Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  “Come on, switch-hitter. You’re lagging.”

  Lonan takes the shot right about the time the waitress hits the table with yet more food: a steak for him and some stupid bed of greens for Lore. Rabbit food. Beverly Hills Housewives kind of food. I swear to god, if she starts doing Pilates, I’m locking her in the bedroom and force-feeding her pie.

  Grabbing her fork, Lore starts pushing the lettuce around without really eating it. “So how did you end up working with Asher?” It sounds like she actually wants to hear the answer and gives me a dirty look when I don’t bother to stifle my long-suffering sigh.

  “Military referral,” Lonan says around a mouthful of French fries as he digs into his side of bloody cow. “I was in the Air Force, but Uncle Sam decided I’d be more useful in the private sector.” When I feign a snore, he actually turns a shade redder before adding, “I don’t mean to butt in on your date, or whatever this is. I don’t have to sit here. Rebel’s probably shitting kittens as it is.”

  “Ignore him.” Lore reaches across the table and snakes a bite of his meat right off his plate. She follows that up with a handful of his fries, and Lonan lets her. Because she’s adorable. Because it’s all blue-eyed sympathetic looks and sneaky fingers. I get it then, and can’t help the smile that creeps up on me as I realize that all her niceties and polite questioning is mostly a ruse to get closer to what she really wants: Lonan’s food. Then she pops off with, “It’s nice to have someone to eat with, even if my rock star vampire friend over there is giving you the stink eye.”

  Lonan, that shithead, just grins back at her like she’s a puppy he wants to squeeze while Lore helps herself to another mouthful of rare meat. Me? I’m stuck on four words that instantly wipe the smile right off my face:

  Rock star vampire friend.

  It’s not like I can be pissed about it, either, because what else would Lore call me? I’m not her boyfriend. I’m not her husband. I don’t own her, haven’t marked her, can’t mark her. So basically she’s a free agent, and what does that make me?

  An asshole.

  And her lover. At the very least, I’m her lover.

  Maybe it’s not a word Lore’s comfortable using at dinner over a retarded upscale salad, but she’s still holding out. Holding back. Not wanting to admit what this is because she expects to have it yanked away from her.

  So I lean in and snag the bottle. Upend it so that the last of the liquor goes straight down my gullet. Set it down hard enough that the plates dance against the tablecloth.

  “We’re outta booze. And outta here. Come on, babe.” I haul Lore out of the booth and toward the exit, leaving Lonan and Rebel to catch up if they can.

  She clutches my hand, her mouth trying to keep up with her feet. “Where’re we going?” Hic. “I didn’t even have a chance to finish my dinner.” Hic. “Or Lonan’s… Xaine, slow down, these heels are really tall!”

  “I’m tired of sitting still,” I tell her as we head down the hall toward the telltale thump thump thump that’s the heartbeat of every nightclub everywhere. “Say the word, sweetheart, and I’ll carry you.”

  Lore laughs. It’s a giddy noise, cut with booze and adrenaline… and me. Lore is giddy on me. Doesn’t matter what label she slaps me with, she’s always going to look at me through the goggles of a young kid listening to her first angsty ballad. Some teenager slow dancing at her prom. The young woman who agreed to marry some hayseed hick wannabe musician.

  Oh yeah, she was all good with marrying him. Guess he ranked higher than “friend” on the Lore-Shag totem pole. That’s okay, that’s fucking fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine with the bright pink state of our fucking world today. She wants a Rock Star Vampire Friend, well, she’s going to goddamn well get one.

  On the dance floor, A-and B-list celebrities are getting down and dirty. There are photographers at the four corners of the room, but they’re being discreet about their snaps. I count at least two Oscar winners in a booth off to the side, a couple of Grammy winners, more nominees, and at least one next-gen party-girl Hilton. I plow through all of them, taking the pats on the back, the greetings, the half-hugs, the proffered hands. By the time we hit the bar, the staff has seen us coming. They’re not prepared for the body shot request, though.

  Lore’s ass hits the bar two seconds later. “What’m I doing up here?!”

  “Lying down.”

  She snickers, her nose all wrinkled up at me. “Alrighty, then.” And she stretches completely out, arms over her head, toes pointed, an explosive little “hic” tossed in for good measure.

