But he vaguely remembered his mother’s love for the gardens of his childhood home and it had carried into his own strange half-life. No matter where he landed to live, a garden was something he always made sure to have. They existed in various degrees of excellence and extravagance, but the one in New Orleans was by far the grandest. It was the place he went to feel human, the place where he could still (more often than not) appreciate that there were good and beautiful things in the world.
He was standing by the front door now, pulling the door open silently and watching Megan’s face. She looked like she’d landed herself in Wonderland and couldn’t remember why she had gone searching for it in the first place. Those gardens were a place where even time went for a little break, where the whole world seemed to stand still and rest its weary head.
It was a place of peace and curiosity and now that Megan was there, Philip thought somewhat smugly, she would not turn and go back in the direction from whence she had come.
She was looking at him now, her eyes veiled and all of his every kind of communication with her, communication she probably didn’t realize had ever been there at all, gone.
He could not read her face but he could see that she was still walking towards him in a daze, and that was enough. He was right. He was dead right. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was sucked into the mystery of it all, and then there was the house. He had seen that she, as so many people in the grand city of New Orleans did, wished feverishly to get even a glimpse at the inside of his property. That was the real hook, not him. That was the thing that kept her feet moving forward, but there was also a growing curiosity about him as well, and that was a pretty good omen. At least for Philip’s purposes and desires.
“What’s that?” she asked, managing to look both interested and aggravated at the same time.
“It’s a French 75. Classic drink, clean flavors. I had a feeling it might be the kind of thing you’d enjoy.”
He watched her face closely, waiting to see what her response to that one would be. She had a good poker face, he’d give her that much, but he still sees the faintest of little twitches at the corners of her mouth that gives her away. He got it, nailed it, in fact. It must not only be the kind of drink she liked. He was willing to bet, bet a large amount of money on those little twitches, that it was her absolute favorite cocktail there was. She reached forward, hesitating and then further closing the gap between the two of them, and then practically snatching it from him. She wanted to step away from him again, he could see that too, but she didn’t. She won’t.
She’s stubborn, he thought, and brave. She’s not the type to back down and run away once she’s done a thing.
“It isn’t poison or anything right? I mean, this isn’t some kind of a weird plan to get me all drugged up, is it?”
“Seriously?”
He couldn’t help chuckling, but he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or insulted. She really must have been through some shit to have the balls to come right out and ask a question like that. Little spitfire, that’s what she was. A little spitfire and he was going to make use of her. He was going to do things to her, to make her feel things she hadn’t even known were possible, and did she know it? He thought she just might, or at least part of her. He thought she just might.
“Yes, seriously. I don’t know you, not at all. It seems like a pretty reasonable question to ask. Honestly, I shouldn’t even be drinking this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to, but I probably shouldn’t.”
He liked the way she spoke. There was something irreverent about it, something slightly accusatory but funny at the same time and it made Philip grin. Grinning wasn’t something he really did a whole lot of, but he was doing it now. In a life that sometimes became unbearably weighty in its boredom, he was entertained by this girl.
His wanting her to be there with him was more than just an act of attempted heroism. It was selfish also. He liked her and he wanted to see what the inside of her mouth tasted like. Even thinking about it, thinking about the velvety feel of the insides of her thighs, must surely have made him positively vibrate with his want.
He was sure that the way he was looking at her made his less than honorable intentions at least partially known, and he was pretty sure that most women would have shrunk back from it. Not this girl. Not this completely odd and irresistibly compelling Megan Wright. She held his eye contact defiantly, slammed back her drink in one long swallow, and then let out a little gasp.
“So you liked the drink, I take it?”
“Yes, it would appear that I did.”
“Would you like another?”
“Sure, why not? If I’m going to be poisoned, might as well go out with a fancy cocktail and a house tour. Because you are going to show me the house, aren’t you, Philip?”
“Would you like that?”
She sighed in exasperation, actually tapping her foot impatiently and taking the second drink he made her without so much as a thank you. He smiled at that as well. He enjoyed the game. It was like a less R rated version of the hunt, and what predatory beast didn’t enjoy the hunt? She took a sip of this second drink, closing her eyes briefly in satisfaction, before answering him.
“That’s a stupid question, don’t you think?”
“Is it? And why would I think that?”
“Because you already know the answer. What’s the point in asking questions you already know the answer to?”
“Point well taken. Now, finish your drink so I can pour us both another before we begin the tour.”
“Really?” she asked with one eyebrow raised. “Another? What if I don’t want another drink?”
“Don’t you?”
