Vamps: Human and Paranormal (32 page)

“I should’ve had her give me some pointers on how to wear them, myself, I said, pointing down to my shoes.  “I about keeled over trying to get into the cab.”

“I barely even noticed,”  he said looking deep into my eyes.  

I suddenly had a flash back to how he smelled, how his chest felt through his shirt.  I took a long drink from my water glass, and then had a long sip of my wine.  The way he was looking at me was driving me wild.

Suddenly the waiter was back with our salads...and fried mozzarella...and fried Zucchini...and garlic bread topped with mozzarella.  I didn’t realize that I’d ordered so much food.  It was what I usually ordered when Bess and I came here to binge, usually after a really bad week or Bess breaking up with a current boyfriend. 

So much for looking like a dainty flower.

“Let’s dig in,”  Dean said passing me the fried zucchini. 

I smiled as he dug his teeth into an ooey-gooey wedge of fried cheese.  I got the feeling that he didn’t give a damn what a date ate, which was refreshing, and lucky since I usually get ravenous when I’m nervous.

We were talking about the newest jarvex joint replacement when the entrees came.  We hadn’t even finished all the appetizers yet.

“I like the action of the shoulder,”  I said raising a forkful of manicotti to my mouth, “but the hip isn’t nearly as good as the Sinkling.”

“Really?”  Dean was dipping some garlic bread in his fettuccini Alfredo.  “I prefer the Steel light.  I know it doesn’t have as long a shelf life, but I find patients recover and are walking that afternoon.”

“Yeah, but then about a year later they’re having trouble, coming back to us thinking we can help.”

Dean put down his fork.  “You mean they don’t even get five years out of it?”  He looked aghast.

“Usually they’re headed back for replacement procedures less than two years later.  And by then they usually have to have the other hip replaced too, having to use it so much to compensate.  They just don't’ want to go back under the knife.”

“So you really think the Sinkling is worth the recuperation time?”

I suddenly got another hot flash.  He was actually really listening to me.

“They may need an extra couple weeks of therapy at first, but I never have them bounce back on me. “

He was giving me this look--it was making me really uncomfortable.  “What?”

“Nothing,”  he shook his head.  “It’s just I don’t find that people on first dates ever really say what they mean.”

“Sorry...didn’t get the memo.”

“No, don’t be sorry.  It’s great.”  Then he started really looking at me with some heat, making me feel hot all over.  “Beautiful and smart.  Remind me to send Bess flowers tomorrow.”

Me too.

*****

We had the cab driver let us off a few blocks from my apartment building.  We walked slow and leisurely, in a happy sort of fog.  And for the second time that week I didn’t recognize my own apartment building, walking past it to hear Dean say, “Lucy, isn’t this your building?”

I turned around to find Dean standing in front of my door, an infuriatingly sexy grin on his face--I was amusing him!

“I should’ve been a blonde,”  I said strolling back to him, glancing up from the pavement to steal glimpses of his pretty eyes.  Like melted chocolate.

“I had a great time...”  he purred.

“Me too... maybe we could --”

“How about dinner on Friday?  I know this great Indian place--terrible service, but the lamb curry is excellent.”

Friday was only two days away...I was suddenly afraid I would combust into flames if I went that long before seeing him again.  “Sounds good.”   I moved closer, drawn to him like a mouth to a flame.  “How are their deserts?”  I looked up into his eyes and felt kind of dizzy. Everything, the noises on the street, the passing cars and people, just melted away.

He inched forward and suddenly our faces were inches apart.  “There’s a great little ice cream parlor just around the corner.  It’ll cool off our taste buds after the curry.”

We stood there staring into each other’s eyes for what seemed an hour.  Slowly, so very slowly, he leaned into me and kissed me.  Lightly at first, his hands behind his back, then as our lips entwined and he slipped his tongue gently into my mouth his hands reached out and pulled me to him.  He tasted wonderful--a mix of tiramisu and something I couldn’t put my finger on.  His strong body felt divine as he crushed me to him.

Oh god, don’t let this end
.

Just when I thought I was going to lose my mind from blind lust he pulled away, excruciatingly pulling his lips from mine. 

“I better go,”  he said, breathing hard as if he’d been running.  “Or we’re both going to be late for work tomorrow.”   And just like that he reached out for the door to my apartment building and held it open for me, not taking his eyes off me as I walked inside and moved toward the elevator. 

I looked behind me and saw him staring at me like the sexiest puppy on the face of the earth.  As I moved into the elevator and pressed my floor, the last thing I saw as the doors closed was his smile.

Damn...

*****

My dream was different this time.  I was kissing Dean in front of my apartment building one moment, and the next Gus was rubbing me all over on my bed, his strong, soft hands kneading away every kink, fanning my internal fire with every caress.  More Dean kissing me, that look he’d given me when I went inside, like he wanted to devour me.  Then Gus was pushing me over on my back, his hands gliding over my flesh, my breast, squeezing them into mounds and roughing my nipples with his thumbs.

As he moved up atop of me, his manhood rubbing and sliding up my thigh, his face flickered, and as he pushed himself into me his face changed into Dean’s.  He leaned down and kissed me, that same exotic taste on his lips as he pushed into me...

*****

By the time my alarm went off I was lying with my face in the mattress, my head down at the footboard of my bed, my sheets both wrapped around me in knots and wet.  I was covered in sweat, exhausted, and my flesh was burning again.

I untangled myself from my bedclothes and padded barefoot into the kitchen.  Standing with the refrigerator door open I drank cold water from a jug of drinking water.  I couldn’t drink enough.  Finally I went to the bathroom and pulled my wet nightshirt off, an old AC-DC  t-shirt, and dropped it to puddle on the floor. 

