by Mimi Strong
He backpedaled, and I kept coming at him, until he reached the foot of my parents’ bed and fell backward, but not before hooking me around the back and toppling me down on top of him.
Pillows of various sizes flew everywhere in the kerfuffle.
I struggled to get away, but Adrian wrapped his arms and legs around me, laughing.
“Lemme go, spider legs!” I yelled.
“I’ve got you in my web.” His blue eyes shone fiercely bright as he grinned up at me.
His body was solid beneath me, and all the squirming was exciting something not just in me, but in him, by the feel of it. A long, thick something. Miss Kitty got very interested.
I stopped struggling and rested with my forearms against Adrian Storm’s chest, so broad like a pleasant lawn in his green T-shirt. His hands moved up my back to my shoulders, then slid down to my buttocks.
And then, for the first time in my life, I did something daring and fun with Adrian Storm.
I said, “Kiss me like I’m dangerous. Kiss me like I’m bad for you.”
He moved his hands up from my ass, to either side of my face, and pulled me down to him.
My lips got closer and closer to his. The heat between our bodies grew stronger, like a campfire between gusts of wind. His lips parted, and his eyelids fluttered closed.
I didn’t just want to kiss Adrian Storm. I wanted to grind my hips against his, and feel his lips, his tongue, his teeth on my flesh. I wanted to reach down into his jeans and grab hold of the beast hardening beneath my thigh.
One of the turquoise pillows near my face caught my attention and broke the spell. I was on my parents’ bed. And why was I about to kiss Adrian Storm when I was already involved with someone?
CHAPTER 16
Lying on top of Adrian Storm's sexy body, on my parents' bed, I came to my senses. We couldn't kiss. That would be the worst thing for us to do.
I changed trajectory, stuck my tongue out, and licked the tip of Adrian’s fine nose.
Pulling back, I said, “Say uncle.”
“Uncle?”
I rolled to the side, off his hot body. “I guess I win this round, after all.”
He sat up, shaking his head and looking around as if just awoken from a dream.
“You win,” he said.
“For once.”
“We should go back downstairs before my parents get worried.”
I slapped him on the thigh. “Worried I’ll get their son pregnant?”
He caught my hand and held it in his. “Petra.”
“I was just kidding about you kissing me. I’m actually seeing someone right now. A guy. So obviously that was just a joke.”
“Who?”
I pulled my hand away, got off the bed, and started gathering the tossed pillows. There was obviously no point in saying who, because he wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“Nobody you’d know,” I said.
“I haven’t been out of town that long. Is it that delivery guy? The red-haired coma guy?”
“Carter is a talented singer-songwriter. He’s more than just a coma guy.”
“I guess he’s okay.” Adrian got up and walked to the door. “Yeah, he’s okay.”
I stared after him, my mouth slightly ajar. “He’s okay, you guess? Wow, Adrian, you sure wanted me bad. I feel so desired right now. Thanks. Thanks a lot for reminding me of old times.”
He backed away, his head down and gaze on the floor. “Whatever I said or did, I’m sorry. For the record, I think you’re a really cool chick, and I hoped we could be friends again, like how we used to be.”
“There’s no reason now. No yearbook.” My words hung in the air for a moment. “Chantalle Hart is working at DeNirro’s. She asked about you. I think you should go for it.”
He backed away a few more steps, until he was just out of sight, in the hallway. He called out, “I’m just going to go home now, before I make things worse.”
At that moment, his mother called for him. “Adri-aaaaaan? We’re ready to go, dear!”
“Thanks for the fun,” I said.
He muttered something I couldn’t discern, and then I heard his footfalls on the front stairs, the wood ones.
I went into my parents’ en-suite bathroom and shut the door to bide my time until the Storms left.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I said, “Girl, what’s gotten into you?”
That’s when I noticed the big, green chunk of spinach covering most of my eye tooth. I quickly picked it out, silently cursing stupid Adrian Storm. Imagine what would have happened if we’d kissed! A partially-chewed chunk of my salad would have transferred from my mouth to his.
Ugh.
The thought of it nearly made me hurl.
The door downstairs slammed, and I heard a car drive away. I waited a full minute, ran some water, and ventured back downstairs.
I found my mother sitting amidst her coordinated throw pillows on the new flower-patterned sofa in the front room.
“Tummy beans?” she asked.
I rubbed my stomach and grimaced. “Yeah. That spinach goes right through me.”
She nodded, giving me a knowing look. “I suppose it hit Adrian at the same exact time, which is why you two were upstairs together.”
I flopped down on the couch next to her, then scooched over so I could lie there with my head on her lap.
“Mom, he tried to kiss me. In between insulting me.”
She patted my hair. “What would your movie star boyfriend say?”
“Something utterly charming that turns my insides to goo. And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“They’re not like us, are they? These actors. They’re like the sun, and we all revolve around them.”
“What am I doing with Dalton? Am I crazy? Should I just keep hanging in there hoping he’ll break my heart then write me a big check so I can put a down payment on a house?”
My mother silently stroked my hair for a moment, then said, “Jewelry is less vulgar than straight cash.”
