His Dark Embrace
Amanda Ashley
HE’S GOING TO KISS ME
And even as the thought crossed her mind, he was lowering his head, claiming her lips with his. It never occurred to her to resist.
She went up on her tiptoes, her arms twining around his neck, her eyelids fluttering down as one of her favorite teenage fantasies came to life. Unlike so many other things she had wished for, the reality was ever so much better than the dream. His mouth was warm and firm on hers; his arms held her body close to his. A distant part of her mind, the part that was still functioning, took note of the fact that they fit well together despite the difference in their height.
One of them moaned, a soft cry of need and longing ...
Don’t miss these vampire series by Amanda Ashley
NIGHT’S KISS
NIGHT’S TOUCH
NIGHT’S MASTER
NIGHT’S PLEASURE
SHADES OF GRAY
AFTER SUNDOWN
DESIRE AFTER DARK
EVERLASTING KISS
EVERLASTING DESIRE
BOUND BY NIGHT
BOUND BY BLOOD
His Dark Embrace
AMANDA ASHLEY
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
HE’S GOING TO KISS ME
Don’t miss these vampire series by Amanda Ashley
Title Page
Dedication
“My Dark Visitor”
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Epilogue
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page
For Vicki Crum,
who introduced me to her friend,
Glenna Capece
and
for Glenna.
She knows why.
“My Dark Visitor”
A dark exquisite dream we share,
This mystic Hallow’s Eve.
The fog and mist come creeping in,
They brush across my sleeve
My breath comes quick, amid the drift
My heart begins to flutter
One beat, then two, within I feel
The presence of another.
I leap, I fly to cross the space,
For something draws me in.
His touch, his kiss, his strong embrace,
Dark magic from within.
No common thought can touch my mind,
For secrets are his cover.
How sleek, how dark, the spell he weaves
The promise of a lover.
My sigh, my plea, my beckoned call,
I seek eternal bliss.
My heart, my soul he does not take
I give him even this.
Our spirits dance among the stars
Complete without restraint
A love so pure it conquers all
And never hears complaint
Dare I look inside to see
The mystery of this night
One dark embrace forever his
It started with a bite.
~MICHELLE DONALD
Prologue
When Skylynn McNamara O’Brien came home to bury her grandfather and settle his estate, she was surprised to see that the house across the street was still vacant. The big, old, three-story house, surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence, sat on a half-acre lot. A covered porch spanned the front of the house. The place put her in mind of a giant among midgets, surrounded as it was by newer, smaller, more modern homes. Granda had once told her that Kaiden Thorne’s grandfather had refused to sell the place to real estate developers, and so they had built around him.
Kaiden Thorne had moved away shortly after Skylynn left for college. She thought it odd that he hadn’t sold the house when he moved. As far as she knew, the house had been vacant ever since.
He had been a strange one, Mr. Thorne. For years, he had collected his mail and his newspaper after dark and always mowed his front yard after the sun went down. He had gone to the high school football games, but only the ones held at night.
Sky had been five or six the first time she had seen Kaiden Thorne. She remembered it as if it had happened yesterday. She had been sitting on the front porch that summer evening, playing with her favorite Barbie dolls, when a moving van pulled into the driveway of the house across the street. Curious, she had watched two men in gray overalls jump out of the cab and begin unloading the truck. There hadn’t been much in the way of furniture, just a black leather sofa and a matching chair, a couple of glass-topped end tables, a dresser and chest of drawers, an antique sideboard, and a big-screen TV. The last thing the movers had unloaded had been a large oblong box.
Skylynn had frowned when she saw it. What on earth was in there? Her interest in the new neighbor soon waned when she realized there would be no playmates her age moving into the house, only a tall man with thick black hair. At five, she had thought of Kaiden Thorne as an old man. Looking back, she realized he had probably been no more than in his thirties.
