She stared at him, and he could see some of the defensiveness fade from her bright blue eyes.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “Yes, I would.”
“So why don’t we call a truce for now.”
She considered him, then nodded. “Truce.”
He nodded, too, and pushed open the door to the main rooms of Zelda’s house. Even though Drake had never been here before, since he liked to avoid the whole domme thing, it wasn’t hard to find the front door.
When they stepped out onto the street, Josie Lynn paused, looking around as if she was trying to get her bearings.
“Don’t worry, I know where we are.”
She shook her head, still looking around. “It’s not that. It’s just—I didn’t expect it to be nighttime.”
“Of course, it’s nighttime,” he said automatically, then realized that wouldn’t make sense to her. She had the luxury of being awake either night or day, unlike him.
She turned her quizzical gaze toward him. “Why ‘of course’?”
“Well, I just figured we had to have been out for a long time, you know, since we were drugged.”
She seemed to accept his explanation. She started down the sidewalk, and he fell into step beside her.
“So where should we go first?” he asked. “Is your place nearby? Do you want to change?”
“I don’t live walking distance from here,” she said, then looked down at herself. “I think this looks all right.”
Drake nodded. His shirt as a dress was more than all right. She’d rolled back the sleeves so the ruffles at the wrist were less noticeable. She’d also undone a couple of buttons to give glimpses of her pale neck and chest, while only hinting at her full breasts under the cascade of linen and lace that was cinched at the waist with a wide belt. The hem fell a few inches above her knees, far longer than Zelda’s wedding dress, and on her feet, she somehow still had the black utility-style boots that had been a part of her work uniform.
Josie Lynn looked cute and sexy and kind of hip. Even the boots worked with the outfit.
But he’d already learned where saying anything flirty would get him: standing outside the walls she put around herself. So he simply nodded. “It looks fine.”
She inspected it once more, tugging down the hem a little, then said, “I’d like to go back to Gautreaux’s. I want to see if my stuff is still there, and maybe if it is, we could test the punch bowl or glasses for traces of whatever drug was used.”
“Good idea.”
They headed down St. Louis toward Chartres, where the reception venue was.
“If it is the band of marauding Chers who did this, do you think robbery was their main goal?”
Drake shrugged. “Who can know what marauding Chers want, but since we don’t have any of our valuables, it seems likely.”
“But why were we missing our clothing, too?”
“Well, I don’t know if you recall how you felt before you blacked out, but I do, and I definitely wanted to be doing things that required me losing my clothes.”
Josie Lynn didn’t say anything, but her deep pink blush was answer enough.
They both fell silent.
“Do—do you think we did have sex?” she asked, her voice quieter than normal. Her cheeks pinker still.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I think it’s very possible. What do you think?”
When she fell quiet again, he glanced at her profile. Her lips were pressed firmly together, and she blinked several times as if she was fighting tears. That was answer enough, too.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask if she felt different, if she thought she could even tell, physically, if something might have happened. But her forlorn expression stopped him. He reached out to touch her arm. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I—I just hope all my catering stuff is still at Gautreaux’s.”
Drake didn’t doubt she was concerned about that, but he knew that wasn’t what had her ready to cry. He tried not to be offended that the idea of possibly having had sex with him brought her to tears. After all, she had made it clear, pre-drugging, that she wasn’t interested in him, and if they had done the dirty, the act hadn’t been her choice, but because of the effects of the drug.
He had to admit that he didn’t like the idea either.
“You know what, we probably didn’t,” he said with feigned decisiveness.
“You don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “Nope, and since we don’t remember what happened anyway, I think we might as well assume nothing did.”
She didn’t say anything more, and he got the distinct feeling that plan didn’t soothe her as much as she’d like.
Chapter Nine
VOULEZ-VOUS COUCHER AVEC MOI?
“SO how do you think we wound up wearing handcuffs?” Lizette asked Johnny as they sat outside of Saxon’s apartment on two rickety iron chairs on the narrow balcony. The drink he had handed her was resting in her grip, and she had her legs crossed, giving her appearance a sense of propriety she didn’t feel. But it was actually pleasant to finally stop tromping around and just sit in the warm air and try to calm down. The courtyard was completely empty, only two apartments having access to it, and it felt safe to Lizette.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Not normally prone to hysterics, she had been quite close to having a complete breakdown when she had seen the picture of Johnny biting her neck. It had looked so … sexy. So … public. “Were we wearing handcuffs in the photo?”
“No. So I guess we can still assume that it happened at Zelda’s later in the night.”
“Perhaps you meant it as a flirtation.”
“Hey!” He smiled at her. “How do you know it was my idea? Maybe it was your way of keeping me close at hand until you could get all your questions about ‘The List’ answered.”
It was clear what he thought of her job. It should have bothered her more than it actually did. But he sounded more teasing than anything else, and she had to admit that was something she appreciated about Johnny. He didn’t seem prone to hysterics either, and he definitely took the approach that life was meant for laughing. Lizette found that a refreshing change from the ancient and dusty vampires in the VA who clung to brooding traditions. To them, shopping for a new coffin was a hot night on the town. Johnny didn’t even have a coffin. She knew because it wasn’t on the list.