She bit her lip as she thought about it and Philip felt that most animalistic part of all begin to stir against his thigh. She had to know how alluring that was, the innocent, thoughtful biting of the lower lip. That was something universally known to drive men wild. Except that even when he looked at her sharply, coming as close to looking right through her as he was able, he saw no artifice in the movement.
It looked to be completely unconscious and that on its own, made it that much more seductive. That and the fact that she didn’t immediately tell him yes. He was so used to women telling him yes, whatever he wanted, a thousand times yes. He hadn’t realized until just this moment how tired he was of being told yes. It wasn’t that he wanted to be told no, just that he wanted to have to work for his yes every now and then.
And she would say yes. He could see that, too. There was a little twinkle of mischief in her eyes that made him even more turned on than he had already been. The big struggle for Megan had been whether or not she was going to come to him in the first place.
She hadn’t wanted to, had fought it tooth and nail, but it was an internal struggle she had lost and so here she was. Now here, what was the point in denying herself that third drink? As if to punctuate the point, Megan took another long sip of her drink, licked her lips, and tossed the rest of that one back, too.
This time Philip did more than just grin. He actually laughed out loud, a large peal of laughter that surprised him. Well this was positively delightful, wasn’t it? This was much more fun than even he had predicted it might be.
“Yes, it looks like I do. Three time’s the charm, right? Isn’t that what they say?”
“I don’t know. Who's ‘they’?”
“I don’t know. They. That’s how the saying goes, isn’t it? Anyway, who cares? It’s out there in the world for all of us to hear now. Who really cares who put it there? Now, how’s about you make me that drink you were so intent on me having and then I want to see the house. I’ve been waiting for long enough, I think.”
She had only been in his home for maybe twenty minutes, tops, but he knew what she meant by that last comment nevertheless. He could see her wanting to see this place, longing to wander through its corridors and discover its mysteries. He found that he, too, was excited about the tour.
Almost nobody w
as allowed inside of the walls of this home. Even the girls he hooked up with, and there had been many, did not come into his home. He would book them a hotel and take the girl in the penthouse suite, not caring a bit for the cost. What did something like the money mean to someone like Philip? He had more money than he would possibly be able to blow through if he were to live another several hundred years (which he fully intended to do) and a five hundred dollar night in a hotel seemed like a small price to pay to keep his solitude and anonymity intact.
But not this time. Again, Philip believed that Megan Wright was not like the other girls he had been with, and there were very few people in the world who were anything close to her. He wanted to show her his home, which surprised him, but there it was.
His home, the truest expression of who he was. Showing his home to another living soul felt like one of the most vulnerable things he could do. It had all of the bits and pieces of himself he had amassed over the past century and opened him up to scrutiny and any number of questions.
Usually, he would have avoided that at all costs, but not now. Now he felt like a kid on Christmas getting to show off his new and best toy. That’s what his house was to him; his toy, his pride and joy, the one he kept close.
He walked her through room after room after room, so many rooms that he knew without asking that she would never know just exactly how many rooms the sprawling home contained. Not that it mattered. She was utterly delighted with the place, believing each room to be more beautiful than the last.
He knew that without having to ask as well. So many rich and luxurious things, such an overload for the senses. She wanted to touch everything, to pick it up and put it up against the skin of her cheek. She wanted to experience it, all of it. He saw that and was pleased.
“What about back there? You haven’t shown me that part yet. Right? I mean I don’t think you have. Unless I’m just completely turned around, which is definitely possible.”
“No,” he said smoothly, no emotion showing in his voice in one direction or another, “you aren’t completely turned around. We haven’t seen that area. Those are my chambers.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, they are.”
“And are we going to see those as well?”
“Would you like to see those as well?”
Megan’s eyes grew brighter still and she took a demure sip of her almost empty cocktail, her eyes never leaving his. They were caught in the middle of a standoff, neither one at all willing to back down. But were they really on opposing sides, when it was all said and done?
He would not ask her to come to bed with him, that he would not do. He had already done far more than he was likely to do. He had invited her here for this rather ostentatious showing of his home, had done his best to dazzle her in his own way.
And did she want to see his chambers? He thought that she did. She struck him as a smart girl and she must have noticed that she had seen everything but his bedroom by now. By asking what was back there, she was all but asking for an invitation but by God, he was not going to extend it.
He would not lower himself to something one step above begging, he wouldn’t, but she only continued to look at him with those wide, strange eyes and after some unknown amount of time had passed, he could stand it no longer.
