Fiasco? I cracked open eyelid number two. “First of all, my dating service isn’t a fiasco. I don’t just hook up vamps. I hook up weres and warlocks, too. And second, my business has nothing to do with the fact that I’m lying here catatonic. I’m practically a vegetable because I’m married to Remy.” As the words rolled out of my mouth, my mind registered the truth and my stomach hollowed out. My gaze zig-zagged to the tall, scrumptious police chief standing a few feet away. I stared into his green eyes and my stomach hollowed out. “We are, aren’t we? We’re,” I cleared my suddenly dry throat, “we’re actually married?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother piped in. The poppppp of the champagne cork punctuated her statement and sent a bolt of pain right between my eyes. “Born vampires don’t get married.”
Relief spiraled through me.
“You’re committed.” She poured herself a glass of bubbly liquid. “Marriage is a human term. We born vampires commit to one another.” She held up her champagne in salute. “For eternity.”
The room started to spin again. “I think I’m going to throw up.” I forced a deep breath. Not that I needed to breathe, but desperate times called for desperate measures and I needed all the help I could get. “This is definitely the worst night ever.”
“Nonsense.” My mom set the bottle aside and took a sip from her glass. “I’ve waited for this night my entire afterlife. I finally have the perfect son-in-law. Priscilla Farquois will rip out her eyes when she hears the news. She just knew her darling Beatrice would pledge her loyalty first, but we beat her to the punch. I can’t wait to get back and startdthck and planning the party. I’ve talked with Remy’s mother and she’s thrilled. She’s already called the Fairfield Country Club about the reception and set up a meeting with their special events coordinator...”
My mother ranted on between swigs of champagne and I closed my eyes again and tried to get a grip.
Committed.
I was freakin’ committed.
Not that I had anything against pledging my undying loyalty to another vampire. I’d always pictured myself getting hitched and settling down one day. But not with Remy.
Not that he wasn’t hot. He was tall with green eyes and a smokin’ body. And he knew his Gucci from his Gap. And he had a big enough bank account that I wouldn’t have to worry over a credit card bill ever again.
But the thing was, we were friends. I’d seen him with marbles up his nose and he’d seen me in bloomers and buckled shoes. We grew up together in the old country (i.e. the French countryside). He threw spiders at me like an annoying older brother and I nailed him with rocks a la the typical pain-in-the-ass kid sister. The point—we’re practically family. Minus the DNA, of course. And the guilt. While I can tolerate a conversation every now and then, I wouldn’t want to get hot and naked with him.
Not that sex was everything in a relationship.
Okay, so sex was everything for us born vamperes. Our entire existence revolved around the big S. We were conceived via sex. We stopped aging when we lost our virginity. Even our value as vampires was based on the ability to do the deed. A male BV’s attractiveness was measured by his fertility rating. Meanwhile, a female BV boasted a little digit called the Orgasm Quotient. The higher the number, the more fertile the female, and therefore, the more sought after. Sex was everything to us.
But sex with Remy?
We’re talking major ick.
Even more, I already had a significant other. I’d come out of the coffin with Ty and introduced him to my parents just a few weeks ago (hence the Xanax). My folks were still in denial, but that didn’t make the truth any less true.
Ty and I were officially together.
A bonafide C-O-U-P-L-E.
And I’d had sex with someone else.
I think.
My brain did a quick skid and shifted into reverse until I was back at the hotel bar where it had all started. I remembered the first screaming orgasm. The second. The third. A few rounds at the roulette table. A fourth drink. A fifth drink. Things got really blurry after that and I saw only bits and pieces. A fat man in a white jump suit. A woman playing an organ. My mother looking deliriously smug from her spot on the front row. Mandy checking my head for a fever. Nina crying hysterically thanks to her raging hormones. Remy carrying me into the elevator. My top coming off. My pants sliding down.
And?
And that was it. No shouting his name or clawing his back or bursting into a thousand tiny pieces. The next thing I knew I’d opened my eyes to find a naked Remy in my bathroom and the worst hangover of my life.
