by Молли Харпер
3
Because of their natural animalistic leanings, were-creatures are more connected to their sexual instincts than the average human. Because premarital relations are frowned upon in the were community, were honeymoons generally last three or four times as long as human honeymoons.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were Other than a new career, new hours, new diet, new friends, and a slightly unhealthy sirechilde relationship, not much had changed in the months since I’d been turned.
No, wait, I was going broke. That was new.
My part-time paychecks weren’t enough to fund my “extravagant” lifestyle. Thanks to the wonders of vampirism, I’d been able to cut little extras such as food and medical insurance. But the taxes on River Oaks were coming due soon. The water heater was making weird noises, and there was a suspicious and expensive-looking sag in my roof just over Aunt Jettie’s old room. I had a 200-pound dog to feed and an expensive dental regimen to maintain. And the payment people at Visa were starting to ask questions. The financial juggling was becoming a little more than I could keep up with.
Complicating matters was the delay in my “triumph settlement.” Earlier that year, I’d fought Missy the Evil Realtor to the death after she’d framed me for a series of crimes, all in an effort to obtain River Oaks—or, rather, the property River Oaks stood on. My sprawling old family farm was the keystone plot in a tacky undead condo development she had planned. Frustrated by Aunt Jettie’s refusal to sell, Missy had decided to use the Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) World Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead’s laws governing vampire behavior to yank the property out from under me. So I didn’t feel too bad about running her through with one of her own realty signs.
In the vampire world, if you kill another vampire in battle, you get all of his or her stuff.
And since Missy had spent years amassing property and swindling vampires out of their homes, that amounted to quite a bit of stuff. But after months of red tape and delays, I wasn’t holding my breath for the council to fulfill its promise to fork over Missy’s holdings anytime soon. Of course, holding my breath wouldn’t really matter one way or the other, but …
I hadn’t told anyone about my financial woes, not even dearly departed Aunt Jettie. There was nothing I could do. I was stuck. I was too fond of Mr. Wainwright to leave Specialty Books. Even though I was basically an unglorified sales clerk with two advanced degrees, I’d gotten the distinct impression that Mr. Wainwright had come to depend on me. He was doing less and less at the shop, opening later, going to bed earlier in his little apartment over the store, and leaving me to close. I couldn’t abandon him.
If I told my parents I was having money problems, Mama would, well, I don’t think she would insist I move back in with them now. But I’m sure my life, liberty, and pursuit of healthy boundaries would be infringed upon in some way. And while Gabriel had made repeated offers to help me out financially, that just wasn’t relationship baggage I wanted.
Most sire-childe relationships are not as complicated as ours. Gabriel is dark and intense, obsessive to the point of being just this side of creepy. Some guys bring you flowers and candy; others exact biblical revenge by pushing trees on top of the drunk hunter who fatally shot you. I’m more of a crunchy-granola-pacifist vampire, so I found this rather disturbing. OK, it was a tiny bit hot but mostly disturbing.
I knew Gabriel was not evil. For that matter, neither was I. Vampires have the same capacity for good and evil that humans do. To be fair, people can lose some notions of etiquette when they’re no longer answering to the moral constraints of human society … and they thirst for human blood. The bottom line is that if you had evil leanings in life, you’re probably going to embrace them wholeheartedly once you’re undead. If you were a decent person, say a former librarian who loves America and puppies, you’re probably going to be an upstanding, almost vegetarian vampire.
It took Gabriel and me weeks to work through the weird feelings that followed his murdering Bud Mc-Elray. As a human, I’d never been in love. I’d been in deep, abiding like with several of my boyfriends, but I’d never had that feeling, that “Wow, this is a person I could spend the rest of my life with” feeling. And even though Gabriel was one of the few people I could spend the rest of my long, long life with, I couldn’t think of being with him as a permanent situation. He’d saved me. He’d killed for me. But I couldn’t accept that someone like him could be interested in me.
