Bingo.
I hit send and waited.
“Yeah?” His voice came on the other end.
I ignored the little chill that ran down my spine and curled my toes. “Hey, are you busy?”
“Eminently.” His dry tone crackled down the line.
“You came across so much friendlier last week. My first impression was of a golden retriever.” My mouth often worked like a tube of toothpaste that someone twisted too hard. I opened the top and stuff just oozed out.
“Yeah, close association with you has been wearing on my genial nature.”
I nibbled on a nail before trying to get the conversation on the track I wanted. “Speaking of you and me, can we bump up the lesson? I’m available now.”
“Ditch the vampire already? I knew my rakish good looks would get to you.”
“Ha, ha.” I kept my voice dead-panned, but I smiled. He can't see me, so shut up. “And we can’t have lessons at Odd Stuff. The store is open.”
“Yeah, thought of that. Meet me at Peaches.”
“The strip club?” Doubt edged my voice.
“Yeah. Two reasons. It’s empty during the day and it has a dance floor. I have mats we can lay out so that when I throw you, you won't get too banged up. Unless you would rather get a hotel room and forget the whole self-defense thing in lieu of exploring our unique bond?”
“Peaches it is.” I disregarded Mr. Solar Soul mate’s comment about the hotel room as not worthy of a response. I tapped the phone off and headed back to Ashtabula as the snow started to fall.
The heavy flakes promised a white Christmas for sure.
~~~
Peaches looked even seedier during the day than when I had gone there in the dark. The cinder block building showed its age. A coat of white paint flaked off as if to disassociate itself from the shady interior. The rutted gravel parking lot had almost disappeared under the snow which collected on every visible surface. We were going to get hit hard.
The sky above darkened from the predicted storm, which would probably thrill my daughter if it caused an early release from school. I looked at my cell phone, relieved to see I still had a full charge, just in case.
Nothing else, no businesses or anything, remained around Peaches. Tannery Hill, the road that it was on, used to be all factories, but they stood abandoned now, signs of a dying economy. I had the uncomfortable thought that if I screamed, no one would hear me. My stomach flipped and my palms sweated a bit in worry. I rubbed my hands against my legs and forced myself to get moving.
Go, Janie. Way to be optimistic.
I hustled to the front door. The knob turned easily under my hand so I went in. The last time I had been there, a man inside checked ID's. No one waited to stop me so I went through the next door, too.
Someone had turned on the lights, but I didn’t see Chance. He had been there, though. He had pushed aside all of the tables and chairs and put down red mats. The better to hide the blood stains.
God, what was with me and my negativity?
Without warning, the room tilted and spun in crazy circles around me. I staggered, looking for a barstool to sit before I fell. I perched against the bar, as he had most of the chairs stacked on the tables either against the wall or on the T-shaped stage that the strippers danced on. He came out from a door behind the stage.
“Hey.” He didn’t look at me, seeming intent upon some task.
But I sure looked at him. He wore a white, button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and half the buttons undone. It draped negligently out of dark denim jeans that hung loosely around his legs. Chance usually dressed casually. Vance, on the other hand, did not. Vance looked like a British rock star, while Chance would seem mundane if I didn’t know better. I mentally chastised myself for comparing the two men and swallowed hard past the nausea caused by the dizziness.
“Hey.” I managed to get the word out despite the woozy sensation. I forced myself to stand up and walk to him, concentrating on each step so that I didn’t wobble like a drunk. Rule number one with the big, bad, monsters—show no weakness.
Chance still didn’t spare me a glance. Instead, he flipped the few remaining chairs onto the stage. “We’ll start out pretty simple. Defense, mostly. I figure, you won't be starting any fights in the near future, just fending them off.” He talked while he worked, all sleek and catlike in his movements, and never once glanced back, taking it for granted that if he talked, I listened.
