Wait (Beloved Bloody Time) (5 page)

The doorman pointed him toward the right lounge bar and Christian stopped at the entrance to the bar, looking for her. He had to look over everyone twice before he spotted her, for she had changed into something utterly conservative, compared to the flower child headband and flowing print dress and rope sandals she had been wearing only three hours before. Even the long masses of her hair were tied back neatly.

She was reading a book and hadn’t seen him. Christian threaded his way through the tables, and stopped by her side. “Good story?”

She looked up and smiled at him. “You found me.”

“My nurse was indignant as hell. She thinks I’m seeing a floozy.”

Natália grinned.  “In a way, you are.”

He sat at the table.  “You don’t look like one. Not right now.”

“Ah. You didn’t like the maxi dress.”

“The dress was fine. It was the beads and bangles that killed it for me.” He shook his head. “Not that I really give a damn anyway.  It’s so good to see you.”

She closed the book, but left it sitting on the table by her elbow. “I was quite shocked, to see you sitting behind the desk. I saw your name on the door of the building but I figured it could have been any Hamilton. The odds that it would be you…”

He nodded. “We do seem to keep passing each other, don’t we?”

“Ships on the horizon,” she finished, telling him she remembered what he had said.

A small silence settled between them, humming with pleasure. He looked her over. She was as beautiful as ever, and the steel backbone was just a little bit more in evidence from her self-assured air, the way she had dared sit in a bar by herself, and the control and alertness in her.

“So…” she said. “You’re a doctor. I can’t tell you how much that pleases me.”

“Because it was your idea?” He shook his head a little. “You gave me the thought. It had to fester a few years before I did anything about it. I couldn’t think past the idea of doctors I’d seen working in first aid stations in the field. I wanted no part of that. By then I had moved back south. It was there I met my first family doctor, the kind that made house calls – although we don’t do that anymore. I spent an evening with him, while he told me about the satisfaction he got from helping people. Most of his patients he’d known their entire lives. It…appealed to me. So Dr. Soames helped me get enrolled in college.” He grimaced. “I had to go back to basic college and work up from there, but it’s not like I don’t have the time, right?”

Natália smiled.  “It didn’t occur to you to fake the undergrad degree?”

Christian frowned. “You fake such things?”

“Only for those accomplishments I already have, if they’re in the wrong name. I just bring them up to date and put my current name on them. It saves me from having to re-qualify for everything.”

He blinked. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You’re still used to thinking like an honest human,” she replied.

Christian stretched out his legs, as the waitress came over to the table. “Red wine, please,” he said.

“I’m good, thanks,” Tally told her, touching her glass of white wine.

Once the waitress was out of earshot, he said: “I’ve been nothing
but
an honest human for nearly fifty years. Once I got my medical license, Dr. Soames took me on as a partner, and I took over his practice when he died. I did that until I couldn’t fake my age anymore, and came up here to New York. I changed the date on my medical license, so it matched my apparent age, and moved into Harlem. And that’s where I’ve been for the last ten years. I tell you, Tally, I’ve done more good in the last fifty years than I ever did in the decades before that.”

She caught his hand in hers. “I’m so very happy for you.”

“And you…” He drew in a breath. “You’re a hippy.”

“Temporarily.”

“Are you living with him?” The question emerged more harshly than he had intended it to.

Natália tilted her head to look at him with understanding patience.

It irritated him even more. “You really believe all this free love guff they spout?”

“I believe Gabe when he talks about it, and about other things,” she answered. “He has a very different perspective on the world.” She sat up straighter, reminding him for one dizzy moment of the night they had spent on a bench in Seville, watching the sun come up, and the very proper way she had sat. “I’ve learned a lot from Gabe.”

“Is that why you’re with him?”

“That…and other things.” Her smile spoke of secret sensuousness and abruptly, his body responded, tightening up and throbbing. It didn’t help that her scent, some subtle perfume he didn’t recognize, was wafting to him across the table. It was unique, unusual. He wouldn’t forget it, nor the effect it was having on him.

He was grateful that the waitress arrived right then with his wine, forcing him to keep his mouth shut. He tried to push away the images dancing in his mind. Tally with that…that…
human.
His arms around her. His mouth….

When the waitress was gone once more, Christian turned the glass on the table, spinning the stem with his fingers. “You’re calling yourself Tally now?”

Her grin was full of mischief. “This life, I am.”

“What were you passing as in Europe?”

Her smile faded. “Lee…Hamilton.”

Christian stopped spinning the glass and just stared at her.

For the first time she looked something other than completely sure of herself. After a moment, her gaze dropped to the table.

His heart was loose again. Pounding. And his body… “Do you know,” he asked her, keeping his voice very low, “how much I want to kiss you right now? Kiss you and much, much more.”

She looked up at him, startled. No, not startled. Just surprised. There was a glow in her eyes. It was the promise of things unsaid and it pulsed between them.

After an age had passed, Christian leaned across the corner of the table and reached for her. His fingers trembled as he curled his hand around her head and drew her to him.

His senses were hyper-alert and he heard her indrawn, unsteady breath as he brought his lips against her. 

The kiss was as sweet as the first, all those decades ago. He had not forgotten a second of it, but he
had
forgotten the true power of their kiss. His body tightened to an almost painful arousal. The chairs, the table, were in his way. The public room was a hindrance. He wanted…oh, he wanted to drive himself into her, to taste her in every way possible! He was infinitely more experienced now and knew the enjoyment two people could bring one another. He wanted to share that with her. He wanted to bring her to the point of ecstasy, where her senses were swept away by the power of her pleasure.

