With a Kiss (20 page)

Liam shrugged. “Maybe he sensed that I’m wired wrong and…”

“You’re not wired wrong,” Marcus corrected.

Liam glanced up for a moment, not at Marcus, but past him into the room.

“Even if you were, that wouldn’t give him the right to hurt you.”

“But you like hurting—?” Liam began.

“No!”

Liam blinked, meeting Marcus’ eyes just for the briefest fraction of a second before looking away again.

“Not in the way you mean,” Marcus said. Taking a step to his left he lowered himself to perch on the edge of a spanking bench.

Liam said nothing, he just stared at his own hands as if they might hold the answers to every question he had.

“I may not be the most moral of men by human standards,” Marcus admitted. “But that doesn’t change the fact that pain tastes vile.”

If nothing else, the words shocked Liam into looking up at him properly.

“Whenever I’ve brought men, or women, to this room, I’ve always intended to feed from them as well as just play with them or screw them.”

Liam’s hand went to his neck, but it was impossible to tell if that was because he wanted to protect the jugular from attack or if he was imagining how good it might feel when a vampire’s teeth broke the skin there.

“You can taste…” Liam whispered.

“Yes.”

The boy’s hand moved to his wrist, to where Marcus had taken his first brief feedings from him.

“In the hospital, you…”

“That wasn’t about sex,” Marcus said, even more softly than he intended. “It wasn’t about getting off on tasting your pleasure.”

Liam’s fingers caressed the little patch of skin, over and over, back and forth as a frown built on his forehead.

“You needed me.” Marcus was sure he hadn’t intended to say any such thing, but the words were out before he could stop them.

“This would taste different?” Liam asked, turning his attention to the room once more. He’d pulled his legs up in front of him; there was no way for Marcus to tell if the sight of the leather and chains were still turning him on.

Marcus looked around the room too, trying to see it through the eyes of an inexperienced submissive. “When everything comes together perfectly, it’s the most sublime taste in the world,” he said.

Memories rushed to the front of Marcus’ brain. Men chained to the diagonal cross. Women too, before he found out that he generally liked a man’s flavor better.

Dozens of humans had been locked into the cage in the corner of the room over the years—hardened masochists each and every one of them.”

“Adrenaline, endorphins, trust, pleasure, desire, submission,” Marcus said. “When they’re mixed together, nothing tastes better. The pain a certain kind of man feels then…it doesn’t feel like pain—and it doesn’t taste like pain either. It’s…” He frowned, pushing his hand through his hair as he struggled for the right words. “I couldn’t have enjoyed the games I played in here if the men I was with didn’t get equal pleasure from it.”

Liam lifted his eyes and met Marcus’ gaze for a moment. “Do you want me to—?”

“I want you,” Marcus cut in. “To stay with me and to give yourself time to heal. Anything else that happens will be because it’s what we both want, not because you think you owe me for room and board.”

Liam frowned too. “You…you can feed from me, if you want. I mean, you probably have some kind of better arrangement with other people…I know there are people who are trained to do things like this—blood whores and stuff, but if I’m here, and convenient and everything…maybe…”

Marcus stared across at him, unable to make real sense of the jumbled scraps of sentences.

Every cell in his body screamed at him to take what the other man was offering him. He needed blood. His teeth ached for it, every nerve and sinew he possessed clambered for even the briefest taste. His cock wanted anything Liam was willing to offer him, too.

“I don’t mind,” Liam whispered.

Marcus took a deep breath. The scent of leather hanging in the air did nothing to help him control his baser desires. “I mind.” The words sounded far too rough, far too harsh for someone like Liam.

“Because I won’t taste right unless we…” Liam waved a hand toward the playroom.

“Because when I feed from you, I want to taste your pleasure, not your fear,” Marcus corrected. “I want you to taste safe and protected and completely at ease with me. I want to drink your blood and know I’m the man who makes you feel that way.”

Liam held his gaze for several long moments, his eyes full of confusion.

“I know how that bastard made you feel. I won’t allow you to feel the same way when you’re with me,” Marcus blurted out. It was a stupid thing to say. God knew that Liam needed strength from him not weakness.

Liam swallowed rapidly. “I…” he looked down at his hands. “Am I allowed to go back downstairs?” The words were rushed out so quickly, they almost tripped over themselves in their haste to be spoken.

“You don’t need my permission to go wherever you want within the house,” Marcus said, mentally cursing himself for making the worst possible mess of the whole conversation.

Liam nodded. He was obviously trying his best to appear calm and collected. He was failing miserably, but he was trying. Marcus watched the other man drag himself to his feet only to hesitate as if suddenly unsure where he belonged.

“The sun should be flooding into the morning room now. There are some magazines you might enjoy on the coffee table,” Marcus offered.

He listened to Liam’s footsteps as the other man turned and walked away, his senses allowed him to track Liam all the way to the room downstairs.

