“You want to come over?” he said.
“Come over?”
“I’ll give you my address,” he said. “Plug it into your GPS and come over. I would come see you, but I don’t think I can drive.” He laughed again.
“Are you okay?”
“Great,” he said. “Better than great. Come over. I have whiskey.”
Well, it wasn’t as if I was sleeping, anyway. But drunk Lachlan sounded strange. I wasn’t sure if it made any sense at all to go see him. I should have told him no.
But I got his address, and I drove over.
He met me at the door. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. “Penny,” he said.
“Um, listen, I should just make you some coffee and help you sober up.”
He grabbed me and pulled me inside. He shut the door and pushed me back into it. And then he pressed his body into mine, his lips into mine.
I was stunned. I went rigid, letting him kiss me, but not responding.
His lips were soft against mine. His tongue pushed into my mouth, and it tasted sweetly of liquor and promise.
A jolt of goodness went through my body. I let my tongue touch his.
He sighed. And then he pulled back. He laughed, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have…” He stumbled away.
I looked around his apartment. We were in the living room, but he didn’t have any furniture. It was just an empty room. Bare walls. Carpet.
He wandered through the doorway, away from me.
I followed him.
We emerged into the kitchen, which was similarly bare. There was a card table in the middle of the floor, flanked by one metal folding chair. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting in the middle of the table.
He seized it and handed it to me.
I took it. I took a drink. Why not? The liquor burned down my esophagus. “Are you okay?”
He reached out a hand for the whiskey bottle.
I handed it back.
“You asked me that on the phone,” he muttered. “You asked me if I was okay. And I told you. I’m great.” He looked around for the folding chair to sit down. But he missed it completely and landed sprawling on the floor, his hand with the bottle in the air. He burst out laughing. “Saved!” he declared, scooting the whiskey back onto the table. He doubled over, laughing and rolling on the floor.
I knelt down next to him. “You really don’t have much tolerance, do you?”
He lay flat on his back and looked up at me. “You’re upside down,” he told me.
I rocked back so that I was sitting. “I’m going to go.”
He scrambled into a sitting position. “Don’t go. You just got here.”
“You’re… very drunk.”
“Yes,” he said. “Sorry about that. I’ve been trying not to drink lately, trying so hard.”
“Do you have a problem with drinking? Because when we were at the bar, you said you didn’t drink, but was that because—”
“I’m not an alcoholic, Penny.” He sighed. “I’ve just been having a hard time lately. I keep feeling all this… pain, keep remembering that everything in my life is fucked. Drinking helps. I keep thinking about…” He tried to reach the whiskey but couldn’t. He stared at the palm of his hand instead. “Thinking about her. ”
I waited.
He didn’t say anything.
“Thinking about who?” I finally said, but I was fairly sure I knew.
“Hallie.” The name was charged with emotion. His voice cracked. He reached on top of the table. This time, he managed to get the bottle of whiskey. He took a big gulp of it. Grimaced. Shivered. Took another gulp. Another grimace.
“Your daughter?” I whispered.
He nodded. He set the bottle down and wiped at his mouth.
“Because I made you talk about it the other day? I brought it all back up, didn’t I?”
“It isn’t your fault. I don’t need to talk about it for it to start…” He tapped his temples. “All kinds of things bring it up. Sometimes, I see the moon, and I remember this book we had when she was tiny, and how she’d point to the picture of the moon until I said, ‘Mr. Moon.’ And then she’d giggle.” A ghost of a smile on his face. “The way it sounded when she laughed…” The smile faded. He crawled over to the other side of the room, grabbed the kitchen counter and hauled himself to his feet.
I stood up and went to him. “Lachlan—”
“Don’t.” He put his finger against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Okay,” I said.
It was quiet.
I put my hand on his arm. “Well, maybe you should go to bed. Have some water and lie down?”
He tried to smile at me, but he only looked haggard now. Tired and haggard and sad. He shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’m not drunk enough. I’m trying to drink enough that I just pass out, but no matter how much I drink, it doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“Maybe if you lie down, it will be,” I said.
He kissed me again.
It surprised me. I hadn’t been expecting it.
This time, his mouth was more thorough. His tongue swept into my mouth, bold and clever, as if he belonged there.
I clutched his arms. I tried to push him off, but I found myself kissing back, even though this was ridiculous. He was out of his mind, and he didn’t know what he was doing, and if I let him do this, I’d be taking advantage of him. I was the one who was thinking clearly. Or at least I had been before he started kissing me like that.
My body felt weak, felt tender. It was a slow awakening, nothing like the obvious intensity of my arousal with Alastair. This was tentative, but nice. So nice.
His lips left my mouth. He kissed my chin, my jaw, my neck.
Thrills went through me. I gasped.
His hands were inside my shirt.
“Lachlan,” I said again.
He nipped my neck. His teeth—
I slammed my open palm into his chest, pushing him away from me. “No,” I said.