  I can’t say that I have ever actually licked 200 proof anything off someone before, but there’s a first time for everything. I reach over her and grab a bottle off the lit-up wall. The glass is cold, even to my touch, and Lore shrieks when the frozen booze hits her bellybutton. My tongue immediately follows it, sliding over her flesh and seeking out her navel like a dent in a pot of cream. She squirms and goes to slide a hand over her middle, but I catch her by the wrists, because she tastes like everything I like. Woman and salt and sunshine. Warm flesh. Willing flesh.

  Lore. Just Lore.

  And I don’t question it. To be honest, I never question it, but I’m questioning this less than I probably should. I never stop to think, but I’m thinking less than normal. I always enjoy myself, but right now, I’m enjoying myself so much that I take a second shot with a slurp that leaves me coughing. It’s been a long damn time since I tied one on like this.

  But what happens in Vegas…

  By then, Rebel’s caught up to the bar, if not to me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? A known killer is back from the dead, on the loose, after the two of you, and you think it’s smart to slip your security detail?”

  Lonan’s right behind him. “What did I miss?”

  “Not much, by the looks of it.” And Rebel has a point, because Lonan’s face is sporting three shades of lipstick.

  I heave Lore into a sitting position and then, because I can’t help myself, I kiss her. It was supposed to be one of those passing things, but she wraps those mile-long legs around my waist and moans into my mouth. Then it’s on, with my tongue sliding past her lips and delving deep. Deep enough to taste her again. Deep enough to want that and more and everything. I don’t think to pull away until her hands spasm against my shoulders, and when I do, she comes up for air with another gasp.

  I hold up my finger for another round, and the bartender leans over to shout, “What do you want this time?”

  “No more drinks!” Rebel yells the same time that Lore screams, “Sex on the Beach!”

  He glares at her, but her head is tilted back, all that hair rioting over her shoulder like sunshine. The diamond spray is slipping south, and I can’t say that I blame it.

  Lore pulls it off and stuffs it into my pants like she’s tipping a stripper. “Sex on a park bench!” Hic. “Or…”

  “Sex on a bar!” I suggest, digging my fingers into her thighs because I can smell her, the core of her. I think about ducking my head between her legs, dipping my tongue into the honey pooling in the crux between her thighs, wanting her to arch into my mouth like I’m the only thing that exists in her entire universe.

  “How about some Porn Stars?” the bartender counters, cutting off the vivid mental image of eating out my Human Singer Friend in public and in full view of a lot of photographers.

  The next thing I know, we’ve each got a shot glass of some bright blue liquor, Rebel and Lonan included. I don’t care if they drink theirs, so long as Lore slugs hers back.

  “Keep ’em coming!” I yell at the bartender as I drag her out to the dance floor.

  Lore backs her ass up to my crotch and grinds me like she wants me to knock her up through god knows how many pairs of Spanx. “You good?”

  “It’s all good!” I yell back, beyond delighted that she turned out to be a horny drunk. She rubs up against me, shaking her hair in my face like she’s in a rap video, getting down and dirty to the po
int that a circle clears around us. Everything’s going fuzzy, a camera out of focus, a paparazzi shot from a thousand feet, to the point that it’s hard to put names with faces anymore.

  But when Charlie Sheen gives you the big thumbs up, you know some seriously crazy shit is going down.

  I spare a half-second glance at Rebel, who leaning against the bar looking disgusted and muttering orders into a radio. My gaze skips over to Lonan, entertaining two women and the shirtless stud who was working one of the dance platforms when we walked in. Honestly, I don’t know what he thinks he’s going to do with that much T&A, much less the dong, but that’s his business, not mine. I don’t have the bandwidth to spare him even if it was, because Lore’s got her arms around my neck and she’s murmuring something against my cheek. Her breath is sweet and boozy and warm, and I swear I’m hard as a rock, almost-but-not-quite-fucking her in front of God and Charlie.

  I have to duck my head, and it’s tempting to bite her ear instead of shouting into it. “How about we get the hell out of here and hit the Strip?”

