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“I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but will you tell me why, Birgitta?” He’s so still that I can’t tell if he’s breathing.
“Why I want to have you in my bed?”
He sighs. “Why my brothers didn’t scare you away. Why you’d want a monster in your bed? Why you don’t write your story and go?”
“If you don’t want to go back to the inn, you can just say no.” I don’t know all the answers, and I don’t like feeling this vulnerable. I tug on the door handle. It opens a few inches.
Oliver pushes it closed with one hand and grips my hip with the other. “Don’t be angry.” He presses his mouth to my neck. “It’s not that I don’t want you. I’ve never wanted anyone or anything as I do you. But vampire bites can be addictive for some people. If you want the bite more than me, I’d rather not have you.” He turns his back and lets out a disgusted laugh. “I’ve lost my mind.” His broad shoulders rise and fall.
People use terms like heartache or their heart leaped or heartbreak, and I always thought they were either sappy idiots, nuts, or being metaphoric. It seems I was wrong. My heart leaps in my chest and then aches for him. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my hand to his back. “I want you, Oliver. If you don’t want to bite me, I’ll still want you. If you don’t want to make love, we can talk and maybe you’d hold me through the night. This connection between us is terrifying. I’m not going to lie. I like feeling in control and my need for you is definitely out of my control.”
When he doesn’t move or respond, my throat starts to tighten as emotions well up. I will not cry in front of him. I get in my car and fumble with the key. “Come on, Britta. Get your shit together.”
The passenger door opens and Oliver slides in. He steadies my shaking hand. “Easy, sweetheart. No one is rejecting you. I’m sorry if that’s how it seemed.”
Gasping, the first tear rolls down my cheek. “Okay.” I dash it away and bite my lip to keep more from following. I turn the key in the ignition. Slowing my breathing is a tool I’ve learned to calm my emotions when I don’t want someone I’m interviewing to know I’m nervous or afraid. I try it now so I don’t burst into sobbing tears.
Oliver places his hand over mine and turns the car off. “Look at me.”
Focused on the shadowy trees outside the windshield, I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. “I can’t right now.”
He opens his car door and gets out.
“Oh god, I chased him away. I’m an idiot.” I lean my head on the wheel.
My car door opens and he eases my hand from its death grip before lifting me out of the Jeep. “I’ve got you.” His voice is silky and full of warmth as his long strides take us into the woods to the left of the mansion.
“Where are you taking me?” I wrap my arms around his neck and lean my head on his shoulder.
He kisses my forehead. “The groundskeeper’s cabin.”
“Won’t he or she mind?”
Steps quickening, he brings us deeper into the woods. “We haven’t had one in fifteen years because Silas tends the grounds.”
It’s so dark with the canopy of trees, we arrive at a whitewashed wood cabin before I notice it tucked into the woods.
Oliver puts me on my feet in front of a forest-green door with a charming four-pain window centered on the top half. “Give me one moment.” He hunts under several rocks in the flowerbed to the right before producing a key and opening the door.
Reaching his arm through, he flicks a switch that lights up the interior, then waits for me to enter.
Inside is like a fairytale with white walls and wood floors. The kitchen takes up one corner. White cabinets and black counters. A small butcher block island holds pots and pans on a lower shelf. There’s a sitting area with light-gray upholstered furniture and a few colorful throw pillows in front of a dark fireplace. A glass door leads to the back of the cabin, and a door on the left must be a bathroom or bedroom. “No one lives here?”
He shakes his head. Hands in his pockets, he looks like he’s worried I might not like the house or that he brought me here.
“Why is it so clean and new?” I run my fingers over the butcher block, then open the mystery door. There’s just enough light from the main room to make out a short hall with two thresholds. The outline of a bed through the one on the right, and a vanity in the bathroom straight ahead. I step back and close the door.
When I turn, Oliver is directly behind me and I nearly bump into him. He combs my hair away from my face with strong gentle fingers. “We had it remodeled a couple of years ago. It was falling down. Morris makes sure it’s kept clean as he makes sure everything at Scrim Hall is in order.”
I cup his cheeks. “Why am I so obsessed with you?”
Lowering his head, he captures my lips with his. His tongue is velvet as he probes the seam until I open for him.
My body burns for more, for everything. By the time he breaks the kiss, my panties are soaked.
“I feel the same way.” He drags my hips closer so I can feel his shaft and know he’s telling the truth.
Grinding my pussy against him, I need more. I want all of him. “I know we should talk, but I need you inside me now, Oliver.”
