“I’m having supper with Laura tomorrow,” I said. “I figure I owe her a cocoa at the very least. I can ask her some stuff. But she seems kind of private.”
Marc snorted. “I’ll bet.”
Chapter 30
I paused outside Sinclair’s bedroom. The sun would be up soon, and just thinking about the night’s events (not to mention living through them) made me tired. But now what? I’d told Sinclair the truth…told myself the truth. I knew he shared my feelings. We were engaged. We lived together. We were apparently in love. So did we share a bedroom? Did we wait until our wedding night?
My unholy lust for Sinclair’s delicious bad self aside, I wanted to share a bed with him. I wanted to make up for using him earlier, and I wanted to hear his deep voice in the dark. And in my head.
On the other hand, after what I’d done to him earlier, what right did I have to expect us to literally kiss and make up? If our situations had been reversed, I’d have held a grudge for at least a year. Maybe I should give him time.
On the other other hand, he had come to Scratch specifically to…what? Regardless, he’d saved my ass yet again. Maybe it was silly to be all “you can have space, big guy.”
Oh boy, was I pooped. Screw it. I’d worry about it tomorrow night.
I turned away and plodded down the hall to my room. One thing—well, another thing—to worry about; I had the master bedroom, which in a place like this was really saying something. After we got married, Sinclair would probably want to share it with me. That could be a problem; he was as picky about his suits as I was about my shoes. There was room in my heart for Sinclair, but was there room in my closet?
I opened my door and gaped. Sinclair was in my bed, shirtless (at least!), blankets up to his waist, poring over all kind of dusty books. He looked up. “Oh, there you are. Ready for bed?”
I clutched the knob. Uh, the doorknob. “Don’t you think this is a little presumptuous?”
“No.”
“I debated outside your door and decided to give you space!”
“How sweet. Please strip now.”
I snorted, torn between irritation, arousal, and plain old happiness. One thing about Eric Sinclair: he didn’t dither. “Okay,” I said, shutting the door. “But don’t think it will be this easy every night.”
“I’m counting on it, actually. Do you know, you’re the only woman who has ever refused me?”
“No wonder you’re such a pain.”
“Tina had the same theory,” he said thoughtfully. “But I dismissed it.”
I pulled my T-shirt over my head, struggled out of my jeans, then stripped off my bra and panties. I shoved a few smelly books out of the way, ignoring his wince, and wriggled under the covers.
“Sushi socks?” he asked.
“What is it with you and Japanese cuisine? You don’t like my sushi jammies, you don’t like my socks…”
He smirked. “It’s possible they’re hurting the mood.”
“Hey, it’s chilly in here.”
“If I warm you up,” he said, pulling me against his chest, “will you take them off?”
“Done and done,” I said, and opened my mouth against his. His hands circled my rib cage and then moved up, and it was all very fine. Whatever had happened between us, this moment seemed exactly right.
I reached down and felt him beneath my hand, already hard, and had a second to wonder—How did vampires get it up? Then I forgot about it as his hands cupped my bottom and pulled me closer, so close you couldn’t have slipped a piece of Saran Wrap between us. He broke the kiss and pressed his lips to the hollow of my throat.
Oh Elizabeth, Elizabeth, at last, at last.
I nearly sighed with relief. I could hear him in my head again! I definitely wasn’t evil anymore. Not that I had worried too much about it, but I had missed the intimacy of it.
“I love you,” I said.
Elizabeth, oh my Elizabeth. His grip tightened, and after a long moment he murmured against my neck, “I love you, too. I’ve always loved you.” Always. Always.
“You can bite me if you wa—” And then his teeth were in me, his tongue was pressed firmly against my throat, and we shuddered together. Only when Eric bit me did I feel like everything was wonderful. Only with Eric did I not mind being dead. In fact, being with Eric was the opposite of being dead.
“Oh, G—oh, thath good.”
He stopped drinking so he could laugh, and I leaned down and tickled his balls. “Don’t thtart or I’ll thing a hymn.”
“Anything but that, darling. You should practice more, get used to the scent.”
“I only like doing that with you,” I said, and he bit me again, on the other side.
And I you, you are sweet, you are like wine, you are…everything.
“Ummm…” I was shivering like I had a fever; God, I wanted him so much. “Come inside me now. I’ve waited long enough. Don’t start about it being my own fault.”
He laughed again and eased into me; I wrapped my legs around his waist and felt him slide all the way home. And oh, it was sweet, it was like wine, it was everything. I licked his throat and bit him, yes, it was like wine.
“Elizabeth,” he groaned, thrusting hard. He grabbed my thighs, spread them apart for him, clamped down. Shoved, pushed, penetrated. And oh, it was good, it was so good. Elizabeth, I love you, there’s no one. No one.
“Oh, boy,” I gasped. That was it. That did it. I had thought my orgasm was way off, but it was just around the corner and when he said my name, when he thought my name, I could feel myself opening beneath his hands, his cock, his mouth, opening and coming, and it was more than fine, it was like coming home.
“Listen,” he said, and his voice—it was trembling. I was shocked, even in the depths of my pleasure…I’d never heard him sound like that before. “Elizabeth. Listen to me. Don’t do that again. Run off like that. Scare me again. Do you promise?”
