I never answered his comment about why I looked sad. Or rather, if I did, it was with a kiss. Just three steps inside the darkened house, before he’d had a chance to turn the lights on, I threw my arms around him and drew him to me for a messy, almost desperate kiss.

For the briefest moment, he seemed startled at the onslaught, but soon enough he caught on and kissed me back. His hands swept down my back, and he cupped my ass, squeezing gently once before he lifted me. I didn’t think and let my body react automatically, my arms tightening around his neck, my legs coming up around his waist, pressing me against his hardening length.

I heard, vaguely, the thuds of my sandals slipping off my feet, and I was aware, for the most part, that Morgan was moving, carrying me somewhere. If I’d managed to spare a thought for it, I might have guessed we were on our way to the bedroom, but I was too busy devouring his mouth, then tasting the salt on his skin with tiny licks to his cheek, his chin, his neck, to worry about our destination.

He tasted and smelled wonderful, like the ocean and flowers and sunlight and smiles and clasped hands and, yes, I know it makes no sense, but that is still what I think of when I recall those sloppy kisses I mouthed over every bit of bare skin I could reach.

It wasn’t nearly enough bare skin, but I couldn’t do much about it when I was wrapped so tightly around him. Thankfully, he soon lowered me until I was sitting on what I realized was the iron wrought table on the balcony. I kept my legs around him, binding him close to me, but I dropped my arms and tugged at the hem of his shirt, pulling it up over his head.

In the quasi-darkness, his smooth chest was a study of shadows that invited touch. I hummed as I ran my fingertips from his collarbone down to his navel, scratching ever so gently. When Morgan let out a quiet sound of frustration, I thought at first it was from my teasing, but I then realized he was trying to pull my dress up, a feat complicated by the fact that I was sitting on it.

“Something you want?” I asked in my sweetest voice as I unbuttoned his pants, making no effort to help him undress me.

“Same thing I always want,” he said in a low voice that trembled slightly when I cupped his thick cock in my palm. “More than I should have.”

The words gave me pause, and I would have told him that wasn’t true and how much it pained me to hear him say things like that, but all thoughts cleared my mind when he lifted me off the table. For a second or two, he held me against him again, his dick pressed against my stomach, his tongue slipping inside my mouth and out again like a promise of things to come. Then he lowered me again, and I had to drop my legs from his waist to stand on my feet. He lost no time in pulling my dress over my head, leaving me standing in front of him in my bikini. His eyes gleamed as they roved over me, and I realized he could see me perfectly, darkness notwithstanding.

“I want you,” he growled. His right hand curled around his dick, and I squeezed my thighs together as he gave himself a few slow strokes. I started to reach out to replace his hand with mine, but he took hold of my waist and made me turn away from him, leading me to the banister.

Understanding what he wanted, I couldn’t stifle a quiet moan as I leaned my arms on the thick wooden beam, bending forward, spreading my thighs and arching my back. Morgan’s hand caressed along my spine down to my ass. I shifted into his touch, trying to say without a word that I really wouldn’t mind if he pulled my bikini bottoms off me, but Morgan had a different idea. His hand slipped between my thighs and he rubbed my mound through the slick material of the bikini. I’d already been wet, but now I was sopping.

“I’ve wanted you all day long,” he said in that low-pitched voice that never failed to make me think of warm caramel and all things sinful.

He stepped closer to me, and soon it wasn’t his fingers playing against my drenched bottoms, but the hard length of his cock, so close to where I wanted it and yet still so far.

“I wanted to take you on the boat, right on the ocean, and no one would have heard when you cried out for me. I wanted to bring you to one of those small beaches, and make love to you in the sand, and shock the tourist boats passing by. I wanted to fuck you in the garden, fuck you hard against a tree, right in the middle of all those flowers, none of them as beautiful as you, none of them smelling anywhere near as sweet as the nectar flowing from you.”

I didn’t even have to close my eyes to see it, all of it, everything he was describing.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked, gasping as his cock nudged my clit once more.

He didn’t reply. Instead, he tugged my bikini to the side, exposing my folds and guiding his cock past them. I moaned again, pressing my face into my folded arms. Every time he slipped inside me, it always felt like this was our natural state, the way it ought to be all the time, while being apart was something that we had to endure. He pushed all the way in, my slickness easing his way, and stopped. He leaned forward to press small kisses along my back. I felt him shaking behind me, and only had time to worry for a second before I realized he was chuckling.

“What is it?” I asked, a little breathless, as I pushed myself up, grabbed the railing with my hands, and pressed back against Morgan.

He dropped a kiss to my shoulder.