Her second distinct memory of Kaiden Thorne occurred on Halloween, Sky’s favorite holiday, except for Christmas, of course. Back then, everyone in the neighborhood decorated their houses, each family trying to outdo the other, but none of them could hold a candle to Mr. Thorne. His yard looked like something out of a Hammer horror movie. There had been a coffin that looked as if it was a hundred years old, a skeleton that looked so real, it had given Sky the creeps. Ancient torture devices had lined his driveway. A scary-looking clock that would have looked at home in a Vincent Price movie chimed the hours as assorted ghouls and monsters popped up out of old pirate chests and from behind weathered headstones.
Sky had been seven when her brother, Sam, took her trick-or-treating at the Thorne house. Sam had been ten at the time, and even though her brother could be a major pain, she had idolized him. He had told her, straight-faced, that Mr. Thorne was a vampire, but Skylynn hadn’t believed him because Granda had told her there were no such things as vampires, witches, ghosts, ghouls, or skeletons that walked and talked. But when Mr. Thorne opened the door, Sky had taken one look at his bloodred eyes, his gleaming fangs and long black cape, and screamed bloody murder. Her brother had teased her for months about the way she had turned tail and run back home just as fast as her legs would carry her. She’d had nightmares for weeks afterward, even though her grandfather had persuaded Mr. Thorne to come over and explain that he had been wearing an elab
orate costume.
As time passed, Granda and Mr. Thorne spent more and more time together. They made an odd couple—her short, gray-haired grandfather and the tall, dark-haired Mr. Thorne. As far as Sky could tell, they’d had nothing in common. Granda was a retired doctor who dabbled in chemistry in his lab down in the basement. He had often kidded her that he was looking for the secret of eternal life. As for Mr. Thorne, she didn’t know what he did for a living. For all she knew, he, too, had been retired. The two men had spent many a night locked up in Granda’s lab.
More than once, she had snuck down to the basement. With her ear pressed to the door, she had caught snatches of conversation, but Granda’s talk of plasma and platelets and transfusions meant nothing to her.
Occasionally, a strange man came to visit Granda. Sky never saw his face, never heard his name, but there was something about him that, even back then, had made her skin crawl.
The summer Sky turned twelve, she started spying on Mr. Thorne. She wasn’t sure why. Curiosity? Boredom? Who could say? She bought a notebook and made copious notes about his habits, the cars he drove, the clothes he wore. He rarely had visitors, but when he did, she wrote down the color and make of the car and the license plate number and descriptions of the people who came and went so infrequently. Sam thought he was a drug dealer or a hit man.
Sky had always had a flare for art and she drew numerous pictures and portraits of the elusive Mr. Thorne. A faint white scar bisected his right cheek. He had another scar on his back near his left shoulder blade. She had seen it one night during a scavenger hunt. The last item on her list had been to find an old newspaper and she had gone knocking on Mr. Thorne’s door in the hope that he could help. He had answered the door wearing a pair of swim trunks and nothing else. He had invited her to step inside while he went to fetch the paper, and she had glimpsed the scar when he turned away. As she grew older, she began to wonder how he had gotten those scars.
By the time she was thirteen, she had a full-blown crush on the mysterious Mr. Thorne. And then, when she was fifteen or sixteen, an odd thing happened. For no apparent reason, he stopped staying inside during the day.
She would never forget the Friday afternoon she had come home from school and seen him outside, mowing his lawn. Wearing only a pair of cut-off blue jeans and sunglasses, he looked sexier than any man his age had a right to.
But that had been eight years ago, and she was no longer the wide-eyed innocent child she had once been.
Chapter 1
Skylynn sat on the front porch swing, staring blankly into the distance. Yesterday, she had buried her grandfather in the family plot, alongside her grandmother and her parents. Now, sitting in Granda’s creaky old two-seater swing and listening to the clock inside strike midnight, she wondered if she carried some kind of curse. How else to explain that everyone she cared for left her? Her parents had been killed in a traffic accident when she was only three. Her grandmother had passed on a few years later, leaving Granda to raise Sky and her brother, Sam.
Sam had been sent to Iraq nine months ago, shortly before her divorce. For the last four months, he had been missing in action, presumed dead. When he had first gone missing, she hadn’t slept for days. She had written to several of the men in his unit, asking for information, but they had all said the same thing. Their unit had been in a firefight. Sam had been with them one minute and gone the next. They had searched for him until enemy fire had driven them out of the area. Since then, there had been no word of Sam’s whereabouts. Not a day went by that she didn’t think of him, worry about him. Knowing there was little else she could do to help him, she sent fervent prayers to heaven each night, praying for his safe return home.