Well, I didn’t exactly run off, I was just trying to take charge of things, and I certainly didn’t set out to scare him, but—
“Do you promise?”
“Yes, yes, I promise. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
You are the only one who can scare me. “All right,” he said, and his voice sounded normal again, thank goodness. He reached down and gently thumbed my clit, and this time when I shuddered, he did, too.
It took a long time for me to move, and I just sort of wriggled out from beneath him and flopped over like a fish. He groaned when I punched his shoulder to get him to give me a little room.
“Well, that was…” Orgasmic? Too obvious. Earth-shaking? Too clichéd. Fantastically amazingly wonderful? Too needy.
He picked up my hand and kissed the knuckles. “Sublime.”
“Ah! Luh mot just.”
He laughed. “Close enough.”
I hesitated. It was obvious to me, and had been from the beginning, that he didn’t know I could pick up his thoughts when we were having sex (when I wasn’t evil). And I had never been able to figure out a way to tell him. He was so controlled, so cool and calm, I didn’t know how to say it without freaking him out or making him mad. Hell, I could hardly explain it to myself; I’d never been able to read minds before, and I couldn’t read anyone else’s.
But now was the time. Things had never been better between us, more comfortable, more natural. In fact, I had never been happier, felt more loved, so safe. I would tell him, and he wouldn’t freak out, and everything would still be nice between us.
“Good night, sweetheart,” he said, and the sun slipped up in the sky—I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it. I spun down and down into sleep.
And the moment passed.
Chapter 31
“So.” I cleared my throat. “How ’bout those demonic powers?”
Laura wolfed down the last of her blueberry muffin. We were at the Caribou Coffee in Apple Valley, snarfing down muffins (well, she was) and white tea. After last night, I’d been tempted to cancel on her and spend
the night in bed with Eric, but how many half sisters did I have? One, so far.
“Betsy, do you have something on your mind?”
“No, no. Well, maybe.”
Laura’s big blue eyes shone with reproach, which would have made me feel worse if there hadn’t been crumbs sticking to her lower lip. “Everybody has secrets, Betsy. You most of all.”
I handed her a napkin. “Hey, I’m totally open about my disgusting covert vampire lifestyle.”
She laughed.
“Look, I just met you a few days ago, right? Heck, I just found out about you a few days ago. I couldn’t think of a way to blurt out the whole ‘I’m dead’ thing without weirding you out. Or making you think I skipped my meds.”
“You’d be surprised what does and doesn’t weird me out.”
“Hey, I was there, okay? I would totally not be surprised. Well, not that surprised. Look, let’s do a quid po ko, okay?”
“I think,” she said gently, “you mean quid pro quo.”
“Right, right. Let’s do one of those. I’ll tell you something weirdly secret about me, and then you do the same.”
“Um…”
“Oh, come on,” I coaxed. “We’re sisters, we have to get to know each other.”
She fiddled with her glass. “Okay. You go first.”
“Okay. Um…last night wasn’t the first time a bunch of moody vampires tried to kill me.”
She nodded. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“Now it’s your turn.”
“Ah…when I was eight I stole a plastic whistle from Target.”
“Laura!”
She cringed. “I know, I know. I felt so bad about it after-ward I told my mom and my minister. Who was also my dad.”
“For heaven’s sake, what kind of morbid confession is that? I’m talking about really awful sinful evil stuff.”
“Stealing is a sin.”
I rested my forehead on the table. “I mean really bad stuff. Not kid stuff. Because I have something to tell you, and I can’t do it if I don’t feel a little closer to you.”
Her eyes went round with curiosity. “Why can’t you?”
Because I sucked at telling people intimate things about themselves. “Because I…I just have to.”
“Well, why don’t you just go ahead?” She patted the top of my head. “Just get it off your chest. You’ll feel better.”
“Okay. Well. You know how your mom is the devil and all…?” Her lips thinned, but I plunged ahead. “And you know how—wait a minute. How do you know your mom is the devil?”
“My parents told me.”
“Your mom and the minister?” I was trying not to gape at her, and failing.
“Yes.”
“How did they know?”
“She told them. I think she thought it would be funny. That they would get rid of me. And she…the devil…appeared to me when I was thirteen.” I noticed she didn’t say “my mother.” In fact, her lips were pressed together so tightly, they had almost disappeared. “She told me everything. About possessing a—no offense, a woman of poor character—”
“None taken. At all.”
“—and how it was my destiny to take over the world and how she was proud of me because I wasn’t like anyone else—”
The milk glass broke in her hands. It had been mostly empty, but a little bit spilled onto the table, and I frantically blotted. Meanwhile, Laura was getting pretty worked up.
“And it’s not up to her, you know? It’s not up to her at all! It’s my life, and I don’t give a—a crap about destiny or any of it. It doesn’t mean anything anyway! I don’t have to be bad, and it’s not how I was raised. She didn’t raise me, my mother and father did, and she doesn’t get to decide how I live my life, and that’s how it is, that’s how it is, that is exactly how it is!”
