With a Kiss (18 page)

“I’m sorry about my bedroom door,” he blurted out.

“
You
weren’t the one who broke it,” Mrs. Jenson pointed out as she turned to him, set the teapot down on the table and took a seat on the other end of the sofa.

“It was still my fault,” Liam said, already feeling the heat rushing back to his cheeks at having to admit such a thing. “I—”

Mrs. Jenson made a skeptical noise in the back of her throat, stopping Liam short. “Young Master Marcus would do well to learn some self control. He always has been far too rough with his toys.”

Liam’s blush threatened to trigger spontaneous human combustion. He wasn’t sure if it would be even more embarrassing to tell her he’d had a childish nightmare, or to leave her thinking Marcus had been that enthusiastic about screwing him.

He cleared his throat but, coward though it made him, said nothing.

“Take a cake, love.” A plate filled with generously sized fairy cakes was proffered toward him. “You could do with feeding up.”

Liam did as he was told.

“You enjoyed your breakfast?” she asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Liam said, hurriedly covering his mouth in an effort not to spit cake crumbs everywhere. “Marcus, at breakfast this morning, and at dinner last night, he um…”

“Don’t you worry about him. He’s a typical vampire when it comes to his meals—he only ever picks at human food.”

“Oh.” Liam wasn’t sure what else to say. “This cake is delicious,” he hazarded.

“You’re better off without the bastard, you know.”

“Martha!”

Liam looked across to the doorway leading back into the main kitchen. Mr. Jenson stood just outside the little sitting room, glaring into the homey space, his frown so deep his thick gray eyebrows almost met in the middle.

“Well, he
is
better off without him,” Mrs. Jenson said, once more busying herself with the tea things. “In my day there were names for a man who hit those he was supposed to care for—and they weren’t polite ones. If I had my way your ex would be—”

“It’s none of our business, Martha,” Mr. Jenson said, as he came in and sat down in the armchair opposite them.

Keeping all his attention on the large section of cake still on his plate, Liam silently wished that a hole would open up in the well scrubbed floor and swallow him whole. It didn’t.

There was nothing he could do but attempt some sort of distraction. “You both worked for Marcus before his…his accident?”

“Ever since the day he was born,” Mrs. Jenson said. “Vampires don’t tend to raise their own children as a rule. Although how anyone could leave such a sweet little bundle as the young Master Marcus was, is beyond me. You know, I don’t think he’s set eyes on them more than half a dozen times in his whole life.”

She added milk and sugar to Liam’s mug without bothering to ask if he wanted any. He could only suppose that was part of her plan to feed him up.

“Are your parents still around, love?”

“Martha…”

Apparently, Marcus’ housekeeper outranked his butler—in the servants’ quarters, if nowhere else. Mrs. Jenson handed her husband a cup of tea, cheerfully ignoring the note of warning in his voice.

“We’re just having a cozy chat, aren’t we, love?” she said to Liam, reaching out and gently squeezing his knee.

Liam managed a small smile, but it quickly faded. “We’ve sort of lost touch,” he whispered, quickly lifting his cup and taking a sip of the warm, sweet brew.

“When you came out?” she asked, holding his gaze as if it were the type of thing little old ladies were quite entitled to ask a gay man the first time they met.

Liam shook his head, and dropped his gaze in the face of an opponent who could apparently control her ability to blink for entire eternities at a single stretch. “They didn’t really get on with Ralph,” he mumbled.

And when he’d been forced to choose between them, fear of Ralph’s temper had made the decision for him. Liam mentally cursed himself, but he straightened his spine as best he could, there was no going back now.

A disapproving sound emerged from the back of the housekeeper’s throat. Liam had the distinct impression that, had Ralph been there, he might well have been sent to bed without his supper.

By the time Liam was finally sent back up the stairs to the main house, having been ordered to either relax in the morning room or explore the rest of the house, he couldn’t help but feel relieved that he’d escaped without having told a sweet little old lady his entire life story in minute and embarrassing detail.

His footsteps sounded loud as he walked along the halls. It was one thing to be told that nowhere was off limits to him. It was quite another to hear the old house creak under the force of the rising wind outside and not believe that someone was going to throw open one of the multitude of doors as he strolled past, and demand to know who the hell he thought he was, poking around where he had no right.

An uneasy shiver ran down his spine an hour or two after he left the Jensons, as he wandered silently down one of the maze of corridors on the upper floor, making his way toward the back of Marcus’ house.

Liam took a deep breath in an effort to control his nerves. His ribs reminded him why that was such a stupid thing to do now that the effect of Marcus’ bite was wearing off again. The bruises may have faded and the worst of the pain eased, but the all too familiar twinges were still there. Lifting one hand to his chest, Liam let the heat from his palm soak through his T-shirt and into his skin.

Marcus’ body heat was much better at soothing aches and pains than Liam’s own was. It had been like sleeping next to his own personal hot water bottle. A living, breathing bed warmer that had held him close and went out of its way to encourage snuggling.