“I just realized… It all started on a balcony. And here we are again.”

There we were, yes, with the inky darkness of the ocean for backdrop instead of Central Park, and the warm evening air rather than freezing temperatures. There we were, Morgan and I, truly together rather than sharing a fantasy. There we were, on the other side of the world, weeks later, lovers rather than strangers. Another balcony, yes, but everything else was different, including us.

A bubble of laughter started to rise to my throat, but it turned into a small cry when Morgan pulled back, almost all the way out, before slamming back in. Sensations exploded through me, causing goose bumps to erupt all over my body. I tried moving with him, but his hands gripped my hips, holding me steady.

“Let me,” he grunted. “Please, Angelina, let me…”

I was in no state to argue, especially when he started to move more quickly: sharp, shallow jabs that managed to ignite every sensitive nerve inside me. It was all I could do to hold myself up, my arms locked tightly against the repeated thrusts that pushed me forward.

“Let me hear you,” he demanded, panting. “Don’t hold it back.”

I realized then that I was biting my lips to keep myself quiet. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, but I knew where it had come from. There was no one on the beach that I could see, nothing in front of us but the ocean and, in the distance, the muted flashes of lightning from a storm far out over the water. Still, we were outside, in the open, where we might be seen or heard, and all my instincts were to keep quiet, even when Morgan asked to hear me.

I shook my head, too scared of making noise to even open my mouth and say I couldn’t. Morgan’s rhythm intensified at once, his cock pressing even faster, even harder inside me as one of his hands slid up to cover one of my bouncing breasts. My nipple tightened behind my bikini top as though to pierce both the fabric and his palm.

“Come on, Angelina,” he growled. “I wanna hear you. Let me hear you. Let me know this feels good.”

It did. It really did, more so than I know how to express in words, but my moans, my gasps when I finally let them rise into the night, must have been enough, because they urged Morgan on further until we were both crying out our pleasure, both shaking from the intensity of our shared orgasm, both panting for breath and clinging to each other to remain upright.

When Morgan’s spent cock slipped out of me, I staggered and turned to embrace him.

“I lo—” I started, but his mouth covered mine and swallowed the rest of that breathless declaration.

In between kisses and fumbling caresses, we made our way inside and into the shower, leaving the rest of our clothes as a trail in our wake. Morgan’s cool skin quickly warmed up under the two crisscrossing sprays of water, and I was more than happy to stand there, wrapped in his arms, my eyes closed, drifting between lingering pleasure and the promise of sleep. Morgan, however, had something else in mind.

Of course he did.

I started to protest when he pulled out of my arms, but I opened my eyes in time to see him sink down to his knees in front of me, and the sight made me lose my voice.

“Lean back,” he murmured, his hand pressing against my hip until I leaned against the smooth river pebbles that covered the wall.

That same hand then caressed up from my calf to my leg before pushing up, and suddenly my thigh was on Morgan’s shoulder and he was leaning forward to press the most chaste of kisses to my clit. Such a small touch, but with it the flickers of pleasure remaining from my orgasm flared back to life.

I gasped Morgan’s name and, without thinking, tangled my fingers in his hair, which was plastered over his head by the water pounding on us. He took that touch as encouragement and flicked his tongue out, first at my clit, then lower, lapping at my folds, my thighs, at our combined essences dripping out of me, reveling in them with quiet, greedy little noises that made me feel lightheaded and giddy like a fine wine.

“You…” I moaned when he nipped at my most sensitive folds and started again, my head bent forward so I could watch him. “You love this, don’t you? Tasting me? You always… oh God…”

I had to close my eyes when he pushed his tongue inside me, keeping it rigid and fucking me with it before he returned to his long, slow licks.

“’F course I do,” he mumbled, his words muffled as he pressed ever closer to me. “You taste like heaven.”

I don’t know if it was his words, his tongue, his oh-so-careful teeth, his fingers sneaking inside my slick passage and curling just right, or the fact that I was still primed after our balcony escapades, but it only took moments before I was crying out his name, pleading for him to stop at the same time that I tightened my fingers in his hair and held him closer to my core.

My body shuddered violently, and Morgan pulled back. Through the water dripping from my eyelashes, I could see him kneeling there, a hand on his hard-again cock, staring up at me with a look of pure hunger.

All I had to do was moan his name again, and he was scrambling to his feet then hoisting me up, his cock finding its way back where it belonged. My inner walls were still contracting when he pressed inside me, pleasure still flowing through me, and it didn’t stop. It just went on and on, wave after wave as I clung to him and he moved inside my body, too excited to hold on to a rhythm, his hips jerking up with a mind of their own.

