~*~
My first day at the Expo didn't go well. I ended up driving off a sweet young were who'd had a massage booth next to me—trust George to leave all the scented packets unsealed. The other problem was the sales traffic. All the potential and actual buyers trooped religiously to Deathly Buzzing's main rival, Turn Me On.
Six hours into the day, and aside from a few heated condoms for the ghosts—you know how chilly they can get—and a couple of catnip nipple rings, I’d sold virtually nothing. The only real highlight of my day was being terrorized by a rather oversized lesbian biker vampire. She did buy one of the Blow Up Bite Bods, though, and a year’s order of NearBlood, “the vampire’s closest alternative to the real thing.” The mental images of her and the doll left me enough material to keep my psychiatrist in business for year. Fortunately, by this time, Mom and Dad had become bored of hassling me and were somewhere in the hotel spying or playing tricks on the other patrons.
The day did turn out a little better, in a sad way, when Ms. Arnez, my rival at Turn Me On, was handcuffed and taken away by PMS. Goodness knows what for. The only crime she'd committed, from what I could see, was being way too sexy. I’d be willing to bet a buck she wasn’t human but couldn’t even guess what she might be.
The net result of the arrest was good and bad. I got a lot more traffic. After all, what’s the point of seeing good toys if there is no one there to sell them to you? Alas, I nearly had to run for my life when a giggly gang of middle-aged ladies attempted to strip and ravish me just before supper. It was Amanda Bast’s arrival that saved my skin when she put the ladies to rights regarding convention etiquette and sent them packing. The damage was done, though. What with that small incident in the foyer and now here in the Count's ballroom, I was getting a reputation I really didn't want.
A reputation Ms. Bast seemed determined to try out.
My encounter with Ms. Bast can only be described in the terms of interesting. Her hand did fascinating things beneath the table as I attempted to demonstrate to a rather shy and giggly younger zombie the latest in vibrolube technology. I’d just gotten to the part where I expounded the virtues of sonic moisturizers on dry, cracked and decomposing skin, when I felt my zipper being pulled open.
I made a polite, panicked dash to the restroom and locked myself in a cubicle for a good half hour. You know, if I could bottle what Fritz had done to me I’d be able to open my own marital aids company and be a millionaire in days.
When I did peek out again, Ms. Bast had vanished and the area around the booth was empty of people. I’d had enough for one day and decided to call it a night. Hopefully I’d get some peace and quiet before Mom and Dad came back to the room. I knew they'd missed arguing about me and what a failure their only son had been.
In spite of the crowds moving around the convention, I had the good fortune of having an elevator to myself, which was just as well. I couldn’t imagine what being trapped in here with a glamour lust-affected woman would be like. I tried to pull myself together. I should be enjoying these last few days of my life, not laying on the bed listening to my parents fight as we watched reruns of “I Love Lucy.”
Up on the twelfth floor, I stepped out of the elevator, distracted by a lot of thoughts, mainly by the unfair death sentence Fritz had put over me. The babbling couple who got off the elevator next to mine took even more of my attention. What was so amusing about spouting numbers like “17,” “25” at each other?
Then again, it had to be amusing enough to prevent me seeing the third guy who'd come with them. I'd barely had time to step around him when…
“Oomph!”
I landed face down on top of a rather familiar woman. Rather than stammer my way out of this repeated and highly embarrassing position, I decided to let my suave and sophisticated side deal with it.
“Oh. Hi.” I smiled.
Blonde and frizzy said nothing. Instead she wriggled her hips in a rather delightful manner. Her smile grew as a certain part of my anatomy did as well.
“Now I know you're pleased to see me,” she said, giving me a peck on the nose that was somehow more intimate than the long kiss she'd given me downstairs. “But if you don't want me to succumb to your charms and do even more of what I did downstairs, I suggest we stand up.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.” Hey, I can be as sophisticated as the next guy.
Levering myself off the floor I managed to stand and, holding out a hand, helped her to stand too.
“Since we, er, keep bumping into each other, may I know your name?” I helped her brush the dust bunnies off the back of her shoulders and back. She wriggled with a quiet “Hmmm” when I went accidentally too low and stroked her buttocks. Just to make sure her pants were dust free, I stroked them again.
“Uhndame,” she answered as she shivered, giving me a damn sexy look. She was having a very hard time fighting the glamour lust spell. Guiltily I took my hand off her. She shuddered as I did. “Amanda Uhndame.”
“I'm, well, Roger In… Ah, just call me Roger.” I held out my hand and she took it and shook it firmly.
“I recall Igor telling me your name, Mr. Ing. And please call me Amanda.”
“Hi, Amanda. I'm sorry about all the...tumbling and stuff. It's not normally me.”
“It's not usually what I do, either,” she said. “Though it hasn't been all that unpleasant, has it?”
I blushed. It had been far from unpleasant. “It has been nice. A little,” I finally admitted.
Amanda laughed, a sound that tickled in my ears and made its way towards the throbbing in my groin. This woman was doing things to me than none of my teenaged dates could have even dreamed of.
“I tell you what,” Amanda said, slapping my rather, ah, lustful thoughts back into hiding. “I was just on my way out from work. Let me take you to dinner, as a kind of apology.”
“Oh, no, no apology needed.”
“So you'd rather stay in your room all night?” She cocked her head to one side with a look so disarming it should have been illegal.
