by Ever Coming
“Yes, Jasper.” I pretended to check and seeing the fifty percent battery incitation told me it would only be true for another couple of hours, max. “Thank you.”
“No thanks needed.” That seemed to be the going motto. Thanks were needed though. Lots and lots of thanks because as much as I wanted to do it all and on my own, I couldn’t. If only I had access to my money I could hide much easier. Sadly, it was locked up tighter than tight until I turned twenty five, and by that point I was already gone and as far as most people conjectured, dead.
I sat in my seat, not moving while I waited. Jasper never said I couldn’t look around the room or check out the books on the shelves, but self-preservation dictated I stay put. With my luck I would break something that cost more than I’d make in an entire year, which I assumed most things in the room did.
The door swung open two minutes and forty three seconds later. I know this because I counted, a method I used to keep my brain from wandering too far outside the path I wanted it on.
In walked a man, a good half foot taller than me, probably more if I were to guess. He was wearing blue jeans and a shirt that had to be made for him. It was a shade of grey that almost hit a heather and clung to his muscles magnificently. I wasn’t normally a muscle girl, but the man was impressive. That was when I chanced a look at his face. Dimples and he wasn’t even truly smiling. More of a smirk at my overt ogling, which I knew I needed to cease, but then I saw his eyes, the color of the ocean off the coast of Italy when my grandmother took me on holiday as a young girl. Back then I was mesmerized by the beauty of the hue, and now, now I was practically drooling.
“You done?” He chuckled, not at all put out by my inappropriate appraisal. He was probably used to it because goodness gracious the man belonged on billboards for all the world to admire.
“Yeah, sorry. Don’t know what came over me.” I didn’t either. Sure, I had seen my share of hot men and had even been approached by a few. None of them had me acting like a big old drooling creepster.
I stood up, brushing the skirt of my dress down, hoping I hadn’t wrinkled it too badly by sitting in the chair. I was so overdressed. I looked like a woman about to be wined and dined by the man of her dreams, and he was dressed like he was going out for a burger, which in a sick kind of way he was. Me being the burger.
I grabbed my purse and took a step in his direction holding out my hand. “I’m Paige.” For some reason the lie was harder to get out than it ever had been before. The truth, it wanted to flow from my lips. If I hadn’t blocked a vampire before, I would’ve been sure he was using his skills on me. But nope, he wasn’t even meeting my eyes, they were elsewhere. And by elsewhere I meant my legs, my hips, and my boobs. Fair enough, since I was just ogling the daylights out of him.
“You done?” I mimicked his previous comment.
“After a quick twirl I may be.”
I twirled for him, not once hesitating.
“Shall we?” he asked as I came to a stop, his body much closer to mine than it had been when I began. I took his proffered arm and we stepped out of the room and down the hallway. “My car is in the garage, so we just need to take the elevator down a floor.”
I hadn’t imagined we would be leaving the building. Although I should have since I had seen so few others while I was here and it was the largest group of blood courtesans on this coast. My body froze of its own accord. Was I all right with this? Nothing outwardly indicated I shouldn’t, but common sense told me leaving with a stranger who wants to eat you was usually a bad plan.
“Are you ready for this?” His hand hovered over the elevator button, waiting for my say so.
“I have no idea.”
“We can stay here?” He asked it as a question, which set me aback. Was he nervous too? Most likely not. I had a tendency to read too much into things when I’m nervous.
“No, let’s go.” I reached in front of me to press the elevator button and somehow we ended up with the elevator door opening and our fingers entwining simultaneously. “It feels safe.”
“Have no worry, butterfly, you will always be safe with me.” His words rang out as truth as the doors closed and we began our descent. “I thought we could do one of two things. There’s a fine establishment my friend Jameson owns where we could enjoy dinner and some nice wine or we could go to someplace less … over the top, I guess is the best way to put it.” His accent became thicker the more he spoke. Irish maybe. Sexy as heck.