Finally, Marcus pulled himself to his feet, too. Standing in the middle of the room, he looked at the toys and the furniture around him.

It was so easy for him to imagine Liam bound down against the examination table on the far side of the room, to picture the boy looking out at him from between the bars of the cage or glancing over his shoulder at him while his limbs remained bound to the cross.

Marcus closed his eyes for a moment. It was also all too easy to imagine the other man allowing all those things to happen just because he was too scared to admit that he didn’t want anything like that—because Ralph had beaten the idea that he had no option into him so hard, Liam had forgotten that there were people in the world who weren’t like that.

Stepping out of the playroom, Marcus closed the door very quietly behind him. The latch caught with a gentle click. Humans didn’t have to be like that unless they chose to be. Neither did vampires.

Chapter Nine

“Liam.”

The word was said very gently, as if the person saying it was doing his damnedest not to startle him. All his hard work was for nothing. Liam almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to turn and face the speaker.

Marcus stood in the playroom doorway, his shoulders seeming to fill the space completely. He hadn’t tied his hair back at the nape of his neck the way he sometimes did. Liam’s palms ached with the desire to reach out and stroke the glossy black strands, just as they always did when Marcus’ hair was loose, but his palms were the least of his troubles right then.

As Liam watched in something that felt a lot like horror, the other man looked slowly around the playroom, taking in every detail of each leather clad piece of furniture and each carefully arranged toy.

“I thought,” Liam began, but he quickly stopped himself short. He had no right to think, no right, in fact, to do anything that he hadn’t been ordered to do. He had no right to be in that room at all. Suddenly it was obvious that he should have stayed in the morning room reading his magazines.

It was equally obvious to Liam that he completely deserved whatever happened next. It was all he could do not to flinch away from the vampire in anticipation of the first blow. Perhaps, if he was lucky, Marcus would be hungry afterward. If Marcus wanted to feed, then at least he’d get some of the healing properties of his bite and—

“Thank you.”

Liam blinked. Against all logic, Marcus hadn’t sounded the least bit sarcastic as he said it.

Marcus stepped forward and skirted around the edge of the room to sit on the… Liam wasn’t exactly sure. It looked like it was designed to enable one man to tie another guy in place with his head down, his arse up and his legs spread wide apart. It might have been designed for spanking or screwing—it could just as easily have been for both.

Liam took a deep breath and lifted a hand to push his fingers through his hair. He saw the dust smeared across his hand, but it was too late. His arm had too much momentum. Swallowing down his nerves as best he could, Liam told himself it didn’t matter. He probably looked like a fool anyway, a bit of dust on his face wouldn’t make that much difference.

Shoving both grubby hands into his pockets, Liam looked briefly at the open door. There was a clear path between him and the hallway. If he needed to run, he could. He turned his attention back to Marcus.

“You’ve been working hard,” the vampire observed.

Liam followed the other man’s gaze as it swept the room again. There was no longer a single speck of dust to be found there, his own more practical kind of sweeping had taken care of that.

“Take care that you don’t do too much too soon,” Marcus warned. “Humans take time to heal.”

“I’m fine. It’s been two weeks and I…when you…” Liam took one hand out of his pocket and waved it around vaguely. “It helped a lot.” He’d never recovered from a beating that quickly—and few of them had been as bad as that night’s had been. Liam shook his head, trying to clear the memory from his mind before it took hold there.

“I’m glad,” Marcus said.

Liam shuffled his feet as he focused back in on the here and now.

“Do my toys seem less scary now that you’ve realized what a huge dust trap they are?” Marcus asked, one leg idly swinging as he settled himself more comfortably on the edge of the…the thing.

Liam was surprised at just how easy he found it to smile at the other man’s teasing, but he soon found himself growing more serious again.

“I…if we did, would it just be because you need to feed and I’m convenient, or would it be because you actually want…well…
me
?” Even though he knew it was a stupid question to ask, Liam couldn’t keep it back. “I don’t mind either way,” he rushed to add. “I’d just prefer to know.”

“If all I wanted was convenience I’d get a take-away—pick up a cheap rent-boy in a bad part of town and receive everything I wanted from him in the back of my car.”

Liam was shocked into looking up and meeting Marcus’ eyes. God help him, even being that take-away sounded hot to him. Half-hard the entire time he’d been cleaning, Liam suddenly found himself as stiff as a damn telegraph pole. There was no way he could take his hands back out of his pockets a third time. It wasn’t only his nerves he had to hide now.

“My interest in you has nothing to do with convenience,” Marcus said.

Liam nodded his understanding. Unable to hold the other man’s gaze for more than a minute, he looked around the room again and took a deep breath. He nodded again. He could do this. “Where do you want us to start?”

“You want to try playing with me?”

Liam nodded. He was reasonably sure that was the only way he was going to save his sanity or manage to get a whole night’s sleep without all this stuff creeping into his dreams.