All night in my room, with Mom and Dad's ectoplasmic verbal jabbering. Suddenly dinner with this woman—even with Fritz's death threat hanging over my head—seemed perfectly wonderful. Although if she kept looking at me that way, I'd find it hard to keep my hands off her, and she didn't have a glamour lust spell hanging around her head.
“No, you're right, I need to go out, but please. I'm the one who's been walking into you. Let me pay.”
“Don't be stupid,” she said, linking her arm with mine as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I tried to ignore the burning hunger such a simple contact shouldn’t make me feel. “Where I'm taking us, we get to eat for free.”
“Free sounds good to me.” I grinned. “But I thought it was just the two of us?”
No one had ever laughed at my jokes before…I was grinning all the way down to the foyer.
Free supper turned out to be in one of the hotel restaurants, in this case The Abyss. Not a place I would have come alone, mainly because it was so dim, with artfully placed atmospheric lighting and no outside windows. Also it seemed to be set up almost entirely for the paras.
Food for the humans consisted of two appetizers, one of which was the aforementioned Rat on a Stick, and the other was equally unmentionable.
“You sure you don’t want any of the Eyeball Toasties?” Amanda asked as she popped another of the battered and deep fried morsels in her mouth.
“No, I’m sure. I want to save room for the oysters and the surf and turf you’ve ordered.” It was a lie, but having seen the size of the appetizer, it could very well turn out to be the truth.
Instead, whenever I could turn my eyes away from the vision of beauty stuffing fried eyeballs into her mouth, I looked into the huge aquarium of the hotel. The Abyss, a feat of amazing engineering, had been built two floors beneath ground level, and one whole side of the restaurant consisted of thick glass. Just beyond the glass was the aquarium, lit up now with colored spotlights
that left nothing to the imagination.
Trust me, seeing a kraken mate with four mermaids and three mermen at the same time left nothing to the imagination.
There was also a dreamlike quality to the room caused by the ever-changing light patterns as they sifted through the eddying water and into the restaurant. If I hadn’t been so worried about the food soon to arrive—and whether I could eat it—I’d have appreciated the atmospherics a little more.
“So you work here then?” Yeah, all right, it was a dumb question but I had to start somewhere.
“Well, not specifically.” Amanda sat back, wiping those gorgeous lips with her napkin. “You could call me more of a district manager, I guess. I look after the southern United States interests for Morgan Hotels. We have a dozen or so hotels scattered below the Mason-Dixon line. I’ve just come as an extra hand for the weekend. The ParaPleasures Expo really pulls on our local resources.”
I couldn’t help giving her the once-over, thinking there were certainly a few things I could pull on. Amanda laughed, and I blushed, realizing how rude I’d just been.
“So, if you’re human why do you work with…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to name them.
“Paras,” Amanda prompted, forcing me to nod. “Probably the same reason you do,” she answered. “I’m just a little bit not-human.”
“I’m fully human. Why do you think I’m not?” I refused to pout. Pouting didn’t look good on a man.
“Well, for example, I’m glad you didn’t bring your parents along with you for dinner.” Amanda slipped the remark in casually, as a plate of oysters, almost as big as the table, was brought to us.
“I couldn’t; they’re dead.” The words come out of my mouth like a cracked record. Then I stopped and looked at her. “Oh, my God! You could see them?”
“Clearer than I could see how pleased you were to meet me.”
“This is so embarrassing. I’m so sorry. I mean, what my Dad said…”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not the only one with ectoparental issues.”
Then it struck me—all that spinning she did to talk to nobody in the foyer. “Your parents?”
“I guess you didn’t see them, huh? My mother was choosing names for her grandchild before Igor managed to drag you off me.”
“But how come you can see my folks, and I can’t see yours?” I swallowed dryly. Were her parents here?
I peeked around the room, checking to see if anything looked slightly paler than normal. Or something moved by itself. I thought there might be a shadow on the back of a Sumo wrestler sitting just behind Amanda. He was probably here as part of the entertainment, though why he wasn’t dressed beat me.
“They’re not here, you’ll be relieved to know.” Amanda interrupted my search. “They're off spying on any unfortunate couple they can find. And give it time. By the end of the weekend hanging around this lot—” she indicated the paras sitting around us “—you’ll be able to see a lot more than just our parents. The skill seems to be one that people like us absorb from being in proximity to paras.”
“Not just us,” I said bitterly. “Mr. Fritz can see them too.”
“What are you messing around with Mr. Fritz for?” she asked, sounding suddenly very concerned.
I shrugged. “He made me an offer I can’t refuse.” No point dwelling on it.
“Oh.” Amanda’s tone was as leaden as a coffin lid slamming shut. “One of those offers.” Her mood shifted a little and her eyes changed. She was a lot less open and far more difficult to read.
Knowing that I'd probably just ruined what had been a good evening, I picked up an oyster in the shell and, following Amanda’s example, let it slide into my mouth, trying to figure out how to eat it from there.
“Don’t you worry about Mr. Fritz,” she said eventually, patting my hand and sending spikes of lust through me. “Just eat your food. Then we’ll go back to my place and have the best hot monkey sex we’ve ever had.”
The Sumo guy didn’t seem too happy to have my half-masticated oyster plastered on his back.
Continued in Part 3
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I Dream of Desi
by Jenna Leigh