The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (9 page)

“Shamelessly,” he said again, bending to kiss me.

“No, none of that,” I told him, dodging him. “We need to talk without the distraction of your sexy mouth.”

He frowned with said sexy mouth. “That does not make any sense.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I do not. But I would like to. Why do we not go outside for a conversation, so you feel more comfortable speaking at full volume?”

“Eh,” I said, letting the corners of my mouth tug down as I glanced out the window.

“It is a lovely night,” he added, in a lilting, crooning tone.

“This is literally how every horror movie starts. Also, you've attacked me before. I know it seems petty to harp on that, but . . . I think I will anyway.”

“Are you always this stubborn?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“If you are worried about getting out of the house unnoticed, I can hold you as I jump to the ground from the window.”

I arched an eyebrow. “My brother-in-law put me through ninja training. You don't think he taught me how to land safely from a second-story jump?”

He grinned. “You do not like being patronized, do you?”

“No, which is why they call it ‘patronizing,' with the negative connation.”

“I know the connotation. I have spoken English for many years,” he insisted, more than a little affronted.

I shushed him. “I know, that's not—OK, I'll jump, but maybe hop down there and be ready, just in case.”

“Excellent,” he said, swooshing out of my room like a gust of wind.

I peered down from my window at the handsome blond man beckoning with a fang-tipped smile. Like many a damsel before me, I wondered at the wisdom of joining my moonlit paramour. A smart woman would have smiled, waved good night, and
not
joined the man who'd recently attempted to maul her on a midnight stroll.

And yet . . .

“I am not a smart person,” I muttered, slipping into my sneakers, which were a lovely complement to my pink gingham pajama pants and tank top. I braced my arms against the windowsill. It was maybe fifteen feet to the ground. I cut the difference, dangling from the planter box ever so briefly and dropping to the soft grass on both feet with a quiet
oof
.

Oh, thank Cthulhu that worked, because otherwise, I would be very embarrassed.

I wriggled both ankles to make sure they were intact. I listened for some weird alarm from Cal to sound or for Iris to come screaming out of the house.

Nothing.

Nik smiled and offered me his arm. It was all I could do not to hold my pajama leg up like a hoop skirt.

“I think I owe you information,” he said, as we sauntered through Iris's elaborate garden. In high summer, her beloved flower beds were bursting with night-blooming plants: delicately scented jasmine, proud, trumpetlike moonflower, and night gladiolus (in my honor, thank you very much). Cal and Sam even dug a small pond in the center of the yard so she could plant night-blooming water lilies, in bright pinks and white. Thanks to Cal's influence, it reminded me of Persephone's garden, delicate and beautiful but still shrouded in the darkness of the underworld. Iris, a lifelong gardener, was careful to mix some color into her palette, the sturdy pink evening primrose and flaring yellow of narrow-leaved sundrops, to remind her of the joys of daytime living even while the moonlight reflected, bright and brilliant, against the petals.

Even though she clearly loved her life with Cal, even though I knew that vampirism was the only option if she wanted a long-term commitment with him, I couldn't help but feel a little sad for my sister, having lost the sun, cut off from the growth cycle that had meant so much to her. I wondered if I would be able to make the best of it, as she had; if I would be able to give up feeling the sun on my face, the crackle of popcorn on my tongue, the velvety softness of chocolate. Probably not; Iris had always been better at adapting.

For now, I was grateful that the scents and colors gave me something to cling to, to focus on, rather than the pounding of my nervous heart. I was counting on the droning of crickets to drown it out for Nik's sensitive ears.

Nik folded his arms behind his back as we walked, with a strange, almost military stance that made me wonder whether he was used to more formal “walk-and-talks” or he just didn't know what to do with his hands. We wandered closer to the edge of the woods, ducking into the trees.

I stopped just a few feet in, far enough that Iris wouldn't be able to see us if she glanced out the window but not so far that I couldn't see the lights of the house. That counted as some semblance of common sense, right?

