“You’re early. Did you get some studying done this morning?”
Stepping out of the embrace she tried not to frown as she fumbled with the tie at her back. “Um, I didn’t really sleep well last night, so I figured I’d come in early. I was just distracted this morning and wasting time.”
He brushed her hands away, making quick work of tying the apron strings. In a husky voice he said, “I would have made sure you slept well if you were in my bed.”
“Yeah right.”
He turned her back around and smiled at her. “Well, not all night, but I would have made sure you were exhausted enough to sleep soundly. Hey, is that new perfume?”
She frowned and sniffed her skin. “No. I don’t have any perfume on.”
“You smell different.”
“Good or bad different?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned in and made a face as he inhaled her scent that told her he wasn’t a fan of whatever he smelled. “It’s musky, like cologne almost. Where were you?”
“Jeeze, don’t act so repelled.” She grabbed a handful of her shirt and brought it to her face. She took a deep breath through her nose. “I don’t smell anything. And what do you mean where was I? I was home.”
He sniffed her neck. “It’s not your clothing. It’s your skin. Did you get different soap?”
“No, same old stuff I always use.” She sniffed her arm and rolled her eyes. “You’re imagining things. I smell like I always do. Maybe it’s something in the bar.”
He leaned in to kiss her. “You’re probably…” Pausing halfway in, Kyle held his breath then retracted the motion. A small grunt rumbled in his throat as he inched back. He looked like he couldn’t stomach the way she smelled.
Aggravated, she sniffed herself again. “What? I showered less than an hour ago. My hair’s still wet. I don’t smell anything. Maybe you’re getting a cold or something.” Moving to the kitchen she found Karen, Jimbo’s sister. “Kar, do I stink?”
The round, older woman turned and frowned. “What?”
“Kyle says I stink.”
“I did not say you stink. I said you smell different.”
“Smell me,” Annalise insisted, stepping closer to Karen.
Karen sniffed. “You smell like you always do. Like honeysuckle.”
Turning back to Kyle she said, “Told you. God, way to give me a complex.”
Karen laughed as she turned back to the grill, and Annalise walked past her ignorant boyfriend, grumbling about boys with no manners as she went about readying the tables for the lunch crowd that would start coming in. However, by five o’clock Annalise was wondering if she did stink. Her tips sure did. Every time she took a customer’s order they seemed to take a whiff of her then retreat as far away from her as their seat would allow. Even Bruce, who was usually her flirtiest customer, seemed to have a difficult time keeping up a conversation with her and maintaining a straight face.
By seven, when the dinner rush was underway and all orders had been sent out, she ate a chicken wrap back in the kitchen as Karen did dishes. As she plucked a tomato from the wax paper lining the plastic basket, she frowned. “Can a spider bite make you odorous?”
“What? Did you get bit by a spider?”
“No, well I don’t think so. Maybe. I had a mark on my thigh this morning, but it’s already gone. It was sore, but when I checked it last it felt like nothing. But I had this weird dream last night about bloodsucking fish, and now I apparently stink.”
“Is there a red line by the bite? That could be a blood infection. You don’t want to mess around if you got bit by a recluse or something. They can do some nasty damage.”
“Oh, great. Well, how do I know if one bit me?”
Drying her hands the older woman said, “Let me see this bite.”
Annalise looked around to make sure they were out of sight. She stood in front of the swinging door so no one could burst in on them and quickly flipped up her apron and undid her shorts. She yanked them down and twisted her leg, exposing the area she thought the mark was on earlier that day. “It was right here.”
Karen ran a finger over the smooth skin and frowned. “I don’t see anything that looks abnormal. If something bit you it would most likely leave a mark. This skin looks fine.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t even see a break in the skin.”
Annalise exhaled a sigh of relief and did up her pants. “Thanks.”
“Don’t listen to Kyle. He’s just teasing. I think you smell lovely.”
Just then the door pushed in and whacked Annalise in the butt. “Lisey, you got a customer.”
Readjusting her apron she thanked the other woman again and grabbed her tray to go take her customer’s order and hopefully not get any more you smell like a dumpster looks. As she pushed out of the kitchen she reached in her pocket for her order tablet and froze. There was her big tipper, Adam. She smiled and straightened her shoulders. She noticed Kyle watching her and ignored him and quickly walked over to Adam’s table.
“Hi.”
“Hello, Annalise.”
Her belly flipped at the way he said her name again, Ahn-nah-leeze. “How are you, Adam?”
He smiled, his teeth perfectly white and straight. “You remember my name.”
“Of course. And by the way, I can’t accept this. I think you accidentally left a hundred on the table yesterday.” She placed the ninety-eight dollars on the table, and he stilled her hand with his own, stilling her heart in the process.
“There has been no mistake. I left that for you. It is your tip.”
She stared at him, apparently no longer able to blink, and gave a humorless chuckle. “Adam, a tip is usually fifteen percent of the bill. A good tip is twenty percent. Your tab was two dollars. Forty cents would have sufficed. A dollar I could have accepted, but not all this.”
“I want you to have it.”
“I can’t accept. It isn’t right.”
