With a Kiss (2 page)

Liam cleared his throat, a slight blush rising to his cheeks. He was checking out the coma patient. That was just wrong—on so many levels.

“So, um…I guess I’d best tell you a bit about myself, since it seems like we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together.” He leaned back in his chair, trying to look casual, confident and completely at ease, but quickly leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees as he knotted his fingers together.

For a full minute, Liam stared down at his intertwined knuckles. “I guess there’s not really much to say. I’m kind of boring.”

He glanced up at the other man through his lashes. Marcus…Mr. Corrigan…No, Liam finally decided, he’d call him Marcus. Marcus didn’t look bored. There was no expression whatsoever on his face.

Liam chuckled slightly to himself. “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about you falling asleep on me.” He took another deep breath. “Okay, let’s try this again. I’m Liam Bates. Twenty-eight years old. I used to work just across the road from here. I waited tables in the cafe opposite the hospital for about three years, but now that we’ve moved in together, Ralph doesn’t like me to…”

Liam’s eyes opened very wide as he mentally cursed himself. The last thing he needed in his life right then was some homophobic jerk who…

His thoughts slowly faded away as he blinked at Marcus’ sleeping form.

There wasn’t going to be any visible reaction to anything he said. Liam looked over his shoulder. No one else was in earshot.

“I guess it really doesn’t matter if you know I’m gay, does it? It’s not like you’re going to make a complaint or ask for a different visitor.” Liam pushed a hand through his hair, disordering the mousey blond strands. “You know, it’s lucky you probably can’t even hear a word I say, because I’m making a complete balls-up of this visitor thing, aren’t I?”

Rising from the chair again, Liam strode across to the window that practically filled the wall on the opposite side of the room from waist height all the way up to the ceiling. It looked down over the gardens surrounding the hospital and would have been a nice view if the patient were in any condition to see it.

“Anyway, like I was saying, Ralph asked me to hand in my notice at the cafe. He’s got a good job. And he’s right, there’s no need for me to wait tables for a pittance. I just…”

Liam frowned through the window. Turning his back on the view, he leaned against the window sill and put all those silly thoughts out of his head. “I should be counting my blessings, right?” he said. “A rich boyfriend who wants to spoil me is a good thing!” Liam forced a smile, but maintaining it for even a few seconds made his face ache.

Marcus made no comment.

“And he’s a good guy too,” Liam pressed on. “He doesn’t screw around on me or anything like that. And he’s working on his temper, so—” His hand froze halfway to his right cheek as the door swung open.

A young red-headed nurse backed into the room, pulling a trolley full of medications and dressings along after her.

“Hi.”

The nurse twirled around, knocking over several of the medicine bottles on her trolley as she backed away. Her eyes went to Marcus for a moment, before swinging wildly toward Liam. “Bloody hell—for a moment I thought he’d actually woken up!” Leaning back against the bland cream paintwork next to the door, she patted her chest as if trying to still a racing heart.

“Sorry, I’m one of the volunteer visitors,” Liam began to explain.

The nurse waved him into silence. “Not your fault. Our Mr. Corrigan here has always given me the heebeegeebees. There’s something about vampires that just makes me want to cover my neck whenever I’m around them,” she added, the Irish note in her accent softening as she pulled herself together.

“Vampires…?” Liam echoed.

The nurse finally seemed to recover enough to step away from the wall without fainting. “They didn’t tell you? Well now, isn’t that typical? They’re supposed to, you know?” she added, as she turned the trolley around and pushed it closer to Marcus’ bed.

The routine was obviously well established. While her hands moved on automatic, the nurse’s words continued to flow without hesitation. “Regulations state that everyone who has any contact with a patient has to be informed of their species, unless the patient is human of course—no one minds humans.”

“He’s a…” Liam stared at Marcus as if he was seeing him for the first time.

Of course he knew all about vampires, who didn’t? And, yes, he had always been aware in a very general sort of way that he probably spoke to a dozen people who needed to drink blood every day, but that wasn’t the same as actually knowing the man he stood next to had fangs.

Liam watched in silence as the nurse—Sophie Roberts, according to the hospital ID clipped to her uniform—fussed around, taking down the empty IV hanging from the metal stand next to Marcus’ bed and replacing it with a bag of blood.

A bag of…

“Is that blood?” Liam took a step back, pressing his backside against the window ledge, as if the stuff might leap out of the bag and attack him at any moment.

The nurse looked over her shoulder. “It is indeed. Animal blood rather than human, of course—bovine to be exact.”

“Oh…”

“Can’t let the poor little parasite starve to death while he’s too ill to be any danger to anyone, can we?” Nurse Roberts asked. She picked up a metal bowl from the trolley and placed it on Marcus’ bed.

Lurking uncertainly on the other side of the room, Liam watched her deftly remove a bandage from the vampire’s hand and toss it in the bowl. Blood stained that part of the fabric that had been wrapped around the top most part of Marcus’ index finger.

Quickly cleaning the wound, the nurse replaced the dressing. Her every movement made it clear she wanted to have as little physical contact with Marcus as possible.

Within a minute, she’d bustled back out of the room, once more leaving Liam on his own with the sleeping man…with the sleeping vampire. Stepping forward, Liam took great care to make no sound, to keep all his movements calm and controlled, as if he might rouse the other man to attack if he weren’t very careful.

