Tara took one of the feverishly hot hands between hers and answered, “I will be, soon.”
Marcus only nodded. “Very well. I’ll be waiting.”
Waiting seemed to be a permanent condition for Marcus. After ten straight decades of following your every fancy, what else might you pursue? He’d attended to an impressively large number of hobbies to pass away the years, even becoming quite excellent at needle-point. The movies had certainly missed that one.
Tara was still in limbo between being and becoming, a transitional state between what she had been and what she would be. The gray hours bridging night and day did not yet bother her, and in fact, she found great comfort in the dawn. She stepped out onto the porch, noticing as she did a loose rail on the steps leading to the yard. Tara would have to tell Connor about that when he got back so he could fix it- Connor…
What would she do when her husband came back, two short weeks from now? She didn’t think he would be favorable to a century-old seducer taking his place in his home. Although to be fair, the house had only been sold the first time so many years ago when it appeared the residents - Marcus’s family - had abandoned it or perished. In fact, Marcus was the only member of his clan who survived. With no one to tie him down, he had simply vanished, wandering wherever he felt like going. “The National Lampoon’s Vampire Vacation.” Tara whispered.
Marcus would probably not appreciate that particular joke since he tended to shy away from contemporary pop culture. But his tastes were not frozen to the time he’d changed; it seemed as if the sixties, of all the eras he’d endured since then, held the most sway over his styles and ideas. It was probably the free love mentality that he appreciated - Tara could picture Marcus shirtless, with his thick, Jim Morrison curls of hair mesmerizing legions of drug-addled teenage girls.
A song-bird broke the silence, trilling shrilly through the misty morning. Tara tried to mimic the warble but only succeeded in provoking a flight of winged creatures. How had she gotten here, to this strange place? The first day that Tara had visited town was when she met Marcus. She had eaten lunch and visited one of the several antique bookstores. Later that evening, dreading being alone in an empty house, Tara had visited another bar in town for a nightcap - The Hob Knob, which was presumably named for the towering bluff overlooking Milford. A pleasant enough place, if a bit of a dive. The floors appeared to have not been swept in ages and stubbornly released each footstep. Tara was not one to back down from a threatening situation, however. Not even when she realized she was likely the only woman in the bar; she was certainly the only patron visible without a beard of some kind. Tara did concede that a colorful cocktail such as an apple martini or a Sex on the Beach probably would not meet with approval, so she ordered a light beer from the grizzled man leaning on the bar. He looked like tending bar might only be his part-time gig - in between stints in jail.
A man began to hit on her with the awkward forthrightness granted by too much alcohol and too little respect. “Hey baby, you’re pretty sexy.” Ah, a true romantic. Her gentleman caller sang her praises so eloquently.
“Thank you,” Tara said simply, not encouraging further conversation. “My husband thinks so.” She deliberately put her left hand on the bar, showing her wedding ring.
The bearded Lothario blinked in a futile attempt to clear his booze-reddened eyes before slurring, “Well, where’s he at?”
Fantastic. Tara was being courted by one of those stubborn creeps who never knew when to give up. Or didn’t care. He placed a hand on her leg, a move that seemed as much to steady the drunk as to cop a feel.
“Don’t touch me!” Tara told him, slapping the hand away.
“Whatever pretty lady, I know whatchoo want-”
He tried to put his filthy hands on Tara again, but she slid away easily, not yet having had enough to drink to slow her senses. She placed a ten dollar bill next to her beer. It was probably too much, but she only wanted to get out of there, and she left the bar hurriedly.
Heart beating furiously, Tara fumbled with her keys, searching for the button to unlock the BMW. Her unwanted companion followed her into the parking lot, probably thinking she was playing hard to get. He stumbled across the gravel lot too quickly for her to get in and start the car, so Tara switched instead to the small can of pepper spray that Connor insisted she carry. Button depressed, a fine, fiery mist hit the man in his face, sending him into a frenzy.