Nik cleared his throat, leaning back against a tree. Despite my desire to look just as casual, I did not want to risk bark scrapes or getting my hair caught in low-hanging branches. Nik tilted his head, studying me. “If I recall, the last time we were together, you were interrupted before you could ask me anything.”

“I suppose my first question would have to be, are you an evil vampire hell-bent on my death and/or destruction?” I retorted with more snark than I probably deserved to use.

“I am not evil, that I am aware of,” he said evenly, though he sounded as if he was about to laugh. “And I do not think I am hell-bent on your destruction, though my actions apparently lead you to believe otherwise.”

“Which, I suppose, is your way of saying that you don't know why you're going into anti-Gigi fugue states,” I muttered.

“I really have no idea. But for now, can we pretend that we are two normal people on a normal outing, in which we are exchanging the background information one would expect to learn when one of them is not blacking out large portions of his history?”

“You mean the kind of conversation that usually takes place
before
getting to second base with somebody?”

He leaned forward, trapping me against the trunk of a large oak tree by placing a hand on either side of my head. “I am not familiar with the base system, but I am fairly certain we did not get to any of the interesting ones. As a man, I insist that I would remember touching a body like yours. The sense memory alone would be enough to carry through to my conscious memory.”

He flashed that megawatt grin at me, and my lady bits did a little happy dance. It just wasn't fair. The man should come with a warning label. “Caution: May Cause Panties to Spontaneously Combust.”

OK, Scanlon, you are a grown, modern woman
, with plenty of practice controlling your hormones. This is no different from any date with any attractive man. You just have to set boundaries and keep the blood directed above your waist. You'll be fine. Now, keep him at a distance, so you can concentrate on producing words of more than one syllable.

I reached up to toy with the collar of his shirt. “Well, I'm combining the lovely languid kisses with the aggressive biting attempts, which rounds up to second.”

Traitorous lady bits!

Clearly, the parts of my brain not controlled by pheromones had lost the fight. They were probably tied up and shoved into a storage space somewhere in my oculomotor section, the part of my brain that controlled eyelash fluttering and giving Nik the “come closer” looks. Stupid trampy brain parts.

Nik's nose brushed against the curve of my forehead, running along my hairline. “What do you want to know?”

Nik knelt to the ground, silent in the dry, rain-
deprived grass. Fear flared through me like a warning bell. What if this was some weird sex thing I wasn't ready for? What if he sank his fangs into my thigh? He slid off the rubber ballet flats I used as house shoes and dropped them to the ground. Yeah, that didn't make me feel much better, in terms of potentially weird sexual things.

Even in the moonlight filtering through the overhead canopy of leaves, I could see the iridescent red polish on my toes, with little golden House Lannister lions painted on my big toes and
R-O-A-R
written on the others. His eyebrows rose in surprise.

“I noticed these before, in your bedroom. As much as I want to use my question on something profound, this begs explanation,” he said, waggling my foot.

“Jane and I paint our toes with the different house sigils while we watch
Game of Thrones
reruns,” I told him, slipping my foot back into my shoe. “Last week, we had House Tully trout swimming across our feet. Jane's got a much steadier hand with the polish than I do. I'm more of a House Stark girl, but we don't play favorites.”

He stood, pulling me gently as we went deeper into the woods. “You are an interesting group.”

“We find ways to enjoy our time together,” I said, as he threaded my fingers through his. He compared the size of our hands. The verdict? His were huge, even compared with my long, tapered fingers. The same flaring feeling thrilled through my belly, but it was less fear-based and more giddy nerve-giggles. “Iris can't watch
Game of Thrones
anymore. Every time she starts to like a character, that character dies in some spectacularly horrible way. So she sticks with nice, safe network comedies that don't feature regular beheadings. But Jane likes the show, so she comes over to watch it and get a little time away from the testosterone cesspool at her house.”

