Into the Spotlight (13 page)

The depth of his emotion gave him pause. He wanted her. He wanted all of her, and he would do anything for her.

Even sacrifice Frederick if it came to that.

Chapter Eleven

“Lord Markham!”

Malcolm entered the unassuming chamber on the heels of the announcement. Two erotic nights and three endless days passed while he awaited the hearing. Every night he’d spent in the lounge, watching Jeannie perform. He waited for the end of the second show when she could ascend from the Pit. They’d steal away to his rooms for supper and conversation. He’d held himself back from taking her to bed again, eager to learn everything there was to know about her.

They dined on the most delicate of dishes from around the world, thanks to the culinary expertise of the Arcana chef. Her simple delight invigorated him. They sampled wines from vineyards across the globe. Her selection of his private stock from France as her favorite gave him wings.

Every dawn, he held her, cradling her close as the light stole the life from her body. Three days after she’d revealed the truth, when he thought surely he would go mad from the curse that took her away, the summons from the Overseers arrived.

They would hear his case.

Malcolm dressed with care. He chose a charcoal gray from the Saville Row collection, a green silk shirt and a plain tie. The green was for Jeannie’s eyes. It was all he would allow himself to think of as he presented his arguments on both matters.

Jeannie flexed. Awareness returned with eerie swiftness every night when the sun sank below the horizon. She would leap from simple existence to awareness with a painful surge of heartbeat. A gasp flooded her lungs with burning oxygen. Her heart spasmed as it began to beat. Blood pounded against her skull as circulation forced the sluggish stillness to action.

She wasn’t in her bed. Her small cell in the Pit was as familiar to her as her own reflection. She lay in a much larger bed, looking up at an ornate ceiling with shadowed images dancing across what looked like a blue sky.

Twisting, Jeannie sat up and examined her surroundings. It took time for her mind to process. She knew this room. It was ten times bigger than her cell and it smelled of sandalwood, cloves and Malcolm…

She sighed. Malcolm’s room.

“Good evening.” The man himself leaned against the doorway, a towel wrapped lazily around his hips. Steam rolled out of the room behind him, and water traced a lazy passage down his chest. He looked fabulous.

“Good evening. Why am I here?” The ingratitude of the question struck her and she fumbled. “I mean, I’m happy to be here, but they’ve always returned me to the cell, why did I get to wake up here tonight?”

“The show is closed for a week. I pleaded your case to the Overseers and they are deliberating on it. I found you here when I returned from the hearing.” A smile played at the corners of his full mouth, and her freshly awoken heart did a little handspring.

“Does this mean I’m free?” She held her breath, certain it couldn’t be that simple, but desperately hopeful nonetheless.

“Not yet. But the unique nature of your case demanded a full inquiry. The show was closed, and you were given into my custody until dissolution could be made. You still can’t leave the casino but, for now, you are more than welcome to stay here with me, or we could move you into your own room.” He’d not moved from his place at the door, his broad arms hanging loose at his sides, but his fists clenched and opened.

“Do you want me to stay somewhere else? I don’t want to impose.”

The problem with dreams coming true existed in the borderlands between ephemera and reality. Jeannie hadn’t dreamed in fifty years. When she went into her still state, there was no dreaming, just a sick awareness of time passing in gray.

She wanted this dream to be real. If it wasn’t real, she didn’t want to wake up.

Malcolm’s neutral expression darkened. “Jeannie, I want you here. I can stay in another room if that’s more comfortable for you, but make no mistake. The only way I want you leaving is if you can walk out the front doors of the casino and never have to look back.”

“Can I walk out those doors with you?”

The last word barely left her lips when Malcolm streaked across the room. The bed bounced with his arrival, and Jeannie tumbled back against the pillows, the warm, wet heat of him soaking through her shift. Laughter bubbled out at the hungry expression on his face.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Jeannie seized the skin of her forearm between two fingernails and pinched. Malcolm watched her with a puzzled expression. Gritting her teeth, she pinched again, drawing blood from the smooth skin.

He caught her arm before she could pinch again and brought her forearm up to his lips. The sharp prick of his fangs stung the pinch and then they sank in, sharp and sweet. Bliss exploded through her.

Hips arching, she strained up against his body, but he held her still, feasting on her skin. Like a droplet of her blood, her senses zoomed through her body, pinging and reverberating with pleasure as his mouth moved.

Desire pooled in her belly and splashed out over the reservoir of control. The hardness of his erect cock speared against her side and she twisted, caressing a path up his biceps to his shoulder and then down his chest. The scent of his soap tickled her nose with evergreen, spice and something musky.

Dark blue eyes blazed at her over the wrist he nursed, attentive and watchful. Her mouth opened and his name escaped on the back of a groan. Her body ached for him, wanted to feel him driving inside her.

Malcolm laughed, licking the mark of his teeth on her arm closed. The skin puckered as though aroused from the attention. His gaze drifted lower. Her nipples stiffened as though he caressed them.

“I want you,” he murmured, pushing her flat and burying his face against her throat. His fangs teased her pulse, sending another spear of longing through her.

“I want you.” Jeannie seized his hair and yanked his head up, her mouth open and eager for his invasion. The kiss seared her to her soul, burning away the icy traces lingering in her system. She writhed against him, hands stroking, touching, exploring. He rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She dipped her hand down to tease his cock.

Her shift shredded as he yanked it free. Malcolm rose. She feasted her gaze on the tense planes of his chest and the corded muscles straining around his throat. She’d waited five decades for this man.

This vampire.

She’d come to Las Vegas on her way to Hollywood, determined to discover her dream.