“You bitch!” he hollered, grasping at his face. “You’re gonna get it now!” Even incapacitated, he was far larger than Tara, and he stumbled towards her in a rage.
Suddenly, he was on the ground. Not moving. And beside the motionless body stood Marcus. Slender, elegant Marcus, who now seemed to her to be incapable of such violence. Tara could not move, frozen by the burst of activity which had taken place in the last minute, though that passage of time seemed to have taken much longer.
“Are you alright?” Marcus had asked her in that soft voice of his. Tara couldn’t answer, still focused on the body lying at her feet. She only broke from her reverie when Marcus took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him.
The man in the painting! He was. The man in the portrait. But that was impossible; Tara knew enough from her own knowledge of art that it must have been as old as her house, and this young man appeared to be more than a year older than that picture’s subject. But there were the same dark, liquid eyes. The same raven thick hair, though cropped closer.
“You,” Tara whispered.
“Me?” Marcus responded.
Still holding her face in his hands, he leaned in towards her. She shrank away from him, but Marcus only kissed her on the forehead and said “Let’s get you home.”
Marcus seemed to have trouble operating the BMW’s transmission. The engine gave off a constant high-pitched whine as he drove only forty miles an hour away from Milford and toward Tara’s house. He had no trouble finding the house, though; even taking roads that Tara had not yet known existed to bring her back. He was obviously familiar with the area.
Tara did not bother to wonder how he would get back to town with no car of his own, because as Marcus began to leave, she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Stay, please.”
Marcus turned and bowed, saying, “As you wish.”
As he followed her back into the house, Tara had a brief moment of panic. A minute ago, she couldn’t stand the thought of watching him disappear into the night, but, while she still felt that way, now she had no idea what to do next. Would he expect to sleep with her? Oh crap. What have I gotten myself into? she wondered to herself. As she led the way into the living room and they both sat on the couch, she studied him. He was young, yes, but there was a darkness in him. She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever it was escaped her as he reached out his hand and gently touched the side of her face.
“Are you alright?”
She paused to study his eyes before she replied, “Yes. I’m just.... really tired.”
He tentatively reached out to her, and she barely hesitated before she leaned over into his embrace... and completely lost her composure. He held her until she had cried herself out, letting her process the events of the evening and the close call she had had.
When her sobs had calmed to the occasional hiccup, she straightened back up and said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t usually lose it like that. But thank you. Thank you for saving me, and for bringing me home, and for - “
He interrupted her, “No, it was my pleasure. I couldn’t just stand by and watch such a beautiful woman being attacked.”
She shuddered as she considered how the night could have turned out. Then, something occurred to her. “What is your name?”
“Marcus,” he replied. “And may I have the pleasure of knowing yours?”
“I’m Tara.”
“Well, Tara, I’m very glad I could be of service to you this evening,” he told her. And he stood as if to leave again.
“Wait, can I at least get
you something - …” Tara had jumped up to offer him a drink, anything to get him to stay, but she was suddenly overcome by a wave of dizziness and fell back onto the couch.
He sat back down with a look of concern on his face and said, “How is it that you’re alone in this big house?”
With her head in her hands, she replied, “My husband left this morning on a business trip. He’ll be gone for several weeks.”
“Well,” he said, “I would never forgive myself if I left you tonight and something happened. Let me at least stay until I know you’ll be alright. I’ll sleep on the couch. I promise - your virtue is safe with me.”
Too exhausted to argue, or even consider the ramifications, Tara agreed before she could talk herself out of it. Through even her tiredness and adrenaline hangover, something inside her burned with a desire to know this mysterious man better.
She wearily climbed the stairs, calling down to Marcus. “There’s a blanket in the hall closet. An afghan, actually.” As though he would care for the difference.
