Maggie woke the next morning to Aiden’s lips moving over her neck. She sighed, stretching as he rolled her onto her stomach. His hands and mouth moved over her flesh, kneading her muscles before nudging her legs further apart. Maggie was more than ready for him when he entered her.

Rising over her, Aiden’s chest brushed her back as he clasped her hands and held them while he moved within her. He didn’t keep her hands because he didn’t want her to touch him, but because he needed the contact with her. She cried out, her fingers clenched on his when he brought her to release. Plunging into her once more, Aiden shuddered as he came with the same intensity he had the three times he’d taken her last night.

Lowering his head, he kissed his marks on her shoulder. It was too soon to take her blood again, but the pulse of it called to him. Rolling to the side, he drew her into his arms. Her lush breasts pressed against his flesh as he settled her on his chest.

When he glanced at the clock, he realized last night was the first time he’d slept more than a few hours at once in a couple of years. With Maggie by his side, he’d slept for nearly eight hours, a feat he would have believed impossible yesterday.

She lifted her head to gaze down at him. Against the white sheets, her hair was a vibrant red curtain. Her charcoal eyes shone with amusement, and the flush in her cheeks was irresistible. He found his finger tracing the contours of her nose before dipping down to the curve of her upper lip.

His finger had a mind of its own as he couldn’t stop touching her, and he knew he’d never get enough of this woman. He just had to convince her he was worth becoming a vampire for.

“Good morning,” he said and lifted his head to nibble on her lip.

“Good morning.” She smiled at him when he kissed the tip of her nose. “That was a better wake-up than coffee, but don’t think that means you’re getting out of buying me coffee. I can be a little unbearable in the morning without caffeine.”

He chuckled as he cupped her nape and caressed her cheek with his thumb. “I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, believe it,” she replied. “I got by on this hotel stuff yesterday, but I need some Dunkin’ if I’m going to continue to stay with you, Nosferatu. Plus, I’ll be much more energized for the rest of the day.” She winked at him as she ran her hand over his chest.

“Then I will buy you a coffee factory.”

She laughed. “I should probably go for a run too if I’m going to be ready for the marathon next month.”

“I will take you for a run and get you some coffee.”

“Good man.”

She kissed his nose and threw back the covers as she sat up on the bed. She felt like leaping to her feet and laughing while spinning in circles. It took her a minute to find the right word to describe her emotions, as they were all inadequate. Then, she realized exactly what she was, elated.

She’d never been this happy before, which made no sense to her. Her entire life was in upheaval, yet she understood what people meant when they said they were walking on clouds. And her cloud walking was from more than having had the best sex of her life last night and today; it was also Aiden.

She liked him. She shouldn’t, but she did. She might be the insect strolling into the trapdoor of the spider’s den, but she didn’t think so. He was a vampire, he fed on her, yet he also acted as if he cared for her. In the short time she’d known him, she’d come to care for him too. She cared for him more than she would have believed possible so soon after meeting someone.

She shouldn’t be falling this fast, she’d learned caution early in her life, but trying to stop her emotions seemed as possible as trying to stop a runaway train. She’d always rolled with the flow in her life; she never would have survived it with her sanity intact if she hadn’t, so she decided to keep rolling.

No matter what happened, even if she could never fully regain her old life, she would always be glad she’d met Aiden.

She turned toward him when he sat up. The sheets fell around his waist when he swung his legs to the floor, and Maggie plummeted from the clouds. Sorrow choked her as she gazed at his back. The lines running across his flesh formed a starburst pattern where they all met in the center. A few dozen scars ran in different directions and wrapped around his ribcage to end beneath his arms. She’d seen the rate with which he healed; she couldn’t imagine what he must have endured to bare these scars still.

“What happened?” She traced one of the faint lines, but when Aiden flinched away, her hand fell onto the sheets.

Aiden turned to look at her as he recalled the marks on his back. In her arms, he’d forgotten about them and the compulsion that had propelled him to such repeated degradation at the hands of another.

