“I’m never completely sure with Charlene.”
“Do you love this guy your sister is marrying tonight?”
“No. Emphatic no. Ick.”
“Then why does your sister want to make you miserable?”
“I suspect she thinks Ross still likes me.”
“And?”
“There is a faint possibility it’s true.”
“Nevertheless, Charlene wouldn’t marry him if she didn’t love him, or if she thought he was in love with you, would she?”
“My sister is Evil Incarnate. Evil Incarnate can do whatever it/she pleases. All reason aside.”
His hand disengaged from her leg. Using a warm finger, he wiped something from her lower lip. Lipstick? No. Blood, from where she had accidentally bitten it during the stress of her confession.
Christian held his finger up, his gaze drifting past the spot of darkness on it, to her.
“You don’t have to protect me,” Veronica said. “You just have to pretend, so they leave me alone.”
Maintaining this closeness to him was impossible. Veronica inhaled him with each breath she took. He really did smell like cedar chips.
More fanning with the clutch purse. Her eyes were riveted to his upheld finger as he moved it closer to his mouth.
“Your motive is for someone to be with you, take the heat off of you,” he said.
Boy, if only he could do that right now. Turn the heat off before she developed Carpel Tunnel Syndrome from all the fanning.
He was looking at his finger in a provocative, sensual way. Make that very provocative. Her thermostat soared to full blast. Gobi Desert stuff. Veronica couldn’t fan fast enough, was totally stunned by the thought of what he might do next.
A thrumming started deep in the V between her thighs and so intensely that Veronica was certain everyone within a reasonable radius of this limo might feel it. This was not a biological clock thing, no tick tock. It was more like thunder down under, rolling through her, toes to wrist.
His finger was less than an inch from his lips.
“May I?” he asked.
No way, Veronica told herself, was he actually going to lick that speck of blood from his finger. Not real blood. If he licked that finger, he would be carrying this vampire thing way too far.
But he did just that. His full, succulent lips closed over the tip of his finger. And underneath the yuck factor, Veronica felt a gathering of panty moisture, punctuated by leftover lightning. His motion was a hint, a promise, a sort of physical double entendre. And it turned her on.
“Wait. This is just a dating service, right?” she stammered. “Because I . . .”
Again, his eyebrows went up questioningly.
Uttering a gasp, swallowing a moan, Veronica tugged her skirt downward. This caused her date to move closer to her again, sliding all the way across the center line of the limo’s back seat.
Wasn’t there a law against seat encroachment?
Her heart lurched like it was doing cardio exercise, sitting down. She could have counted beats without having to reach for an artery. Maybe it was the vampire game causing this nervous edge, she told herself — the coffins at the agency, and all the talk about what those teeth were for. Maybe it was the undeniable fact that this guy was so handsome it seemed unlikely he could be real, paired with the fact that she was, heaven help her, wildly attracted to him.
Or just possibly the attack of anxiety was due to the fact that they were nearing the church. They would soon leave the relative safety of the limo to attend her big sister’s wedding, and the entire Davis family would be there to give the youngest Davis grief. Judgmental parents. Judgmental sister. Judgmental brother-in-law, to be. Judgmental brother-in-law to be’s parents.
Rented date.
The realization of what she had done drove the panic down into her bones. The heat in the car hissed as it met with the cold of her full-blown attack of nerves. But it was too late to do anything about any of it. They were en route to the church. She had a man beside her. There was no way in hell she could go to this wedding alone and survive. She might be twenty-three years old, but would revert to age ten the minute she arrived, the minute her mother came at her with comments about her hair, her dress, her lack of suitors. She could feel the age slippage starting now.
“The sad truth is that I am so desperate not to stand out at this wedding, I would have broken a foot to get out of it,” she explained, shocked to have spoken aloud.
She would have added that she would have worn camouflage, too, if she’d found a store that sold it, and also that she was the only sister of the bride-to-be, yet wasn’t even a bridesmaid. People would be also questioning this.