He smiled at her. “What is wrong about it? It is my money. I do not need it. I want you to spend it on something you want or need.”
Annalise thought about her school loans, her rent, the broken tail light on the Steaming Turd. Why was she turning down this money again? Oh, right, because it was ninety-seven ways inappropriate. She looked into Adam’s dark-silver eyes and paused. She inhaled quickly as a strange sensation prickled under her scalp, tingles fluttering down her spine.
“Take the money, ainsicht. I want it to be yours.”
She exhaled and blinked several times. She was going to say something, it was on the tip of her tongue, but her thoughts seemed suddenly disorganized and she couldn’t remember. “Okay. Thank you.” Tucking the money safely in her apron, she smiled. “What can I get you?”
“I would enjoy the beverage you offered me last night.”
“Okay and this one’s on me.” She smiled and turned back toward the bar, relieved Adam did not seem to find anything about her scent repulsive.
* * * *
Adam sipped his beer and watched Anna flutter around the tavern, smiling as she worked. She was lovely. He could not wait until he visited her again this evening. She was…magnificent. The unique flavor of her blood still thrummed through his veins, the memory of her sweet honey still lingered, fresh in his mind. He needed to taste her again.
He had worried about leaving her. After he had replaced her undergarments and covered her back up, he’d returned to his watch in the hall, needing to guard her from any predators lurking in the night. He was not comfortable with her living in such a shifty building. As the residents began to awaken, he was able to pick up on some of her neighbors’ emotions. Not all of them were pleasant. He did not feel safe with her residing in such a place.
He pressed his luck and waited to find his own shelter just minutes before dawn, and it was a good thing he held off. Just as he was preparing to find shelter he heard her scream. Panicked, he quickly released the lock on her door and bolted into her bedroom
. She was covered in sweat and tears as she tossed and turned under her bed sheet. She was having a nightmare. Adam had instinctively pulled her into his arms and held her tight, whispering soothing words in her ear until she calmed down.
He wondered what could have frightened her so. He was unable to read her thoughts, but he could feel her emotions, more so since he’d drank her blood. In that moment, his mate was terrified. He’d been able to hear her heart racing and feel the organ pounding where her fragile spine rested along his arm. She seemed to calm quickly once he began reassuring her that he was there and she was safe. This pleased him very much. Although he kept her in a dreamlike state, the fact that she drew tranquility from his presence was a good sign.
It was eight thirty. Her shift would be over soon. Adam wanted to do something that impressed her. He had been watching the men of the bar use the large music box by the door all evening. He reached in his pocket and pulled out two coins. Time to take a look.
The box had a rolling wheel that flipped pages of pictures. Many pictures featured men and women singing or playing instruments. He assumed this was what the music artists looked like. Next to the pictures were listings of what Adam assumed were song titles. He pressed a key with a black arrow that sent the pages rolling to the left.
He paused when he came across an album cover that was red and said The Beatles at the top. In the photograph were four gentlemen staring over a railing of some sort. He read down the list of song titles to the right and thought back to Annalise’s words in his dream. She had sung a song from this collection. What did she call it? There it was, “In My Life.” He slid his two coins in and pressed the number he hoped would play that song.
* * * *
Annalise finished tidying up her waitress station before her shift ended. Kyle would be working until close tonight, which didn’t bother her since he’d kind of hurt her feelings with the whole ‘you stink’ comment. She had to seriously get some studying done anyway. She wiped down the empty booths she could get to and carried an empty ketchup bottle over to her station as she hummed along with the end of CCR’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” Ten minutes and she would be out of here. It was looking up to be a decent night.
As the song changed, she tightened the lid of the ketchup. When the first guitar notes played from the jukebox, she froze. Shivers ran over her skin as she suffered the oddest sense of déjà vu. She knew the song. It was one of her favorites. However, this certain song plucked at a recent memory she couldn’t place. She shut her eyes and let the sound of the beautiful words sink in.
Deep in her mind she saw her hands bathed in sunshine, a thread of her copper hair curled between her knuckles and teasing over a quilt. Her skin prickled as something soft and light climbed under her arm. It was such a vivid memory Annalise actually touched her wrist as if to find a trace of the downy fur. Her fingertips tickled with a playful pat, pat, pat of soft padded paws—a kitten, tiny and gray with a soft, pink nose and fuzzy, white feet.
Her confusion at the clear image did not stop the soft smile that curled her lips. She heard herself singing the lyrics and saw blades of grass folded under the almost inconsequential weight of the quilt. Where was this memory coming from?
“I enjoy it when you sing.” The voice rang through her mind, carried as if it was sailing on a breeze with autumn leaves, yet an aura of warmth sunk deep into her right side as if its speaker was right beside her.
Her brow creased in concentration and as if tattooed on her tongue, the words, “Music is something I think I will miss,” whispered past her lips. Where was this script coming from? A memory of herself, weightless and light, as if she were floating away, tickled her mind. All sounds around the bar disappeared. Was this a dream she had forgotten? Who was the other in the dream? It was a man, and his voice was foreign yet familiar to her in some surreal way.
