With a Kiss (3 page)

Rubbing at his bare arms, trying to warm them up, Liam couldn’t help but wonder if Ralph had gone to one of the displays on his own, after Liam had run out on the older man. A shiver traced its way down his spine. He’d have hell to pay for that when he went home.

Crossing the room, Liam peeked through the little window in the door leading out into the corridor. No one was within view. Ralph hadn’t guessed where he’d run to and come after him.

Liam ran his hand down his face. Blood from his cut lip smeared on his fingers. Liam absentmindedly wiped it on his wet jeans. He was just being stupid now. Ralph hadn’t followed him to the hospital in all the time they’d been together. He wasn’t going to start now.

Liam glanced at his watch again. Pinning a smile to his lips, he made his way back to Marcus’ bed and picked up the ear phones attached to the hospital radio system. Putting one ear bud in Marcus’ ear, he slipped its companion into his own ear.

They were only just in time. The chimes on Big Ben were already counting down the last moments of the year. Under his breath, Liam counted down the seconds along with them, his eyes never leaving the sleeping vampire’s face. “Three…Two…One…”

Marcus didn’t join in. He didn’t smile, or wish Liam a happy New Year as noisy celebrations were relayed to them over the radio. He didn’t turn his head when the first firework whistled into the air not far away and pretty colors exploded in the night sky outside the window either.

“Happy New Year, Marcus.”

Liam’s brain, pounded by both fists and panic, packed its bags and slipped away for an impromptu holiday.

It was good luck to welcome the New Year in with a kiss, and God knew that Liam needed all the luck he could get. Unable to think of a single reason why it was a bad idea to do so, Liam leaned down and pressed his lips very chastely against Marcus’ mouth.

A frown spread across Liam’s forehead as he straightened up. Against all logic, he was almost sure he’d felt the other man’s tongue brush against the cut on his lower lip as they kissed.

Chapter Two

Blood.

For the first time in three years, the taste of it danced on Marcus Corrigan’s tongue as an impossibly soft mouth brushed against his lips. It was only the tiniest drop, but it was real, human blood, and it was enough.

The droplet sparked frantic messages that raced through Marcus’ veins faster than sound, or light, or even thoughts could travel. There was blood to be had. It was his for the taking. The call to arms bounced off nerve endings and ricocheted through Marcus’ joints, reactivating muscles that had lain dormant for so many long, painful months.

Marcus’ tongue slipped out to taste the other man—his first voluntary movement since he’d been admitted to the hospital. His taste buds brushed against a cut on the boy’s lower lip.

The bastard had hit him again.

If Marcus hadn’t been sure of it before, the split in Liam’s skin confirmed all his worst fears.

A shocked little noise caressed Marcus’ mouth. Liam jerked away from him.

No! That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

It was far from the first time Marcus’ brain had demanded that his limbs reach out and catch hold of the boy. The only difference that night was that his body actually seemed willing to obey those orders.

Marcus’ fingers twitched. His hand slowly rose from the bed sheet. He fumbled blindly at empty air until he finally found Liam’s arm. He wrapped his fingers around the boy’s wrist—his thumb and forefinger meeting easily on the other side.

“What the—?”

Panic filled Liam’s voice. He tugged at Marcus’ hold on him, but mere human strength was no competition for a vampire’s grip.

Little by little, Marcus managed to remember exactly how a man went about prying open his eyelids. Harsh white light stabbed at his senses, as vicious as any knife.

Growling his displeasure, Marcus squinted up at Liam, desperate to catch his first glimpse of a man he’d been picturing in his mind’s eye for months. All he could make out was a blur. He forced his eyes to open completely. Pure survival instinct insisted that Marcus lift both his hands to shield his eyes from the light.

Liam’s wrist slipped from Marcus’ grip. A shadowy outline backed away from the side of his bed.

With depth charges still exploding through re-activating joints and nerve endings, Marcus didn’t have energy to waste on complex thought processes. All he could do was react the way nature intended a vampire to react when his prey was trying to escape.

The scent of Liam’s blood insisted Marcus play his part in the chase. After all the time he’d spent unable to do anything but listen to his visitor babble away at his bedside, he’d be damned if he’d let the other man withdraw now. Muscles finally sprang into action.

Barely aware of wires and leads being yanked and torn from his body, Marcus threw himself out of the bed. Pain shot through his feet as his soles hit the floor. Tendons screamed in agony. Joints exploded as if a sledge hammer were being brought down on each one in turn.

Liam stumbled backward. Marcus’ fingers brushed against the boy’s t-shirt only for the thin material to slip from his grasp as his prey jerked away.

Gradually, the world swam into focus. Marcus saw a clear image of Liam for the first time; saw the way the boy’s hand scrabbled at the handle of the door leading out of the room. A clumsy step brought Marcus to within arm’s reach of the boy.

His hand closed around Liam’s shoulder and jerked him away from the door.

As suddenly as Marcus’ ability to stand had returned to him, it vanished again. His knees buckled. His muscles battled to keep him upright, but it was a war they were destined to lose.