And her date? Would having him work? Would his presence help dull the sharp family edges, and defray the usual pitiful looks she’d have otherwise encountered?
“Veronica?”
“Yes?”
“Did your sister’s fiancé, Ross, ever get close to you?” Christian asked. “Did he want to?”
“We only got to dessert,” she whispered. “The kind you eat with a fork, at a restaurant. Once.”
This stunted reply seemed to satisfy her incredible new friend. He nodded, leaned in, brushed her cheek with his. His index finger, the one he’d licked, trailed along the outside of her leg in a lazy pattern, heading uphill.
As much as she wanted this guy on a more permanent basis, there was so little time to explore the possibility.
“Your sister’s fiancé still likes you?” the blaze-wielding vampire queried, not yet finished with his inquisition.
“It’s the only thing I can think of. The only reason Charlene might want to rub it in.”
Christian’s whisper brought his lips across hers. Barely. Just. No razor-sharp canines pricked in a kiss that wasn’t really a kiss.
Veronica closed her eyes.
“I’ll protect you,” he swore, forming the words against her mouth. “We now have a bond.”
“You mean a contract.”
He shook his head. “A bond, sealed with blood.”
“You’ll come to the rescue, like a knight in shining Armani?” she joked, while the internal pounding dropped to her ankles, like her underwear might in another minute. The atmosphere in the car had radically changed. His voice had changed.
Blood bond? What the heck did that mean
“Tell me what you want from me,” he said.
She kept her eyes shut. “I was hoping for something along the hot sex and a dozen roses afterwards kind of pretense from you for the evening.” Her voice was strained.
“I can do that,” he said. “Quite easily.”
“Yes. You seem to be very good at pretending.”
Pretending, her ass! This guy’s fingers were idling near the tops of her stockings. This was no regular warm-up for an event, this was trouble.
If laughter had broken the ice for her, this man’s ice-breaker was more touchy-feely. The result was volcanic. Not only had he crossed over the invisible line in the car, not only had he touched her suggestively, he had her believing wholeheartedly in his acting abilities. He had her believing he might care.
The air was ripe with unspoken promises. Secret promises. More than just hot, sweaty stuff. Fact: She wasn’t going to any wedding. She really was on her way to jail for hiring and bedding an escort. The agency had a paper trail to prove it.
Veronica opened her eyes, one at a time.
“Tonight,” her vamp said. “Tonight, you’ll be queen.”
Her lashes flapped in response. “Queen? Really?”
She felt the shake of his eruption of laughter on her earlobe. Whether out of anxiousness or anticipation, she joined him, spiraling way past giddy. And the laughter they shared felt delicious. It felt dangerous.
But then —
At that moment, a familiar glow came through the window. Not golden arches, or streetlights, or neon. This illumination was an eerie, churchy sort of glow, almost as mesmerizing as her date’s shining eyes.
Chapter six
Tick-freaking-tock.
The limo slowed. And the church was out there, all right, glowing with her sister’s evil aura. It was show time, and Veronica wasn’t ready.
With her date still bodily close, she said, “Have you ever gone on an assignment without the vampire getup?”
“Getup?” he queried.
“You know, the teeth.”
“I can’t change what I am, Veronica. The agency is up front about this, and what they offer. If we don’t declare our status, things could get uncomfortable.”
Veronica tried to imagine what her family would say when she and Christian got out. She wondered whether this guy would drop his fangs in a water glass, and whether he’d be aware of how many Appletinis she planned on chugging to get through the night. Just how much cake she might wallow in.
With the word cake came more x-rated images. Bed. Naked. Mounds of whipped cream. Chocolate whipped cream. Christian, her dream date, rolling in it. She attached a five-star rating to the image, brief as it was.
