From The Nights Before Christmas © 2010 by Kerry Allen
Chapter Six
Concrete floor bruising her hip and shoulder. Door to parking lot propped open with a roll of toilet paper. Alone.
Car seat flat beneath her. Rhythmic whump-whump of windshield wipers. Unlit dome light floating above her eyes. Scowly-vamp behind the wheel.
Cheek on Harvey’s shoulder. Legs dangling over his arm. Smell of boiled cabbage. Muffled cheers of a live studio audience. Woolly-headed old woman peeking out a door into the dim, institutional hallway.
“It’s about time you swept a girl off her feet, Harvey Doyle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tell him there’s sex in Ida—
“Ho,” she croaked upon her next return to the land of the living, followed by, “Oh,” enlightenment attained regarding the gibberish often uttered by those brought back from the dead. The mystery of Strommy Onrie had remained a topic of heated debate within the Council long after the target of that interrogation died the second time, all because someone knifed him in the back before he finished placing his order for a sandwich.
She forced her weighted eyelids open. Patches of not-quite-white paint marked the ceiling, poorly disguising evidence of a leaky roof or pipes. The back of the boxy vintage sofa on which she lay rose to her left. Much to her amazement, Harvey had suppressed his fussy grandma tendencies and refrained from wrapping it in a protective plastic shell.
Her head rolled to the right. If she had the strength to extend her arm, the fire crackling in its narrow brick box would be within reach. A stick of unseasoned wood popped and tumbled to the hearth. Paint bubbled on its surface.
Her sluggish brain needed a minute to mull the oddity of that knobby piece of kindling. She finally decided it belonged on a table, not in a fire.
He’d busted up his furniture to keep her warm? How sweet.
She craned her neck to see more of the room and wondered if she could fake being chilly long enough to warrant torching the rest of his Seventies yard sale decor.
Knuckles connected with wood, four tightly grouped raps.
Harvey emerged from an adjacent room and passed by her feet. “Don’t move,” he commanded with a scowl.
Because she couldn’t move if she tried, she made another choking-frog sound, meaning, “Sure thing.”
Multiple locks rattled. A door opened. A few indecipherable words were exchanged. Paper crumpled. A door closed. Again with the locks.
She imagined Harvey greeting the friendly neighborhood axe murderer, passing him a paper sack full of nonsequential bills, and stepping out to give them some privacy.
Businesslike footsteps headed her way.
Though she knew Harvey would report any axe murderer of his acquaintance to the proper authorities like a good little snitch, her body tensed in anticipation of the blow her imagination predicted.
Death wasn’t bad, actually, but the weak and helpless phase that followed came straight from her worst nightmare. Whoever got possession of her body after her execution could do whatever he pleased with it, and her resurrection wouldn’t last long enough for her to recover her strength and carve the son of a bitch into stew meat.
A leather-upholstered footstool slid into the gap between her face and the fireplace. A book dropped on top of it, providing a stable base for plastic bottles of Pepsi and Gatorade and three Styrofoam cups Harvey removed from a greasy paper bag.
She squinted at the book’s spine. Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism. One of those books people kept on the coffee table to create the illusion of sophistication. If Harvey was willing todefile a show-off book by using it as a coaster, either he’d actually read it, or he valued his secret stash of skin mags too much to risk getting stains on them.
He pried the lids off the cups, and tendrils of savory steam wafted her way. “You need fluids.”
“Plumping me up for another suck?”
Judging by the austere downturn of his lips, she’d managed to make herself understood that time. “You’ve been drained twice in the span of a few hours. There’s no precedent to consult, but logic dictates tissue and organ damage will occur before you adequately replenish blood volume on your own. Drink.” Two steps carried him out of sight. “Or don’t. I know by now reason has no effect on you.”
True, thirst motivated her far more than reason, but her limbs weren’t quite up to meeting demands from any quarter yet, and she sensed his helpfulness wouldn’t extend to holding her in his lap and spoon-feeding her chicken noodle soup.
She’d known the threat to feed him a kid would get her barred from his good graces permanently, but the stubborn man refused to cooperate with conventional approaches such as reason. Sometimes the shortest distance between two points involved diving off a cliff. She hadn’t been very popular when she reached her destination, but dammit, she’d reached it.