  “We should go to the Crazy Horse!” she yells back, falling against me so that it’s easier to start hauling her toward the door than it would be to help her find her feet. “The paparazzi would go nuts!”

  Generally I’d be amenable to an evening filled with strippers and good company, but tonight I’ve got far different plans than hitting up the local cabaret. One way or another, I’m putting my mark on Lore, and if I can’t do it in the popular contemporary fashion, well then, things are going to have to get a little more traditional.

  Biblical, even.

  “Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me! Come on, Lonan!” I yell in passing. “There’s a jewelry store in the lobby, and I need to make a pitstop on the way out.”

  He trails after us, looking bewildered and ten kinds of shitfaced. There’s a redhead on his right arm and the dude on his left. I don’t know where he ditched the other woman, and I don’t care.

  “Isn’t that Xaine?” the girl mutters.

  I turn on my heel and walk backward long enough to answer, “Naw, I am the artist formerly known as Xaine.”

  “Dude,” the other one blurts out like he’s waited his whole life to have the opportunity to ask, “do you even have a last name?”

  I’m beyond caring what anyone other than Lore thinks about me, about all this, and she laughs all the way outside, her loose giggles interspersed with those adorable fucking hiccups.

  “Nope, he’s just Xaine,” she says, falling against me as we reach the curb. “Thank god he’s not a symbol yet.”

  “Well, I’m a sex symbol,” I say, stuffing her into the limo. “But if it makes things easier, you can call me ‘Rock Star Vampire Friend’ until death do us part, sweetheart.”

  Because the Something Old is me. The Something New is her. The Something Borrowed can be Lonan, and the Something Blue—

  Was the Porn Stars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Lore

  Consciousness comes at the cost of comfort, stampeding into my head with all the grace of a rhino. At first, I don’t even move, don’t open my eyes, don’t so much twitch a single muscle except to draw a breath. A slow, careful breath that I have to monitor, in case I need to make a sudden lunge for the bathroom.

  “Hell,” I mutter into the silence, swallowing hard against the gorge rising in my throat. “This must be what hell feels like.”

  I’m hot, but my skin is coated in a cool sheen of sweat, and the more discomfort that I acknowledge, the worse it seems to get. My hands shake, so I clamp them down on the sheets, pushing at the fabric until I’ve kicked free of the wild tangle. The bedroom smells like alcohol, sex, and perfume: a mélange of debauchery that keeps my roiling stomach on edge. I need to open a window. Turn on the air conditioning. Something, anything, because if I don’t…

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  I jump up from the bed so quickly that I lose my equilibrium, then it’s a battle against vertigo the entire way to the bathroom. Hitting my knees at a tile-burn skid, I lean over the pristine white porcelain bowl.

  Then I empty my guts. Heave until my jaw hurts, my throat burns, and tears trickle down my face. Heave until it’s all yellow bile and reflex. Heave until there’s nothing left. Eventually it tapers off into a full-body weakness that has me shaking and caving in on myself. Slowly, I recline, ass pressed to the bare tile floor, shoulders against cool porcelain.

  Too bad they don’t leave mints on the toilet seat, too.

  It smells like soap here, like air-conditioning and clean, which makes it a far better place to wallow in my misery. Propped against the whirlpool tub, I battle the urge to puke some more and wait for my stomach to settle. I don’t know where Xaine is, where Lonan and Rebel and Jude are, but I get the distinct impression that last night was a wilder ride than any of us bargained for. I have vague recollections of icy body shots, vaguer recollections of dancing, and a niggling feeling that tells me I’m missing a big part of the paint-the-town picture.

  So, about that niggling feeling in your boobs…

  Except I encounter a white bandage on the curve of my right thigh first. I narrow my eyes at it, then tug at the medical tape holding the gauze down. A swear word trips across my lips the moment the bold, black tattoo comes into view.

  That motherfucker.

  It’s unmistakably Xaine’s X. The one he dashes across eight-by-ten glossies and fangirl tits. That trademark slashing autograph that gets auctioned off on eBay, burned across an expensive guitar or etched into a monogrammed pick… or scrawled on a napkin with some song lyrics written on it.

  I’m a goddamn piece of Xaine memorabilia.