“I’m not sure.”
“Answer me this. Have you eaten tonight?” I shook my head, loving the cool feel of his hand against mine and trying to hold onto that magic for a moment longer. “In that case, what would you rather eat, steak or a burger?”
“Burger.” I knew he didn’t eat in the truest sense of the word, so the entire thing sounded off, but I would rather eat a burger any day of the week, so burger it was.
“I know just the place.”
The elevator door slid open and he led me to his car. I had zero clues what kind of car it was, but the little blue vehicle screamed speed and wealth. He opened the door for me before climbing into the driver’s seat. I’m wasn’t a fan of parking garages and kept my eyes closed the entire time. My brain knew that the ceilings were more than high enough, but my stomach didn’t agree.
“Do I even want to know?”
“Why my eyes are closed?” I opened them and was happy to see we were no longer in said garage. He gave a nod as the car veered right. “It isn’t you, it’s parking garages. I don’t like how short they feel.”
“Then where do you keep your car?”
“I don’t have one at the moment, but until it died I kept it on the street.” What a pain in the neck that had been with the alternate side of the street parking garbly gook, but it felt good to have a way out if needed. If we had to leave before I saved enough money for a car, we would be using the bus, and while that was cheap, it also left a paper trail.
“You must live outside the city.” He placed his hand on my knee. Why did this feel more like a first date than a job? Talk about blurred lines.
“No. I just moved it every twelve hours.” Rain, snow, sickness, lazy Saturday, it didn’t matter, that thing needed to be moved at eight and eight.
“City life is not what it once was.”
“No, I suppose not. How long have you lived here?” What I really wanted to ask him was how old he was, but it was in the handbook that asking was off the table, which made little sense, but a rule was a rule and this job could mean big things for me.
“Coming up on fifty years now.” Fifty. That wasn’t a milestone I'd reached yet being on this planet, much less in one place. He gave my knee a gentle squeeze. “Butterfly, that’s not as long as it sounds nor am I as old as you are assuming. I’m only seventy three, which by vampire standards is quite young. Before you ask, I was twenty nine the day I turned.”
I was only half listening. He had been calling me butterfly since we met, and for some reason the endearment felt like more than just a random sweetie or honey, although it probably was exactly just that. Pairing that with his hand on my knee and I was lucky to understand a word he said.
“Only a couple of years older than me,” I pondered out loud as we pulled into a parking spot in front of what looked to be a hole in the wall gem. The aroma hitting my nose before we even opened the doors was magnificent, but it looked like nothing I would dare enter on my own out of fear it was a drug front.
“Here we are.” He turned off the car after removing his hand from my knee and, gracefully and far too quickly for my eyes, got out of the car and to my side, where he opened the door like a gentleman. He held his hand out and I accepted it greedily as I climbed out of his car. It might be expensive and fast, but it was far from easy to climb out of in heels and a dress. “Rumor has it they have the best burgers in the city.”
“It looks like a dive, so I imagine that rumor is spot on.”
He rewarded my appraisal with a smile, and t
o think I had thought his smirk was smexy. Even with the coolness of my hand in his, I could feel myself heating up. This man was dangerous in the very best of ways.
The place was packed, which made sense since it was a Friday night. We wormed our way through the tables, finding a tiny booth in the back corner with a bench only on one side. They must’ve had some do it yourselfer working on the layout of this place to be sure if they ended up with only enough room for part of a booth.
I grabbed the menu from the table and spotted what I wanted immediately. Cheeseburger with fries. No need to read the rest of the menu when the smell of burgers frying had already convinced me.
“Whatcha drinking?” an older woman in a stained, far-too-small uniform shouted from the counter.
“Water is fine,” I called back. She must have taken that as a “we both want water” because she didn’t wait for a response. I read somewhere that vampires could drink, but not eat, and that they preferred wine. Wine was so not on the menu at this place. Crappy coffee and ice tea most definitely, but no wine.