Her left hand had fallen across her chest when he dumped her on the sofa, and it laboriously crept a few inches until her fingertips found the tender spot on her neck where he’d bitten her. Girl-vamp’s mark stung and itched like a wound from a poison dart. Harvey’s throbbed with an almost sexual ache that could be relieved only by more, harder, faster. “You give better fang than the girl at your office. She latches on like a tick. You squeeze and moan and get frisky. Makes a girl feel appreciated.”
A chair in line with the top of her head creaked as his weight settled into it. “Why force me to feed from that man and threaten a child if you intended to be the victim yourself?”
“I gave you plenty of opportunity to nibble at my bait, but you didn’t.” Talk about a blow to the ego, coming in second to a fat guy who smelled like farts. “Besides, that whole speech about nature is wasted if you act only because I say so. I threatened you. You attacked and killed, and you enjoyed it. Now you’re behaving like a proper vampire.”
“I don’t want to enjoy murder.”
Her arm lifted in a wave before collapsing under its own weight, but even that was progress. “Hence the reasoning behind feeding you Bowe, the Amazing Resurrecting Elf. I’m alive now, so technically you didn’t commit murder, leaving you with a clear conscience and an unblemished criminal record.”
She twisted her body to the right. Judgment of Paris taunted her by soaking up the condensation dripping from the chilled bottles. Until she could make a fist, she didn’t trust her ability to hold onto one.
She sought Harvey over the low arm of the sofa. His chair crumpled the drapes and sat at an angle that directed the occupant’s attention to a blank wall, a haphazard placement she attributed to being shoved out of the way so he could park her closer to the fire.
He had disarranged one element of his life without being harangued to do so. Club-hopping and concubines couldn’t be far behind.
Inside the man who looked respectable enough to take home to meet grandma beat the heart—and other organs—of a disreputable rogue who performed lewd acts in semi-public places. “Consider the boner a gift. Did you rub that one out or hump my corpse?”
He covered his eyes with one hand and slumped lower in his seat.
She congratulated herself on a job well done. If he found comfort in misery, discomfort herded him closer to happiness. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was the one resigned to die. The right to mope belonged to her, and no gloomy vampire would be stealing her last possession, even if she didn’t plan on using it.
She succumbed to her parched throat and grabbed for the soda. Her unresponsive fingers knocked it to the floor.
“Damn it.” He said it as two distinct words, not dammit like a recreational swearer did. So uttered, it carried more meaning than a generic declaration of frustration, more like damn you or fumble again and I’ll cut off your fingers to give you an excuse to be clumsy.
Imaginary pins and needles jabbed at her sinuses.
He retrieved the bottle from the floor and held it over the hearth, breaking the seal and letting the gas escape before removing the cap completely. Then he placed the bottle on the cushion near her face, wrapped her hand around it, and returned to his chair without another word.
She sniffed. “Thank you.”
“You should have said something. Something pertinent,” he emphasized to distinguish reports of debility from the various other things she had, in fact, said.
She propped herself up on one elbow and raised the bottle to her lips. It felt as if only half the liquid poured in her mouth made it to her throat, the rest absorbed by her arid tongue.
The effort of draining half the bottle drained her. She laid her head on the arm of the sofa and let her eyelids rest. She hated being weak, but not as much as she hated that he knew about her weakness. That knowledge gave him more power over her than she wanted anyone to have.
Then again, trying to hide anything from him might be a waste of perfectly good bravado at this point. “Is it true vampires can learn everything about a victim from the taste of the blood?”
“That degree of sensitivity is mercifully rare. For most, only someone very well known provides anything more than nourishment.”
The twinge of regret was tiny, easily squashed, flicked away, and forgotten. Where did that come from, anyway, a desire to make friends on her last day of life? It would be better for both of them if he knew only what she chose to tell him. “Is that what happened to you? Got a taste of someone very well known and discovered you didn’t know her so well after all?”
“Why were you sentenced to death?”
If he insisted on becoming defensive every time she asked a simple question about the state of his penis or his old girlfriends, this would be a really short conversation. “I told you before. I was weak.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“It is for an assassin.” She wasn’t keen on discussing some subjects, either. “I assume she was a delicate, demure blossom of femininity who turned out to be bouncing on every pogo stick in town, to speak.”