Tally wasn’t fighting him. She wasn’t drawing away. She was kissing him with as ferocious a need as he was. Her capitulation was as sweet as a victory.

She wanted him.

He groaned, trying to pull her closer and closer. He could lift her over the table and into his lap. It would take very little of his real strength to do it. But he had constrained himself to human feats of strength for so long, that he could not break with the habit now.

Tally tore her lips away from his. Her hands were clenching the arms of his shirt – he hadn’t noticed her touch until now. She was trying to push him away. “No, Christian. Not now. Not…yet. There is something we must speak of, first.”

The heat and lust curdled in his chest and groin as he realized what she was about to say. “The exemption?” He sat back and pushed his hand through his hair. It didn’t surprise him to feel that he was trembling. He blew out a breath, trying to recover his normal calm, so that he could think.

“You write them, I know,” she said. “Gabe isn’t a stupid man. He wouldn’t fall for some stranger spinning him a yarn. The man would have had to work to convince him and he had your address.” She leaned forward to make her point. “You were right to throw us out this morning. That is what you would have done with any strangers. But it is you and I now. I know you write them. You know you write them.” She sat back. “I just don’t understand why you don’t take payment for them.” She sounded baffled.

Christian hid the irritation he felt. “You thought I would enjoy profiting from war?”

Her lips shaped themselves into a silent “oh!” Then she gave him a sheepish smile. “I’m so sorry. It’s not that I forgot. It’s just…that was back then. It was a different life.”

“I haven’t forgotten any of it,” he said evenly. “I don’t want to forget.”

She stared at him, with a touch of curiosity and surprise.

He shifted in his chair awkwardly. “Anyway. Why I did it isn’t germane. I can’t write your…friend an exemption.”

“Because he’s my friend,” she said flatly.

“Because I’ve written too many already.” He rested his hand on the table. “There have been signs. The FBI is sniffing around, checking out my business, my personal life. They’re closing in. You and I both know we cannot withstand extremely close scrutiny. As each decade passes, it gets harder to keep up with all the documentation and cross-checking they do.”

Her lips pressed together thoughtfully. “What would they do to you, if they caught you?”

“Jail, probably, and that’s the last place I can afford to be.”

“Then trades lives.” She shrugged. “The FBI wouldn’t be openly investigating you if they didn’t already know enough to grab you on something. It’s time to transition to the next life before they do.”

He drew in a breath. “But…my patients…”

“
No
. Christian, listen to me.” She leaned forward again. “You are not human. You cannot afford the luxury of human considerations and human behavior.  I’m glad you’ve had these decades to help people. I am. But now you have to remember your maker’s first lessons. You cannot endanger the Blood. By lingering too long in this life, when you know the possibilities are intolerable, you’re risking exposing us all.”

He bit down on the need to protest, stifling it. She was right. He
had
forgotten this basic tenet. That was because for a very long time now, he had moved through his days and nights thinking of himself as human. Only when he fed was he forcibly reminded of his real identity, and these days, he could hunt, feed and remove traces of himself with an efficiency that ensured it barely registered consciously.

Then the idea slammed into his brain with a force that made him gasp. He pushed his chair back from the table and turned it to face Tally. He reached out and turned her chair, bringing her face to face with him. Their knees were almost touching. “Come with me,” he said. “I need someone like you in my life, to remind me of what I am. To keep me centered.”

“You need a nanny?” she asked.

“I need
you
. Come and be my wife. Or my sister…no, that won’t do.” He pushed his hand through his hair again. “You can be anything you want, as long as it doesn’t have us arrested for incest. But come, just for the fun of it.”

She was breathing faster, her lips slightly parted, as she considered it. She really was considering it, he realized with a start of excitement. “Where would you
like to go?” he asked. “You’ve been here for a while. We could go anywhere you like. South America. Asia. Australia is supposed to be a great place.”

She grimaced. “Not unless you drag me there in irons.”

“What about Columbia? Or Peru? It’s supposed to be beautiful there. Or Brazil.”

“Brazil…” she said thoughtfully, the tiny line between her brows appearing. “What would we do?”

“The world needs doctors. I can…” He smiled. “I’ll forge my papers and start another practice, wherever we feel like stopping. Somewhere on a beach sounds pretty good.”

“It does.” She was smiling, her full lips looking luscious in the low light of the bar.

He considered her. “What about Gabe?” he asked flatly.

Tally sat very still for a long moment, her gaze unfocused. Christian could actually feel the seconds ticking off. The tension in his gut spiraled.

Then she sighed. “He won’t miss me. Not really. He’ll sell another painting, and paint a dozen more, and he’ll be fine. It’s not like he ever really loved me.”

“Are you sure?” Christian asked. “Because it seems to me that’s a neat way to justify everything. Don’t do this if you’re going to hurt him.”

She smiled. “Do you know why we’re together?”

He shook his head.

“He asked me if I wanted to see his paintings.” Her smile broadened.

Christian found he was smiling too. “He actually
did
want you to see his paintings?”

“He really did. It took another five days to get him into bed and even then he seemed surprised by it.” She gave a small laugh. “He won’t miss me for long. As long as he can paint.” Her smile faded and she just looked at him.

“That’s to be the price, is it?” he asked. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the folded form and put it on the table. He uncapped his pen.

She stared at the folded sheet. “You brought one with you? I thought you said…?”

Christian shrugged. “It was you. Did you really think I would refuse you? Besides, it’s not an issue now. You and I are moving on.” He unfolded the sheet. “So, I’ll fill this in, then you and I will plan our escape.”