That night as she lay in bed, Tara wondered why she trusted Marcus, this man she’d just met. The answer was simple enough - she didn’t trust him. She didn’t think he would hurt her, not after he’d just saved her, but there was something strange about him... Then she realized that’s why she wanted to keep him close. Marcus was a mystery, and she could never resist something new and surprising. Who was he, and why did he look so much like the painting left in her house?
Her dreams that night were filled again with images of her beautiful young man, who now had a name. But now they were layered with a tinge of violence, a strange and enthralling sense of danger, as though anything might happen. She saw again in her dream the drunken man lying on his bed of gravel, as though he could find no better spot to pass out- except that as Marcus drove away, Tara was certain she had seen his head turned at a crazy, impossible angle. Marcus and his wordless exploration of her body, a soft worship that ignited a need within Tara. An insatiable need that left her chasing the boy, chasing him tirelessly until finally she caught her quarry and found, instead, it was Connor she’d been pursuing. Strong, virile, Connor, whose neck she bit into, reversing their roles, and this time it was Tara penetrating his flesh.
*****
After that first evening that Marcus spent on the couch, in what she now knew had been his home, their relationship had progressed faster than she would have ever thought possible. Suddenly, her life before Marcus seemed very distant and fuzzy in her memory. Even though Connor still called every night at 9pm on the dot, she became less and less interested in talking to him. She and Marcus spent every waking and non-waking hour together learning more and more about each other. His strangeness gradually became normal over the first few evenings until they finally went to bed together, and he revealed his greatest secret of all.
“You’re a vampire?” Tara asked him. She knew she should be shocked, but for some reason, it felt like she’d known it all along.
Marcus rolled his eyes. “Feel my chest.”
Tara placed a hand over his heart. “Your heart’s beating. Fast. And you’re warm?”
“Exactly,” Marcus answered. “It goes to reason that if I’m drinking warm blood I’d be warm too, would it not? That’s why I don’t think of myself in those terms. It’d be like calling someone with red hair a leprechaun; there’s that little in common.”
Tara did not lift her hand from that hummingbird buzz. “You drink blood?”
“Not often. It’s more like a treat. You drink juice, don’t you? But you wouldn’t live off it. I eat meat, and sometimes other things.”
She looked at his face and compared it to the painting now leaning against the wall in her bedroom. “And you look so young…are you immortal?”
Marcus laughed. “No. I just age much slower than you do. I think it’s the slower metabolism. That’s another thing: we’re not as strong as your movies would have you think. At least not all the time. It takes a lot of energy.”
There were other things, things that Marcus did not tell her. One was how she could have been so easily and so completely and so willingly seduced by him. One minute they were standing there talking and the next she was on the bed, Marcus leaning over her, his wiry muscles taut. Marcus had a tendency to go shirtless around the house. He said it was because he was already so warm.
He had the lean body of a just-maturing man, the smooth skin and nearly hairless body of a man a decade her junior. But Marcus knew things: he knew every president of the last hundred years, he remembered the first shuttle launch, and he knew how much gas cost in 1965. But Marcus especially knew about women. He might have been a hundred years old, but in that respect, Marcus was perfectly in line with his biological age. A college boy’s libido applied studiously for a decade of decades.
Tara had not yet adopted Marcus’s style of going sans top and so he undressed her, slowly. First the sandals, and her jeans, but he left her panties on. For an hour he left her that way, only teasing parts of her body with a combination of strong fingers and gently scratching nails. Showing her how the lightest touch could bring pleasure, a gossamer-thin strand of feeling she only became aware of after many minutes of no sensation but his breezy touch. Her skin, her nerves, Tara herself, seemed to have become attenuated to a fine level of sensation she’d never before known.
A soft warmth began to grow in her, but one not yet entirely sexual. Only a comfortable, lulling tenderness- a glowing ember of pleasure. Tara thought she might fall asleep or, more accurately, pass out. That is, until Marcus brought her to a new level of pleasure, one more ferocious and greedy.