“I assume a boyfriend dumped you due to your own tendency to bounce on anything with a pulse, and you murdered him with the mistaken belief the woman-scorned defense would get you a slap on the wrist.”
He’d stacked that sentence with insults, by far the worst being the implication she’d get caught if she had occasion to bring work home with her like that. What kind of amateur did he take her for? “My job doesn’t lend itself to long-term relationships, but to whatever extent they last, they’ve all be exclusive. Well, I was with a skin-shifter once who looked like a different guy every night, and I had one training squad that used orgies as a stress-relief exercise, but we were faithful as a group.”
She cracked an eye open and found him staring at her like she’d confessed to trafficking slaves stuffed with heroin-filled balloons which she intended to sell to schoolchildren before she field dressed them, roasted them on a spit, and served them as the main course at a cannibal luau—or worse. “Oh, lighten up. It was aeons ago and the only time in my life I’ve encountered five others whose company I could tolerate long enough to have an orgasm. Don’t be such a prude.”
He continued to stare, unmoving, as if paralyzed.
Or hypnotized.
The latter was interesting enough to be worth the crick developing in her neck from keeping an eye on him. “Perhaps that’s a thoughtful silence rather than a judgmental one. Is that sheltered mind of yours laboring to envision me tangled up naked with other girls, and if so, can you please explain to me the universal male fascination with girl-on-girl action?”
He did loosen up, if only to slip into his familiar scowl. “I’m unable to envision anyone, except for you.”
“Not very imaginative, but alone is, historically speaking, how I get the majority of my sex, so at least you’re accurate.” She suspected he envisioned her locked in a closet with a dirty sock stuffed in her mouth rather than engaged in any erotic pursuits, but that was neither fun nor discomfort-inducing and therefore could not be allowed to continue. “Am I touching myself in this fantasy of yours?”
He covered his face with his hand again.
If she had successfully planted the image in his mind, that particular use of his hand wouldn’t do much to get rid of it. She found the gesture of exasperation sexy nonetheless. He could be incited to bite. What other instincts might he succumb to with the right provocation? “Do you want to see me touch myself? Oh, never mind. You’d never say so. I’ll just do it, and you can peek through your fingers if you want to watch.”
“Stop.” The hand dragged down his face left long lines of fatigue in its wake. “I admit you have a certain vulgar appeal, but you negate it with insincerity. I will not be used as a toy to while away your final hours.”
“No offense, but if I wanted to be amused, you’d be my last choice of companion. You are the dreariest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” Well, second dreariest, but the other guy had issues Harvey could never begin to compete with. If the two of them ever ran into each other, they’d create a sucking vortex of despair that would swallow the whole galaxy. “You need something in your life. It’s sure as hell not me, but you’re never going to find it entrenched in that rut you’ve dug for yourself. The only chance you have is if somebody shakes you out of there. Since my sole talent at the moment appears to be shaking you, it’s up to me.”
“Why does it matter? You’ve never seen me before. You’ll never see me again.”
She rolled to her back. The blotches of mismatched paint on the ceiling faded in a misty blur. “I have a good imagination, and it’s going to keep me company for eternity. I can spend that time imagining you’ve carried on with this life of drudgery until you finally snap, slaughter a bunch of innocent people, and get staked out in field to witness your first sunrise. Or I can imagine something changes and you live happily ever after.”
The sinus prickles returned. They brought snot this time, which she sucked up like a true badass. “So nothing personal. I just don’t want to be racked with guilt my every alive moment until the end of time.”
“You don’t want to be forgotten.”
She laughed. Invisibility was in her job description. It paid, literally, to be forgettable. “I’m selfish, not vain. I don’t care if you forget me five seconds after they haul away my body.”
Her problematic corpse reared its bloated head again. It, at least, refused to be forgotten. She couldn’t make Harvey watch her die. Not only would it put a damper on his new carefree lifestyle, but without plastic slipcovers, it would leave a terrible stain on his upholstery.
She didn’t have until midnight, or even nine. The next constriction would cut inches off more than her hemline. She had to leave before it hit at 5 a.m.
