Romani Armada (Beloved Bloody Time)
Page 10
“He’s the one who should be apologizing. Not you.”
“I’m not. Apologizing.” She sighed. “I think.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know what I think, Justin.”
He tilted his head to look at her more closely. “You’re embarrassed.”
Deonne grimaced. “I suppose…yes.” She sighed again. “I really didn’t know he felt like that. He’s hidden it from me.”
“Until now.” Justin leaned over and picked up her hand, tugging her to her feet, and pulling her closer to him. She bumped up against the insides of his thighs and he dropped his hands to her hips, keeping her there.
“Can someone be a bigot for hating vampires?” he asked. “Bigots hate different races. We’re not even the same species.”
“You’re human under the vampire overcoat,” she told him.
Justin smiled, but there was no humor in the expression. “Is that what you think?”
“You started out human,” she reminded him. “That didn’t go away.”
He let her go, pushing her gently back so he could stand up. “I think we’ve all been behaving too nicely around you. You haven’t seen enough of real vampires.”
Deonne propped her hand on her hip. “Like threatening to take my head off for me? That sort of behavior?”
“That was playtime.” Justin shrugged.
“What are you trying to say, Justin? If I witnessed your…what, your inner soul, I’d curl up and wilt away because it would be too much for me?”
“We don’t have inner souls,” Justin shot back. “We’re damned according to every doctrine out there and the atheists think we’re unnatural aberrations, just to add the final kicker. Despite two hundred years of respectability we still haven’t won approval or social acceptance because deep down in their gut, humans know. They know we’re no bloody good and they’re right.”
Deonne stared at him, appalled. “What are you saying? You just helped me kick my father out because he doesn’t like vampires and now you’re saying exactly the same thing…and you are one!”
Justin shook his head. “Your father hates us based on fear and ignorance. Prejudice, pure and simple. I distrust vampires…I don’t like the breed in general because I know them, Deonne. I’ve watched them for centuries and nothing they have done has endeared them to me.”
“Despite being one of them,” she finished.
“Despite being one of them,” he repeated, bitterness dripping from every word.
Deonne realized she was breathing hard, like she had run a quarter-mile dash. She was frightened. Dismayed. “What about Ryan? Brenden?” she asked. “Surely you cannot consider them to be the lowlife trash you’re painting vampires to be? You work with so many of them. Christian, Tally and Rob. Nayara. You spend time with them. What does that make you?”
“The Agency is the exception,” Justin shot back. “The Agency and nearly everyone in it…they’re different. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s something to do with having a purpose.” He shrugged. “Ryan and Nia and Godfrey built a good thing. They saved my life.”
Then his eyes widened in surprise, as if he had just realized what he had said, and who he had said it to. A moment passed, then he blew out his breath, slowly. He shrugged again, a tiny movement. It was an acknowledgement that he had said too much.
Deonne shifted a few steps to her left so she was facing him properly. “I have no idea who Godfrey is. I’ll find out later. But how did Ryan and Nia save your life?”
Justin shoved his hands into his pockets. Hard. He rolled his eyes. “You really need a picture painted for you?”
“Pretend I do,” she replied. “Pretend I don’t want to think the worst of you, that I’d rather you tell me the truth so I don’t imagine it blacker than it needs to be.”
Justin’s gaze drilled right through her. He wasn’t looking at her, she knew that. He was focused on internal thoughts. It was a struggle that went on for long seconds, while she stood holding her breath until his gaze focused on her again.
“Can’t you just pretend I’m a good guy, Rinaldi?” he asked softly. “I like…having you around.”
Her heart was banging against her chest so hard it hurt. “Just having me around, huh? That’s it?”
“Well…” He began to smile, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
“Don’t finish that thought,” she warned him, lifting her finger.
He didn’t. His hands, she noticed, were still pushed deep into his pockets. He studied her. The predator was watching, somewhere in the back of his mind.
She shivered and gripped her hands together tightly for courage and watched the mottling appear, leaving them white and bloodless. “It’s more than just having you around, for me.”
Silence.
Deonne lifted her gaze from her clenched hands, to look at Justin. His expression hadn’t changed. He hadn’t moved an inch.
“And I had my money on sarcasm,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Who’d have thought I’d render Justin Kelly speechless?”
He cleared his throat. “You know the origins of vampires – the casts. Your source—”
Deonne whirled away, deep disappointment biting into her chest and angry tears stinging her eyes. “Fuck, Kelly!” She strode away, a dozen furious steps, then spun back to face him. “I wouldn’t give up my source when Brenden threatened to decapitate me. What makes you think I’m going to just hand the name over to you? I might be falling in love with you, but it doesn’t mean you get to use that as leverage. I will never break my professional ethics, not even for you!”
“I’m not asking for a fucking name!” he cried. Then he stopped and stared at her, his mouth opening in shock. He pulled his hands out of his pockets. “You’re…falling in love with me?”
“Not if you keep acting like a fucking jerk, asshole.”