The cold water didn’t do anything to relieve the heat in my skin.  If anything it made it worse, the heat intensifying and then accumulating between my legs.  I suddenly wished I’d bought one of those shower attachments with Bess when I’d had the chance.

My phone was ringing when I got out of the shower.  I looked at the number, hoping it would be unknown--then it might be Dean--but it was Bess.  I flopped on my back on the couch and answered with an exhausted groan.

“Sounds like you had a fun night.”  Bess chuckled on the other end of the line.  “Is he still there?”

“You’re such a perve...he didn’t spend the night.”

“He left right after! Didn’t peg him as a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am type.”

“We didn’t have sex...but the way he kissed me when we said goodnight...”

“You would have said...?”

I smiled, feeling the heat intensify all over, especially in my face.

“I would’ve bagged him and tagged him,” she said.  “But in your case I guess it’s good you two didn’t fuck on the first date...there is going to be a second date?”

“Friday.”

“Make sure you shave your legs tonight--don’t want pieces of toilet paper all over you when you too finally do it.”

“What makes you so sure I’m going to sleep with him on the next date?”

“No reason.  I can just hear it in your voice.  You’re in lust, cupcake.  And it’s about time.”

*****

By some miracle the next day, I made it to work on time.  I was sure once I started out for work I would lose track of where I was going, but as if on auto-pilot I steered my way through foot-traffic and across busy intersections without even thinking about them.  What I was thinking about was Dean and that heart-stopping kiss.  That look in his eyes.

I was troubled too by the dream.  Not that I’d transposed Dean into my sex dream, but that I was still having sex dreams at all about Gus. 
He’s gay!
I kept telling myself. 
Let it go!

But the weirdest thing by far that day happened when I got to work.  All the guys were clustered in the back by the electro pulse machine, and they didn’t look happy.  And as soon as I turned the corner to check appointments at the front desk I saw them--Nicole and this skinny, short, pale little man with glasses and a pocket protector.  And Nicole was all over him.  Not in the R-rated sense, but she was smiling and laughing and touching him as she spoke to him.

His cheeks and ears were crimson from the attention.

I could tell my fellow male co-workers were beside themselves with grief.  Hot chick starts at work, and before any of them (all ex-high-school-jocks) can score, or even get to second base, a nerd with a pocket protector snags the hot cheerleader.

I smiled as I waved to my wounded co-workers.

I watched as Nicole leaned in and whispered something into the nerd’s ear.  The rest of him got as red as his ears and he looked like he was about to explode--or shoot straight up into the air like a cruise missile.

He was still smiling ear to ear as he staggered out of the physical therapy department.

“What was that about?”  I asked.

Nicole looked up from her charts and smiled.  “That’s Lonny from accounting.”

“Now the pocket protector makes sense.  What doesn’t make sense is why you were flirting so hard with him?”

“What do you mean?”  She didn’t look offended--she barely looked up from her chart. 

“I didn’t think he’d be your type, that‘s all.”

“Oh, you think I’d be interested in a rich doctor or one of those Cro-Magnon frat boys here?”  She glanced their way and rolled her eyes.  “Not a chance.”

I couldn’t conceal my curiosity.  “But the nerdy accountant, that’s your type?”

“He’s opened my door for me every morning since I started here.  He’s always out front reading a book when I get here.  The other day he was reading an Alice Hoffman book--she’s my all-time favorite author--and the next thing you know we were having lunch together.  He even bought me a book he thought I’d like, some guy I’d never heard of before, but I just loved the book.”  She finally looked up from her chart.  “A hell of a lot better than any bouquet of roses.”

I had to agree, thinking back to last night’s sack of snicker doodle cookies.

Nicole’s eyes rolled up in her head and she bit her lower lip.  “But I’m going to have to overhaul his wardrobe.  I love the glasses but the pocket protector has to go.”  She smiled at me.  “It’s not like I want to change him, just his clothes.”

Nicole was just one surprise after another.

Later I saw the two of them sitting side by side in the cafeteria and all I could think was how much I wanted Dean to be waiting at the door to my apartment with some tiramisu and a box of condoms.

I tried to shake this image.  But by the time I paid for my meal and finally sat down to eat it, I found I’d picked out three bowls of lime jell-o and five bottles of orange juice.  I ate one of each, tentatively, and then pitched the rest.

I still had half my shift to go.   I prayed I’d make it.

*****

Chapter 11

My first client after lunch threw me a little.  He was already seated at a table in the back when I arrived, and from my vantage point walking over to him he looked just like Dean.  My heart jumped and I started feeling hot all over, all over again.  But as he turned and said hello I saw it wasn’t Dean--his eyes were too close together and his nose too long.  But for a moment there I thought my daydreams were coming true.

The rest of my day trudged on by: new hips, thrown out shoulders, post-op knees and one unlucky devil that had just gotten his cast taken off his right hand after six months of mending--it had been shattered in a freak beer keg incident.

But when I finally got home Dean wasn’t waiting with more cookies and that box of condoms.  There wasn’t even any messages on my house phone--though I’d been checking my cell between clients.

About seven o’clock my cell rang.  I didn’t know the number so I thought immediately it was Dean, so I took a deep cleansing breath to try and calm myself, and answered.

“Hi, is this Lucy?”

Not Dean.
The guy’s voice was scratchy and he had a Brooklyn accent.

“Um, yes.  This is Lucy.”

“
Funk an A! 
The other day this hot chick had me detail her car for her, said I should give you a ring.”