She’d thought twenty-four hours impossible. Eight? Hopeless. Her throat constricted, reducing her voice to a choked whisper. “I wanted to leave a mark on someone, other than a scar or a tombstone for a change.”
“Are you cry—”
“No!”
He moved Judgment and the assortment of fluids to the floor and took their place on the footstool. The pitying look he gave her prodded the moisture gathered at the outer corners of her eyes to overflow and trickle into her ears. She hated wet ears. “You suck.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Did you figure that out before or after I killed you in the service corridor between The Gap and Spencer Gifts?”
It took a distraught woman to tease out his sense of humor. “Nice guy, my ass.”
“You don’t want me to be nice.” He plowed his fingers through his hair, transforming his neatly combed style to bed head. “What now?”
He didn’t know she’d let him off the hook. Might as well let him believe he wiggled off on his own. “You won’t like it.”
“I’m certain the suggestion will be appalling, but you were correct the last time that was the case. Killing you was the most satisfying thing I’ve done in ages.”
“Flatterer.” She sat up and swung her legs around. Her knees bracketed his, and she squeezed them together. “We teased out your predatory instincts. The next step is living up to the vampire reputation for debauchery.”
His eyes widened as understanding dawned. “Oh, no.”
She slapped her hands down on his thighs to keep him seated. “Keep an open mind.”
“I’m not as… liberated as you are.”
“Of course you’re not. That’s the goal you’re striving for. Think of me as your mentor.”
“I think of you more as my tormentor.”
With the rumpled hair, the strained eyes, and the necktie ever so slightly off center, he was the picture of a man clinging to the tattered remnants of control. He lived the way he thought he had to in order to hold it together, but he thought wrong. Control was an illusion, a comforting lie. One lie led to another, and that led to crazy because liars eventually stopped being able to recognize the truth.
She didn’t want that to happen to him, but she didn’t believe he could be stripped of his artifice in the time she had. More likely, she’d push him too hard and break him before dawn, wasting what remained of her life and ruining his.
She straightened his tie and pressed her hand over his heart. He had a good one. Maybe he’d be all right. “I’m giving you an early Christmas present. Goodbye, Harvey Doyle.”
Halfway through the gamut of locks trapping her in the apartment, he came to stand behind her. His arm brushed her shoulder, and his hand flattened against the door. “Wait.”
Such a courteous host, asking the most unwanted guest in the history of entertaining to stay for coffee. He must be relying on her ability to chuck him out of the way on her way out the door to release him from his social obligations. “Your life isn’t mine to change.”
“If you don’t, who will?”
Her hand trembled over the next lock at his barely audible words. “You don’t like change.”
“When it’s necessary and gradual, I’m capable of it. I’ve adapted for eight hundred years. Different cultures. Different continents. Different technological ages.” His breath stirred the hair on her nape. “Now, things move too fast. I adjusted; a year later, I was obsolete. I can’t keep up. I decided to wait for it to stop, but it never will, and I’m too far behind to catch up. I need help.”
She lowered her hand. He didn’t need brute force to keep her here. Being a sucker for men in distress always got her in trouble.
He didn’t budge when she turned around, giving her a closeup view of naked desperation.
She sighed. How much more trouble could she possibly get into? “Bite me.”
The shutter slammed down on his expression, and he stepped back.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “You stupid, oversensitive vampire! Literally, bite me. I don’t have time to romance you all the way from repulsed to horny, so we have to work with the only thing you like about me, which is my blood.”
“Twice tonight, you’ve proven no one takes just one sip of you. I will not make love to you and kill you again, in either order.”
Make love was a term used to seduce reluctant women, what followed a successful campaign no more loving than any other sex act. Harvey’s campaign was the opposite of seduction, making her wonder if he did something different. If he had his way, though, she would never find out. “That’s the old Harvey talking.”
“Some things never change. Nothing short of a catastrophic brain injury will ever make that acceptable to me.”
She picked up the coat rack and gave it an experimental swing. “That could be arranged.”
He eyed the makeshift weapon. “Elven foreplay?”
“Mm. I suppose blunt-force trauma wouldn’t be as much of a turn-on for you.” She returned the rack to the floor, running her hand up the long, thick shaft while she contemplated the alternatives. “You’re more of a laceration guy.”