“Why are we here?”
“So you can eat.”
I took a sip of my water, which had been rudely slapped down only moments earlier. Finn’s place, left barren. No water for him. It was as if the woman didn’t see him.
The food smelled great and the ambiance was at least not snotty, but that didn’t mean it was where we should be. This had me feeling more and more like it was a date with every passing moment. A date with a vampire, who was a customer. No, that didn’t sound right either. The whole night was a ball of caflustered confusion.
“Isn’t that what you are supposed to be doing?” Technically, I was his dinner after all.
“In due time, butterfly, in due time.” Somehow his accent made that sound like more of a promise than I was sure it was. I knew from yesterday that the actual act of feeding wasn’t sensual by any means, but the thought of Finn wrapping his lips around my skin and sinking his teeth into me had my panties crying for a life preserver. “Have you decided on your dinner?”
“It was an easy choice. Burger and fries.” My tummy was dancing for joy just thinking about it. It had been so long since I had anything other than pasta.
“You want that with cheese?” Our waitress startled me with her abrupt words. She was standing a full table length back. Finn must have seen her there when he asked me what I wanted. She was an odd duck, this waitress of ours.
“Yes. Please,” I called out as she walked away from us. Rude much?
“I didn’t see her there.”
“She doesn’t like me being here.” His voice fell as he spoke. She wasn’t just an odd duck, she was a mean one.
“I see.”
“She knows what I am, I suspect,” he answered my unspoken question.
I placed my hands on the table so that our fingertips almost touched. It would be wrong for me to just grab a customer. Or at least, I thought it would be. Hard to tell since this whole thing was weirdness wrapped in a bow. I figured I would subtly offer, and if he wanted my hands, he would take them.
And boom, it worked. He placed his hand on mine, the coolness a welcome sensation.
“Does that happen a lot?” I wasn’t allowed near vampires growing up. My father believed whole heartedly that if holy water could burn them, they were of the devil. I ascribed to a much different philosophy, one that said let their actions speak, not their weaknesses. I never voiced that opinion for fear of the whipping switch. I had enough scars from that thing for stuff I actually did. I didn’t need more for my thoughts.
“Not so much. Most people can’t tell by looking at me. The few who can generally don’t want me around.” Seers. I had heard of them, but thought it was more hogwash. I knew my father hired one to work at the church for our night time services. I assumed she was just swindling the church for money, which worked well for me since they pretty much swindled their congregation weekly. Maybe she had been legit. Not that keeping a vampire out of church was a worthy goal, but my father had many unworthy goals.
“That stinks.” I rolled my hand over so our palms met. It was funny how his cool skin could send a bolt of heat through me like no one else ever had. Not even my college boyfriends, whom at the time I thought were hotness personified.
“It is what is,” he said as he pulled his hands away. I was hurt by their quick withdrawal until my dinner landed in front of me. The waitress all but threw it at me before she scampered away. Poor Finn, that people were so scared of him for absolutely no reason. He was kind—anyone who met his eyes would be able to sense that.
“Now tell me, how did you end up here?”
“You drove me?” I didn’t want the conversation to enter this terrain. I planned to go to work, get prettied up, give someone my arm, and go home. This whole hanging out touchy feely stuff wasn’t on my to-do list. Not that I was completely averse to the idea, but it had to stay superficial. Daisy was counting on me.
“You know what I mean.”
I poured some ketchup on the plate and played with my fries, unsure where to begin and how much to divulge.
“Why are you a courtesan?”
“It’s a long story.” A very private one, though for some reason I wished I could share it with him.
“I have all night.” Did that mean he was one of the vampires who needed to sleep all day or simply that he had purchased me for the night? Of course, it could’ve been just a saying, but leave it to me to dissect the crap out of it.
“I have a daughter.” I shrugged before picking up and taking a huge, unladylike bite out of my burger. He quirked an eyebrow with the unspoken “And?” So I added, with my mouth still half full of burger, “We need money.”