He ran his tongue over his fangs. Then he shut his eyes and closed his mouth. When he opened both his eyes and his mouth, his fangs had retracted. He looked shaken. “I’m sorry,” he said in a dead voice. “I wouldn’t have—”
“Sit.” I pointed to the chair. “Go over there and sit down.”
He rubbed his face. Then he hobbled across the room and fell into the chair. He reached for the whiskey bottle.
I hurried over and swept it out of his grasp. I went back to the sink, unscrewed it, and proceeded to pour it all down the drain.
“Hey,” he protested, but there wasn’t much fire behind it.
“You’ve had enough,” I said.
He hung his head.
I leaned against the sink. For some reason, my pulse was pounding, and I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm it. “What the hell?” I finally managed.
He slowly raised his gaze to meet mine. “I’m sorry.”
I folded my arms over his chest.
“I’m not good at this,” he said.
“Good at what?”
“At…” He gestured at me and then at himself and then back at me. “Look, in the past, when I’ve needed—wanted—a female distraction—”
“Distraction?” I said.
He flinched. “That’s not what I meant.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I just mean that I’ve got this face, and women usually…” He cringed. “Look, can I start that again?”
“Women usually fall all over you?”
“I wasn’t going to say it that way.” He sagged in the chair. “Look, I’m drunk, you’re very pretty, and—”
“Shut up, Lachlan.” My pulse was still racing.
“I should have realized that you wouldn’t want to kiss me. That you’re different than all the other women I’ve ever—”
“It’s not about the kissing,” I said, feeling frustrated because I had liked kissing him, and I probably would have fallen all over him if he hadn’t… I dre
w in another unsteady breath. “You almost bit me.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“You were about to.”
He parted his lips.
I put the empty bottle in the sink. I crossed the room to him. I looked down at him. “Could you stop when I told you to stop? Because last time, I thought you weren’t going to stop.”
He swallowed hard. “Penny,” he rasped. “You can’t…”
My pulse hadn’t calmed down at all. It was crashing away just beneath my skin. “Only a little bit,” I whispered. I moved my hair away from my neck, baring it to him.
He licked his lips. He looked up at me and his eyes were hungry, the way they’d been in the bar.
A little thrill shot through me. What the hell was I doing? It was crazy. Why would I let him—
He stood up and grasped my shoulders.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel his breath on my skin. Then the whisper of his lips. Then a sharp tug of pain.
And then…
Bliss.
That feeling of being one with him, of knowing everything, seeing everything.
It was as if we floated up through the ceiling of his apartment into the apartment above, saw the neighbors sleeping in bed, saw their cat curled at their feet. And then up another floor to a bare apartment, roaches climbing over the linoleum, and then through the roof, into the night air, past the trees, shooting for the sky, everything streaking by me, wrapping me in euphoria as we traveled for the heavens, for the stars, for the—
He let go of me.
We both went sprawling.
And I was just ordinary me again, sitting on the floor of his apartment, and everything seemed dingy, and my head hurt.
He stumbled backwards and stood up. There was red on his mouth. My blood, dripping in the crease of his—
His tongue darted out and licked it up.
Something inside me convulsed in pleasure. What? I liked that? I liked him drinking my blood? No, I was losing it. I was losing my mind.
He help up a finger. “Holy fuck, Penny.” His voice was clear as a bell, no slurring at all.
“You don’t sound very drunk now.” Cautiously, I stood up.
“You shouldn’t have let me do that.”
“I know.” I put my hand to my neck and brought my fingers in front of my face. They were wet with red blood. “Shit,” I breathed.
“Why did you let me do that?”
I looked at the blood. It was so damned red. “It just… It feels…”
He shot across the room and grabbed my wrist. He put my fingers in his mouth, licking them clean.
I let out a tiny noise.
He dropped my hand as if it burned him. “What the hell are you doing to me?”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Get out,” he said.
“But…”
“Get out.” His voice was a growl.
I backed away from him.
He turned so that he wasn’t facing me, sinking both of his hands into his hair.
From behind, I could see the muscles in his back rippling beneath his t-shirt. He was stronger than I had imagined, and his body was very nicely shaped, and…
I ran out of his apartment as fast as I could.
In the car, I adjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could look at my neck. There were two neat little holes there, and they were already scabbing up. They didn’t hurt, but they were so… conspicuous.
Damn it.
I went back to the hotel, but I didn’t go inside. Instead, I ran to the beach and threw off my clothes. I dove into the water and shifted.
So that I would heal. So that I could hide. So that no one would know what I’d let him do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Someone was banging on the door to my apartment.
I felt like I had just gotten to sleep only minutes ago. I groaned. I threw aside the covers, yanked a robe over my pajamas, and went out to open the door. I wished Felicity was here. She could have answered the door. But she had spent the night at Jensen’s, so I was out of luck.
I opened the door.
Lachlan was standing there wearing his sunglasses. He had on a suit and button-up shirt, but no tie.