She inserted the tip of her left index finger in her mouth and bit down until the skin split beneath her teeth. She applied the blood as another woman would perfume, dabbing it behind her ears, down her neck to the valley between her breasts, on her wrists, inner elbows, thighs.
His eyes followed the trail of red. “You look like you’ve been in an accident.”
“I need heroic measures to save me.” She cupped her breasts and squished them together. “Chest compressions.” She sauntered across the room, crowding him against the back of the sofa, stopping with her face scant inches from his. “Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
Her finger throbbed. “But I’d settle for some Neosporin and a Band-Aid. This hurts like a bitch.”
He inspected the damage. “No wonder. You practically chewed it off.”
“It’ll probably get infected. Then gangrenous. Kill me in a week or two.” Her eyebrows climbed. “Thank goodness I won’t live long enough for that to happen.”
“Keep looking on the bright side.” He raised her finger to his mouth, enveloping it in wet warmth. The pain vanished.
“Ah, there’s the good stuff.” She rested her head against his shoulder. Vamp spit was a customizable cocktail of analgesics, paralytics, hypnotics, stimulants, coagulants, anticoagulants, and a bunch of other chemicals drug companies would kill—had killed—to get samples of. She kept a vial in her first aid kit when she could afford it, but she’d never had it fresh from the source before. Had she known it was so much more potent, she would have hired a vampire medic instead.
Not one this stiff, though. She loosened the knot of his tie. “Next step in your transformation: no more wearing a noose around your neck.”
He released her finger. “I have to present a professional appearance at work.”
His mouth covered the blood smear on her wrist. His tongue rubbed languid circles on her skin.
Bowe had a dim recollection of some other guys at the office. “Nobody else was wearing a suit.”
“Slobs.” His lips drifted to the crook of her arm.
“It’s a culture of slobs. They’re adapting to their environment. No ties.” She pulled it from around his neck, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it into the fire. “Um… I’ve never seen fire that color before.”
His mouth continued its journey. “Synthetic fibers. We’ll be asphyxiated by toxic fumes.”
“Nothing worth doing lacks an element of danger.” Neurotic as he was, his existence should be filled with excitement and adventure.
He located the blood behind her left ear. “Is it true what they say about elf ears?”
“Mm-hm. They’re pointy.” She gave his ribs a pinch. “Focus. I’m not the one who needs to be excited to do this.”
The trail she’d marked for him traversed all her major pulse points, so he’d know damn well her blood was already hot and racing in a not-indifferent sort of way. Kinky ear stuff would be overkill.
“As I remember it, the best part of debauchery was leading another into temptation.” He pivoted with her in his arms and bent her over the back of the sofa.
If she fell from her narrow perch, she’d slide right into the fireplace, and everyone knew vamps preferred their meals raw, not flame-broiled. For his sake, she had no choice but to wrap her legs around his hips. “I thought that only applied to innocents.”
His lips followed the trail of blood down her chest, bringing a heavy ache to her breasts. “Waste of time. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Neither did she, with him. Her inclination to rip off the rest of his clothes, wrestle him to the floor, and lick him all over probably fell within his definition of too aggressive. Something had to be done, though. When he worked his way down her right arm to her wrist, he’d run out of blood to hold his interest.
“Touch me.”
Her breath escaped in a gusty sigh. “Finally.” One handed, she unbuckled his belt and whipped it off, tugged his shirt from his pants, slid her hand underneath, and touched… a T-shirt. She made a frustrated sound in her throat.
“I thought you’d be more proficient at this.”
“I’m not used to men in child-proof packaging. Got a chastity belt on under there, too?” She’d tear the damn thing off with her teeth if she had to, but he could make it a whole lot easier on both of them. “Give me my other hand, dammit.”
“I’m not done with it.”
He paused to taste the base of her thumb, then trailed his lips over her palm. When he had sucked the tip of each finger, he held her hand in his, palm up, and looked into her eyes. His lips formed a small, wicked smile before parting to release a breath.
Her jaw dropped as a phantom mouth retraced the trip he had taken over her skin, in slow motion. It began as an effervescent tingle and melted into liquid heat, retracing every swirl of his tongue and graze of his teeth. She melted over the back of the sofa like one of Dali’s clocks.