  Irritation flares hot, but on the tail of that discovery comes another realization: there is an odd feeling in the vicinity of my boobs, certainly more painful than the anger building in my chest. Right now, I’m wearing nothing but a dress shirt. Whose, I don’t know, but it’s white and starched and pristine, except for the tiny dots of blood streaked across the front. My first instinct is to touch the bite marks on my neck, dabbing at the skin and searching my fingertips for signs of a spill. Nothing, though.

  So the next move is to nut-up and peer down my borrowed shirt. With my hands on either side of the collar, I spread the fabric wider, peering inside, jaw dropping at the sight of two perfect little barbells through two very sore nipples.

  Pink. The balls are pink and cold and definitely not plastic.

  “What the fucking fuck? I am going to kill hi—”

  Even before the words are out of my mouth, my eyes catch on the matching rosy sparkle of something else. Letting go of my borrowed shirt, I spread the digits of my left hand wide, gaping at the conspicuously pink diamond sparkling on my ring finger. It’s huge, square cut with a ring of smaller diamonds around it, and set in shiny platinum. My mind goes completely and utterly blank.

  Because… he wouldn’t… he didn’t… he…

  The bedside alarm clicks on, sending staticky voices spiraling through the suite. Echoing off the bare walls and amplified by the white tiles, they compete with the pounding in my head.

  “There’s some surprising entertainment news out of Las Vegas today,” the disembodied male voice tells me. “Seems that bad-boy rocker Xaine got himself hitched last night, and to none other than the recent break-out pop artist, DJ Lore.”

  Oh, no…

  “No one could have seen that coming, John,” his female counterpart volleys. My head hits my hand, the cool brush of metal across my forehead so foreign that it startles me and I have to open my eyes to look at the ring again, blinking twice to take it all in. “Apparently the wedding was witnessed by none other than Noah Carmichael, another rock icon signed to the Apocalypse label. He was the one who tweeted the first pictures and video of the happy couple.”

  …Noah Carmichael?

  That’s a new development, and one I most certainly don’t remember. Trouble is, relying on my memory for anything these days is tantamou
nt to asking an orthodontist to fix a hemorrhoid.

  In other words, completely pointless.

  Pushing up from the floor, I have to clutch the sink because the room’s spinning and I’m spinning right along with it. Giving it a minute, I hover in limbo until I stabilize, until I can open my eyes, take a deep breath, and move away from the counter. Legs like a fawn’s, I work my way through the bedroom and into the living room, clinging to every piece of furniture and every door jamb on the way. I aim for the TV remote, and as soon as I have it in my hand, I click on the tube, flipping to the E! Network.

  My stomach bottoms out when I am the first thing that I see, leaning heavily against Xaine, head resting on his shoulder, both of us standing in front of Elvis at the altar. Xaine’s got his arms looped around my waist, like he’s not ever going to let me fall. He can’t. Not if he wants me to make it through the goddamn vows.

  It’s the shit-eating grin that hammers the last nail in the coffin I have planned for him, and I head off in search of my Asshole Vampire Husband.

  “Xaine!” Too fucking loud, Jesus Christ. I lower my voice several notches to shout his name again. The suite is big, but not that big, and I’ve already covered the territory from the bed to the bathroom to the television set. If he’s here, he has to have heard me puking my guts out. If he’s here, he has to know that I’m awake. Then there’s not only the righteous indignation burning me up; there’s a sudden stab of fear that he didn’t make it back to the hotel with me last night—

  “For fuck’s sake, stop shouting,” comes the hoarse retort.

  Still clutching the remote, I head for the door off to the side of the full bar, behind the dining room table and chairs. When my bare feet hit the marble tile beyond the furry white carpeting, I shudder.

  He’s holed up in some kind of office space, complete with a giant flatscreen playing the Drunken Vegas Wedding Highlight Reel. A wall of windows overlooks the Strip, the dimmer switch set to “hungover vampire,” so that the view is still visible but the glass is shadow-gray. The massive conference table is covered in ToughBook computers, USB cables, and surveillance equipment from PFC. There’s a few half-empty coffee cups and a glass scummed over with Alka-Seltzer residue, so my guess is the boys were here for part of the morning, at least until Xaine commandeered their base camp.