Cherry Stem (18 page)

I expected him to start yelling right about then. Maybe even call me names.

He didn’t.

He snatched my finger, which had been left to hover in front of his nose, and bit it lightly.

It didn’t hurt, but it momentarily shocked me into stillness. I don’t know exactly
how
stupid the astonishment on my face looked at that moment, but the answer to that had to be
very
, because Alex started laughing.

“God, you’d say anything to pick a fight right now, wouldn’t you?”

Hiding my relief that he hadn’t taken my words seriously, I retrieved my finger and tucked my hand under my armpit. “I wasn’t trying to pick anything. You just pissed me off.” I halfheartedly tried to slide off him, giving up when he stroked my hip with his thumb.

“Yes, you were. You were freaking out and wanted to get me to either fuck you or fight with you.” He’d seen right through me. He was all kinds of wonderful, and I was an idiot for being such a bitch just seconds earlier.

In lieu of an apology, I muttered, “I’m a little stressed. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“I know.” Smiling smugly, he added, “I knew from the start.”

Men
! “Well, then, why didn’t you play along and let me have my fight?”

“I promise to do so in the future, once in a while. Sometimes I may even put out.”

“Hey!” I slapped his chest, but there was no feeling in it. With what he’d said, I no longer needed sex or an argument to forget my fears. He’d mentioned a future and had done so in such a natural way that while I was there, in his arms, I could actually imagine us having one together. My bubble was firmly back in place. “Could you put out now because I want you to, because you’re very, very hot?”

He shook his head. “Are you still hoping to take advantage of me? Wouldn’t you rather just
talk
?”

I grabbed my pillow and smacked him in the face. My victory was short-lived. He dug his fingers into my ribs and tickled me mercilessly. Attempting to flee his attack without using the unfair advantage my vampiric powers afforded me, I didn’t notice he was pulling his own pillow from behind his head until it hit me sideways.

“Oh, now you’ve done it!” I twisted my body so I faced away from him and began tickling him on the soles of his feet and behind his knees, my thighs keeping him in place. That got me a slap on the butt for my trouble.

I turned to glare at him when I made out another sound among his chuckles. “Was that your stomach rumbling?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s long past breakfast time.”

“Long past lunchtime too.” I pushed at his stretched-out form. “Go get something to eat. I don’t want you going all scrawny on me.” Not that I could fathom the possibility.

He sat up and gave me a quick kiss before getting out of bed. “What about you?”

“What about me? It’s still sunny outside. I’ll be here, waiting for you. In the
nude
.” Like I’d have given up on early afternoon frolicking so easy.

“Aren’t you hungry?”

I was but didn’t want to drink from him all the time. I’d already decided to stick with packaged meals as my regular diet and only feed from Alex on occasion. “We’ll have to go by my place before the Dark Sun so I can change. I’ll have a microwave dinner then.”

“You can drink from me. Always. I mean, unless you don’t want to. Don’t know if it’s a case of having the same meal every day thing for you.” He said it in a low, unsure voice, and it once again dawned on me that I wasn’t the only one with insecurities.

“To me, blood isn’t just sustenance,” I said. “It’s an experience. Some see it differently, but for most it’s sexual to a degree.” I tried to find the perfect simile, failed, and settled for a close second. “I remember thinking chocolate soufflé was heaven when I was human. For me taking someone’s blood is like eating chocolate soufflé off his naked body, only better. It fills my stomach, but it also turns me on and rejuvenates me. I could never get bored with licking chocolate soufflé off
your
naked body.
Never
!”

I paused to make sure he was with me. “I want to…take only from
you
”—he nodded—“but it may hurt you.
I
may hurt you. If this is a regular thing, it may weaken you, or you may become addicted to the endorphins released in your body when I bite you.” Now I was talking as if this—we—could go on the way we were, but I didn’t feel like I was deceiving him. Was it possible I was deceiving myself by thinking I could and
would
walk away after we’d found Dotty? Not what I ought to be thinking. “Do you get what I’m saying?”