Gravity dragged Marcus unstoppably toward the floor. His grip on Liam instinctively tightened. The boy looked over his shoulder. His eyes opened very wide as their gazes met. Twisting around as if in slow motion, Liam opened his arms to catch Marcus, as if he really believed there was any way in hell he’d be able to keep a man twice his size upright.

The room spun around them both, walls rising rapidly on all sides as the floor rushed up to greet their flailing limbs. Marcus landed hard on the cold tiles and their chill quickly rushed through his naked body. Pain flared in his shoulder and quickly spread through his entire body. Liam tumbled down half next to Marcus, half on top of him.

With what little strength he had left, Marcus increased his grip on the boy’s T-shirt—determined to maintain his hold on the man, even if he couldn’t keep his own balance.

The smaller man’s body pressed down against Marcus’ bare chest, his hands resting neatly on his shoulders, as Liam stared down at him, his eyes full of panic.

“Safe,” Marcus tried to say, but his throat howled in agony as he tried to force words through it.

Liam didn’t seem to understand the word. His gaze traveled rapidly over Marcus’ face as if desperately trying to get a read on him and work out how to protect himself.

“You’re safe,” Marcus tried again. His vocal cords still weren’t his to command. The voice didn’t sound anything like he remembered it. There was no strength to it, no certainty. A frown creased Marcus’ forehead.

Dropping his gaze to Liam’s throat, he saw the boy’s Adam’s apple bob when the boy tried to swallow down his nerves. His jugular pulsed right next to it.

Blood. Fresh and delicious, and right there. All he’d have to do was pull the boy’s neck down a few inches and he could take all he wanted from him. Liam wouldn’t be able to stop him. Predatory instincts howled inside Marcus, but he pushed them away.

“Safe. Understand?” he pushed. That was important. Liam wanted to feel safe. If all his babbling had told Marcus anything at all, it was that the boy wanted to feel safe more than anything else in the world.

Liam didn’t answer. He wasn’t even looking at Marcus. All his attention was on the door leading out into the hospital corridor.

Marcus’ frown deepened as a loud banging sound registered in his senses for the first time. He followed Liam’s gaze up to the door. Someone was hammering on the other side of it, trying to force it open. It jerked against Marcus’ bare skin, hitting into his shoulder over and over again, but whoever was trying to get in wasn’t strong enough to move him.

Liam pushed at Marcus’ chest, trying to get up and scramble away from him.

“No.” Marcus tugged at the sodden T-shirt, pulling the boy back down as he lost all interest in the door.

Their eyes met. “Please don’t tell them?”

Marcus’ frown deepened as he fought to make sense of the words.

“Please don’t tell them that I kissed you,” Liam whispered, urgently. “I…they’ll…I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have…”

Marcus somehow managed to summon the energy to lift his other hand and press his fingers clumsily against the boy’s mouth. “Not mad,” he forced out. His voice was still thin and raspy, but finally starting to sound a little more like he remembered it being three years ago.

“You’re not?” Liam’s eyes opened very wide as if he’d never heard anything so shocking in his life.

Marcus’ lips curved into a smile. He didn’t even need to order them to do that. The muscles remembered how to form the expression entirely on their own.

The boy really was charming. Perhaps not as pretty as Marcus had pictured him, but he was just as easily shocked as Marcus had known he’d be, and his blood still called to him as strongly as ever.

Liam looked up at the door again.

“They won’t hurt you,” Marcus promised, quietly impressed with himself for managing to say something that sounded suspiciously like a whole sentence.

He stroked his fingertips over the cut on Liam’s lip. The scent of the blood made Marcus’ teeth ache and his veins plead with him to feed. A bruise was forming on Liam’s temple too, where his blood was pooling just beneath his skin—a criminal waste.

“I think you’re freaking out some of the nurses,” Liam said.

Marcus didn’t bother to offer any sort of comment on that. Who gave a damn about the bloody nurses?

Liam nibbled on his bottom lip, right next to the split. “I…I’d like to get up now, if you don’t mind?” he asked, cautiously.

Getting up… Marcus mentally cursed—his prey might as well have asked him for the world on a stick. Marcus had no idea how the hell he could accomplish such a complicated maneuver without a proper feeding.

“Maybe I could help you back to your bed?” Liam offered. “And we could let the nurses in?”

Marcus’ shoulders tried to tense at a mere human thinking that he couldn’t get up on his own. The energy wasn’t there. It wouldn’t be there until he fed. The nurses would be able to supply him with blood until Liam could offer his willingly.

Marcus reluctantly nodded his willingness to accede to his prey’s request. “You should be checked,” he said, his attention once more straying back to Liam’s bloody lip. He should be checked and cleaned up, before Marcus gave in to the temptation to feed from him no matter what Liam’s views were on it.

“Me?” Liam asked, as he pulled himself up into a kneeling position at Marcus’ side.

“Bastard hit you again.”

All the color drained out of the boy’s face. “You…?”

“Heard every word,” Marcus finished for him.

Liam pulled away, scrabbling backward on the floor as if
Marcus
was the man who knocked him to the ground, and kicked him while he was down, every damn time he had a drink.

“I…you…I…” Liam sat on the floor at the foot of the hospital bed, wide-eyed, with his hair dripping wet.