He lowered himself into his chair with the same intense attention to detail, not quite able to drag his eyes away from the bag of blood hanging above him. Animal blood, he reminded himself. It was nothing to be scared of. But at the same time it became almost impossible to stop his eyes following the intravenous line down to where the needle disappeared into Marcus’ arm.

Liam glanced at Marcus’ face for a moment, then back to the blood supply draining steadily into his vein. Heat rushed to his cheeks.

“Sorry. I…” Liam cleared his throat. “I guess I didn’t handle that very well, did I? I’m not usually so… I mean, I don’t have any problem with vampires. You’re just like us; you just need to drink blood occasionally, right?”

Marcus said nothing.

Liam ran his hand down his face. Damn, but it was a good thing the other man was completely oblivious to his presence. Any conscious guy would have probably given him one hell of a back hander ages ago. Liam’s hand automatically strayed toward his cheek. The bruise was gone now. It had barely even been worth mentioning from the start, but now it had completely faded away and…

“The nurse made it sound like you’ve been here a while,” Liam blurted out, desperate for any topic of conversation that would distract him from a day he’d much rather forget. “Is this something that often happens to vampires?” He frowned slightly. “No. Stupid thing to say. That’s like people thinking any time a gay man is ill, it has to be HIV. Although—”

Liam cleared his throat, only just keeping back a really bad joke about fang shaped condoms and safe biting. He shook his head at himself, but at the same time, his lips quirked into a small smile. “I have a really bad sense of humor,” he confessed, dropping his voice to a whisper, as if sharing a secret with a good friend.

His expression faltered as it occurred to him that he was probably speaking to the one and only person on the planet who really could be trusted to keep any and all secrets someone shared with him.

Marcus Corrigan wasn’t going to rush off to Ralph, carrying tales. Liam was safe there.

“So, um, where was I?” he tried again, finally able to relax into his chair a little. “I was going to tell you about me, right?”

* * * *

Liam closed the door leading into the private room behind him and leaned back against it. He thought about shutting his eyes in an effort to hide a little bit more thoroughly from the world, but the sight before him was far too beautiful to waste.

Marcus lay exactly as he always did, right in the center of his hospital bed, long black hair trailing over his pillow.

Liam took one more deep breath and let it out very slowly. There was something amazingly reassuring about entering a room and knowing exactly how the man in there was going to react to his presence, something gloriously safe about knowing that the man in front of him would never lash out in his direction, no matter how badly he screwed up.

“Hi, Marcus.” Liam whispered the words so quietly he could barely even hear it himself. Clearing his throat, he looked up at the bright florescent lights set into the ceiling and tried to summon up the will to make another attempt at it.

It was no use. Speaking wasn’t in him right then. He wasn’t sure he even had the strength to take another breath. Adrenaline ebbed away rapidly, allowing Liam’s pain to flow back into his body and make itself felt in every joint and sinew.

His frantic dash across the city had inflicted its own blows, apparently aimed at all those places where Ralph’s fists hadn’t landed that night. Very slowly, Liam bent his knees and let himself slide down the door, until he sat, curled into a tight ball on the hard tile floor.

Folding his arms on top of his drawn up knees, he rested his forehead against his damp forearms. For a long time, he just sat. Unable to think, unable to move, Liam merely existed.

Time passed. Liam had no idea how long he remained on the floor just inside Marcus’ door, but, eventually, some tiny part of his mind that was a little more ready to face the world than the rest of his psyche, began to focus on the steady beeping emanating from one of the machines by Marcus’ bed.

Liam slowly lifted his head. For a few seconds, everything remained a blur. Blinking his eyes, Liam swiped at the drops of rain lingering on his lashes with the back of his hand.

The beeps continued, one every second, one for every beat of Marcus’ heart, just as they had ever since Liam first met the other man. The News Year’s Eve festivities hadn’t made any difference to Marcus. The vampire hadn’t gone out drinking with friends from work; he hadn’t come home spoiling for a fight.

Liam swallowed rapidly. There was something incredibly pathetic about sitting alongside a man in a coma and being jealous of the other guy’s life. Pulling himself to his feet, Liam slowly crossed the room until he stood right next to Marcus’ bed.

“Have you had a good day?” he asked the slumbering man.

No answer was forthcoming, but Liam was already used to filling in the other man’s side of their chats.

“Sarah was on duty today, wasn’t she? Did she tell you her plans for tonight?” Liam managed a small smile for the picture that formed in his head. “I bet they were wild!” He couldn’t imagine the stunning blonde doing anything that
wasn’t
wild.

Gradually, even that mild trace of a cheerful expression faded from Liam’s face.

“You’ve probably guessed that my plans didn’t exactly go the way I hoped.” he mumbled, his fingers fidgeting with the edge of Marcus’ bed sheet.

Whoever had washed Marcus’ hair that day had left one dark lock trailing across his forehead. Liam reached out and stroked it back from the vampire’s face without even thinking about the gesture.

Marcus wasn’t the type of man who would want to look anything other than his best at all times. Sighing quietly to himself, Liam stepped away from the bed and paced over to the window. “It’s stopped raining,” he said, before glancing at his watch. “And it’s three minutes to twelve. The weather men were right for once. It’s cleared up just in time for the firework display. That’s good…”