Alex nodded again, yet I saw the
but
forming in his eyes before it reached his lips. “But you don’t take more than a pint at a time. That much is replenished within twenty-four hours. And if I was getting hooked on being bitten, wouldn’t it have started happening already? Wouldn’t we have seen it?”

The handbook had a section about addiction. It said addicted humans could go through depression or even experience physical pain if they weren’t bitten regularly. It also said the craving would show after the first bite. “I guess.”

His expression was completely serious. “There won’t be any microwaving tonight.”

* * * *

With the door closed behind Alex, I picked up my cell. It wasn’t like I was hiding something; I’d just rather escape the awkwardness of talking to my ex in front of my current lover.

Two clicks later, I was dialing Constantine.

It rang for a long time before he finally answered. “Now,
I
don’t want to talk to
you
.” His words were drawn out, like he was still half-asleep, and his drowsy voice had the same effect on me as Alex’s drowsy voice. Maybe I had some condition that caused overhorniness?

“Very mature, Constantine. I couldn’t talk earlier. Was it something important? Did the council—”

“I know you may find this hard to believe but I really don’t want to talk to you right now. I’m in the middle of more…pleasurable things.” A throaty laugh from the background—correction, a laugh like the woman laughing had something
in her throat
—accompanied his words.

I didn’t even have time to be indignant; he hung up.

Ádísa. It had to be her. He was in bed with Ádísa
again
. Or was it still? Had the two of them jumped into bed straight after our meeting and stayed there until I called? I wouldn’t, couldn’t,
shouldn’t
care. He was safe and obviously pleasured, if not happy. Good for him. I glared at my phone like it was its fault that a certain horny bastard hadn’t changed.
So much for him not letting go of me,
something whispered in my head, but I gritted my teeth against acknowledging the thought and the stinging it brought to my eyes.

I was still nude, as I’d promised Alex, when he called for me to help him with the door, but my naughty mood had been replaced by a murderous one. I wished the council member involved in the whole mess was that she-devil, and that I got to dust her. It’d be a challenge, with her age and warrior past in the way, but I’d figure it out. Alex’s voice essentially snapped me out of a particularly satisfying daydream that involved her begging me for mercy.

I ran up the stairs and opened the door for him, careful to stay behind it and away from the sunlight.

He inched in, juggling a heavily laden tray while not missing a step on his way down. The tray held a bowl of what appeared to be a mountain of cheese and exuded a mouthwatering scent, together with two plates, cutlery, a pepper mill, and a very slim vase—wedged snugly between the plates to be kept from toppling over—with a paper rose in it.

“Pasta and a flower for milady,” he announced with a grin before setting the tray in the middle of the bed with a flourish. “I would have gone for a real one but wasn’t dressed for outside.”

Denying the urge to bite his bare ass, I sat carefully on one side of the bed. He took a seat opposite me, cautious not to shake the mattress more than necessary.

“Prepare to be amazed.” He filled the plate closer to me and then placed the bowl on top of the empty one. With a wink thrown my way, he stuffed a huge bite in his mouth.

A gorgeous, naked, kindhearted man was treating me like a queen, and I was about to give him up because we’d be incompatible at some point down the road. Was that entirely rational of me?

“Eat. It’ll get cold.” He spoke with a full mouth, using his fork to jab the air above my plate.

I did just that, but not before I overindulged myself with the pepper mill. I brought a forkful to my mouth under his watchful eye and couldn’t hold back a moan of approval, despite having fully intended not to show my like or dislike until I’d tortured him a bit.

If his omelet the other day had been good, his pasta was excellent! He’d chopped carrot, zucchini, and onion finely and, as he explained while I chewed, had mixed that and an egg with the pasta while the latter had been steaming hot, which had effectively cooked the egg and left the veggies crispy enough to make the end result yummy. The whole thing had then been buried under an insane amount of cheese and sprinkled with a bit of parsley.

I was halfway through my serving when I realized he hadn’t even touched his food after the first bite. “What?” I tried not to display the contents of my mouth.

“I know we said we’d talk about us after things settled, but I called my mother when I was upstairs, to ask where she had the onions—”

He’d talked to his mother? It had to have been while I was talking to Constantine for me not to have heard him.
Was trying
to talk to Constantine, that is.

