He framed her face with his big hands. “I love you, Olivia DaCosta.”
“I know. I saw it on the news. After all, they do say it’s News You Can Trust.” She smiled.
“I hope you don’t mind that all of New York knows now.”
“I’m guessing it’s probably spread across the whole country now,” she said. “I’m hoping my mother hasn’t had a stroke. But no, I don’t mind. A lot of people will hate me for it, but I don’t care. I’m not listening to them. I’m only going to listen to my heart. And you know what it’s telling me to do right now?”
“No.”
“Take you to bed and not let you leave until daylight forces you to.”
He smiled. “I like that idea.” But then his smile faded and sadness took its place. “First I have to tell you something that might change your mind.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
He walked across the room and stood staring out the front window. “I’ve never told anyone this before.”
“You can tell me anything.” She wanted to cross to him, but she sensed he needed the distance.
He said nothing for so long that she grew nervous. Finally, he turned toward her. “I’m responsible for someone’s death.”
“Yes, I know. I was there.”
“Not the guys who attacked you. Right after I was turned, I almost drained a girl, a college student named Bridget Jameson. She was walking home after a night class.”
Olivia had said he could tell her anything, but she hadn’t expected this. She sank onto the arm of the couch and pushed an instinctual fear away.
“The vampire who turned me, my sire, was a criminal I was chasing. He’d attacked a deli owner in his store, but something made him run. I still don’t know who he was, because I never saw his face, and the deli didn’t have a security camera. He bit me, forced me to drink his blood then didn’t stick around to usher me through the transition.”
“Why did he turn you instead of killing you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought that was a better way to get me off his trail, strike back, who knows. But when I came out the other side hungry for blood, I attacked the first person I came across. When I realized what I was doing, I was horrified. I thought I’d gone suddenly insane. I dropped her and ran. I was on the verge of jumping off a building when another vamp found me and talked me down. Even when I told him what I’d done, he helped me. He’d been a doctor but since he couldn’t treat patients anymore, he found ways to help vampires.”
“He didn’t turn you in?”
“No. I didn’t actually kill Bridget. I learned later, though, that I might as well have. I just left her lying there, and the scent of her blood drew another vampire. He finished her off. I wanted to die for good. I still think of her, wondering what her life might be like now.”
“She might not have survived the virus,” Olivia said.
He stared at a spot on the floor. “But she would have had the chance.” He paused, lost in what-ifs. “David, the vampire who took me in, helped me learn to live as close to a human life as I could.”
Olivia swallowed, trying to take in all this new information and determine if it changed how she felt about Campbell. Despite how she cared for him, she was surprised her survival instinct hadn’t yet sent her fleeing. That had to mean something, right?
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” she asked.
He met her gaze. “It’s a heavy secret to bear. And...I was afraid of how you’d look at me when I did.”
She tried not to think of that poor girl, instead focusing on the good Campbell had done since. He’d once said he was atoning, and now Olivia realized it was for much more than his attack on her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “You didn’t ask to be turned, didn’t ask to be left with no direction on how to deal with that.”
Campbell shook his head. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Forgive so easily.”
“I’m not discounting that what happened to Bridget was awful, but you were a victim that night, too. It’s no different than having a baby then abandoning it, expecting it to learn to walk and talk all by itself.”
He stared at her for a long time. “You’re amazing.”
“I just see you carrying too much on your shoulders. You have team members to help. Friends. Me.”
“You still want to be with me?” he asked.
“More than ever.” Wanting to push away the past, she gave him a wicked grin. “It’s not every vampire I invite into my bed.”
He stalked toward her slowly, a graceful animal. “I was afraid to tell you.”
“I’m glad you did. Your secret is safe with me. There’s nothing to be gained by its revelation. And if I know you, you’ve beaten yourself up about this since the moment it happened.”
He stopped close to her and rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “Thank you.”
“How about you thank me with something more than words?”
She squealed when he swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom. He fell with her to the bed and started trailing kisses up her neck to her ear. He bit her lobe just hard enough to send an erotic surge of need through her body. The words he’d said into that TV camera, that he loved her, fueled her need to touch him, to consume him and have him consume her.
She jerked his shirt out of the waistband of his pants and ran her hands up his back, then raked her fingernails back down all that cool, sinewy muscle. He responded by grabbing the front of her button-up blouse and ripping it open, sending buttons flying in all directions.
His mouth descended to the swell of her breasts above her bra, his lips and tongue working her into a frenzy. In a movement too fast for her to track, he ripped off her bra and sent it sailing across the room.
“Don’t like my bra, huh?” she asked between ragged breaths.
He met her gaze with eyes blazing with desire. “I don’t like anything between the two of us.”
“Then take it off. Take it all off.”
With another of those wicked smiles playing across his lips, he rid her of her jeans and panties, leaving her bare under his gaze. Then he stood and oh-so slowly unbuttoned and slid down the zipper of his pants.
“You enjoy torturing me, don’t you?” she asked.
“You’re more than welcome to help.”
Olivia lifted to her knees and slid her hands slowly below the top edge of Campbell’s pants, never taking her eyes off his. Then even more slowly, her fingers found their way into his underwear and started pushing them and his pants down over his lean hips, then his thighs. When they dropped to his ankles, he stepped out of them, but she didn’t let go. Instead she ran her fingers up his thighs, then his taut stomach. She broke eye contact only to place her mouth on his chest. She rained kisses across his smooth skin then trailed her tongue along the same path.
Campbell growled, and his nonessential breath became ragged. “Now who’s torturing whom?”
“You can end the torture,” she whispered in his ear. “Make love to me like you’ve never made love to anyone before.”
“Gladly.”
He lifted her effortlessly to his waist. “Wrap your legs around me.”
As she did so, he entered her in one swift motion. Olivia gasped and let her head drop backward, her hair coming loose in the process. Campbell’s mouth captured her right breast and sucked as he withdrew, only to drive into her again.
She laced her fingers behind his neck as he grabbed on to her hips with both hands, holding her firmly against him as he increased his pace.
“Yes,” she said. “Faster.”
He complied, and she lost the ability to focus on anything but the pulse and frantic motion where their bodies joined. As she felt her climax building inside her, the muscles beginning to contract, she held on to him even tighter and tried to meet each of his thrusts with strong ones of her own. Somehow she felt his climax growing ever closer, too, and it spurred her lust even more.