She followed the fast fleeting threads in her mind and sensed, not five seconds after she saw them, they were already slipping through her grasp. A familiar panic grabbed hold of her, a sense of slipping away from this peaceful place. As if she were an outsider looking in on some secret garden of tranquility, she heard her voice from her dream echo through her head, “Come find me, Adam. And we will dance to The Red Album.”
With a tiny shock of electricity zapping through her veins, she straightened. Her eyes opened. She watched her shaky fingers release the ketchup bottle in front of her and slowly turned. It was him, Adam, the man from her dream, standing not twenty feet away from her, directly across the bar, watching her as she turned and fully faced him. What was going on?
He stepped in her direction, and her feet began to carry her toward the center of the bar. His eyes never left her, and the intensity of his silver stare became an anchor to something buried deep within her. It was as if he knew her dream, knew this song was for her, played it intentionally for her ears. She shook her head slowly as they came face-to-face. He smiled that perfect smile she’d noticed earlier. Who was this guy and how had she dreamed him up weeks before she ever saw him? He must have come into the bar some time ago and her subconscious must have remembered him. That was it.
He reached for her fingers hanging low by her side and entwined his hand with hers. It felt warm and right. A sense of coming home washed over her. She was somehow apart from the rest of the world, but warm and safe. He raised their entwined hands, and the warmth of his other palm heated through the denim covering her hip. Somehow her other hand found a place high on his broad shoulder. He pulled her closer, and she went without objection, stepping into a slow roll. She was suddenly dancing with the strange man who’d left her a very generous tip.
He held her close as they twirled slowly lost in space. He smelled of incredible spices and the heat of his body close to hers seemed to singe right through her clothing. She looked into his silver eyes, her expression one of bewilderment. He smiled, making her feel that everything would be okay. As the final lyric was sung and the music faded away, their steps slowly yielded. She did nothing but stare up at him, her heart was beating erratically.
Just as she was about to ask him WTF, the sounds of the bar came whooshing back to her. There was an odd quiet over the click clack of the pool table balls pinging and sinking into their places, the sound of the restroom door swishing open as someone walked through it, and the sizzle and clatter that filtered through the order window from the kitchen. Jimbo’s was not the type of bar patrons danced in. Embarrassed, she took a step back.
What was she doing? Guilt washed over her, and she glanced at Kyle behind the bar. He was watching her with an unreadable expression. One of his hands held the tap as another held an empty tumbler, as if her actions had caused him to forget himself and simply watch whatever the hell she was doing.
She looked back at Adam and realized how wrongly what they had just done could be interpreted. Taking another step away from the tall, dark stranger, then another, unable to look at Kyle again, she quickly turned. She yanked off her apron somewhere along the way past the tables and tossed it onto the waitress station just before she ducked into the ladies’ room.
Slamming the door closed, Annalise pressed a hand to her forehead and leaned her back into the cool tile. She focused on the steady drip, drip, drip of tap water leaking past the loose washer of the faucet and plunking into the rusted basin of the sink. She pushed away how amazing those two minutes of being held by strange over-tipper guy felt and forced herself to think about how she could explain her actions to Kyle.
She moved her hand away from her eyes when she heard the door to the restroom push open. Kyle stood there, still wearing the same confused expression. “Wanna tell me what that was about?”
She shook her head. “I…I don’t know. I just heard the song and the next thing I knew I was dancing with him.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s just a customer.”
“Are you sure?”
There was a long moment of silence. Kyle eyed her skeptically. “What
else would he be?”
“You two were not dancing like strangers at a bar. You were dancing like long-lost lovers.”
“That’s ridiculous. I never saw him before last night.”
“Look, Lisey, if you wanna start seeing other people, you need to let me know. It’s one thing to adjust the rules of the game as we go. It’s another thing altogether to break the rules.”
She tried not to get irritated at Kyle’s easygoing acceptance of her wanting to see other people. Not that she wanted to, but the way he acted like he would be okay with it so long as she was upfront stung a little. Maybe he was bluffing. Surely it would bother him if she suddenly wanted to share her body with another man. Unless… maybe he wanted to sleep with some other woman. Her mind began embarking on a roller coaster of jealousy and self-doubt, a ride that usually stopped off at irrational bitch station. She glared at him. “What if I said I wanted to? You wouldn’t care?”
“Of course I would care, but I would be pissed if you lied to me,” he snapped.
Her posture shifted defensively. “And what about you, Kyle? Do you wanna see other people?”
“I’m not the one slow dancing with some chick in front of you in the middle of the bar!”
“I don’t even know the guy!”
“Well, it looked like you did. Not only that, it looked like you didn’t have a boyfriend. You want to be single, fine, but how about sending me a memo first?”
“You’re the one sounding like you don’t want a relationship anymore. This morning you tell me I stink, and now you’re making a big deal about nothing. Maybe you’re the one who has something they need to get off their chest.” Something she said earned a deep scowl. He tilted his head and stepped closer. “Wha—what are you doing?” He sniffed her neck. Was he friggen’ kidding?
Called to Order [The Order of Vampyres 1] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 9