“Where did you go, darling?” His tense voice waved aside her musings. He loomed over her, his arms holding him rigid and needing. She stroked her thumb over the crown of his cock and delighted at the way his mouth flexed and air escaped in a hiss.

“I was thinking that I’ve waited all my life for you.” Jeannie whispered the words against his skin, almost terrified that saying it aloud would drive her dream away. “I left home convinced I would find my destiny at the other end of the bus route. All I had to do was get to Hollywood. I would find my dream there. For fifty years I’ve waited, waited to get back on the road and go. I think I gave up, I gave up because I was never going to find that road back to my dream.”

“And now?” Desire and something more thickened his voice, the husky whisper shivered along her nerves.

“You found me.” God. He was her dream, given flesh and form. “You came for me. I don’t have to look for my dream anymore.”

“Thank you for waiting for me, Jeannie, and don’t ever give up on me again.” He shifted, and in one smooth stroke, drove inside her.

She closed her eyes, savoring the fullness of him, stretching her, pressing her wide. Rolling her hips, she wrapped her ankles behind Malcolm’s hips and he sank deeper inside her. She thought she would split open from the raw need and fulfillment colliding within.

“Open your eyes,” Malcolm demanded and beckoned.

She obeyed, looking into the blackened depths of his eyes as he withdrew and then plunged inside her again. She cried out as fire arced along her nerves. He drew back to the tip and drove in again.

“Don’t close your eyes.” The need in his voice snapped her lids open. His face hovered just inches from hers. The sweet, slick scent of Malcolm filled her lungs. His chest rolled against her aching nipples with every pulse.

His arms braced on either side of her head, leaving her hands free to grip his shoulders. He drew out each thrust, teasing her and then sending her closer to the edge. Each time she thought she might topple over, he would snap at her to open her eyes. She watched him watching her, filling her and when his control fractured, she drank in the darkness that blotted out the blue as his body pounded into hers. Jeannie held fast to his gaze as pleasure tore her asunder and filled her with bliss.

Jeannie dozed with her head on his belly, the sheets twisted around them. She barely had to time to wake when he rolled her over, teasing kisses down her spine, stroking the cheeks of her ass and then urged her up onto her hands and knees. She tipped her head to the side, watching him line his cock up and press against her entrance, swollen with need. Her sensitive flesh quivered as he glided in, slow and purposeful.

Her lower lip caught on her teeth as he continued the smooth, even strokes quickening the pressure building inside of her, but he wouldn’t let her go over. Glancing up, her mouth opened in wonder at the deep intensity in his gaze. He watched their coupling, his teeth sharpening with every thrust and she knew as she bucked her hips back to meet him what to do.

Pushing her hair to the side, she bared her marked throat to him and his darkened gaze raked along her. “I shouldn’t.” The words were thick with need, his voice deeper somehow, more guttural as he spoke around his fangs.

The protective resistance in his voice spiked the pleasure through her. She wanted his fangs in her. She wanted his mouth taking her even as his cock ground deep inside her sex, seeming to knock lovingly against her womb.

“I want you to.”

He needed no further encouragement and bliss rolled her under, tumbling her in an assault of pleasure as he came inside of her, his fangs piercing her throat. Her desperate endearments tangled with cries of pleasure. She tried to catalog the delicious array of sensations, but she lost all count. Thought remained a hazy shade of Malcolm. His finger stroked along her arm, his heart beating a strong cadence beneath her ear.

She could stay like this forever.

“What do you want to do?” Malcolm’s soft question pierced the sated veil around her mind.

“Recover for a few more minutes and then I’m ready for anything.” It was hedonistic to be lying in a bed, Malcolm draped against her back, muscles rubbery with spent pleasure. He rolled over, pulling her with him until she slid down, head resting against his abdomen.

Laughter shook the stomach beneath her ear. She smiled. The sound and the sensation tickled her.

“I was thinking you should eat.”

“Huh.” Jeannie shifted, ordering lax muscles to move. “You do that a lot.”

“What?”

“Feed me.”

“Ahh. I love your mouth.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Jeannie nudged the sheet at his hip, baring his upper thighs and licking her lips. “How much do you love my mouth?”

He answered only with a groan.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know that movie.” They were curled up at the top of the bed, each on their own side with plates of meat, vegetables, fruit and more spread out between them. The wine was white. She wasn’t allowed to feed herself, because Malcolm kept putting different combinations together and hand feeding them to her.

“‘These aren't the robots you’re looking for’,” Malcolm repeated and waved a hand at her. When she shook her head helplessly, he sighed. “Note, we will be spending a lot of time in front of the television.”

“Why?”

“Why? What was the last movie you remember seeing?”

“
Singin’ in the Rain
! It was magnificent. I’ve always wanted to do that twirl number around a light pole in the rain.”

“Exactly. That’s why you need to see these other movies.”

“Okay. If you say so.” She snuck a cracker and bit into the saltiness before Malcolm could load it up with roasted duck, cheese or the creamy horseradish.

“I do.”

“Malcolm?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?” Jeannie stifled a giggle as he cocked his eyebrow. “I mean a non-movie-related question.”

“You may ask me anything you want.”

“How did you become a vampire?”

“Ahh. You mean, was I seduced by some beautiful, manipulative woman to walk the long, lonely road of darkness, pining for her only to discover that she never gave a damn about me in the first place, and I am always going to come second to my whiny, younger brother?”

Jeannie blinked. Malcolm’s sober question worried her. Had he truly been so badly mistreated? “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to pry.” His burst of laughter transformed her worry to a glare. She threw the half-eaten cracker at him, torn between relief and outrage.