Someone was moaning continuously, and it only occurred to me distantly that it was I who was making those sounds: those desperate, raw, utterly obscene sounds that should have made me self-conscious but really, I couldn’t have cared less right then, not as long as Morgan continued to worship my body until oblivion overtook us both.

I don’t remember getting out of the shower, drying up, or climbing into bed with Morgan. I suspect he helped with all of it. My next fully conscious thought was of lying next to him in bed, my head nestled against the crook of his shoulder, feeling spent and absolutely content. I tried to think of a way to tell him how good I felt, and I could only blame my short-circuited brain for how long it took me to realize I knew the perfect way for that: three little words that meant so much. I raised my head so I could look at him, and said his name very quietly so he’d open his eyes. He’d left the light on in the bathroom, and I could see his face, the small smile still curling his lips, the soft, unguarded expression I saw so very rarely.

“I love—”

Before I could finish, he pressed his lips to mine for a gentle, tender kiss. When he pulled back, he murmured, “Sleep, Angelina,” and closed his eyes again.

Sleep, however, was suddenly the very last thing I wanted.

Twice, tonight, I had tried to tell him I loved him.

Twice, he had stopped me.

If he’d done it only once, I would have thought nothing of it. But twice…

This was no accident, no coincidence. He’d heard me say it before, but for whatever reason he didn’t want to hear it again.

Why?

What could be so bad about me saying it? What could be so terrible about hearing it?

After the wonderful day we’d had together, after that torrid evening, why on Earth was he still holding back? More to the point, why was he forcing me to hold back, too? I’d never asked him to say the words back, had I? I just wanted to tell him how he made me feel. Why wouldn’t he want to hear it?

It dawned on me that the past two months he had spent alone hadn’t changed him at all. I’d believed he needed time to overcome his past, but now, after our separation, after talking to Carol and Miss Delilah and Irene, I was wondering if time alone would ever be enough to help him accept that, yes, he could be loved, and he deserved to be loved. Deserved to hear it, too.

Maybe he needed more than time. Maybe he needed a nudge to help him forget what he’d done, help him realize it wasn’t bound to happen again if he only allowed himself to relax.

Maybe he needed to know that when I said ‘I love you,’ they were more than words born from pleasure that he could silence with a kiss.

For half the night, I tried to figure out how I would say it. When I figured it out and allowed myself to fall asleep, I dreamed of it, of what I wanted to ask, what I hoped he’d do—what I feared he’d reply. A dozen scenarios, and none seemed foolproof, far from it. In the end, I decided that straight and to the point would be best.

I was alone in bed when I woke up. I got dressed and went to look for Morgan. I found him on the balcony, and he flashed me a smile, mouthing “Good morning” as he continued to listen to the person at the other end of his phone. The steaming cup of coffee and a paper bag of fresh pastries looked like they’d been set on the table for me, and I helped myself, grateful for the few moments I was being granted. Because this was it. I would ask him now, as soon as he hung up the call. There was no reason to wait, not even if I was more nervous than I’d ever been.

I’d finished my coffee and eaten two scrumptiously fluffy malasadas when he finally put the phone away. I didn’t let myself wait a minute longer to the risk of losing my nerve. I looked at him and said, “I want you to bite me.”

The smile melted right off his face. “Angelina…”

I nodded. “That’s my name, yes. Not an argument. Not even when you make it sound so sexy.”

I watched his expression close off until his face was like a mask of cold, unfeeling marble. I’d expected him to respond this way, so it wasn’t really a surprise when he said, “I’m not biting you. I’m not biting anyone ever again.”

“Wrong,” I said calmly. “On both counts. You’re going to bite someone, and that someone is me.”

As he shook his head, something like incredulity passed through his eyes. He leaned back in his chair and looked at me as though he’d never seen me before.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” I countered.

“You know why. You know what happened the last time I bit someone.”

He’d lowered his voice, but he couldn’t disguise how broken he sounded. I didn’t like that I was stirring dark memories again and hurting him to the point that he looked away from me, but what else could I do? How else could I reach him beyond the walls he’d erected around himself? He came out to me, sometimes, like he had yesterday when he’d taken me to the garden, like he had last night when he’d made love to me, but he never was completely, fully there. He was always ready to retreat—to hide again. I wouldn’t let him this time.

“Morgan, look at me.” When he didn’t, I sat on the edge of my chair, leaned toward him and reached out. I framed his face in my hands and shifted his head until our eyes met. “I do want this. Really. I know what I’m getting into.”

