My spine stiffened. My shoulders closed in, and I pulled away. He gave me a sheepish look as his fangs snapped back up. He loosened his grasp on my hips, ghosting his hands over my face, my hair, my arms. “I think we’re going to need to renegotiate the terms of our agreement.”
“Were there terms?” I asked. “I thought it was a pretty standard ‘accept my money to shelter me, or I track you to your house and kill your family’ deal.”
“I said I was sorry about that. Look, it’s clear that I’m going to have to continue to look into this matter from a remote location. I need to stay underground, so to speak. And considering the encounter at my house, I would feel better knowing there’s someone in the house with you and your sister. There’s no better way than to continue staying here. I think we’ve come to an understanding. And we work well together when you’re not being prickly.”
“Prickly!”
He smiled at finally hearing some force in my voice. “Like a cactus. I will double my offer if you let me stay another week. If I haven’t resolved my situation at that time, we’ll renegotiate.”
I chewed my lip. “For fifty thousand dollars, I suppose you can stay in one of the family rooms upstairs. Considering that you haven’t eaten me yet, I guess I should trust you.”
His eyebrows arched, but he was still grinning, amused by my greed. “Fifty thousand? There’s no prorated, special guest price available?”
I looked down toward the bruises forming on my arms, daring him to question the price. “Give me flak about it, and it will be seventy-five.”
He none-too-tenderly pressed my head against his collarbone with a thunk. “Apparently, you know more about negotiating than I give you credit for.”
I chuckled against his shirt and stayed burrowed there. We remained quiet as my breathing slowed. I tangled my fingers in his dark hair, winding it around my fingertips. His soft, cool lips rested against my forehead, and his arms pulled me tight against his solid chest. It would be so easy to imagine that he really cared, that we were a normal couple, cuddling up after a long day. But he didn’t care. He barely knew me. He was just clinging to the only person he knew who was willing to shelter him. And I was going to have to learn to prevent this sort of closeness if I was going to survive after he inevitably blew out of town.
I would have to invest in some Godiva, because that was really going to suck. But for now, it felt really good to share any sort of connection with another person, breathing or not.
He rubbed his hands along my arms, my back. My pulse evened out, and my eyelids drooped. And the incredible heaviness of ebbing adrenaline sucked the strength from my limbs. I was on the point of dozing off when Cal said, “Go take a shower. I’ll make you something to drink for a change.”
I nodded, wiping at my sticky, drying cheeks. “Something with vodka.”
I shampooed four times before realizing that I’d completely zoned out under the hot spray. Even with leave-in conditioner, the next morning was going to be a rough hair day. When I finished my shower, I drew back the curtain to find two fingers of vodka on the rocks waiting for me on the bathroom counter. I chose not to think about the fact that he’d been in the bathroom with me while I was naked. After all, I’d seen him “indisposed” often enough in the last few days.
I grabbed for my fluffy pink robe and slugged back the drink in one gulp … then immediately regretted it. I wheezed in a croaking gasp, my windpipe burning in the fumes of the ice-cold alcohol. “Holy Lord, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a grown-up drink.”
I bent over the counter, breathing out of my nose to lessen the sting. I was out of practice at this particular skill. Being a single pseudo-parent seriously screws with one’s alcohol tolerance.
I eventually emerged from the bathroom, wet hair combed and teeth brushed. Cal wasn’t in the master bedroom when I came out. I went upstairs to my room, determined to find the least attractive pajamas I owned. Standing in front of my dresser, I dropped the robe and opened the top drawer.
I heard a throat being cleared behind me.
I shrieked, turning around to find Cal standing in the doorway, holding another vodka and a bag of Jolly Ranchers that he must have found in the vegetable crisper. “Cal! Get out!”
“You saw me naked,” he noted, his voice irritatingly untroubled.
“This is why you’re not supposed to be on the second floor!” I cried, yanking my robe over my shoulders.
“Because you walk around nude?” he said, smirking. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Iris. You have a lovely body. Shapely calves, high, firm breasts, a sweet heart-shaped little—”
“Easy,” I said, glaring at him.
“Don’t be upset.” He waggled the glass at me. “I struggled all the way up the stairs to bring you this. You rewarded me handsomely.”
“If I hear you say the words ‘tit for tat,’ I am not above repoisoning you.”
Cal smirked. “But you feel better now, don’t you? Now that righteous indignation has replaced your fear?”
“Not really, no.” I tied the robe tightly at my waist and sat heavily on my bed. I scooted against the headboard and clutched an embroidered green pillow to my stomach. Cal put the drink on my nightstand and carefully sat on the end of my bed, on the opposite side. I appreciated that he was trying to give me some space, but it was still very strange to have a vampire perching on the blue log-cabin-pattern quilt that my grandma made for me. I dropped two green-apple Jolly Ranchers into the glass to flavor the vodka, a trick I’d learned when I’d outgrown wine coolers in college.
Sipping my drink, I told him in more detail about my walk through his dark house, about the empty front bedroom and being felt up by a randy, hungry vampire. He examined the bite mark at my neck, his face hardening, but he remained quiet.