He smiled. It was the same warm, full-hearted expression he had given her when he had walked back into the apartment when her father had been here. It was the easy smile that lit up his eyes and made her breath stop and made her think of their flesh meeting in all the right places. It made her think of Justin’s kisses.
Justin covered the space between them in ten steps – his legs were that much longer than hers. He slid his fingers into her hair, tangling with the knot she had tied it in to greet her father. His thumb brushed her cheekbone as his smile faded. “Feeling’s mutual, lady,” he murmured.
Her heart did the same sickly semi-ballistic drop, leaving her breathless and dizzy. “Truly?” Her voice was almost bodiless.
“When you’re not being a jerk,” he added, the corner of his mouth lifting.
“No, don’t joke, not now,” she said quickly. She rested her hand on his chest and felt something she didn’t often feel. Heat and the steady, hurried beat of his heart. His pulse told her he wasn’t as contained as he appeared. “You always joke and misdirect and wriggle away from this stuff.”
Justin gave another tiny shrug. “It’s messy stuff,” he said.
But Deonne knew the nonchalant shrug and his indifferent reply was a lie. The beat under her fingertips told a different story. She ignored it. “You don’t let me see inside you very much.”
“Safer that way,” he replied.
“Safer for who?”
His jaw flexed. For a second, Deonne wondered if she had pushed too far. Justin wasn’t above simply walking out of the room if the conversation probed too deeply for his comfort, as she had learned from past experience. He pressed his lips together, making them thin and hard. Then he seemed to relax, as if he was giving in. “You won’t like what you find, deeper in. You won’t…” He took a breath. “Love me,” he finished, his voice low and harsh.
“Shouldn’t I get to decide that?” she asked, fighting hard to keep her tone reasonable, even though she was dismayed by his confession.
“I…yes, I suppose.” He pushed his hands into his pockets. Hard. “I don’t like my odds, though,” he muttered, his gaze dropping to the floor.
He shifted on his feet, and Deonne realized that Justin was fighting the urge to leave. This was stirring things in him, building his discomfort level to a point where normally, he simply removed himself from the source of anxiety.
Now he was trying to stay and sort through it. For her.
“For a vampire who doesn’t feel emotions except intellectually, you look like you’re twisting yourself into a knot inside,” she told him.
He turned away from her, almost like he was going to leave. Then he shifted back to face her squarely, his blue eyes frank and filled with anguish. “I can’t think around you. You gum up everything so I can barely remember whether I’m vampire or human or what my name is this century. Then you want to talk about how I feel?” He pulled a hand out of his pocket. “I feel, Deonne. I feel it here, inside.” He thumped the tips of his fingers against his chest. “Do you get it? I feel it like a human does.”
“Sweet lord,” she breathed, staring at him. “Is that even possible?”
“It is now.” He pushed his hands into his pockets again. “I don’t even know what this is.”
“You haven’t told anyone. Not about us, not about how you feel, none of it.”
His mouth twisted down. “Who do you propose I tell?” he asked. “Vampires don’t talk about themselves. You must have noticed by now.”
Deonne nodded. The need for privacy was almost a genetic imperative in them. Personal questions were considered offensive and borderline criminal. “More complications,” she said. “No wonder I’ve had a permanent headache for the last year. You’re not an easy man to get to know, Justin Kelly.”
He took a breath as if he were about to answer. Then he shook his head.
“What?” she demanded.
“That’s because I’m not a man. You keep trying to treat me like one.”
She sighed. “If I really were treating you like a human, I would have left you six months ago.”
His mouth opened. His eyes widened.
She gave him a smile. “I’ve given you more room and more time than any man I’ve ever known. I’ve been patient beyond the point of reason. True, you don’t live an average life, so I’ve had to allow for things like stations blowing up and psi raids and baby abductions. But that right there, Justin....” She lifted her hands. “A war with another species? How could I possibly make the mistake of thinking of you as human when I simply have to look at the circumstances of my life over the last six months and those of the people around me to know I’m not among humans anymore?”
Justin let out a slow breath. “We’re that different?”
“You spent days…weeks, trying to make sure I understood how different you were and I learned the hard way all by myself, too. Yes, you’re all very different from humans, even though you act and look almost the same as them.”
“That’s not good,” Justin muttered, looking away.
“No, it’s fine. It’s great. It’s who you are,” Deonne shot back. “Don’t you understand? It’s the differences between you and humans that I have spent all my energy trying to show humans. The very good differences. You can’t see it because you’re too immersed in your lives and that’s the way it should be, too. There’s so much that is strong and admirable about vampires that if humans just stopped panicking over the blood drinking for sixty seconds, they would see it for themselves.” She threw her hands up and let them drop.
Justin tilted his head to study her. “Isn’t that why we’re paying you the crazy credits? Because humans won’t stop panicking but you’re that good?”
“I may be good, but it helps when you have first class material to work with,” Deonne replied. “And you’re pulling me way off subject. Again. See, this is exactly what I mean. You do this, as soon as we start talking about you. You glide right out from underneath the spotlight.”