“Cherry, baby, you’re great, but you need to stop zoning out.” He was looking at me with good-humored exasperation.

The rest of my bite went down unchewed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You were saying…” His calling me baby hadn’t gone unnoticed. There was a peculiar warmth in my stomach.

“Eh, the moment’s gone now.” He gave me a dismissive wave and focused on his plate.

I was such an ass for not paying attention to the wonderful, beautiful, sexy, intellig—God, I seriously needed to work on my focusing. “No, tell me.
Please
!” Deep inside I knew whatever it was he wanted to say would be huge. It would play a major role in…something. All my instincts screamed I needed to know.

“It’s nothing.” He picked a piece of pasta with two fingers and popped it in his mouth. “My mother was just asking why I was home in the middle of the day, and I told her I’d taken this week off to spend it with my girlfriend. It was supposed to just be a white lie, get her off my case, but I liked the sound of it.”

His girlfriend. He thought of me as his
girlfriend
. I hadn’t been something so innocent to anyone in a long while. It was surreal that I could feel happy amid all the danger, and that in turn horrified me. There was so much at stake, so much more than my unlife.

I knew Alex had told me so he’d see my reaction, but I couldn’t give him what he wanted just yet. When we would finally be done with the case, I’d have to take time to decide whether we could be together or I should go ahead with my original plan. He didn’t know about the latter, though, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I began to smile, stopped, ran my tongue over my teeth to make sure no sneaky piece of parsley was stuck on any of them, and finally beamed at him. “Did you tell her you’re not putting out?”

* * * *

I’m a natural blonde. Well,
used to be
a natural blonde. Now I’m a very
un
natural redhead, a shade so striking that it stays in the mind of the casual observer, also known as any guy I choose
not
to leave a place with when I go out for a snack. That’s why, on occasion, I do my nightly prowl in a wig.

In that apartment, my wig collection was in the right-hand side of my closet, and it was extensive and fabulous.

I was already in the skintight silver minidress I’d chosen to wear and had set aside the killer Jimmy Choos, for which I’d used my vamp gaze on a bank manager just the previous month. The dress had made it a bit hard for me to kneel, as had the nice and pointy piece of wood I’d taped to my inner thigh. I’d managed nonetheless, and was now carefully going over the blonde wigs, trying to choose the perfect one without getting the rest of them tangled up.

“What about this one?” I held out a honey blonde one with as natural a curl as it comes when wigs are concerned, and looked over my shoulder at Alex.

“What was that?” He lay on my bed propped up on his elbows, wearing that gorgeous shirt he’d had on the night we’d first met. His hair was tousled to perfection, and his eyes were trained several inches lower than what I was showing him.

I realized the dress was not covering even a little bit of my rear, so I pulled on its hem with my free hand. My efforts at modesty were in vain, but at least he looked up. I repeated my question. “The hair. Do you think it’ll work?” I knew it would in principle; the club would be too crowded and the music too loud for Willoughby to realize the blonde waiting for him wouldn’t have a heartbeat.

“It’s a bit too classy for what we’re going for, I think.” He crossed his legs and returned his gaze to where it had been before I’d demanded his attention.

I scrunched my nose. “You’re right.” Looking for something more bleached provided three alternatives. One was highlighted, short, and feathery, and it was set aside. Longer hair would hide more of me. The second was shoulder-length and light yellow, but one look at Alex made me discard it. He was shaking his head. The last one constituted a eureka moment. A near white hue, it was silky smooth, completely straight, and I knew it came down to my waist.

I tried it on and studied my reflection. Yes, I have one. We all do, and thank God for that, or applying makeup would be mission impossible. The whole thing with vampires casting no reflection only held true when mirrors had a real silver coating at the back. I don’t know why we can’t see ourselves in silver; it’s not like we’re silver intolerant, like werewolves are. What I do know is that it’s a good thing I was turned after that era, because my vanity hadn’t faded with death, and I don’t think I’d have been comforted by knowing I could check myself out on other reflective surfaces—not like I could walk around with a window pane or a lake in my purse.