Nik took a lock of my dark hair and twirled it around his long, deft fingers. “I envy your closeness. It has been a long time since I have shared that sort of camaraderie with anyone, even Cal, whom I would consider a close friend. And I have not seen him in centuries.”

“Still, to come running when he asked you to harass my classmate on my behalf, that's a pretty tight bond,” I said. “Also, before we
really
start the Q-and-A portion of this evening, I need to tell you something. Because I don't want you to find out some other way and get upset. I may have gone into the office server last night to look for your employee file.”

He stopped to stare at me, golden eyebrows at full mast. “You did what?”

“I didn't know if I would ever get to see you again, and I had all of these questions that Cal refused to answer. And I'm sorry. I didn't mean to violate your privacy. I just wanted to know more about you. I thought I should tell you myself.”

“How did you find my employee file?”

I winced. “Technically, I didn't. I found what was supposed to be your employee file, but it was empty.”

He laughed and pulled me against his side, tucked neatly under his arm. “The fact that you were able to find the empty file was impressive. My actual file fills most of a storage room at the Council archives in Prague.”

I would take time to be frightened by that later. “So you're not mad?”

“Mad that the girl who has occupied most of my waking thoughts since the moment I remember meeting her is equally curious about me? No, I am not angry, quite the contrary. I am glad you want to know more about me. And I am intrigued that you have the skill and cunning to accomplish your goal. All wrapped up in that sweet, deceptively guileless package. You surprise me, Gigi.”

“Well, I'm glad you appreciate my sexy curiosity, because I have questions galore. What's your origin story? And as a follow-up subquery, how do you know Cal?”

“Are you allowed a ‘subquery'?”

“Yes, I am,” I said airily. “Entertain me, Nikolai.”

“Oh, I could
entertain
you for hours,” he teased me, rubbing his thumb in tight circles around my palm. “But for now, I will tell you that I was born in the 1500s,” he said. “I was the youngest of three sons in a fairly well-off family, for the time. We did not have a title, but we had a very rough version of what could be considered a castle. It was mostly a fortress, deep in the Romincka Forest. My father tended faithfully to his tenants in the village. He made sure they had enough to eat, medicine when they were sick, firewood when they were cold. He was a good man, educated and kind, and so were my brothers. But as the youngest, there was little for me to do or look forward to unless one of my brothers died. And that wasn't the way I wanted to make my way in the world.

“So one day, when a traveling Romani circus drove past the village, I jumped on the nearest wagon and joined the caravan.”

I hooted. “You ran away with the circus?”

“For a time,” he said, looking pleased that he'd made me laugh. “They were not pleased that I had stowed away on their wagons and made me work for every crust of bread they threw my way. It was a rude awakening for a boy used to servants and soft sheets. But I earned my place.”

“Were you ever a clown?” When my alarmed tone caught his attention, I added, “It's a fair question.”

“No, I was more of an ‘advance man,' ” he said. “I went into the towns before the caravan arrived and was sure to tell the locals of my woes down at the nearest tavern. My pretend farmhouse had burned down, my pretend cows had dried up, my pretend wife had left me for my brother, that sort of thing. Conversation would naturally lead to commiserating about similar mishaps in their village, and I would take what I learned back to Mama Katya to use in her palm readings.”

“And no one ever caught on to you?”

“I wore disguises,” he said. “I blackened my hair with boot polish, rubbed walnuts on my teeth to stain them. I learned about subterfuge and sleight of hand. The circus folk may have stolen and lied, but they were very open about it.”

“Once again, your vampire logic is not like my human logic.”

“I suppose it is not,” he said, sliding a cool hand over the delicate bone of my wrist. “I enjoyed myself with the circus. I learned who I was and what I was capable of, and I picked up many of the skills I still use today.” He held up his hand, which was currently dangling my stainless-steel cuff bracelet, inscribed with a swirling
G
.

“Hey!”