Gabriel was everything I was not. Sophisticated and complicated and able to colorcoordinate a room like you wouldn’t believe. I craved him with a bone-deep lust I’d once reserved exclusively for Godiva truffles. I was fixated, not just in the physical sensethough that was an obvious, and occasionally distracting, bonus—but with what he thought, how he saw the world, how he saw me. It was addictive to see myself reflected in his liquid silver eyes as strong, beautiful, intelligent, interesting, though slightly exasperating. Even when we were together, all I could think about was the next time we could be together.
I needed order. I needed constancy. But being with Gabriel was like standing in the center of a swirling eddy, the dark water surrounding you, dizzying, powerful, and beautiful. But all the while, you can’t help but feel those churning walls closing in, threatening to crash in on you and crush you under their weight.
I couldn’t seem to find my footing in this relationship. It didn’t help that Gabriel kept leaving town on business trips like this current one, the third excursion in as many months.
Now that he wasn’t keeping constant “Keep Jane alive and out of trouble” vigils, Gabriel was spending some time catching up with his various business interests. He was the proprietor of three radio stations in the Southeast, plus a hotel in Atlanta, a seafood restaurant in New Orleans, and a mini-golf course in Biloxi. And those were just the ventures in this country. I know it sounds like Tony Soprano’s investment portfolio, but to be fair, he had more than 100 years to diversify. Older vampires are heavily invested in human real estate, medical research, music, publishing, and media. It’s what has helped maintain our cover for two millennia. It’s not a conspiracy or anything, we’re just trying to keep you people from setting us on fire in our sleep. If we controlled everything, do you really think the Lifetime network would have had a vampire detective show?
So Gabriel floated in and out of my world, letting me think I could handle life without him, only to show up after a few weeks and make me crazy all over again. I was frequently left to wallow and wonder where he was and what he wasn’t telling me. I excelled at wallowing and wondering. If I called, it went to his voice mail. If he called, it was always just before dawn, as I was falling asleep and didn’t have the mental capacity to ask him much. This combined with a painfully active imagination led to scenarios that would have done that Lifetime show very proud.
And, of course, he had to come home from his latest trip on a Tuesday night to find me wearing my “housework” sweats and a dirty bandanna around my head.
“Have we discussed the ‘Call first’ rule?” I asked when I opened the door, suppressing a giddy smile.
Gabriel had been impossibly beautiful even in the harsh neon lights of Shenanigans that first night I met him. And now that I had sharp vampire vision, I could fully appreciate the leonine dreaminess that was my sire. There he stood, wearing his typical Johnny Cash full black, flowing dark locks curling at his collar. His full, soft lips quirked at my rude greeting, and a flicker of warmth reflected back at me in those clear, gray eyes. Despite our general resilience, he looked tired. There was the slightest hint of shadows under his eyes. And even for a vampire, he looked pretty pale.
“Hello, Gabriel, it’s lovely to see you?” he responded in a feminine voice that, frankly, sounded nothing like me. “I missed you terribly. How was Nashville?”
“Hello, Gabriel, it’s lovely to see you,” I parroted in an explicitly pleasant tone. “How w
as Nashville? Have we discussed the ‘Call first’ rule?”
“Can I come in?” he asked, hefting a foam cooler with his hip. A girl couldn’t help but appreciate the way those hips looked in black denim. I paused to give them the proper reverence.
I opened the door wider, then stopped him with a hand to the chest. “Wait. You have that
‘We have to talk’ look on your face, which usually means I’m going to be accused of something.”
“For once, no.” He advanced against my palm. I held him back. He pouted. “This is getting heavy.”
“You have superstrength,” I pointed out, grinning despite myself. “What’s in the cooler?”
“A present.” He opened the top and proudly displayed a dozen pint-sized plastic envelopes of blood packed in dry ice.
I cocked my head and studied him thoughtfully. “The next time you go shopping for me, take Andrea.”