I’d cheated and I couldn’t even remember it.
If I’d cheated.
Hope blossomed. Crazy I knew considering the odds were soooo stacked against me. But hey, I loved Ty. And while I’m not the nicest person at times (think a half-off sale at Nordstrom’s and me wielding a Louis Vuitton), I wasn’t a two-timing cheat.
Was I?
Panic bolted through me and I sat up. My head pounded and the bed seemed to shake. My watery gaze scrambled around the room. “I need to talk to Remy.”
“Of course you do.” Nina gave me a wink. “We’ll get out of here so you guys can have a few minutes to talkti>.”
“No, really. I just want to talk to him.”
“You talk away.” My mother set her glass aside and gave Remy a nudge. “My daughter wants to talk to her new eternity mate and finally end the lonely, grandchild-less hell that has been my existence for the past several hundred years.” She swept a glance around the room. “Everybody out. Now.”
A split second later blessed silence settled in and I found myself alone with Remy.
He sank down on the edge of the bed beside me and started unbuttoning his shirt.
I scrambled backward. “What are you doing?”
“I thought you wanted to talk?”
“I do. That means I say something. You say something. I say something else. You tell me this was all a mistake. Talk.”
“Oh.” He started re-buttoning. “I just figured you wanted a repeat of last night.”
My stomach dropped a good two feet. “So we really did it?”
“Of course we did it.” He seemed to think. “I mean, I’m pretty sure we did it. You were naked. I was naked. We got naked together.” His gaze met mine. “We had to have done it, right?”
“Not necessarily.” I gave him a hopeful smile. “Maybe all we did was get naked.”
“We’re vampires, Lil. Do you honestly think we got naked and didn’t do anything?”
He had a point. BVs lived to do the nasty.
At the same time, I was sinking fast. I needed a lifeline. “It is possible. Maybe you passed out and I passed out before we really got to the good stuff. Maybe that’s why we can’t remember doing it. Maybe there’s nothing to remember.” My gaze collided with his. “You have to have sex to seal the deal. If we didn’t consummate, then the whole thing is null and void. No sex. No deal.”
“Is the thought of spending eternity with me really that bad?” Before I could shout an enthusiastic hell, yeah! he rushed on, “Come on, we’re perfect for each other. You know it. I know it. Our families know it. It’s always been just a matter of time before we stopped fighting the inevitable. Let’s end all the controversy and just accept the fact that we belong together. It’s our destiny.”
I eyeballed him. “You’re scared shitless of your mother, aren’t you?” I finally asked.
He nodded. “And yours. But even if I wasn’t afraid to throw a wrench into their party plans, I’d still want to go through with this. I’m through with the endless stream of women. It’s time for me to settle down. To do my duty and carry on the Tremaine name. Why not with you?”
Because you don’t love me and I don’t love you. It was there on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back because a)Remy wasn’t exactly his usual brotherly self at the moment(I could tell by the hard gleam in his eyes and the crazed way he was looking at me—as if I were the
last Krispy Kreme and he was running a quart low on insulin) and b) my throat was suddenly too tight to talk.
I was committed to Remy.
Worse, Remy wanted to be committed to me which meant that he wasn’t about to deny what happened last night.
If it had, indeed, happened.
The doubt held on tight, refusing to let go despite the fact that Remy patted my ass as if he’d gotten to know it extremely well over the past twenty-four hours. “We’d better get going. We’ve got a plane to catch, otherwise we’ll be stuck in this godforsaken town another night.” He pushed to his feet. “You get dressed and I’ll take care of checkout. Meet me downstairs in ten.”
I nodded and watched him leave. And then I did what any new bride would do under the circumstances—I reached for the newly opened bottle of champagne and guzzlb) ne and ed as fast as I could.
CHAPTER THREE
Twenty minutes and half a bottle of Cristal later, I walked out of the hotel room. While I could no longer feel my pounding head (yay), I was still fully tuned in to the guilt and angst (not so yay).