He snorted and shook his head. When I didn’t drop my hands, he covered them with his own and pulled them off his face.

“How could you?” His voice dripped with bitterness. “How could you have any idea at all what you’re asking for?”

“I was there, wasn’t I? You showed me what happened the last time you did this. You chose to share this with me.”

He frowned at me. “I didn’t share it so you’d want me to bite you.”

“No, you showed me to scare me. I already told you, it didn’t work. I’m not scared. But you are.”

“Of course I am.” He looked away from me again, turning his head to the ocean. “And you should be, too. But since you’re not, I’ll have to be scared enough for the two of us.”

How could he be so stubborn! It had to be a vampire skill; there was no way anyone human could be so stubborn.

“They were accidents, Morgan.”

His head whipped back toward me. His eyes were blazing.

“So what if they were? They’re still dead. I’m still responsible. Why do you want so much to add your name to theirs? Don’t you think my heart has been torn up enough as it is?”

My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach, and I was suddenly speechless. There was nothing I could answer to that, was there? And even if I’d found the words, Morgan didn’t give me the chance. He stood and walked back inside the house. I thought about following him, but I figured I’d give him—and myself—a few moments to calm down. I approached the balcony railing and leaned against it, looking out at the ocean and trying to let it appease me. It might have worked better if the sky hadn’t been dark and heavy with the promise of a storm, the water gray like lead and tumultuous.

After only moments, Morgan appeared on the beach. He’d apparently had the same idea I did. He walked close to the water and sat in the sand, his back to the house. I didn’t need to see his face to know how upset he was.

It hadn’t been my intention to upset him, but I guess I should have realized it would happen. Besides, wasn’t that what always happened when we had a serious talk? Didn’t someone always end up upset? Didn’t he always leave rather than finish the conversation?

Not this time, I told myself as I stood. We had to talk it out. I joined him on the beach.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting in the sand next to him, close enough that our shoulders were pressed together. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He sighed deeply. “That’s fine. Let’s not talk about it again.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated, “but I think we have to. I need you to—”

“Oh, Angelina, come on!”

He scrambled to his feet, and I have no doubt he would have walked away from me again if I hadn’t managed to get a hold of his hand. I held it in both of mine. He could easily have pulled free, I’m sure, but all he did was give me an impatient look.

“No, please, listen to me,” I begged. “Just listen and tell me if I’m wrong, all right?”

He looked down at me for a few seconds, his eyes as tempestuous as the ocean behind him. Finally he gave the tiniest of nods. Hopeful that he wouldn’t run off now, I let go of his hand. He drew a battered pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lit one, using the lighter I’d given him for Christmas. Seeing that lighter gave me a little more hope.

“Melody,” I said, and was not surprised when he drew in a sharp breath. “When it happened, you were young. Very young for a vampire. Weren’t you?”

He didn’t reply, blowing a huff of blue smoke into the wind.

“What did Irene call it?” I insisted. “New blood, wasn’t it?”

His eyes hardened a little more if that was possible. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Everything. Couldn’t he see that? How could he not?

“You hadn’t learned control yet,” I pointed out.

“I’d had thirty years to practice,” he snapped.

I watched him pace in front of me and wanted to draw him back at my side, but he looked too agitated to be contained, and I didn’t dare reach for him again. It wasn’t that I was afraid. Not at all. If I’d been afraid, I wouldn’t have been asking for this. I could see how much I’d put him on edge, and I meant to keep pushing; I had to let him have something, and his pacing and smoking was it.

“But how good were you?” I pressed on. “Irene said some of her control passed to you. How much of it?”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

That, at least, was easy to believe. He really couldn’t see my point, could he? Blinded by guilt, deaf to the words of those whom he considered as guilty as he was, numbed to love… Miss Delilah and Irene hadn’t just needed someone who was his type. They’d needed a human, someone who stood on the other side of that predator and prey line, so the absolution wouldn’t be self-serving.

“It matters because, by vampire’s standards, you were a kid, right?” Had Irene known I’d need to know this to try to get to him? Was that why she’d come to the mansion? “And you didn’t have as good a grasp on what you are as you do now,” I concluded. “Correct?

“I suppose that was true four centuries ago,” he admitted grudgingly. “But that was hardly the case twenty years ago.”

“Right.” I had to roll my eyes at how utterly unyielding he was. Couldn’t he see that I was trying to help? Without my consent, sarcasm crept into my words. “You had a complete and absolute grasp on yourself, on your actions and feelings when memories of killing a woman you’d loved flooded your mind to the point of making you black out. I wonder why I couldn’t see that earlier.”