Still covered in her t-shirt, but no bra, and panties, Tara lay back and let Marcus spread her legs. He bowed before her spread eagled body, hands clasping either knee. His tongue grazing against the fabric of her panties, pressing it against the tingling flesh beneath. Hot breath and her growing moistness. Marcus spent an hour there, licking ceaselessly at Tara, tasting and nibbling her every fold, until she almost thought she’d never felt anything but his tongue. Only that darting, probing tongue. He brought her again and again to the brink of satisfaction until Tara could bear it no more and forced him into her, held his face to her lips and grinded her hips against his open mouth until she reached a climax he could not bring her back from. She fell back again to the bed, trying to find her breath.
“Oh, we aren’t finished just yet,” Marcus smiled. Tara found how patient he could be over the next few hours as he alternated pleasuring her with different parts of his anatomy until he finally found his own release.
Exhausted, but pleasantly so, Tara lay naked on the bed, her skin feeling every slight current in the air around her, almost like a caress. Marcus looked out the window at what had once been his estate, and Tara thought, as she fell asleep: Huh. I didn’t know vampires could sweat. Indeed, Marcus glistened in the moonlight.
*****
Connor repeated the question. “You want me to come to your room?” He felt guilty just asking it.
“Yes.” Candace answered. She stepped closer, and he could not help but catch a whiff of her perfume; that unmistakable scent seemingly every pretty woman gives off. Candace stood so close now that her body brushed against him, and she placed one of those delicate hands on his leg. His thigh. His inner thigh. Her fingers wrapped around the muscles of his leg, mere inches away from-
Connor grabbed at his drink, needing something to distract him from the aggressive woman. Finding the pink straw with his lips he sucked greedily but was rewarded only with a brief slurping noise. “Haha, looks like I need another drink!” Connor turned away from Candace but she interrupted him again.
“Oh don’t worry; I have a bottle of champagne in my room.”
Damn. This woman had her game down. Connor would bet she had some super expensive brand of condoms in her nightstand too, some crazy thing made from seal-skin that only heiresses and oil men could afford. He looked nervously around for a distraction, any distractio
n. The surly bartender was nowhere to be seen, off fetching more tropical umbrellas to shade his drinks or something.
Candace grabbed his hand and pulled him from his seat. While he could confidently command dozens of hardened soldiers and get them working as efficiently as a machine, Connor was always at a loss for what to do with a strong woman. And so, he followed her.
She really must have money, Connor realized, as they made their way to the top floor and to one of the suites. He found his notion confirmed when Candace opened the door with her room key, and he saw the sumptuousness of her suite. This wasn’t furniture to be found in a hotel and motel liquidation; there were authentic Persian rugs, antique chairs and dressers- each piece in the room would cost Connor at least a month’s worth of salary.
Candace casually sauntered in as though she owned it, which for all intents and purposes she did. “Make yourself comfortable,” she told Connor. He sat down awkwardly, hands in his lap, in a plush red chair and waited for Candace to come back from the other room. A few moments passed for Connor to look around the room before she did return.
“Champagne?” Candace asked when she came into the room with a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and nothing else. She had definitely followed her own advice to become comfortable.
There could be no sidestepping the issue from politeness now. Candace was making it perfectly clear what it was she wanted, and, shy or not, Connor would have to respond. Only it was so difficult to get the words out with the vixen undressed before him. Candace slowly approached; her every step revealing a confident and muscular grace. Like a lion, Connor thought. He knew now a little how the gazelle felt, just before the death-blow.
Suddenly, Connor bolted up from his chair, “I, uh, thanks Candace. Miss Candace, but I really should be going. I have some things I need to do. Papers! And, uh, I need to call my wife! I have a wife!” And for probably the first time in his life Connor Macmillan ran from a naked woman. He ran straight to his room, as though Candace might chase him down au natural, and shut the door behind him, breathing heavily.
Lust and Mistrust Trilogy Page 4