He carried his burden into the kitchen, where he carefully stored his repellent treasures in the empty vegetable crisper.
“This is prime Red Cross-grade human donation,” he said. “Tested, screened, and cleared through a lab in the city.”
“That’s wonderful, but why did you bring it here?”
“Can’t I do something nice?” he asked, clearly offended.
I stared at him. “You might have started with a card and maybe worked your way up to human blood.”
“I worry about how you eat,” he said as he sifted through the pathetic contents of my fridge. “I want you to drink a pint of this every day.”
“I’ve told you that it makes me uncomfortable when you blur that daddy/boyfriend line, right?” I said. He held up half-empty bottles of Hershey’s syrup and Bailey’s Irish Cream.
“That’s just for flavor!”
“I’m afraid that you’re becoming too accustomed to drinking synthetic blood, Jane,” he said. “It’s only a recent development, and production could stop with the turn of the political tide. And then where will you be?”
“On eBay, looking for remainders?” I guessed.
“What if you’re too far away from a store to get a supply? What if the supply is tainted?
You need to become more comfortable drinking human blood, feeding from live subjects.”
He hushed me when I opened my mouth to protest. “I know how you feel about feeding from humans, but I want you to have the skills you need to survive. Just in case. I want you to be able to hunt on your own.”
“So, I’m like a domesticated bear, and you’re working up to releasing me into the wild?”
“Yes, that’s the worst possible way you could have taken this gesture, thank you,” he muttered, setting the cooler aside.
“Thank you,” I finally said. “I appreciate the fact that you thought of me while you were away.”
“Every spare moment,” he promised, moving in closer for a kiss.
I stopped him. “Are you sure I’m not accused of something? Feeding on senior citizens? Kicking toddlers? Stealing candy from babies?”
He was darkly cute when he was indignant. “It’s not a bad omen every time I come to call.”
“You’re right,” I conceded. “I’m being rude. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
In a very serious tone, he said, “I think we should have sex again.”
“What?” I giggled. I couldn’t help it. Gabriel and I hadn’t been able to “date” per se.
Dating a vampire is difficult, even if you are a vampire. I mean, it’s not as if we can go out to dinner like a normal couple. We don’t eat. On the rare occasion that we were both at one of our houses and sitting still, Zeb and Jolene or Andrea or Dick would show up, and our twosome became a group gathering. As much as I loved having a close group of diverse friends who understand my special needs, talk about a bunch of mood killers.
“I think we should have sex again,” he repeated. “I think we’ve reestablished our rapport and friendship. I believe you’re starting to trust me again. I know you want me.”
“That’s kind of presumptuous,” I told him. He wasn’t wrong, but it was still presumptuous.
Obviously irritated by my not jumping him right then and there, he added, “Also, the first time was rather rushed, and I don’t feel that I was able to demonstrate my full range of, er, technique.”
“So, you think we should have Naked Happy Fun Time because I didn’t get to see all of your moves?” I said, barely able to contain a second giggle fit as he backed me against the counter. “You don’t just say something like that. You have to take me out for dinner or something.”
“Here.” He reached into the fridge and pulled out a packet of A-negative. “Drink that.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You really don’t understand the concept of modern courtship, do you?”
“Drink it,” he commanded. Humoring him, I popped the top and took a long drink of the smooth, lusciously nutty donated blood. Tasting genuine human blood after months of synthetic always left me a little woozy. Little pinpricks of sensation, nerves firing along my arms and throat, made me lean heavily against the counter to get my bearings.
Gabriel took the packet from my slightly trembling hand. “Now, kiss me.”
“I’m not a light bulb, you can’t just flip a switch and turn me—” Gabriel gripped my cheeks between his palms and seized my lips, the last syllables of my sentence muffled into his mouth.
“I stand corrected,” I admitted as we backed into the living room.
“Is your aunt here?” he asked, tugging at my T-shirt.
I shook my head. “Hot ghost date.”