I nodded, but even that made him seem to glow. I tried to focus, to force back whatever sickness overwhelmed me. He was really the last person that I wanted this to happen around. Chance had flip-flopped sides on me once already in our short acquaintance—one minute he helped me, the next he screwed everything up.
Unfortunately, Chance was nothing if not perceptive. When he looked at me finally, the damned cord flared to life. “You didn't feed.” His jewel bright eyes moved over me, and I could almost feel the heat of their touch on my overly sensitive skin. When he again met my gaze after his thorough perusal, my breath hitched in my throat.
“Um.” My brain seemed wadded in cotton.
“Okay, we agreed that I’m to help you learn to control yourself while feeding so you don't kill people at random. Also, during our lesson, the game rules go on pause, correct?”
“Um.” My eyes focused on his glowing skin, and I couldn’t organize my thoughts enough to make sense of what he had said. With him, a catch lurked in there somewhere, but I wasn’t able to figure out where.
“Yes, or no, Janie?” He spoke as if talking to a not-very-bright child.
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He breathed out a long sigh.
I studied the bit of his chest revealed by the shirt. It drew me like a magnet, and I struggled not to touch him.
“As you neglected to mention that you had not fed yet, and I did not think to ask, and as we are now in the middle of nowhere, I suggest I feed you.”
“That is a bad idea.” Especially since I cannot focus enough to want to keep my hands off you.
“Tell me a better one, and we’ll get right on it.”
He waited. If we had been in a movie, a soundtrack of crickets would have chirped like crazy to fill the otherwise silent background.
The problem lay in my muzzy, electricity-starved brain. “Um, you zap us somewhere?”
“Okay, say I ‘zap’ us somewhere? You have waited so long that you are starving, again, and you’ll kill someone, and then you’ll blame me when you get another of those lovely little stars.”
He had a point. Damn it. “Fine. Just this once. How often do I have to do this?”
“Keep a chart. Download a migraine journal. Something to keep track of how often you get hungry. Then we can get ahead of it.”
Dizzy again, I swayed toward him. “Um.” I caught myself and met his gaze. “How do we do this?”
“We should practice how you would do it on someone else so you learn how.” I saw the glint of his teeth flash and realized he had smiled and then stifled it.
“But my song doesn't affect you.” I sounded plaintive even to my own ears. I, like Mia, don't do sick well and this felt like sick.
“It’s for practice.”
“What do I sing?” I checked for something handy to lean on but he had cleared the chairs.
“Whatever. Just get it over with so we can get to your lesson.” His eyes glittered. If I didn't know better, I would almost think he was looking forward to my taking energy or light or whatever from him.
“I’ve got nothing.” People don't realize how hard it is to just break into a cappella song. It is really hard to do if you aren't some fake character in a musical. Gotta respect those Idol candidates.
He sighed again before he walked to the jukebox on the wall and pulled a dollar out of his pocket. He punched the buttons for a minute. He came back grumbling about how he couldn't believe that the prince of all the sirens had a daughter who couldn't think of a song to sing for her supper.<
br />
I almost laughed, but bit the sound back. I did not want to encourage camaraderie with Chance. He was too damn likeable by far, even with enmity between us.
Music filled the room. The song was Avril Lavigne’s. I wondered if he actually picked a song or if he hit buttons at random. I closed my eyes and began to sing along. As long as I could remember, I have loved to sing. It freed my mind. I came to the end of the first verse and my eyes drifted open.
Chance just stared at me.
I kept going.
He blinked before he started to move. He came close to me, encroached on my personal space, yet did not touch me. His emerald gaze locked with mine. “Open the fist.”
Why should I care, cause you weren't there when I was scared, I was so alone! I sang, and I opened the fist where I kept my siren power. Opening it released something that I kept sealed by force of will alone. Letting go was in itself a relief. My hair flew back, magic seeming to swell around me. Hungry magic, starving and ready to feed.