“I highly doubt that I would resort to handcuffs. Then again, I can’t say I behaved the way I normally would have last night.” She stared down into her glass. “I have compromised this case, you know. I will have to return to Paris and have it reassigned. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to be the one investigating your identity when I have … when we …” Lizette forced herself to say it. “When we have been sexually intimate.”
“At least you can verify my penis size. I’m sure the VA knows that, too.”
She wanted to be offended, but it was probably true. Lizette laughed. “I would if I could remember.”
“Want to check now?” Johnny put his hand on the button of his jeans, clearly joking.
“No!” She said the first thing that came to mind, a joke she normally would have kept to herself. But she let it out. “I don’t have a ruler on me, so what good would that do? Though I suppose I could gauge it with my mouth.”
Johnny choked on his blood, actually spraying some across the banisters of the balcony. “Holy crap. I cannot believe you just said that.”
She had her moments. “I can have a sense of humor as well, Johnny. If your name is really Johnny.”
He gave her an eye roll. “Well, how else can we verify that I’m Johnny Malone? There has to be a way. I don’t want you to get in trouble because my friends throw weddings with seriously spiked punch. I can answer any question you have, because I am me, you know.”
She did believe him actually. He was too well-known by the other vampires, too aware of everything in the apartment, too casually comfortable. Unles
s he was an astonishing con artist, he was in fact, Johnny Malone. “What is your birthday?”
“That’s easy. Born April 17, 1899 in Cork to Mary and John Malone. My sister Stella was born two years later, followed by three girls, one born each year. Molly, Maggie, and Maeve. My mom had an M thing going there for some reason. She and my three little sisters all died in the influenza outbreak of 1918, and my father buried his grief in the bottle. A few years later Stella and I came to America, and fell in with the mob in Chicago after I proved a dab hand with me fists.” He turned up his slight accent until it was thickly Irish, his fists in front of him. He gave her a mock jab with a grin. “It kept us from starving. Until it also got us caught in the line of a machine gun. Woke up a vampire, thank God. I wasn’t ready to go out yet, you know what I mean?”
She nodded. “I do.” She had seen an extraordinary amount of death. It had made her even more fearful of dying.
“When were you born?”
It wasn’t relevant to his case, of course, and she never shared her personal details with anyone outside of the inner council, but he had been so open, and she was feeling oddly melancholy, so she told him the truth. “I was born in 1770 in Lyons, France, though my family spent most of the year outside of Paris at the court of Versailles with the royal family. My parents were murdered during the Terror and I was a witness to it. I myself was scheduled for decapitation at the guillotine, but the blade was dull and did not complete the execution. However, I was tossed in the pile of bodies and well on my way to death, though I have no memory of it. But I awoke as I am today, a vampire by the name of Jean-Baptiste having saved me.”
“Jesus. That’s horrible.”
“Yes.” Lizette drained her glass. “But no more horrible than your history. You lost your family as well.”
“I did.” Johnny leaned forward, his palm on his knee, the hand connected to hers dangling by her side. “Stella and I never knew who turned us. We just woke up frightened and undead. Was Jean-Baptiste a good mentor?”
“Yes.” Her throat felt a little tight, as it always did when she thought of him. “We spent a century together.”
“As friends or as something more?”
“More. Much more.” He had not been the most affectionate of men, but he had been loyal, steady. He had taken care of her. Which seemed ironic now that she had become so independent in the hundred years since his death. She no longer needed that from a man. But she did miss the companionship.
“I can tell by the look on your face you either broke up or he died. I’m sorry.” His fingers enclosed around hers on their mutually dangling hands.
“Thank you. Yes, he died.” Though she wasn’t going to talk about it. Lizette looked over at Johnny, studying the straight line of his jaw. There was something that bothered her if he was telling the truth and he was Johnny. “Why did you fake your death?”
The look he gave her was sheepish and uncomfortable, but she just waited and he finally spoke. “Well, this girl I was dating, she got pregnant.”
“And you were clearly not the father.”
“Exactly. And the thing was, it was like I’ve known for a long time I couldn’t have children, but in that moment it hit me like a ton of bricks. I will never be a father. I’ll never pass any of myself on down to a miniature human. I’ll never get to hold a baby or teach a son how to play ball or grow old while my kids and grandkids sit around a huge dinner table. It all hit me, hard, in a way it hasn’t in decades, that this is it, you know. Just me, and everyone except my few vampire friends will all die, and I won’t. I guess I wanted to see what it would feel like to die.” He finished his drink. “That sounds really damn stupid now.”
But Lizette understood. It had taken her years to accept the fact that she would never be a mother. She squeezed his hand. “Mortality is a strange paradox for vampires. Sometimes we crave death, yet we fear it even more than mortals because it is not inevitable. Vampire death shocks us in a way human death does not any longer.”
“Exactly.” He smiled at her. “How did you get to be so smart?”
When he smiled like that, it was easy to see how she could have been persuaded to have sex with him, especially under the influence of a drug. “I am not smart enough to pass on drugged punch.”