What had I done?
My hands trembled as I hit the button for the elevator.
More importantly, what was I going to do?
The doors swished open. I stepped inside and pressed for the lobby. I needed a plan. I couldn’t just accept my new status as a committed vampire, ditch my old life and head back to Connecticut as the new Mrs. Remy Tremaine.
At the same time, I was the new Mrs. Remy Tremaine (in the eyes of my family and every other BV on the planet). I’d said vows. I’d made a commitment. I’d stripped off my undies.
I glanced around and a strange feeling crept over me. This was it. Ground zero. Remy and I had had hot, hunka-hunka burnin’ sex in this very elevator and sealed our fate for eternity.
Probably.
Maybe.
My mind raced back through the previous night, rifling through the images, searching for the crash and burn that had doomed me to coupled bliss. Sex was numero uno to a vampire. We thrived on it. Even sloshed out of my skull, I would have remembered the good stuff. Him kissing me. Me moaning into his mouth. Him exploding inside of me. Me exploding around him. Me actually liking said explosion.
Unless I hadn’t liked it.
What if Remy had been a total dud and I had blocked it out on purpose because it had been too anti-climactic to even contemplate?
“Fake it.”
The familiar voice jarred me out of my mental interrogation. I whirled to find Mona in all her prom night glory leaning against the elevator wall. Mud smudged her left cheek and stained the neck-line of the fashion disaster she was wearing.
“Where’s Dewey?” I eyeballed the other four feet of empty space.
“I ditched him in the mud room. He’s probably wading through the graveyard dirt right about now.” At my surprised expression, she added, “It’s imported from one of the mass graves in Europe. Ixtab says it does wonder for the pores.” Her gaze met mine. “I hate Dewey, and I really hate that I have to spend the rest of eternity with him. Which is why I feel for you, girlfriend.” She leaned forward and her transparent finger touched the Emergency Stop button on the elevator. Cables groaned and the car came to a jarring stop.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to help you. Listen,” she leveled a stare at me, “if you really want out of this marriage, you should fake it and get the hell out. He’ll probably cry a little because he thinks he failed you and he might even get mad because it’s a definite ego deflator, but then he’ll accept it, move on and bam, you’re free.”
“Fake it?” Now there was a word that wasn’t in the BV vocabulary. We didn’t fake. We didn’t have to fake. “It’s too late for that. We already did the deed last night.”
“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about the big D. Death. Destruction. If you kick the bucket, it’s over, right? He can’t very well reproduce with you if you’re just a big pile of ashes.” She leaned closer and her voice lowered a notch. “There’s a guy here at the hotel who’s a hit man for some of the Vegas mob. He also does work for a few Others who are into the mob scene, like Jimmy Montana.”
“The Jimmy Montana?” She nodded and my eyes widened. Jimmy Montana was leader of the entire werewolf nation. I’d never actuallry y met him since I’d led somewhat of a sheltered existence up until I’d opened Dead End Dating, but I’d heard my father gripe about him more than once. About how he was a prime example of why all weres should be neutered and spayed, and how it was no wonder Viola was such a pain in the ass.
Viola, my father’s next-door neighbor, was president of the Connecticut chapter of the Naked and Unashamed Nudist Sisterhood (a group of female werewolves that met weekly at her Fairfield estate) and a democrat, which meant she had a double bulls-eye on her back as far as my father was concerned.
They had a love/hate relationship. She loved rubbing his nose in the fact that she’d been awarded the prize-winning azalea bushes that sat on the property line separating their estates, and he’d drank enough Hater-aid to make a small remote-controlled nuclear device to wipe out said bushes and all the vegetation surrounding her swimming pool.
Long story short—BVs good, weres bad.
“Jimmy has a suite here,” Mona went on, “and Ralph—that’s the hit man’s name—does jobs for him. Ralph mainly works over Others who owe Jimmy money, but he’s got alimony payments out the ass so I’m sure he’d love a side job. For the right price, I bet you could persuade him to trade in his .45 for a wooden stake.”