Then her mind maneuvered away from bedrooms, latching onto something else. If this fantastic guy was for rent, this visually stunning male, in this limousine, on the same seat as herself — this sculpted creature with bottomless eyes and a face that would make the angels proud — then it didn’t make sense that he was an escort. Why didn’t he have someone special of his own waiting at home?
Not that it mattered, really, since they were only pretending. They weren’t a couple. They were an arrangement. Agreement on paper. Payment for performance.
And not that kind of performance.
Just how long would it take her family to find this guy’s flaw, dazzle aside? What flaw, one might have asked? Well, just the teensy-weensy one, barely noticeable unless he smiled.
No voice like an opera star, all husky and “I’m here if you want me-ish” would be of any use if he smiled. No thousand dollar suit could mask the oddity of the fangs, or what she’d done by hiring him. The guy in this car was a god with a hitch. If he didn’t smile for a while, they might be just fine. Thing was, he smiled a lot. And it was a great smile, warm and full of suggestion. She liked that, liked his laugh, liked his touch.
The limo stopped.
“No!” Veronica whispered. “Not yet! Not ready!”
But neither was she ready to stay much longer in such close quarters with her dashing mate. One more move from him, one more whisper of protection and queen-for-a-night stuff, and she didn’t know what she’d do.
Cry, maybe.
And though the man who had flirted with her body professed to understand what she needed here, tonight, and though she had no doubts about his ability to take a girl to the moon if she asked, no one really had a clue what she would be facing at this wedding. Just because this guy was a looker and seemed able to grasp the finer points of what being an escort for the night meant, the fact was that she had to protect herself. No one could do this for her.
There would be no naked-in-bed evening ahead. The only white fluff in this fantasy would be Charlene, her nasty sister, in full wedding regalia.
The front door of the limo opened with the crispness of tight hinges. Footsteps rounded the car.
Time to panic.
“Maybe we could skip the wedding,” she suggested.
When the big browns trained on her, she muttered, “Just kidding.” But of course she wasn’t. And it was at that very moment that she realized with a tinge of embarrassment, she didn’t even know her date’s full name. He had fingered her ankle, sucked on her blood, and they hadn’t even been properly introduced.
What had she been reading on that bio? His biceps measurements? (Seventeen!)
It would be hard to introduce him to anyone else, awkward at the very least, if a girl didn’t know her date’s name. First and last. Maybe even the middle.
“Excuse me,” she said as the open door beckoned. “In the muddle, I seem to have forgotten your name.”
“Dale,” he said, stepping across her. “Christian Dale.”
“Not very Transylvanian,” she remarked.
“It’s a shortened version of my real name.”
Christian nodded to the driver before turning toward her. Shortened version of Dale, she was thinking. Dale-ula, maybe? Dracenbale?
He did look very much like a Christian, she decided, eyeing him on the curb. Not a Chris, but a full Christian. More sophisticated, with all the letters.
Behind him, she could see the exterior lights of the church. People were milling about, taking a last breath of the cool night air before going inside.
Green smells met her as Christian extended a hand. The lawn beside the church had been freshly mowed and watered. Drops of moisture sparkled like dew in the moonlight. All along the sidewalk, rose petals had been strewn, adding a touch of sweetness to the air.
Never in a hundred years would she have equated Charlene with such a delicate scent. Charlene was more like Chanel No. 5 laced with garlic. Petaled arsenic on a stem. Charlene would have ordered up the roses here on the path, no doubt to mask the subtler odors of rage and injustice.
Just as surely, Charlene would dare to wear white tonight when it was common knowledge to everyone but their parents that Charlene was as far from virginal as a girl could get.
Not that she, herself, was exactly virginal either. Veronica could count the men she’d slept with on . . . one finger.
All right, it wasn’t a very long or impressive list. Still, getting back to Charlene, if rumors or old wives’ tales were to be believed, God would smite anyone down who had slept with a man out of wedlock and then dared to wear white on their wedding day.
Smite. Oh yes, indeedy. If this rumor turned out to be true, there might be hope for tonight, yet.
