelashes. The least Marco could do after he’d kidnapped her was give her a hairbrush and a washcloth. Self-consciously swiping a hand through her ratty hair, she turned to ask him for something to wash up with.
She screamed when she bumped into a solid wall of male chest. Stu
mbling back, she looked up at Marco and blinked hard. How did he get there? Just a second ago, he’d been standing halfway across the room. “How did you do that? Is this some kind of trick?”
“I can move very quickly and silently when I want to.”
“But you…I…no, no, no.”
“As you will find out, sweetheart, some of your little human legends are fairly close to the truth.”
She gulped. “Do you teleport around or something?”
“Not exactly.” He leaned over her neck and drew a deep breath, shaking his head as he moved away. “It’s more a matter of being in total control of myself. I can move across short distances faster than your eyes can follow.”
She gaped at him, not able to form a single coherent sentence. Two things registered in her mind—one, the man was either very quick or some kind of an illusionist, or two, she might want to start rethinking her views on the existence of vampires.
Chapter 5
Marco had walked out of the room soon after the little show, giving Amara some time to let it all sink in. She needed some time to think about everything before she accepted him for what he was. He could see in her eyes that she wanted to believe him, but something was holding her back. Most likely, her Hollywood lifestyle had jaded her so much she no longer believed in anything but her next paycheck.
In a way, she wasn’t the only one who was jaded. He’d lived a long time, and he’d seen a lot of things that made him angry. He’d been angry enough to kill many times, though he’d never given in to the temptation.
He’d never kidnapped anyone, either.
When had this situation gotten out of control? He really had no excuse for what he’d done. He shouldn’t have taken her, but he’d gotten so agitated, so obsessed that he’d snapped. He’d had a few occasions in his life where he’d been close to blind with fury, but only one other instance came close to this. It was one he’d tried most of his life to forget, but knew he never would.
This was absolute madness. He should let her go back to her life, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do it. When he was close to her, he couldn’t account for his actions. Her arrogance spurred his anger and curiosity even more, and her fear enticed him in a way it shouldn’t.