I covered the side of my face with one hand so she couldn’t see my wide-eyed expression.
“Sheesh. My own mother is prostituting me,” I said. “What next?”
“Now, now. What you meant to say is, ‘My own mother is pimping me.’ One can only prostitute oneself.”
“And the hits just keep on coming.”
She patted my shoulder. “You do know I’m joking, right? You’re young, brilliant, and adorable. You’re practically a clone of your dear mother. Any man would be lucky to catch your eye.”
“Okay.”
She kept patting my shoulder. “I know your birthday is a ways off, but he doesn’t know that. You could make up a date, drop a few hints, perhaps walk him by Topaz Jewelry and stop to admire the window display, or—”
I sat up and gave her my most disapproving look.
Her eyebrows pulled together. “I’m being inappropriate, aren’t I?”
“Very. And a little ruthless.”
“That dandelion wine,” she said, shaking her head. “It makes people do the silliest things.”
I rolled my eyes as I got up from the couch and started gathering my things to leave. Dandelion wine, my ass.
My father came into the room with perfect timing to volunteer as my taxi ride home. I would have considered just staying there and getting a lift home in the morning, but I had a date with Dalton in the morning.
The whole ride home, I was quiet, silently sorting through whether or not I’d done anything improper with Adrian Storm.
He was the one who’d grabbed me and pulled me onto the bed, on top of his very hard body that felt way too good underneath mine.
I was the one who dared him to kiss me, though. And using the same words Dalton had said to me outside DeNirro’s. I was kind of a skank! The idea put a smile on my face.
I hugged my dad goodnight and ran into the house, eager to tell Shayla everything. She was out, though, with Golden and Chantalle, according to the note on the fr
idge.
I frowned at the felt-pen-scrawled words for several minutes. They all went somewhere to hang out without me? How rude was that? Very rude.
I opened the fridge and drank some of Shayla’s precious fresh mango juice, right from the bottle, no glass.
Saturday morning, I woke up three hours before Dalton Deangelo was due at my house. It still wasn’t enough time for me to sort out what to wear.
I pulled on the blue dress I’d mentioned on the phone—the one he said would look good on his floor. The color did bring out my eyes, and the shirring above the waistband did wonders to hide my recent cupcake incidents. Then again, I remembered from Dottie’s workshop that red clothing made a stronger impression on the male mind, so I was rooting around for something else when the doorbell rang.
Shayla was silent in her bedroom, still crashed from returning late the night before.
I opened her door and said, “Get up if you want to meet Dalton Deangelo properly.” She’d given him heck on our front lawn that first night, but hadn’t talked to him since.
She stirred, moving just enough to pull the top cover over her head. “Merff,” she said, which was more of a sound than a word.
“You guys really tied on last night, didn’t you?”
She waved one limp hand. “Go ‘way. Your voice. Ugh.”
“Nice. So, you don’t want to meet him?”
“Merff.”
“Your loss.” I started down the stairs.
Shayla and I lived in a delicate balance, and her recent grouchiness shouldn’t have been surprising. She claimed to be happy for me, but whenever something good happened in my life, it took her some time to get used to the idea. Either that, or by wild coincidence the universe would make something bad happen to her to keep us in balance.
I pulled open the front door to find Dalton lurking a few feet off to the side of the porch, his arms crossed and his head nodded down.
The red geraniums in the terra cotta pots sat unharmed on the porch and front stairs, so he wasn’t looking guilty due to kicking one of them over (which happened a few times every summer when friends came over).
“What’s up?” I asked.
He turned a little to the side, taking on an even more lurking pose.
“Are you bailing on me today?” I asked. “Do you have to go back to shooting right now?”
He shook his head, no, but still didn’t say anything.
Now I was starting to get worried. “Something worse?”
He nodded, yes.
I knew, immediately, that he was dumping me. Without a doubt.
So I said, “You’re a fucking douche,” and slammed the door shut.
The doorbell rang again. I didn’t want his stupid explanation, but I opened it anyway.
“Invite me in,” he muttered, standing closer to the door but still keeping his distance.
“Fine. Come in.”
He stepped in with a flourish, his face lighting up with maniacal glee. His mouth opened wide in a snarl, revealing giant fucking vampire teeth.
I shrieked, like any normal person would, given the situation.
He was already laughing, bent forward with his hand on one knee. Waving his hand breathlessly, he said, “The look on your face!”
Holding my hand to my hammering heart, I said, “What’s with all you guys trying to terrify me?”
“What guys?” he said, sputtering around the prosthetic vampire teeth.
“Nobody.” The memory of me squirming on top of Adrian Storm’s body returned with clarity, and I plunged into a deep well of guilt.
Dalton adjusted one of the top teeth, which looked really sharp and dangerous. “Sh-h-ould I wear d-f-ese all day?”
“I don’t know. Definitely keep them on until you officially meet my roommate.” I glanced up the stairs for signs of life. “Unfortunately, she’s impersonating a person in a coma.”
My face twitched as I realized I’d made a coma joke. Once you actually know someone who’s been in a coma (my delivery guy, Carter), you either make twice as many inappropriate coma jokes, or just become aware of the ones you do. And the brain damage jokes are nearly as prevalent. I guess that, like cankles, some things just aren’t as funny when they’re personal.