His fingers touched my neck, and I could feel my power grab onto him. Usually at that point, someone died. My power drained all that it touched. Actually, my power enthralled then drained, to be specific. Chance had immunity to the enthralling part, for some reason. His power, though, was also a whole lot more than I could take.
His touch sent me to my knees and my song stopped, abruptly cut off as all breath left my body in a whoosh. When hungry, I was comparative to say, a man dying of thirst. I would be happy with a bottle of Aquafina. Feeding from Chance was the equivalent of having my mouth pried open and shoved against the bottom of a water slide.
His power flowed into me and I took it. I really had no choice as there was no, 'I am full thanks' button on Chance. At least not one that I had found.
Eventually, the energy found a balance and evened out. After it started, he couldn’t seem to stop it either. My power pulled his as much as his shoved. Until it hit its balance point, we were both stuck.
We knelt in a glowing cocoon of light. His hands lay lightly on my neck, just below my hairline. At some point, his forehead had come to rest against mine. We both breathed heavily. The cocoon pulsed in time to our breathing, and I realized that even our breath was in tune.
His hot skin touched mine, electricity jumping between us, and he smelled like a spring storm—like that scent that hung in air and told farmers it would rain any moment. The sun could be shining, and yet the electricity and the rain scented the breeze—wet and power and grass and flowers all in one potent cocktail. Chance smelled like that moment. I wondered briefly what the clearly masculine man would think if he knew he smelled of flowers.
He chose that moment to move his thumbnail slightly. It grazed my neck where my Kermit the Frog sticker had been—I had a Kermie sticker on my neck to cover one of the three killer tattoo-like marks. They used to be great signs of beauty amongst my kind.
And they were kinky. When someone touched them, as he did, they sent a wave of need to a much lower portion of my anatomy. Thus, I had covered them with stickers. He had put his hands on my neck while I fed, so he must have picked it off.
Okay, that was a big, long, logical explanation for why I wore Kermit the Frog stickers. Normally, I thought the stickers were cute and they deadened the sensitivity to some extent. What did I actually think as Chance scraped a thumbnail across that erogenous zone?
Nothing.
I just leaned in and covered his lips with mine, as starved for the taste of him as I’d been moments before for his energy. Logic didn’t matter—the desire for the taste of him was basic.
But what I felt wasn’t simple.
Sated, full of power, I’d inhaled his lovely scent. Then he’d touched the tattoo and I ached. I needed to feel his lips beneath mine, desperately. I leaned in, and I pressed my mouth to his. When my lips meet Chance's, my very soul seems to come up my throat and caress his. For a moment, for an eternity, we are one being. Rent apart at the beginning of time, we melded together again as we were meant to be. Need and fire.
My entire body burned. I moved closer and he trembled. Or was that me? It didn't matter because we were together. We had come home.
Electrified, alive, yet aching for more, for something just out of reach.
His lips moved, his arms held me and I sighed. His breath whispered across my skin like silk. He understood how to touch me because he was a part of me. Had always been a part of me. He knew me.
I opened my eyes.
“No. Don't.”
I could not only hear the pain throb in his voice, I could feel it. We became one being while connected, so what hurt him hurt me as well. I don't know why, but the stab of it left me cupping his face, offering comfort to stop whatever hurt him. Why wouldn't he want me to look at him? I looked into his—
Glass green eyes. Alien eyes.
I didn't know him. He had sucked me into some freaky ass illusion again. “Dammit, Chance, you did it again!” My voice broke a little as I shrieked. I stood up. The pretty glowing cocoon shattered in a million fragments of light to fall at my feet on the red padded mat of the strip club floor.
Chance sat on the floor, one knee bent, elbow resting on it, hand woven into his hair.
I buried my fingers into my own hair, pressing the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. The pain of breaking apart from him was a physical tearing. It got worse each time we connected. My chest felt empty and tears threatened behind my eyes. What remained of the connection I had so jarringly cut off confirmed that the separating pained him as much as it hurt me.