“I don’t understand where he even came from,” I said, draining the glass. “Would the Council have left someone sleeping in your house? Like a guard?”
I cut my eyes toward his face, and the room spun a little. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had two stiff drinks on an empty stomach after blood loss. I blinked rapidly, and his frowning face wavered a little before my eyes.
“If they did, they certainly wouldn’t send someone who would bite an intruder. You would have been taken directly to the Council office for questioning. You would have cracked under their tactics and revealed my whereabouts in about an hour.”
“Thank you for your faith in me,” I deadpanned. “So I guess it was a good thing, then, that it was some rogue vampire squatter who molested me and fed from me against my will.”
His face softened. I closed my eyes to that pitying, guilty stare and felt a cool hand stroke my bare ankle. “I’ve never been bitten before,” I said, running my fingers over the raw red mark at my neck. “I didn’t care for it.”
There was an incredulous note in his voice now. “Never?”
“Never,” I repeated. “I work for vampires. I don’t fraternize with them.”
“I am sorry,” he said. “It can be very enjoyable for the …”
“Victim?” I asked dryly.
“I was going to say donor,” he corrected me. “If there is an understanding between the vampire and the human, the vampire can make it very pleasurable for him or her.”
“So why not do that all the time?” I asked petulantly. “Why make it violent and painful if it doesn’t have to be?”
He shrugged and looked down at my foot, the foot he was still trailing his fingers over. “Because the vampire doesn’t care to take the time or enjoys taking the blood by force. A good number of us prefer our meals that way. A touch of fear can make the blood that much sweeter. And sexually—”
“Enough,” I said, raising my hand to cut him off. “Disturbing bite wounds aside, there were no files anywhere to be found.”
“Damn it,” he grumbled. “The Council operatives are notoriously lazy. I thought they’d see the decoy box and stop looking.”
“So basically, we’re back at square one?” I asked.
“If square one is somewhere behind our starting point, where we’ve tipped our hand and my adversaries now know that a comely human is helping me, then yes. We are at square one.”
I slumped against the headboard, deflated. Cal reached for me, just as the opening notes of “Flight of the Bumblebee” blared out of my BlackBerry. Cal heaved an irritated sigh and rolled back to the mattress. For the first time in a long time, I considered not answering. Surely, there were more pressing issues in my life than Mr. Dougal’s custom-embroidered handkerchiefs or the order of plasma due at the Wyatt house the next morning. But Cal would be leaving soon. And my business had to survive after he was gone. Missing calls was not a good way to keep it going. And I would just worry about the numerous possible reasons for the call, like a dog gnawing a bone, until I drove myself crazy. Better to answer the phone and cut out the interim mental gymnastics.
I pulled myself together enough to press the send key, take Mr. Rychek’s order for a new batch of gluten-free organic almond milk for Diandra, then close my day with a few phone calls. Because he was incapable of picking up human social cues, Cal amused himself by sprawling across my bed, picking through my collection of embarrassing romance paperbacks. He snickered and read portions of Lord of the Rogues aloud, while I arranged a tasting of specialty bloods for Mrs. Dunston, who couldn’t seem to get out of the habit of throwing dinner parties after her recent turning. I arranged a carpet-cleaning appointment for Mr. Crown, who had never contracted with my service before. He insisted that no one accomplished “menial tasks” like I did, which I tried to see as a compliment. I narrowly avoided having to go to his house and oversee the cleaners myself, claiming a scheduling conflict. The very idea of entering another vampire’s home so soon after being mauled in one was nauseating. Mr. Crown huffed that he supposed a half-done job would have to do, and I ended the call as quickly as possible without actually hanging up on him. Jerk.
At last, I crawled into bed next to Cal and collapsed into a pillow.
“It’s very interesting, the number of topics you cover in your phone calls,” he said, lazily stretching his arms over his head. “It’s a bit like the women of my time. They had to run the households while we were away at war. They had to know a little bit about everything. They had to delegate, organize. I always thought it was a bit like juggling.”
I cocked my head to the side as I rolled over to stare at him. “Would it be rude to ask you how old you are?”
“Do humans think this is an appropriate question?”
“From men to women, no.” I shook my head. “From women to men? It’s allowed.”
He chuckled. “Strange double standard.”
“Well, women have made what progress we can over the years.” I snorted. “Where do you come from?
“I was born in what was known as Mycenae.”
“As in ancient Greece?” He nodded.
I made a mental note to hide the copy of 300 that I had tucked into my “Lonely Nights” DVD collection … and to stop picturing Cal in the 300 leather warrior underwear ensemble.
I cleared my throat. “How ancient?”
“I have lived long enough that I don’t keep track of exact years.”
“Why can’t you answer a question directly? It’s like living with the Riddler.” I groaned. A factoid from some long-past World Civ class floated to the surface of my memory. “Wait, didn’t Paris steal Helen of Troy away from Mycenae, to get away from her husband?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, two royals acting like children brought ten years of war and misery down on our heads.” He held up my romance novel, then let it flop to the bedspread with disdain.