And now she was back in Vista Verde, California, with a failed marriage to her credit, a brother who was missing, and no family to lean on.
In an effort to shake off her melancholy mood, she studied the three-story monstrosity across the street. They didn’t build houses like that anymore. Heck, they hadn’t built houses like that in over a hundred years. She had always wanted to see the inside, but she had never been invited past the entry hall. As far as she knew, no one else in the neighborhood had ever even gotten that far. The owner, Mr. Thorne, had been willing to let the kids on the block swim in his pool during the day, but neither the kids nor their parents had been welcome on the property after dark, and none had ever been allowed inside the house. She had often wondered what he was hiding in there. Maybe Sam had been right. Maybe Mr. Thorne really had been a drug dealer. That seemed far more probable than his being a Mafia hit man.
Thunder rumbled across the darkening sky, promising rain before morning. She shivered as a cold breeze rustled the leaves of the trees alongside the house. She should go inside, she thought, make a cup of hot chocolate while she tried to decide what to do with Granda’s house, what to do about Harry, what to do about the rest of her life.
Harry wanted to marry her, but after one failed marriage, Sky just wasn’t ready to try again, nor was she certain she loved Harry Poteet the way he deserved. He had wanted to come to Vista Verde with her, but she had told him she needed some time alone. He hadn’t argued, just told her he loved her and would be waiting for her when she returned to Chicago.
Sitting on the porch, wrapped in layers of nostalgia, Sky wasn’t sure she would ever be ready to return to Illinois. Like it or not, Vista Verde would always be home. Stay or go back to Chicago? That was the question. But she didn’t have to decide tonight. She had three weeks vacation from work to make up her mind.
Wrapping her arms around her middle for warmth, she gazed at the house across the way again, blinked in surprise when the front door opened, and a tall man stepped out onto the covered veranda.
Sky leaned forward, squinting into the darkness. Could it be ... ? A shiver ran down her spine as the man descended the stairs and crossed the street toward her. Dressed in black from head to foot, he almost disappeared into the night that surrounded him.
“Mr. Thorne.” His name whispered past her lips as he approached her.
He inclined his head. “Good evening, Miss McNamara.”
“You used to call me Sky Blue.”
“You were much younger then,” he murmured with a faint smile.
Skylynn studied him in the glow of the porch light. She hadn’t seen him in eight years and he hadn’t changed a bit. He had appeared to be in his early to mid-thirties when she went away to college, and he still looked that way. His face remained unlined, his eyes were the same shade of dark, dark brown, his hair was still shaggy and black, his body long and lean and muscular. The faint scar on his right cheek, which should have detracted from his devastating good looks, only served to make him appear more mysterious. Standing there, with his arms folded across his chest, he exuded an aura of raw sensuality and masculine confidence.
“I was sorry to hear about your grandfather,” he said quietly.
“His passing came as a shock,” Sky murmured. “Or as much of a shock as it can be, I guess, considering his age.” Still, Granda had been in good health when she had seen him at Christmas only last year.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time for the funeral.”
Sky nodded. “Please, sit down.”
She had expected him to take the chair across from her. Instead, he sat beside her on the swing, his thigh scant inches from her own. His nearness prickled along her spine.
“Are you planning to stay in Vista Verde?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can. I have a good job in Chicago. Friends.” And Harry was there. She blew out a sigh. “I hate to sell the old house, though.” Realistically, she knew she didn’t have much choice. She couldn’t afford to live in Chicago and pay the taxes and the upkeep on this place, too.
“Too many memories,” Thorne remarked. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“Yes.” She laughed softly. “And too many goldfish and hamsters and birds buried under the palm tree in th
e backyard.”
His laughter, rich and deep and decidedly masculine, joined hers.
It felt good to laugh. “I guess you think it’s silly.”
“No.” He draped his arm over the back of the swing. “I keep that old house across the street for the same reason.”