“Does she sleep in the nude?” Dalton slurped around his vampire teeth.
“Nope.”
He was already moving past me, up the stairs. I followed him up, my hand clapped over my mouth to keep myself quiet.
He opened the door to her room and crept in, the old wood floors squeaking under his feet.
From within her covers, Shayla muttered something about coffee.
Dalton climbed right up onto the bed, his knees and hands on either side of Shayla’s form. I frowned, not pleased to see my vampire boy being so comfortable with another girl. But that was so… just… like Dalton, wasn’t it? For him to instantly feel comfortable and at home wherever he was, to not have any fears about being close to another person. It had to be an actor thing, as I’d never known anyone who acted like that.
He opened his mouth, raised his eyebrows, and pulled his lips back in a crazed expression that showed off the pointy teeth.
He nodded to me, so I said, “Shayla. Wake up. I’ve made a huge mistake.”
She grumbled and wiggled around.
I continued, “I’ve let a vampire into the house.”
The blankets peeled down, and she pushed her long, dark hair out of her eyes.
Dalton—no, Drake Cheshire—stared down at her silently, his fanged mouth wide open.
Time seemed to stop momentarily as she stared up into his eyes. The silence was broken by a high-pitched squeal and then hysterical giggling.
“That’s it?” he sputtered around the teeth. “No begging for mercy?”
She pushed his face away with one limp hand. “Bad kitty.”
He jumped up from the bed and started popping the prosthetic teeth off. Shrugging, he said to me, “Not the impression I wanted to make, but an impression all the same.”
“At least you scared me.”
“I sure did. Let’s see your room now. I bet it’s a girlie room with a pink canopy bed.”
His guess was so eerily similar to what Adrian had said the night before, I had to wonder if the two of them had been comparing notes.
“Right this way, sir.” I led him out of Shayla’s room and across the hallway to mine.
“I see you like books. And country furniture.” He picked up a handful of paperbacks from my yellow-and-blue antiqued dresser. That particular piece of furniture was actually a contemporary piece, from a cheap chain store. My mother had done her magic on it, painstakingly sanding the surface, applying one paint color, then the other, and finally battering the poor thing with a variety of implements.
He set down the books and wandered over to my walk-in closet. “Not bad storage you have here,” he said.
“Yeah, right. Back in LA, you probably have closets bigger than my whole room.”
“That, I do. Big rooms and huge closets. I have a wine cellar with sort of an art gallery in it.”
“Art gallery?”
“More of a shrine. To the balls-out crazy former homeowner.”
“Sounds cool.”
He turned away from my closet and crawled up onto my bed without being invited. “Mm, nice bed.”
I remembered what Adrian had said the night before about his huge house making him feel bad.
“Do you think a person gets more lonely in a big house?” I asked.
He kicked off his shoes and got comfortable on my bed, lying on his back with his head on my favorite pillow.
“Why do you ask? Are you offering to stow away in my trailer and come home with me?”
“Not at all. I was just curious. I’ve never lived without family or roommates, and usually in places that are cheap, which always means small.”
He patted the bed next to him. “Come here and let’s share the story of our first apartments away from
home.”
I climbed up and arranged myself next to Dalton, my cheek resting on his outstretched arm.
“You first,” he said. “Did you go away to college?”
“I did. I rented a place sight-unseen, with Shayla.”
“Brave.”
“You have no idea. It wasn’t completely sight-unseen, because we talked to the landlord by email and got some photos, but I think they must have been standing on ladders outside the rooms to take the pictures, to trick you into thinking the rooms were big.”
I was lying on my side, fiddling with the fabric of my dress over the curve of my hip, and Dalton rolled in to face me, one hand landing confidently atop mine, on my hip.
“Did you have vermin?” he asked, which sounded surprisingly sexy coming from his handsome mouth.
I whispered, “Funny you should ask. Our third roommate was rather cockroach-like. We hardly ever saw her, and she wouldn’t venture into a room with the lights on.”
He squeezed my hand and smiled at me, that cute chin-dimple of his begging to be bitten. It seemed a little odd to be starting a date with pillow talk, but nothing about our relationship so far had been conventional.
“What about your first place?” I asked.
“Bath tub in the kitchen.”
“New York?”
“Where else?” He chuckled as his hand wandered down my hip, along my leg past the hem of my dress, and then back up again under my dress, along the top side of my bare leg. I shivered from his touch, even though the room was warm and full of morning sunshine.
“Something lived in the walls,” he said. “I don’t know what, but it skittered around at night.”
Something about his expression gave me another chill.
I whispered, “Were you scared?”
“Scared of being evicted, and of catching something in the damp air and not being able to afford a doctor.”
“Did you have roommates? Other actors?”
“A few.” His expression grew complicated, and he didn’t offer more.
“Was your next apartment better?”
He brightened. “Much better. I booked some jobs, things started happening, and within a few years I was out in LA, shopping for mansions like they were cars, and shopping for cars like they were tennis shoes.”