This would have sounded like a normal antiparent rant from any teenager, except while she was shouting, Laura’s honey blond hair shaded to a deep, true red and her big blue eyes went poison green. I was leaning away from her as far as I could get without actually falling on the floor, and she was screaming into my face.
“Okay,” I said. I would have held up my hands to placate her, but if I let go, I’d be on my ass on the floor in Caribou Coffee. “Okay, Laura. It’s okay. Nobody’s making you do anything.”
She calmed a little. “I’m sorry. I just—she makes me crazy. So crazy.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m not like that.”
“Okay.”
“I won’t be like that.”
“Okay, Laura.” I watched in fascination as her hair lightened and lightened until it was back to blond, as her eyes went from squinty and green to big and blue.
“It’s like I said before. I don’t think your parents define who you are.”
“Definitely not.” I was trying to look around the coffee shop without her seeing. How had nobody noticed her transformation? “I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
“It’s not your fault.” She was nervously picking up the pieces of the glass and piling them into a napkin. “I’m—I guess I’m a little sensitive on that subject.”
Well, I won’t be broaching that one again, Red, not to worry.
“So, uh, thanks again for your help last night.” I tugged on a hank of her (blond?) hair. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
She didn’t smile back. “Yes, I know.”
Chapter 32
“I have got to meet this woman!” Jessica gasped.
“It was unreal,” I announced. “Totally, massively unreal. Honestly, I was afraid to take my eyes off her. And then she got over it and she was as nice as chocolate pie again.”
“Huh. Did scary magical stuff happen?”
“Nothing besides the evil hair and colored contacts. Oh, and she gorged herself on four more muffins.”
“That is evil.”
“I know! She’s as thin as a stick.”
Jessica handed George a navy blue skein of yarn. We were in the basement, where she had fixed up his little concrete room with curtains (duct-taped to the walls), a mattress, lots of blankets, and about sixty pillows. An entire corner of the room had been taken up with a rainbow of crochet chains. George only knew one stitch. Still, the fact that he was stitching and not stabbing was a relief.
He didn’t seem to mind Jessica poking around in his room, though we were careful—she was never alone with him. As long as I fed him regularly, he didn’t even sniff in her direction. So she read to him, brought him yarn, tempted him with smoothies (which he disdained), and in general found him fascinating. He was keeping clean, too, and showering on his own. I’d borrowed lots of clothes for him from Marc and Eric, though he refused socks and underpants. He took the yarn she offered, slipped off the paper covering, and started to roll it into a ball.
I finished Noxema-ing my face—I might be eternally young, but vampires got dirty faces just like everyone else. Those little disposable towelettes were a godsend; I kept a ton in my purse. “I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on her.”
“You didn’t figure that out after the mysterious weapons of hellfire?”
“Yeah, but now I really want to keep an eye on her. I mean, it’s great that she turned her back on her destiny—”
“But can you really?” Jessica asked quietly.
“Exactly. I mean, look at Eric and me. I swore we’d never be together, but—”
“Your inner whore would not be denied,” she finished.
“That is not what I was going to say.”
“Sure,” she sneered.
“You know, you could go back to not talking to me again.”
“You wish.”
Two hours later, I was just getting to the part in the movie where Rhett sweeps a struggling Scarlett up the stairs when the phone at my elbow rang. Oooh, Clark Gable! I was normally not a fan of facial hair, but he was the exception to the rule. Those lips, those eyes! And the phone was still ringing. Nuts. I
had to do everything myself.
I picked it up, gaze still riveted to the screen. “Hello?”
“Good evening, Your Majesty. I hope you don’t mind my calling instead of seeing you in person, but there’s so much to do, I’m a little short on time.”
“Who the hell is this?”
“It’s Andrea,” she said, sounding worried.
“Oh, right. That was a test, Andrea. And you just passed.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. I was just calling to make sure you had everything you needed for tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“My wedding,” Andrea prompted me thinly.
“Oh. Oh! Right! Your wedding. I totally didn’t forget about it again. Wow, tomorrow’s Halloween already, huh?”
“No. Tomorrow is the rehearsal.”
“Right, right. Well, I guess we’ll see you tomorrow.”
“My father can’t make it, and my mother is out of the country…” She trailed off. I happened to know (from Tina, who was a remarkably tactful but accurate gossip) that Andrea’s parents thought she was still dead. Well, none of my business.
“Hey,” I said suddenly. “Do you mind if my sister comes?” Laura would get a kick out of it, not to mention Operation Keep an Eye on the Spawn of Satan would be a lot easier. And if there was a sudden wedding coup, she’d come in handy. “It’s up to you, it’s your wedding, but—”
“Your—no, of course not. I’d be honored. Any of your family members are welcome.”
“That’s nice of you, but I put my foot down with my mom.”
“Ma’am, that’s not necessary.”
“No, it totally is. She’s looking at this from a cultural perspective, and I can just tell she’s dying to corner Tina and grill her about Life Back Then.”
“Truly, Your Majesty. I don’t mind.” Andrea sounded like she was cheering up. “Someone’s mother should be there.”
“Oh.” When you put it that way. “Well, okay. I’ll let her know. She’ll be thrilled. Sincerely.”