“That’s the thing with drugged punch though. It looks innocent but it has a real kick. Like you, I would imagine.” His thumb was stroking her palm again, not a touch of comfort, but one of intimacy and sexual suggestion.
“You think I have a kick? That I bite?” Lizette set her glass down on the wooden floorboards. “I don’t believe that’s true. I think I have become quite dull.” Actually, she knew she had. Normally it didn’t bother her, but tonight it felt wearisome. There was something to what Johnny had said: If life was eternal, shouldn’t it be enjoyable?
“Then obviously last night was good for you. You needed to come out of your shell a little.”
“Perhaps. Though it would be better if I remembered it.” Then the image of her head thrown back popped into her head. Yes, she would definitely like to remember that. She wasn’t sure she wanted any memory of how she’d wound up in a sex dungeon with four other people though. That went a bit beyond loosening up.
“Not remembering last night is one of my true regrets in life,” he told her, in a way that was so sincere she actually believed him. “But I’m happy to repeat certain parts of it if you’d like.”
It was on her lips to say no automatically. To protest and demure, because that was the appropriate thing to do. But then she thought about it. If she already had compromised the case and would need to reassign another agent to the investigation, what difference did it make if she slept with Johnny again? The cat was already out of the bag, so to speak. So she told him, “I just might like that before the evening has concluded.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“We’ll see.” It would take a huge dose of courage on her part, but the idea seriously intrigued her. “That is, if you’re truly interested, and not just jesting.”
“I don’t even know how to jest about sex. I most definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent want you with every fiber of my immortal being.” His eyes had darkened to black and he shifted in his chair. “It was that picture that clinched it, you know. You look so damn sexy with my fangs in your flesh.”
Lizette fought the urge to squirm. She wanted to see the picture again because it had been sexy. They had looked so intimate. So into each other. It was a passionate side of herself she had never seen captured. Yet, it was something that shouldn’t exist, and she knew it.
“You should delete that picture.”
“Fuck that. The dude on the street still has it, so even if I deleted it, it still exists. So why shouldn’t I enjoy it? I may even frame it, put it on the mantel.”
Lizette rolled her eyes, which made him laugh.
“Hey, I’m going to try Saxon again. If I can’t get a hold of him, I think we should go to my place. It’s closer to Zelda’s. Maybe he was wandering around drunk and went to my place by accident.”
It didn’t seem plausible, but she wasn’t going to argue. She didn’t have a better solution and she didn’t know Saxon or what he might do. “Sure. I’m going to call, now as well.”
Not that she knew what to say to him without sounding completely unprofessional. While Johnny dialed on his phone, she dialed on hers, reflecting that it was strange that it no longer seemed to be bothering her as dramatically that she and Johnny had to sit next to each other at all times. She was getting used to their hands hanging in tandem.
“Hello?” Dieter said, voice slightly muffled.
“It is Lizette. Do you have a minute?” she asked, suddenly feeling nervous. What did Dieter know of her behavior?
“Sure.”
“Yes, well, I believe that tomorrow I am going to return to Paris and send a replacement. You will need to stay here to keep an eye on things.”
“Does this have something to
do with the drunk text you sent me last night?”
Her face heated. “I sent you a drunk text?”
“Well, I can only assume you were drunk as you don’t usually ask me why I’ve never wanted to fuck you.”
Lizette almost dropped her phone. “What? I did not.”
“You did. And I wasn’t even aware that my fuck factor mattered to you.” He sounded amused, damn him. She was not amused.
“Oh, dear.” She wasn’t sure she could be any more embarrassed. “I can’t imagine why I would say such a thing.”
“Maybe because you were worried that no one would ever fuck you again. That’s the way you put it—that no man ever wants you.”
She had been wrong. She could be more embarrassed. She was going to throw herself off the balcony and run away and start a new life in Mongolia.
“Just kill me now,” she told him. “I am surely not so pathetic as that.” Her celibacy had been a choice, so she couldn’t even imagine why she’d been so weirdly desperate for male approval.
“Lizette, I don’t think that your attractiveness has ever been in question. But you have the Great Wall of China in front of your emotions, and most men don’t have the tools to climb it. So maybe throw a rope down to Johnny and you can get yourself a little bit of cuddle time.”
“Why would you suggest him?” she asked, not about to admit that she already had indulged in cuddle time. Big time. Panty-free time. Probably. She wasn’t entirely sure. As to Dieter’s wall theory, she could not argue with it. It was true, no question about it.
“Anyone could see the sexual tension between you two.”
Ignoring that, she asked, “So did I happen to say anything else? Perhaps detailing my whereabouts or my plans? My memory is a bit hazy.” As in gone. Completely. A glance over at Johnny showed that he had heard her. He shot her a wink.
“Something about sitting at a bar while you shopped on the Internet.”
“I was shopping on the Internet?” What things were showing up at her apartment in Paris as they spoke? She lived in 700 square feet, so whatever it was, hopefully it was small. “Zut alors.” She really wanted to say fuckity fuck fuck, but she had already ruined her reputation with Dieter. No reason to cause his doubt in her when she was sober as well.
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