“Um, hi,” I said.
He pushed the door open and grasped my robe, pulling it away from my neck.
I slapped his hands off, backing away. “What are you doing?”
“Did I fucking dream it? Did you come to my house last night?”
I put my hand over my neck. “I shifted. I needed to… erase it.”
He let out a low, nasty chuckle. “Well, that’s convenient. Can you erase my memory of the taste of your blood? Can you?”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
He shut the door to my apartment and leaned against it. “’I’m sorry.” He looked up at the ceiling. “God damn it, Penny, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“You kissed me,” I said. “More than once.”
“I was drunk.”
“So, that’s an excuse?”
He took off his sunglasses. His eyes were bloodshot.
We looked at each other.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice.
He folded up his sunglasses and stared at them. “No, I’m sorry. I was… I was out of line.”
“What was out of line? What are you apologizing for? For yelling at me now? Or for last night? And which part of last night?”
“Everything,” he said.
I swallowed. “I didn’t know it was bad to drink my blood. I thought you liked it.”
“I don’t want to like it.” He shoved his sunglasses inside his suit jacket. “I don’t want to think about it every time I’m near you. I don’t want to smell you and remember—”
“You can smell my blood?”
“No, it’s just that you have a smell. Like everyone has a smell. And you smell like something flowery—”
“It’s probably my deodorant.”
“Whatever.” He glared at me. “When I smell it, I think about how your blood tastes.”
“Is it like strawberries?” I said, thinking of Ace Gonzales.
“No,” he said. “It’s not like anything. It’s like blood. It’s just…” He crossed the room and went over to my window. He pulled aside the curtain. “When you become a vampire, nothing tastes the same after. Everything’s a little bit bland. Except blood. That has these nuances of coppery flavors, little accents and sparks…” He sighed. “Your blood is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Ever.” He let the curtain drop.
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh?”
I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t ever let me drink it again,” he said.
“But…” I bit down on my bottom lip.
“But nothing,” he said.
“It’s only that I like it too, you know, and that’s the only reason that I let you—” I swallowed. “But you’re right. It’s weird, and it’s gross, and I should never have ever let you do it in the first place, and from now on, we’ll keep our distance from each other. Don’t kiss me anymore.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I was drunk is all.” He looked at his shoes.
I squared my shoulders. “Okay, then. Well, let’s not talk about this anymore, because it’s… awkward and embarrassing.”
“Good.” He looked up at me. “Good, we’ll forget about it.”
I nodded.
He nodded.
It was quiet.
I fingered the edge of my robe.
He got his sunglasses back out of his suit jacket.
I pointed back the hall. “I should, um, get dressed?”
“Oh.” He looked me over, seeming to register the fact that I was in a robe. He blushed, looking down at the floor. “Uh, I’m going in to the office now. If you want to, um, meet me there after you’re, you know, dressed, that would be, uh…”
“Should I bring coffee?
” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Good.” He crossed the room to the door. “That would be good.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. He put his hand on the doorknob.
We were still staring at each other.
“Well,” I said, gesturing behind me. “I’m just going to go and, um, put on some clothes.”
“Yeah,” he said. He looked at the door. “I’m going to…” He pointed.
“Yeah,” I said.
“So, I’ll see you.” He turned the knob and the door opened. He was halfway inside the doorway and halfway out. “I’m going to go.”
“Bye,” I said.
His head bobbed. “Bye.”
We were frozen there for several more agonizing seconds.
And then he flung himself out of the door and shut it behind himself.
He was gone.
I stood in the middle of my living room, feeling confused.
“Forget about it, Penny,” I muttered to myself. “He said we should forget about it.”
Right.
I headed back the hall.
*
Raymond Pascal was back inside the interrogation room and Lachlan was sitting across from him.
“I just want to go over some details,” said Lachlan. “I want to know more about how you murdered those girls.”
“I didn’t do it,” said Raymond. “Otis did.”
“Right,” said Lachlan, shrugging.
“Hey, you aren’t trying to pin this on me, are you?”
“I need details, Raymond,” said Lachlan. “Can I call you Raymond?”
Raymond made a face. “What do you need to know?”
“Well, about the drowning,” said Lachlan. “That’s all that happened to the girls?”
“Should something else have happened?”
“You tell me. You were there.”
“Uh, well, I have no idea,” said Raymond. “I told you everything that I saw.”
“Uh huh,” said Lachlan. “Well, I’ll tell you something Raymond. There were wounds on the victims, things we kept from the press, and if you actually saw them murdered, then you would know what they were.”
“You don’t believe me still?” Raymond was incredulous. “But you said you realized I wasn’t some guy with nothing to lose, ready to say anything for publicity.”
“Exactly,” said Lachlan. “Now you think you can leverage your accusation of Otis for a lesser sentence or something. So, you’re even more likely to lie. The wounds.”
Fire Song (City of Dragons) Page 20