“You want me to pay someone to stake me?”
“To make it look like he staked you. He wouldn’t actually do it, silly. Just make sure you explain the details to him really loudly. He’s a little hard of hearing. Jimmy sent him to collect money from this were deer last month. Jimmy said to break the guy—meaning a couple of bones. Ralph thought Jimmy said steak him and so he trussed him up, sent him to a game processing company and had him sliced, diced, packaged and frozen.”
“That’s awful.”
“That’s why you have to make sure he can hear your instructions. Better yet, text him. Ralph never leaves home without his iPhone.” When I didn’t look the least bit psyched by her brainstorm, she shrugged. “You have a better idea?”
She had me there.
But while her plan sounded good in theory, it was still too far out to even contemplate. Seriously. I wouldn’t just be faking my death with Remy. I’d be faking my death to the entire BV world. I’d basically have to cut all ties, disappear, assume a new identity and start over. No Dead End Dating. No friends. No family, in particular a grandchild-obsessed mother nagging me every time I turned around.
All right, so maybe it wasn’t that far out. People disappeared all the time and changed their identity. I had no doubt I could visit theespionagestore.com, pop a new name and some stats into my shopping cart and be in and out in less than a minute. And with free shipping.
I entertained the notion a few moments before accepting the truth--I liked being Lil Marchette. Sure, I had a ridiculously long name and crazy ass relatives and a Visa bill that would make Donald Trump cringe, but overall, I was good. Happy. “I can’t just abandon everything. I’ve got my business. Responsibilities. Ty.” His image rushed at me and my stomach hollowed out. “He’s my boyfriend. I can’t disappear without explaining things to him.”
“So you’re going to tell him?”
“Are you crazy? I can’t tell him I cheated and committed myself to another vampire. He’ll break up with me.” I shook my head. “I have to figure out something else.”
“File for a divorce.”
“There is no divorce for a born vampire. Once we consummate, it’s forever.”
My head started to pound again despite the numbing effects of the champagne. Guilt pushed and pulled inside of me, warring with the tiniest hope that maybe it was all a big mistake. Logically I knew that I hutenew thaad more-likely-than-not slept with Remy. I’
d been drunk enough to commit myself to him in the first place. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I’d had a lightning bolt moment and put on the brakes just before sliding into home plate.
Still, I had no proof. No clear memory. No feelings or images or YouTube video to remind me of the biggest mistake of my afterlife.
The moment the thought struck, my gaze snagged on the black reflective square staring back at me from the keypad. A red light blinked above the square next to a You are Under Surveillance tag.
“There’s a security camera in here,” I blurted.
“Duh.” She shrugged. “They’re all over this place. This is a hotel and casino. One of the biggest moneymakers in town. The staff monitors everything that goes on.”
Meaning they saw it all. A woman counting cards at the Hold ‘Em table. A man switching die at the roulette wheel. Two vampires having crazy monkey sex on the elevator.
“If we really did do it, it would have been recorded,” I heard myself say. Desperation rushed through me and my heart started to pound. “I have to see the footage.” My gaze caught Mona’s. “Do you know where they keep stuff like that?”
“I like the fake death idea better, but to each his own.” She shrugged. “There’s a security station on the second floor.”
I punched the button and braced myself as the elevator starting moving again. This was it. My chance to prove my innocence.
If my gut was right.
And if not?
“What’s Ralph’s cell phone number?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Whoever came up with the phrase Everything is Bigger in Texas had clearly never been to Sin City. We’re talking mega-sized hotels, massive casinos, gargantuan ice sculptures, fifty foot breakfast buffets, Quadruple D pole dancers. Vegas was the mother of big and outrageous.
So I shouldn’t have been the least bit surprised when the elevator doors whisked open and I found myself staring up at a freakin’ monster of a security guard.
He was as wide as he was tall with a shiny bald head and a thick meaty neck. A black suit hugged his massive body and a frown pinched his dark brows.
Here Comes the Vampire (Dead End Dating) Page 2