He took her by the hand, seeing her wince at the feel of his ice cold skin, and couldn’t have cared less. Good. Let her be afraid -- at least a little bit afraid. She was too sure of herself here in his presence. He knew that she sensed the otherness in him, just as he felt the brokenness in her.
They saw each other in some deep, primordial way that he could not explain and, frankly, did not care to. He was tired of looking for explanations for things, at least at the moment. He was tired of waiting for her.
Let her be afraid! He did not care. It would only serve to stoke the fires of their desire for one another because yes, that desire was there, too, so thick he felt that he could have reached out and plucked it out of the air.
He took her by the hand and strode through the massive mahogany room that had once served as the home’s grand ballroom, many years ago. As he walked, he could see the ghosts of his past moving around him, unconscious of the fact that their time had passed and they weren’t really there at all.
He saw balls he had attended when he was young and still believed there was a future ahead of him. He saw balls he had hosted himself as the owner of the property, after his turning was complete. He could still hear the sound of horse’s hooves clomping skittishly in the wet cobblestone streets outside of his gardens.
He could hear the tinkle of laughter from countless numbers of breathless ladies, smell the smoke of many lifetime’s worth of pricey cigars. Those ghosts could be suffocating if he thought about them too much, but on this evening, thinking about them was the last thing on his mind. It was only her and the feeling of her too thin, slightly trembling hand wrapped up inside of his own.
Tripping down a long hallway with a thick plush carpet that still to this day made Philip wonder if this was what it would feel like to actually walk on air, her heartbeat was thumping so hard in her slender wrist, involuntarily, his unusually sharp incisors extended themselves. It was such soft flesh, so supple, so easy to sink his teeth…
“No!” he hissed to himself, so softly under his breath that Megan didn’t hear it at all (or if she did, she made no mention of it which to Philip amounted to pretty much the same thing), “No, not her. She’s not for that purpose. Not to be devoured, at least not like that.”
And of course he wouldn’t, not ever. He would never sink his teeth into that flesh unless she asked him to, and maybe not even then. That hummingbird beat of her heart was not for the eating. It was for the bedroom, which was where he was now taking her.
“It’s so dark” she said breathlessly, stopping short in the front sitting room.
She looked around her in frank astonishment, her eyes hungry for as much detail as she could possibly absorb. He let her hands go then and stepped deeper inside of his chambers. He looked around him, trying to see things the way that she might be seeing them, but he couldn’t concentrate. Being in here seemed to have removed all pretense that they had spent this evening together for any reason other than to experience every part of each other’s bodies.
The massive ebony carved bed front and center served as an excellent reminder, had either one of them been inclined to forget.
“Philip?”
That’s all she got out, only that one word, before he was once again upon her. This time it was not just her hand he held. He wrapped his arms around the lithe length of her body, letting his hands run along the small of her back, daring her to ask him to stop. She looked up at him defiantly, her chin lifted in a girlish ‘you can’t scare me’ sort of a way, and did not move. She hardly seemed to be breathing anymore she was so still.
He understood the feeling. It felt like a dream. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually had a dream, but this felt the way he remembered them, so fragile and slick that it might slip away for any stupid kind of feeling at all.
“I’m right here.”
“You are,” she gasped, the sound of her heart pounding in his ears, “and how did you move so fast? It looked like you were over there and then I blinked and you were right here in front of me. How?”
“Don’t ask a question you already know the answer to. Isn’t that what you said to me? It goes both ways.”
Had that been too much? Had he finally said too much, pushed her too far? Because some part of her did already know the answer and that part of her was afraid. In fact, she thought that maybe more of her knew what he was, then didn’t know. Something in her wasn’t entirely normal either (whatever normal was) or that was the part of her who saw what he was. For what he was.
“You’re right,” she said softly, one hand moving tentatively up to touch his face, “it does go both ways. No more questions. No more talking.”
Grippe
d by an impressive amount of initiative, something he didn’t often find in the women he dealt with, Megan pressed her body more fully against his own. She slid her other hand up to cup his face and then rose up on the tips of her toes and kissed him with a quivering mouth. For the briefest flash of time, the two of them remained in that state of questioning, and then it was like wildfire.
He had wanted so badly to know what Megan tasted like and the reality of it was so much better than anything he had imagined. She tasted like all of the life he had been missing. She tasted like strawberries that had been left out in the warm summer’s sun, like a lazy day on the beach that stretched out for miles and miles into forever.
Even though he knew well enough that it was a place he would never be permitted to go, she tasted like heaven. She was like the light, the broken light, and he was the dark and they somehow fit together perfectly, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to be linked together.
Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) Page 5