Justin cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to. Not this time.”
“You’re just that practiced at it,” she finished. She crossed her arms. “Where are we heading, Kelly? Or is this all you can offer me?”
“‘This’ is a life more interesting than you’ve ever lived. You just said so,” Justin pointed out. “That’s not enough for you?”
She drew in a breath that shuddered. Finally they were talking, but she knew that any response from her might slam the door shut once more. A word, an expression, anything might send him scurrying away to hide behind the friendly, rough-edged Australian larrikin that everyone loved to spend time with. Everyone had such fun in Justin’s company he was the Agency’s top consultant – he brought in more clients and higher revenues than the second and third best consultants combined.
But while everyone was being charmed by his devil-may-care attitude and beguiling ways, no one noticed that all they were getting from Justin was surface reactions. Just underneath the top layer was plasteel shielding, keeping everyone out and all his real emotions locked in.
Deonne searched for gentle words to soften her answer, then stopped as she realized she was handling Justin like she might a troublesome client. She mentally shook her head and reached for the unvarnished truth. If Justin walked away because he didn’t like her answer, then all the pretty words in the world would not prevent that. She wanted to know now exactly where she stood with him.
“It’s not enough,” she told him bluntly. “Not anymore.”
Justin let out his breath in a harsh rush and closed his eyes briefly. “Then we have a problem, don’t we?”
Her heart stuttered. “We do?” She could barely form the words, as her stumbling heart went into overdrive.
Justin turned from her and his movement shot a bolt of fright through her. Was he leaving?
But he walked over to the window, putting his back to her, as he watched the brightening day and the suburbs of Stockholm laid out below stir into life. “You intend to be turned in the next year, don’t you?”
Deonne pressed her fingertips to her temples as the implications behind his question fell into place in her mind. “That’s why you keep asking me about it…why you’ve been trying to understand.” Then the fear blossomed in her once more; this time it was fresh, new and cold. “Are you saying that if I have myself turned…that we…that you’ll leave?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as flinch. This wasn’t a new idea for him, then. Her fear grew.
“Truth, Deonne?” he said, addressing the window. “I don’t know. Not anymore.”
“But that is how you felt. How long ago? When did it change?”
Finally he turned to look at her. “I don’t know when it stopped being an imperative. Perhaps just now, in these last few minutes.” But he didn’t look happy at all.
Deonne bit her lip. “You hate the idea of me becoming vampire that much?”
“I hate anyone giving up their humanity for this,” he replied. “Because it’s you, the idea is even more abhorrent. I can barely stomach the notion.”
“But you won’t leave me if I do this,” she asked. She had to make sure she understood exactly what was at stake.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” Justin replied bleakly. He shook his head. “But I know being happy about it isn’t one of the options.”
She stared at him, her heart thundering, while scared and barely coherent thoughts ricocheted off each other. Now she couldn’t think and she desperately wanted to find a way out of the corner they had just painted themselves into. Then she gave up and just looked at him. “So, what do we do now?” she asked. “You want me to give up becoming vampire? Is that what you’re asking?”
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“Then, dammit, you need to start!” The anger rose out of nowhere, almost consuming her in the hot rush. “You have the right to ask, now, Justin. You know you do but it’s one of
the ways you keep the shield up. You never demand anything of me. You don’t ask for anything. You don’t tell me what you want, how you feel, anything.”
His mouth quirked upwards. “Doesn’t that make me the perfect man? No strings, no demands, no compromises.”
“I can get the same service from a professional escort and he would provide better sex, too!”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw rippled. “Would you like some references? I know two or three who would be more than happy to take you on as a client.”
Deonne dropped onto the end of the chaise, all her anger draining. “I deserved that,” she said, leaning forward to wrap her arms around her knees. She was abruptly cold. The dregs of adrenaline were giving her the shakes. “Is that what you want?” she asked, looking up at him. “Is that what you’re trying to do here? Are you looking for a way to leave? Because the door is right over there.”
Justin pushed his hand through his hair as he walked toward her. He stepped over the end of the chaise with his long legs and settled on the cushion behind her.
“What…?”
“Shhh,” he murmured and lifted up her shoulders, making her sit up. He kept pulling, until her back was against his chest. Then he picked up her arms and wrapped his around her, so their arms were twined together. “I can talk this way,” he told her. “When I’m not looking at you and being whacked around by your beauty and the sight of your long legs. Maybe I can even think.”
“Justin…”
“Shhh,” he repeated. “You want me to talk or not?”
She shut up, although the need to speak, to say anything, was driving at her like g-force.
His lips touched the nape of her neck, where the big artery ran. She knew it lay there just under her flesh, because Justin often kissed her neck and would linger over that area, like the blood called him. She didn’t know if he was aware of it, but she knew he wouldn’t like her pointing out such a vampiric habit to him.
“I was more than an A-grade asshole as a human, Deonne. You with your fine ways and fancy clothes and your expensive taste…you would have run a mile from the likes of me.” He nuzzled her neck, his lips stroking her flesh.