buckled the seat belt around Amara and closed the door,
walking around to the other side of the car and getting behind the wheel. Once
he had the car on the road she turned to him.
“You’re a scumbag.” She shifted in the seat, adjusting her
hands. “Worse than a scumbag. You’re…you’re…”
“Believe me, honey, I’ve been called so much worse than you
can even imagine.” He stopped at a red light and turned to her. “You’d be a lot
more comfortable if you faced forward and rested your hands flat against the
seat back.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’ve already been there. It wasn’t so bad.” The light
turned green and he turned left, heading toward the highway that would take
them back to his house. “Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the ride? We’re
going to be in the car for a while.”
She turned her nose up at him in a gesture that was almost
comical and looked out the window. Her voice was haughty when she spoke. “If
you’re not going to take me back home this second, I’m not going to talk to you
for the rest of the ride.”
That was fine with him.
* * * * *
Oh, wasn’t this just perfect? It had been bad when
she couldn’t find a job, but being unemployed was nothing compared to being
spirited away to some isolated house in the middle of the woods with a lunatic
that thought he was a vampire.
She rubbed her wrists, still red and sore from the rope he’d
bound them with. He’d told her they wouldn’t hurt so much if she’d sat still
instead of trying to work her arms free, but did he really expect her to sit
there and allow him to kidnap her without trying to free herself? The fact that
she didn’t have a master’s degree did not make her an idiot.
At least he’d untied her hands when they arrived. If there
was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was being totally at the mercy of a
man—especially when the man outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds and was
probably in desperate need of his daily medication.
She looked out the window into the fading daylight. Even if
she had been able to get the window up, she wouldn’t have been able to do
anything about it. Her room was three stories up and rocks littered the ground
below. If she even survived a fall that far, she’d be too broken to get away.
Until she could find a way downstairs, she was stuck.
“Are you hungry, Amara?”
She spun, startled. She hadn’t even heard him come in. She
expected him to be standing in the doorway, but he was less than a foot away.
She backed up until her back was pressed against the cool window.
“Amara?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t seem to make a
sound. She shook her head, hoping he’d just go away. Food was the last thing on
her mind right now. She just wanted to be home, relaxing in a warm bubble bath
with a good book and a pint of her favorite ice cream.
“You don’t want anything?” His voice was low, almost
seductive in tone. She blinked, not sure where that thought had come
from. The last thing she needed to be thinking about was seduction.
Although, if it would save her life…
No. That was a bad idea, no matter how she looked at
it. Even if he wasn’t a total nutcase, she didn’t even know his name. “I’m not
really hungry. Being kidnapped by a man who threatens to suck the life out of
you tends to do that to a woman.”
He laughed. “Suck the life out of you? I would never do
that.”
“Isn’t that what vampires do?”
“Of course not.” He shook his head, his expression annoyed. “Why
is it that you humans will believe anything you read in a book or see in a
movie? In my opinion, real life experiences always count for so much more.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’re some kind of authority on the lives
of real vampires?” She snorted, getting a little irritated herself. “Tell
me this, hot shot. If you’re the vampire you seem to think you are, how could
you come to my house, in broad daylight, and push your way inside without