“This is from a whip, isn’t it?” she asked.

Grasping her fingers, he brought them to his lips and kissed them. “It’s the past.”

“I’ve seen how fast you heal. There’s no evidence of the injury you had when we first met, but I saw these scars around that wound. Why do the scars remain?”

“They’ll eventually fade too.”

Especially now that he wouldn’t require someone to beat him to near unconsciousness anymore. Not while he had Maggie to keep him grounded. Now that they’d slept together, his need to change her would accelerate, but for now he was happy just to have her near him.

“But why are they still there?” she demanded. “That other wound was horrific. Were these injuries even worse?”

“No.”

“Then why do you have scars?”

He knew this was a topic she wouldn’t let go, and if he had any hope of getting her to trust him enough to turn for him, he would have to reveal some of the things he’d prefer to keep from her. “Because sometimes, after repeated, sustained injury, our wounds and scars take longer to heal and fade away.”

“Repeated, sustained injury?”

“Yes.”

“Who did this to you often enough to leave you scarred?” The color drained from her face as her gaze shot up to his. “Was it your family?”

“No!” he yelled far louder than he’d intended. “No,” he said more calmly and squeezed her fingers. “My siblings and I may have tried to kill each other a time or two. We may have dared each other to do some stupid things, but none of us would have done this to another.”

“Your parents?”

“My parents never raised a hand against us. They had far more creative ways of punishment. Some of which involved allowing our siblings to decide our fate. Isabelle got to choose my punishment once for hanging her favorite doll from a tree after cutting off its hair, dipping it in paint, and tossing it in the lake. In retaliation, she tied me and that stupid doll to a tree together and kept hitting the button to make it pee. Every time she hit the button, the doll also declared it was hungry or called me mama in this horrible robotic voice made only worse by its swim in the lake.”

He’d told the story in the hopes of coaxing a smile from her, but Maggie remained straight-faced while she stared at his back. “I never touched one of her dolls again afterward,” he finished.

“Maybe your parents didn’t raise a hand against you, but a whip isn’t a hand,” she said.

“A whip isn’t a hand, but my parents never hurt me, and neither did the Stooges. Let it go, Maggie. The marks will fade.”

“I’ve seen what you can do, Aiden. If you weren’t a child when this happened, then who was strong enough to do this to you as an adult and why? Was it Ronan?” She didn’t know the guy, but she’d kick his ass if he’d done this. “Was this a job requirement or something?”

“No.”

“Then what happened?”

Frustration filled her when his lips clamped together and he didn’t speak. He knew so much about her, yet she knew so little about him, and he refused to let her in. She wanted to kick her cloud-walking self in the ass. She knew better than to get her hopes up about anything. She wasn’t pessimistic or optimistic; she put herself strictly in the pragmatic category, and that was where she liked to stay. She’d forgotten that this morning; she would not forget it again.

“You continue to ask about me and demand answers, you expect me to trust you, yet you won’t open up to me at all,” she stated.

Aiden heard the anger in her voice and sensed the distance opening between them when she leaned away from him. He’d prefer not to tell her where the scars had come from, or why, but if he didn’t give her something, she would walk away from him.

“Nothing happened that I didn’t allow to happen,” he said.

“You let someone do this to you?”

“Maggie—”

“Why would you allow this to happen to you? Why would you stand there and take this?”

“Maggie—”

“Who did this to you?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

She gawked at him before tugging on her fingers. He held onto her. “It will never happen again,” he promised.

Maggie glared at him, almost as infuriated by his unwillingness to share with her as she was by the knowledge someone had done this to him and he’d willingly allowed it! Why? What kind of twisted individual would stand there and take this from another? What had she gotten herself into with him?

Then, Carha’s words from the club came back to her and she froze. “That is enough!” Carha had hissed. “If you don’t stop, Aiden, I’ll ban you for life! And that means from my services too.”

“Carha,” Maggie breathed. “Carha did this. This is the service she was talking about.”