Six

Chloe jerked back into the overstuffed cushions of the sofa, her hands shooting up to cover the pulse of her throat on both sides. Aidan rolled his eyes at her knee-jerk reaction, as justified as it might be.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to bite you again,” he assured her. And then he raised a brow, sending her a hotly sensual look. “Not unless you ask me to.”

Without waiting for her to respond to that, he put his hands on his hips and began to pace. Back and forth, back and forth, he wore a path in the small space between the sofa and matching armchair.

“The problem is, I’m not sure how to do that. Especially since you’ve already seen the fangs and the eyes and the . . . you know,” he said, flipping his hand in the direction of the jugular veins she was protecting so diligently, just in case he was overcome by sudden bloodlust.

If she only knew. He was much more likely to be overcome by plain old lust-lust.

She was fully clothed again, in the same jeans and top she’d filched from her sister and been wearing when he’d first picked her up in front of the Bellagio so they wouldn’t be seen outside the Inferno. She was even wearing a bra, more’s the pity.

But even though she was no longer traipsing around in his shirt, with her legs and those sexy dancer’s feet bare, she still turned him on. Yeah, she could be wearing twenty pounds of concrete or the Big Top tent from Circus Circus, and he could be blind as the proverbial bat, and he would still be turned on just standing in the same room with her.

There had been another woman, a very, very long time ago, who’d touched him the way Chloe did. One he’d been this attracted to, cared for this strongly. She was long gone, though, and despite the thin thread of loss that would always run through him, Chloe was the first woman in decades, possibly centuries, that he’d opened himself up to in such a deeply emotional way.

He wasn’t ready to use the L-word quite yet.

Was it possible? Yes.

He thought about her often enough. Thought about being with her, making love to her, simply talking with her over a glass of wine or while they were lying in bed.

When they weren’t together, he wished they were. At dawn each morning, as he was preparing for The Deep Sleep, he pictured her in his mind, knowing she was likely getting ready for bed, too, after a long night of being onstage. When he awoke again at dusk, he thought of her once more, wondering if she was up yet and what she might be doing. He didn’t usually wait long to call and find out, either.

So the L-word was on the horizon, he was aware of that. And, frankly, he thought it would be rather nice to be in love with the woman he was going to be married to for the next several years. Possibly eternity, if it worked out that way.

He hoped it did. Sebastian might enjoy his lone wolf lifestyle, but Aidan needed more.

He was charming and intelligent, sure. He wasn’t too shabby when it came to business dealings, either. Sebastian might be the casino mogul, the one who owned milliondollar properties all over Las Vegas and the world, but if Aidan had wanted to, he very easily could have followed in his brother’s footsteps. He’d built this high-end apartment complex, hadn’t he?

The problem was, big business and real estate didn’t interest him. It was sad to realize, this many years into his existence, that he wasn’t sure what did.

No, he hadn’t spent his entire life—before or after his turning—aimless and uncertain. He’d had jobs. Careers, even. Hobbies and passions and moneymaking ventures. Sebastian had always been the more focused of the two brothers in that respect, but Aidan was no sloucher.

At the moment, though—for quite a while now, actually—he was floundering a bit. Nothing seemed to catch his interest, or at least didn’t hold it for long.

Nothing, that is, until Chloe.

She had caught his interest in the blink of an eye. The sparkle of a sequin. The twitch of a tail feather. And unlike everything else that had come and gone, she was still holding on strong.

Meeting her had been the catalyst to Aidan’s beginning to think about what he did want for his life these days. It wasn’t money; he had plenty of that. Or fame; he was no Brad Pitt, and the attention he got just from being a frequent partygoer was plenty enough. Or immortality; he had that, too, in spades.

What he wanted—he was pretty sure, anyway—was a home. Family. All of those things that came to mind when studying a Normal Rockwell painting or watching a scene on television of a busy park full of playing children and parents watching them with eagle eyes.

He couldn’t have all of that, he knew. It was possible for vampires to procreate, but not easily. And no children had ever been born of a vampire/human mating, which meant kids were off the table entirely unless Chloe agreed to be turned. Or they adopted, but that opened a whole other can of worms.

But that wasn’t even the issue. If he’d wanted kids alone, he could have limited his dating to other vampires. There weren’t a lot of them out there wandering around—certainly not as many as there were sun walkers—but they did exist, and he’d had his fair share of affairs with several of the fanged-and-female variety over the decades.

What he wanted was the home and hearth and haven of being with someone he truly cared about and who cared about him. Someone to come home to, to wake up with in the evening, to maybe adopt a shelter dog with so they could take long, leisurely walks in the moonlight.

Plus, Chloe was the first woman in a hell of a long time who had sent all of his wheels spinning to a milliondollar jackpot. So he’d met her first, then started feeling the tugs toward commitment.

And she’d seemed just as eager to settle down with him. Sure, he realized his wealth was a heady lure. She could very well have been a gold-digger, out to hitch her wagon to his star and live extremely well off of her husband’s millions.