Morgan stopped pacing and stared at me with a look of outrage, the half-smoked cigarette forgotten in his hand.

“You think this is funny?” he snarled.

“No,” I said, more softy now. “I really don’t.”

I stood, and I wavered a little, my footing unsteady on the shifting sand. He helped me by clasping my elbow. He was mad at me, but I hadn’t lost him. Not yet.

“I think it’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard,” I continued. “But it wasn’t. Your. Fault. The reason you killed her was you were out of your mind. Literally. What’s the likelihood of that happening again? Do you think you have other dark secrets waiting to burst to the surface?”

“No,” he said, all but biting the word. “I don’t.”

He sounded absolutely sure of himself, and I thought I understood why.

“You asked Irene, didn’t you? You asked her if she’d compelled you to forget anything else.” At his small nod, I couldn’t help adding, “Now that must have been some conversation.”

The shadow of a smile brushed against his lips.

“More like a shouting match,” he said grimly. “I even threatened to kill her. That’s… a big no-no. Killing your maker is the biggest of our taboos, but just saying the words is still pretty high on the list of ‘thou shalt not’ commandments new bloods are taught as soon as they rise.”

I could see another way of attack opening to me. Could this angle make him see the light?

“Did you threaten her about me?” I asked, laying my hand on his face where, two months earlier, angry slashes had appeared on his skin. “When she clawed your face, was it because of an argument you had about me?”

He covered my hand with his and led it to his mouth so he could lay a kiss in the center of my palm.

“Something like that,” he said after he’d let go.

I can’t deny I felt a little stunned. He’d just said threatening their maker was something vampires didn’t do, but he’d done it. For me.

“Oh,” I said in a small voice.

Arching up on my bare toes, I rested my hands on his shoulders for balance and leaned in close so that my face was only a couple of inches from his. I looked into his eyes for a few seconds; they were as dark as ever, but I’d long since lost my fear of falling and losing myself in them. I closed the distance between us and pressed a chaste, gentle kiss to his lips. I pulled back again without either of us trying to deepen things, and laid my head on his chest. Immediately, his hand was at the back of my head, his fingers threading through my hair.

“So…” I struggled to find my words. I couldn’t let it go so easily. “You’re ready to break the biggest taboo of all for me, but you won’t trust yourself to bite me.”

Morgan’s chest moved against me as he heaved a deep sigh.

“Are we still talking about this?” he asked, grumbling.

“Yes, we are.” I wrapped my arms around him. “Do you want to know why? Because I trust you. I have complete and absolute faith that you won’t kill me. And you deserve to know you’re a good man. Not a monster. You deserve to be able to trust yourself.”

When he pulled back, I thought he’d try running from me again, and I clung to him. All he wanted, however, I soon realized, was to look at me.

“You do mean that, don’t you?” he murmured. “I look into your eyes, and I can see how much you mean it.”

“I do.”

Was this progress? I wanted to believe it was.

“But I don’t understand why.”

“Yes, you do,” I said, gently chastising. “I’ve told you why. You always refuse to believe me, but it’s still true. Stopping me from saying it doesn’t change that.”

“Go ahead, say it,” he said in such a neutral tone that he might as well have given me permission to use his phone or, I don’t know, take his car for a ride. I tried not to let his nonchalance affect me.

“I love you,” I said. “I know who you are, I know what you’ve done, and I’m telling you. I love you. I only wish you could believe me.”

“I do believe you.”

Such a nice admission, but why did he have to spoil it by stepping out of my embrace?

“I believe you, but I can’t be that close to someone again. Surely you must understand—”

I didn’t let him finish. “You think we weren’t close last night?” I asked, feeling a little stung.

I thought the shake of his head was an answer to my question, but his words made me wonder.

“Why do you always ask so many questions, Angelina?”

“Why do you always dance around the answers?” I shot back.

He turned his back to me with a muttered, “I need to go,” that turned my blood to ice.

“Go where?” I asked, sounding more needy than I felt comfortable with. I crossed my arms and tried to sound reproachful instead. “Are you running away again?”

“I’m not…” He sighed and raised his gaze to the sky. “Getting blood here is more complicated than in New York,” he said. “I’ll be back late. You can take the car and go explore if you want.”

But exploring paradise held little attraction if he wasn’t with me. I wanted to ask to go with him, but my insistence about the biting thing had unsettled him, and I figured it’d probably be best if I gave him space. Still, watching him leave wasn’t pleasant. He did look back to give me a small wave, and that small gesture made me feel a little better.

If you can believe it, my day only got worse from there.

 

*