“That was an extremely abridged account, but I won’t push.”
I closed my eyes momentarily in relief. I didn’t want to ruin things by being a bitch and not answering his questions. Nor did I want to have to flee the city because I spilled all my secrets, in public no less.
“Thank you,” I muttered between bites.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
“She’s perfect.” I put the mostly eaten burger down and grabbed a napkin, getting the extra grease off my fingers. “D … Rose is almost three and she’s so smart. And creative. She can turn anything into something magical. She keeps me on my toes, that’s for sure. It’s hard being a single mom. I feel like I work all the time and she’s being raised by Martha.”
I was babbling and I knew it, but I loved sharing all of the awesomeness that was Daisy and rarely got to do so. No braggatory calls to the grandparents, no social media fawnings, no mothers’ group sharing. It was just me and her against the world most of the time.
“Your nanny?”
Silly man thought a single mom could afford a nanny. I guess I did clean up well.
“Goodness no, my neighbor who helps me out.” I took a fry and lathered it in ketchup before taking a bite. For some reason it didn’t feel weird eating in front of him. I usually felt uncomfortable eating in front of guys, period. Always feeling judged by my meal choices, mostly due to my size. That should go double for Finn since he wasn’t actually eating and had the body of a god. But nope, I felt perfectly at ease. The day was getting odder and odder the more I looked at it. “I’m hoping this job will leave my days open to spend with her.”
“If things work out with us and you become my courtesan, you would only need to work every other night.”
“I see.” I keep saying that phrase and lying every time. I was supposed to feed vampires--with an S. Not be an exclusive courtesan. At least not that anyone had told me. “I didn’t realize people had their own courtesans. Jasper seemed to hint at having a rotating schedule depending on how well I was received.”
Finn’s face froze. It was a peculiar thing to witness. If he had been human, I would’ve been concerned, but since he wasn’t. I believed it was intentional.
“I don’t think I would like that,” he finally said just a
s the silence was about to drive me over the edge.
“Why didn’t you want me tonight?” Out came the question before I gave it even the slightest bit of thought. My job was to make him happy, give him his supper, and not be a jerk. I missed the last part by a mile with my question, but his weird response to me feeding other vampires brought that to the forefront of my mind.
“I like to eat differently than most.”
I gulped. That sounded not at all good. “I see.” Why did I keep saying that?
“Oh, butterfly, you don’t see. Not at all.” He threw some money on the table and reached for my hand, which I of course gave him even though he was being vague and kind of sketchy. We were out the door and half way down the road before he began again, bypassing his car completely.
“Have you ever seen a, well there is no classy way to say this, so … glory hole?”
Glory holes. Crap on a cracker. There was no way I was blowing some random guy through a hole in the wall. No way. None. Nada. Zilch. I mean maybe if I knew it was Finn. No. Not even then. How the heck this conversation lead to glory freaking holes.
“I was told sex was …” I stumbled as my words caught in my throat and his rich laugher filled the air. “Why are you laughing?”
“I knew the analogy was bad.” He stopped and took me by the shoulders, encouraging me to look at him, but not forcing the eye contact. He probably didn’t know the eye voodoo didn’t work on me and was being polite. I met his eyes to show my trust. Why? I couldn’t begin to fathom. It wasn’t like I actually knew the guy and he did just try to get me to agree to a glory hole or something.
“Let me finish. In a glory hole situation, do you know who is on either side?”
“No.”
“Exactly.” He was making sense not at all. “It’s just a sharing of need. Nothing personal.”
I wanted to argue that a cock in the mouth was in fact personal, but I could see his point. No names, no faces, no connection. Is that how he fed? If so, he was so doing it wrong because I already felt a connection to him. I knew his face from the deep dimples to the tiny scar to the left of his right eyebrow, to the sparkle in his eyes. Yeah, the anonymity train had left the yard.