Something told him, though, that wasn’t the case. She was too open, too genuine for those kinds of games or deceptions.

Which made him think they might actually have a shot at making things work. Yes, he was a vampire and probably should have told her that before he’d popped the big question and talked her into eloping. But once she came to terms with his little condition and accepted the changes that would have to be made to adapt to his unique lifestyle, they could still do the modern blood-drinker’s version of the white picket fence, right?

A vampire could hope.

Of course, there was still the small problem of Chloe not believing one hundred percent that he was a vampire.

He’d already bitten her, drained her of enough blood to send her reeling, and given her any number of amazing, otherworldly orgasms. Did she think she could come like that with some lame-ass mortal man? Yet she apparently required further proof.

Not an easy feat, considering how well his kind blended with the rest of humanity. With the exception of being allergic to the sun, sleeping rather soundly during the day, and needing to ingest blood to survive, he doubted anyone could pick a true vampire out of a lineup.

“We’re going to have to wait until morning,” he said suddenly, spinning around to face her. The crack of his voice in the otherwise dead silence startled her so that she jumped and finally let go of her neck.

“What?”

“Going into the sunlight. It’s the only thing I can think of that will convince you. But obviously we’ll need to wait a while, since it’s dark outside right now.”

“What are we going to do until then?”

An easy smile spread across his face and he waggled his brows at her. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

Her own brows rose to her hairline above her Frisbee-wide eyes. “Doubtful, Bite Boy. You really are crazy if you think I’m going to let you touch me after being told I married a vampire. One who bit me on my wedding night, no less.”

“I told you I was sorry about that.”

Her mouth twisted wryly. “I don’t know if you can apologize for putting a hole in someone’s jugular. Two holes.”

He didn’t know quite what to say about that, so he said nothing.

A minute later, her nose scrunched. “How do you go around biting people and not leaving big, ugly, very obvious wounds on their necks?”

She wasn’t cowering in fear anymore, which he took as a good sign. And if she was asking questions, wanting to know more about how he lived, then maybe she was opening up to the idea of exactly what he was.

Moving slowly, he stepped to the sofa and took a seat at the opposite end to her, making sure not to spook her by getting too close. No throwing up his arms like he was wearing a cape and doing the whole scary Count Dracula thing.

Stoker really hadn’t done them any favors with that one, the jerk-off.

“We possess an enzyme. In our saliva,” he explained. “After we drink, we lick the wound to close it and begin rapid healing.”

Her fingertips once again traced her own fang-dots. “These don’t seem to be healing all that fast. And that still doesn’t explain why people aren’t walking around with bite marks everyone and their mothers can see.”

Eyes going wide, she sat back and gave a small gasp. “Unless that’s the motivation behind the whole scarf fad. I never understood the point when only about three of every ten women can pull it off. And turtlenecks . . .”

She gave a small shudder to show how she felt about that particular fashion statement. Of course, Chloe was far from a turtleneck kind of woman. She was every man’s fantasy, with a body Hugh Hefner only wished he could get in his magazine. She rarely did long sleeves, let alone anything that hid her amazing cleavage.

“I’m sure scarves have come in handy a time or two,” he told her. “But most times the enzymes begin to heal the wound within only a few hours.”

She gave him a look he had no trouble interpreting. Licking his lips, he returned a sheepish one of his own.

“I was too eager, too rough with you. I did give the wound a cursory swipe, but because of my . . . over-enthusiasm, I may not have done it carefully enough, and it may take longer than usual for you to heal completely.”

“So I’m what? Scarred for life?”

He winced at that, considering the expression’s double meaning. “No. At least, I don’t think so. The marks should heal the same as any cut, leaving behind maybe just the tiniest hint that they were ever there. And I promise, next time I’ll be sure to patch you up properly.”

The minute the words were out of his mouth, she was up and off the sofa. Her turn to pace, apparently.

“I told you, there isn’t going to be a next time. I’m not entirely sure I believe there was a last time. This is all just a little too bizarre for me, you know?”

“I know. I’m sorry. I never should have let things between us go as far as they have without telling you. I didn’t mean to lie to you, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. It was a lie of omission, and for that, I apologize.”

With a huff, she threw up her hands. “Stop it!” she nearly yelled at him. “Just stop apologizing.”

“But I truly am sorry,” he continued. He didn’t know how else to convince her. “I should have come clean with you from the very beginning, or at the very least before we ran off to that Little Blue Chapel and tied the knot. It wasn’t fair to you, and I need you to believe that I really am—”

“Don’t say sorry,” she ground out. Putting her hands to her temples, she rubbed as though fighting the beginning of a headache. “Don’t apologize to me one more time.”

“But I need you to understand—”

“I do,” she interrupted him again. “I do understand. But every time you apologize for keeping your secret from me, you make me feel like a piece of crap.”

That brought him up short. Narrowing his gaze, he thought about it for a minute, then asked warily, “Why?”

Chloe let her arms fall to her sides, gave a long-suffering sigh, and turned her head to meet his gaze. “Because I lied to you, too.”