Then again, it was 2012 A.C. (after air conditioning). People wore white shoes after Labor Day. People wore black to evening weddings. Veronica’s own black dress, slim-cut, sleeveless, with a matching jacket and tiny jet beads across the neckline, wasn’t meant for mourning, but was in this day and age considered the height of chic. In this case, black silk was also as close to camouflage as she could get. Hopes were that in the church’s dark rooms, no one would notice her or the fact that she’d have a finger stuck down her throat to simulate gagging when the first strains of Here comes the Bride began.
Also, camouflage would mean there was a distinct possibility her sister wouldn’t be able to pause in her matrimonial march down the aisle to single her out with her “gloat” smile. Charlene’s satanic grin of victory.
“Veronica?”
Veronica looked at the waiting hand. Christian, her boyfriend for the night, had his earthy eyes trained on her. And Veronica knew right then and there that her black outfit wouldn’t hide anything if she had this guy by her side. In fact, she had chosen too well. Christian Dale would stand out in a crowd like a jewel in a tin crown. A peony in a poppy field. The guy was eye-wrenching, and heartbreakingly unique. Almost frighteningly perfect.
“Shit. Damn. Crap.” She knew also now that he would never leave her side. He would radiate charm all over the place right next to her, including her in his fantastic beam of beauty. She couldn’t slink into the background. This guy wouldn’t allow it. He’d told her she was queen, for crissake. If he continued with this preposterousness, she’d have to take center stage along with him, in which case, she would be royally screwed.
She took his offered hand reluctantly. Caught in the throes of a strange sensation landing somewhere between ecstasy and pain, her heart lurched and her teeth slammed shut. Touching his skin was like coming up against one of those toy buzzers kids got at joke shops.
Bzzzzzz . . .
The shock sailed up into Veronica’s forearm, then into her shoulders. From there, it migrated over to her chest to drive up the tempo of her sputtering heartbeat. Her breath caught. Her size 34 B’s heaved.
She was on her feet, and wobbling. Christian placed a steadying pressure on her elb
ow, and grinned without showing fangs.
“Are you all right?” he queried.
“Of course.”
Anything but! She was sizzling, and wanted to return to the limo. She wanted to call the whole thing off. She might be lonely and desperate for a date, but she sure as hell wasn’t ready for the likes of Christian Dale in a church.
Nevertheless, they were standing outside the place now. It was time to get herself together.
Pressing the black silk dress down over her thighs with shaky fingers, Veronica straightened on her three and a half inch heels. Though the ebony slingbacks made her tall, Christian bested her by a full two heads. She had to look way up again to see his face.
“To be nervous is to be human,” he said supportively.
“Right. And vampires aren’t human, so you’re as calm as a clam.”
“I began my life as a human,” he said, his gaze flitting over her face. “I don’t know how the classification would go now.”
“Bloodsucker,” Veronica suggested, providing the first classification that came to mind. “With ‘walking dead’ a close second.”
Christian laughed again, drawing looks from several people passing by. Though his fangs were partially exposed, his eyes were rich with amusement.
“Do you actually enjoy your job?” Veronica asked him.
“It beats the heck out of office work, and affords me the opportunity to meet very beautiful women.”
Veronica cut her eyes to him, found his grin firmly in place and his eyes dancing. He had given her another compliment, and she knew her face was flushed.
“Look,” he said. “We’re standing six feet away from the steps. We might as well enjoy the show, don’t you think?”
“It’s not a particularly funny show. No comedy.”
“Yet going through that doorway is inevitable.”
Another big smile from him, shining like the headlights on a Rolls Royce. And yet another responding throb down deep inside of her, along with an honest-to-God creamy response.
Veronica considered seriously whether she still had time to make a run for it. Deciding no, and feeling rattled for all sorts of differing reasons, she said, “You’re insisting you’re a vampire?”
Veronica and the Vampire Page 5