“I think—gah!” Distracted by the front closure on my bra, Gabriel had tripped over a footstool and knocked over a side table.
“It might be nice to have sex without breaking anything, what do you say?” I asked, peeking down at him over the edge of the table. Gabriel sat up, rubbing his forehead where my old hard-bound copy of Sense and Sensibility had conked him.
“Haven’t you already read this a few dozen times?” he asked, flipping through the pages.
“We’re going to have to have a literary intervention for you.”
“It’s Jane Austen, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that,” I said, settling next to him and taking the book from his hands. “You can never read Jane Austen too many times. And this is one of my favorites. She manages to pull a believable happy ending out of what could have been her saddest story. She could have left the Dashwood sisters alone, having learned their lessons from their respective traits. Marianne could have been left alone and ruined by her dramatic, impetuous behavior. Elinor could have taken her quiet dignity to a maiden’s grave. But she gave them the men they wanted or, in Marianne’s case, needed. Austen let both of them have a little bit more than they deserved.”
“I love it when you talk about books,” he murmured against my neck. “It gets you all excited. Quick, tell me your theories about Jane Eyre and sexual repression again.”
My burst of laughter was silenced by the press of Gabriel’s mouth.
It’s amazing how much easier it is to be naked in front of another person when you have a little self-confidence. In order to attract prey, vampires are usually more attractive than they were in life. So I got the high-school bookworm’s Golden Ticket. My skin was clearer. My hair had changed to an actually desirable color found in the brunette spectrum and did what it was supposed to on occasion. My eyes, formerly an unremarkable muddy hazel, were now a clear and compelling hazel. My teeth were whiter. And my chest was in the locked and upright position forevermore. I never had to worry about sagging. If Mama would admit to my being a vampire, even she would have to concede that it seemed to agree with me.
Mama probably wouldn’t have mentioned the boob thing specifically, though.
Emboldened by my newfound confidence, I jumped over the couch and pounced on Gabriel, gleefully ripping at the buttons of his shirt. He was too busy slowly peeling off my socks to object. He grinned madly a
t my feet.
“What?” I asked, hoping that after all of this, I hadn’t accidentally fallen for a foot fetishist.
“I just never know what color your toenails are going to be,” he said, stroking my instep and kissing my ankle. “Will it be a prim pink? A contemplative cranberry? A playful plum?”
“My toes are like a mood ring. Good to know. Now, I believe you were kissing my ankle in a very pleasant manner. Feel free to continue,” I commanded, wiggling my freshly painted carpals.
“What is that?” he asked, staring with horror at the virulent shade of pulpy peach on my toenails.
“I had to mix three different shades to find a peach that would match Jolene’s bridesmaids’ dresses. I did an experimental test run to see if my body would tolerate the color.”
“Wow,” Gabriel mouthed silently.
“Shut it,” I said, tossing the remnants of his shirt into a wastebasket. He took advantage of this lapse of concentration to pull me onto his lap, wrapping my legs around his waist. I smirked down at him, tucking his hair behind his ears. “How about we try to make it to a bed this time?”
Gabriel didn’t answer, as his mouth was occupied, scraping his fangs gently over the curve of my breast. I loved and hated it when he did that. Loved it because he was teasing me, toying with me, reminding me of every dark pleasure he could inflict on me. Hated it because it reduced my whole world to a square inch of responsive flesh, making me forget everything—pride, sense, the ability to refrain from bizarre birdcall noises. My only defense was winding my fingers through his ink-black hair, pulling his head back, and sucking on his bottom lip.
He groaned into my mouth. “Unfair.”
“All’s fair in—ummph.” I grunted as he smothered my mouth with his and pushed me to my feet.
“You’re wearing too much.” His low voice vibrated across the skin of my throat. He refused to pull his lips away from my skin as he split my old 4-H camp T-shirt down the front and tossed it into the trash with his own shirt. I glared at him.