“That”—the word broke into a gasp as the sensation spiraled across her breasts—”is not an FDA-approved use of vamp drool.”
“Consider me deregulated.” His gaze ranged over her undignified pose. “I missed a spot.”
He spread her knees and bent his head to the smear of blood on her thigh. The heat of his mouth there and where it lingered on her upper body connected on a taut, quivering cord that ran through the center of her body.
“Take the dress off.”
The words came with breath, which set off another reaction on her thigh. She shivered. Yes. Yes, that. Everywhere.
Unfortunately, he and her body demanded the impossible. She whimpered at her inability to obey. “It’s a portable prison-slash-execution chamber. I can’t take it off whenever the mood strikes.”
He straightened and favored her with a suspicious look. “You threw away the hat.”
“Didn’t come with the outfit. I stole it from a bell ringer. After I threw his bell under a bus.” Before disapproval spoiled the moment, she offered her perfectly noble explanation. “Because it’s counterproductive for charity to be that obnoxious.”
His eyes narrowed. “You might have mentioned this complication prior to initiating this activity, Miss Winderowe.”
Stern, professorial Harvey was even sexier while his phantom kisses continued to burn across her skin. Her rump tingled in anticipation of corporal punishment. “I did say it wasn’t necessary for me to enjoy this. I’d have put more effort into stopping you, but I was really, really enjoying it.”
And still was. He might be the one man who could deliver on the promise of all night long, and he didn’t have to be conscious or even in the same room to do it. “Now that’s out in the open, we can focus on you.”
He pushed her back when she tried to rise. “I finish what I start.”
He returned to his ministrations, directing them higher, stroking, sucking, probing at her through the candy cane undies, causing her to writhe, thrash, and pant. Afterward, when the sofa cushions were scattered around the room and her twitching had ceased, her spine was limp, head hanging over the edge, eyeball to spine with Judgment. On a scale of one to ten, she judged him a thirteen, given his ability to be in many places at once. Fun, sure, but a relief to be done with it. Any more and she’d dissolve into a puddle. As long as he didn’t breathe on—
He did.
Okay, seventeen and a half, points deducted for the smug look on his face. No wonder vamps had people lining up to have a vein tapped.
She wasted precious breath on speech. “Now I understand why you don’t chomp on humans anymore. If you didn’t kill them, they went bunny-boiling stalker on you.”
“Not even close.”
She meant to get close. She regained a modicum of motor control and knelt on the sofa. Her hands found their way under his T-shirt to roam hot, taut skin. She bared it and pressed her face against his belly. Her blood was in there. At least one of them had succeeded in getting inside the other.
He stripped off the corporate lackey shirt and the tee, evidently impatient with her. “I expected more aggression.”
Feeling heavy and throbbing and glowy stifled the drive to savage him, but she was nothing if not accommodating. She took a break from nibbling at the rim of his navel to ask, “Is that what you want?”
His fingers slid into her hair. “Not this time.”
They could squeeze in an extra round or two before five to test drive a variety of techniques. This time, she’d emulate his method, which was thorough.
What she lacked in magical spit, she made up for with lips and tongue and teeth and both hands, all of which lavished relentless attention on him until he took a turn limp and panting in an awkward position on the sofa.
She dropped beside him, too wiped to object to the wooden rib of the sofa digging into her spine. Her fingers traced her vampire’s ribs. She wished they were at her back instead, but her wardrobe restrictions rendered that position useless. “Make with the amazing recuperative powers, and I’ll show you aggression next.”
The corners of his mouth pulled downward. “Given the limitations on our activities, I prefer your violence restrained.”
She nipped his shoulder with her teeth. “Coward.”
“Better an intact coward than a daring eunuch.” His arm came around her and fit her more closely against his side. “I recommend you grab a nap. You’re going to need it when I regain feeling in my limbs.”
She had no backlog of work to drag her away, no war raging just outside the door to draft her into service. If there had ever been a last time she’d been free to lie in someone’s arms, she couldn’t remember it. She wasn’t accustomed to being still and peaceful this way.
He brushed a kiss across her forehead, and she closed her eyes to fight the renewed sting in them.
It sucked pimply troll balls that she wouldn’t get a chance to become accustomed to it.
.
From The Nights Before Christmas © 2010 by Kerry Allen
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