“Why did you do that again?” I couldn’t figure out why he’d do it, since it left us both aching, empty, and I’d made my position on the whole soul mate crap pretty damned clear.
He jumped and glared at me. “I’m not doing it.”
“I don’t believe you and forcing the issue isn’t making me trust you, especially after the mess last week. I’m not your soul mate and no number of weird light bubble making is going to convince me otherwise.”
“Yeah, I am getting that.” His voice sounded rough, but I chose to ignore it. Everything he said and did were all part of the illusion with him. Another lie from a master liar. This man told me my daughter had been kidnapped because he decided I needed to be in my true form. I needed to embrace my identity as a siren. Yeah, as of last week, I still could have been a normal human and sucked down nachos for nourishment like everybody else instead of neurons.
“You picked off my sticker.” I stood and brushed my hands down my jeans as if to wipe the feel of him off my hands. It didn’t help. Wanting to touch him was an urge, a twitching itch just under the surface of my skin.
“Got me.” He held out his hands, attempting to look innocent, the snake.
“Why?” My voice faltered. I cleared my throat.
“Because I could.”
That I believed. He always went with his agenda first. “How do your schemes help me?” I shook my head, sure I looked as incredulous as I felt.
“Well, they may not help, but they’re fun, aren’t they?”
Typical.
“I’m leaving.” I turned to get my coat. Before I had moved two steps away, I landed on my face. I sat up, rubbing my nose. In some Jackie Chan move, Chance did a sweep thing that took my legs out from under me and he literally swept me off my feet.
“You still know nothing of self-defense.” His smirk rode his features like a mask, making him look almost rakish. His tousled red curls and kid in the candy jar expression would have seemed playful if not for the glint of steel in those freakish emerald eyes.
Apparently, I wasn’t leaving yet. Jerk. I rolled over and looked up at him. “Why would you want me for your soul mate anyway? You don’t even know me.” I blinked and hoped he didn’t notice the tears in my eyes.
“Who said it was something I wanted? Do you want it? It isn't about that. It’s about faith.”
And he went back to the conversation from the car that I didn’t get before and di
dn’t want to get now. Stupid stubborn man.
“I have faith that a reason exists for our connection. You, as mentioned, have no faith in anything. But I know what I desire, and you do too. You can’t be easy to kill, so let’s teach you how to protect yourself.”
And on that, at least, we agreed. I put a hand up and he pulled me to my feet.
~~~
An hour later, I hated that man more than I have ever hated anyone else I had ever met. I lay on my back and panted for about the hundredth time. My eyes closed, I seriously considered never getting back up.
“Again!” Like some evil drill instructor, he commanded my weak, caffeine addicted, nacho-loving body while not even having the decency to breathe heavy.
I opened one eye and looked at him. “You’re enjoying this, you sadistic bastard.”
He sneered at me.
I pulled myself to my feet.
“I am teaching you.” His voice held no emotion, his face a mask.
“You haven't even broken a sweat.” I tried not to sound like I was whining, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t pull it off.
“I’m in better shape than you are.” Rubbing a hand on his neck, he fought a smile.
“You threw me across the room. Twice.” This time, I accused him flat out.
“Onto a mat.” He was doing a really bad job of hiding his smile.
I blocked two hits and tried to knock him off his feet. He dodged and came around behind me to knock me off mine.
“Is this really this fun for you?” I sounded as bitter as I felt.
“No, I enjoy this.”
He pinned me beneath him. His entire body hovered less than an inch above mine. I held my breath. If I breathed deeply, I would bring us into contact. After an hour of torture from this man, though, I rightfully felt vindictive. He wouldn’t expect that. As he taught me, surprise could be a weapon.
I sucked in a deep breath, bringing all of me to touch all of him. At the same time, I lifted my head and tilted my lips to touch his in the barest whisper of a touch. I didn’t move away.
Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) Page 3