Liam shook his head at himself. Much better to think of Marcus as a man he’d come dangerously close to humiliating himself in front of while he’d humped him in his sleep. Liam’s hands shook at the memory. His cock stiffened slightly.

Marcus didn’t know about that, Liam reminded himself for what had to be at least the hundredth time that morning. And Marcus was never going to know about it. All Liam had to do was pretend it had never happened, and everything would be fine.

Reaching out to a random door handle on his left, Liam pushed aside the heavy mahogany and peeked inside. Just like every other room in the house, it was elegant and expensively furnished—probably by someone who’d lived and died several generations ago. The Jensons had obviously been hard at work the entire time Marcus had been in the hospital, keeping every single inch of the place spic-and-span in their employer’s absence.

Liam looked up at the huge chandelier hanging in the center of the room. Each drop of crystal sparkled and gleamed. Below it stood a beautifully polished grand piano. Crossing the room, Liam couldn’t help but give in to temptation and lift the lid. His fingertips caressed the ivory keys—and the instrument really did look old enough to be furnished with actual ivory.

The notes sang out, light, delicate and perfectly pitched. It had been kept tuned, as if the Jensons had expected their employer to walk in and sit down at the piano at any time.

Liam’s fingers made their way a little further along the row of keys as he pulled out the piano stool with his other hand and sat down on the plush gold seat. Old piano lessons quickly came flooding back to the forefront of his mind.

He smiled slightly to himself as half remembered tunes and lessons slowly re-established themselves inside his head. Closing his eyes, it was almost possible for Liam to believe he was nine years old, back in his piano teacher’s house, and his biggest care in the world was that week’s lesson.

The knuckles along his left hand were still ever so faintly discolored where he’d tried to fend off one of Ralph’s kicks, but even the trace of pain that had lingered despite Marcus’ feedings, faded away when he lost himself in the music. Liam only opened his eyes again when he reached the end of the piece. Staring down at the keys, it was hard to see anything except the echo of the injury to his knuckles.

His hands looked out of place on such a beautiful instrument. And he was out of place in that room, in that house. Liam slowly closed the lid of the piano. Rising, he put the stool back neatly in its place and retreated from the room.

Closing the door behind him, Liam shook his head at himself. He was not going to feel sorry for himself. He wasn’t going to be the kind of person who was lucky enough to end up in this house rather than on the street, yet still found something to complain about.

Crossing the hall, Liam approached another door at random, eager to take his mind off melancholy thoughts. There was no distraction to be found in a room shrouded with complete darkness, but that didn’t matter because Liam was going to heal and get back on his feet, and once he’d done that…

Liam’s fingertips, working without any conscious direction from his brain, found the switch on the wall just inside to the door. Light flooded the room. Every thought in Liam’s head slowly slipped away. The only parts of his body that retained the ability to move were his eyes. They scanned the room very slowly, taking in every detail visible from that particular vantage point.

The important thing, Liam told himself, was not to panic.

* * * *

“No, I don’t know what his current address is,” Marcus snapped. “If I knew that, I would hardly need to engage the services a private investigator, would I?”

The man on the other end of the phone began to stutter out his apologies. Marcus barely let him get a few words in before he cut him off.

“Theo Wallace. He’s a vampire. Five foot ten, slight build, thirty years old. Last time I saw him he had blond hair and blue eyes—he was pretty. Check out the clubs that are popular on the vampires’ feeding scene, then those around the edges of it. Look in the places no respectable vampire would stoop to feed, too. Do I need to do your job for you?”

The private investigator began to mumble something.

Marcus wasn’t interested in hearing it. “Call me as soon as you know anything. If you can find him, you can name your price.”

“If I can’t find him?” the guy asked.

“Then we can have a little competition and see if my investigative skills are better than yours,” Marcus said. He made a point of letting his tone become far more polite than it had been at any other point during the call. “What do you think, Mr. Grant—will a vampire who’s been starved of blood for three years be able to find you?”

All Marcus heard from the other end of the phone was a little gulp. He smiled slightly as he hung up and leaned back in his chair.

As he tilted back his head, he noticed Jenson’s expression. “As and when I need your approval, I’ll let you know.”

“Very good, sir,” Jenson said, obviously not the slightest bit unnerved.

Marcus stretched his arms out and back behind his head. His body still felt strange, almost as if it didn’t entirely belong to him. He needed to reclaim it, to feel his muscles move and know that he controlled every one of them. He needed to get the adrenaline pumping through his body again.

Killing Theo Wallace would be the perfect way to do that. All he’d have to do was wrap his hands around the little bastard’s throat and lift him from the floor. But maybe he’d just let him get a little toe hold on the ground beneath him every now and again, tease the guy with a little bit of hope before snatching it away.

He needed to know that Theo wasn’t behind every pillar and post he passed. Maybe then he’d be able to step outside the house without feeling that the world was a far larger and more frightening place than he ever remembered it being before his last encounter with the other vampire. He needed to…

Dropping his gaze, Marcus carefully ran a fingertip across the slight scar on his index finger. Maybe even more than that, he needed to feed from someone who wasn’t crammed full of pain and fear.