“Look, you may think you’re all Mr. Seventeen Hundreds Nobility and whatnot, but until I find out that I’ve really gone to la-la land, and not having a mental breakdown like I think I’m having because of the voices in my head, I’m not going to play your little game of how things used to be. So you can just stop trying to work my nerves, and tell me instead how to make this horse go faster. We’ve been riding forever and I still don’t even see the town.”
“If we went faster, you’d fall off again,” he pointed out, ignoring the gibberish part of her conversation despite finding it more than a little amusing.
He realized with a shock that he found her amusing, as well. How long had it been since he’d been entertained merely by conversing with a woman?
Chauvinist pig.
He frowned, wondering where that thought had come from. He wasn’t entirely sure where Chauvin was, or why their pigs would occur to him at that moment, but he assumed that something Io had said had triggered a long-lost memory.
“Oh, man, I’m so going insane. Distract my wonky brain, Nikola!” Io demanded.
He thought of pointing out that he was not accustomed to people making demands of him, let alone fulfilling them, but admitted that he did not find conversation with her tiresome, as he did so many other women.
Dawg!
“Well?” she asked, impatience quite audible in the single word.
“Hmm?”
“You’re supposed to distract me so I don’t sit here and freak out any more about going insane while we slowly amble our way down the side of this mountain, like a couple of slugs out for a leisurely stroll. So get on with the distracting. What are you thinking about right now?”
“I was thinking about dogs.”
“What sort of a dog?”
“I don’t know.” Absently, he reached out and grabbed her arm to keep her from slipping off the side of Thor.
The look on her face was priceless. “You’re thinking about a dog, but you don’t know which one? Maybe I’m not the only one who should be seeing the doctor.”
Nikola considered this. “He is certainly fairly conversant with their ailments.”
She blinked at him a couple of times. When she spoke, her voice was fairly strained. “Who is fairly conversant with dogs’ ailments?”
“Yes,” he agreed, turning his mind to the issue of what he was going to do with her. Oh, it was true she hadn’t begged him for help in escaping her local protector, whoever that should be—and he wasn’t entirely certain he didn’t believe her claim that she wasn’t a light-skirt, since she hadn’t once made an attempt to touch him, not in a sexual way, at least. Well, there was that little bite she had given him, but surely that wasn’t an overture. It hadn’t felt like a blatant sexual hint, and it had been his experience that women of loose morals made bold with their hands, something Io had most definitely not done. No, she most likely was not a doxy, and that meant he couldn’t just give her over to the local horse doctor and be on his way.
For whatever the reason, he felt the need to protect her. He had a suspicion, however, that she wouldn’t enjoy that sentiment.
Io took a deep breath. “OK, we’re going to do this again, because if nothing else, it’s keeping me from worrying about the state of my brain. I said you’re thinking about a dog, and you said—”
“I believe I said that I was thinking about a dog, not you,” he interrupted, considering the fracas that would follow if he should attempt to install her in his house. The temptation she posed him would surely disturb his peace of mind, if nothing else.
The noise of more air being sucked in registered on his ears.
“And you said that some dude would be familiar with dogs’ illnesses, and I said who, and you said yes.”
“I did.” Perhaps he could house her somewhere in town where she wouldn’t distract him with that silken flesh, and those long legs, and the small, but pert, breasts that looked like they were made just for his hands. And mouth. And possibly other parts of him.
“Who is the dude?”
“He is, yes.”
“So help me god,” Io said, breathing heavily through her nose, “if you say ‘Who’s on first?’ I’m going to deck you good and proper.”
“First what?” he asked, confused now.
“I don’t know! Wait, he’s on third base! Hahahahah!” Io sounded the slightest bit hysterical.
He cast her a wary glance, wondering if she might not be as deranged as she kept claiming. “If you don’t know Huebe, why are you convinced he’s first at anything?”
“Aaaargh!” Io screamed, her arms flailing wildly, causing Thor to take exception to such behavior, and before he could say “hasenpfeffer,” once again she was on the ground spitting out dirt and grass.
By the time he had dusted her off, and worked out that she was saying the English word “who” instead of Huebe, he decided that she would be one mass of bruises if he allowed her to continue to ride on her own. Without further ado, he mounted Demeter, reached down with one hand, and told her to swing herself up in front of him.
To his surprise (and no little pleasure) she did so without any objection, settling sideways across his thighs, one arm wrapped around his waist while the other clutched his jacket front.
“All right, but only because your horse doesn’t like me at all,” she said, her breath skittering across his cheek in a way that left his groin heavy and in bad need of a woman’s attention. “Can we shift into third now, please?”
“I’ve shifted as much as I can,” he replied, trying to squeeze a little extra room for her between his body and the pommel, which he knew had to be pressed uncomfortably against her thigh.
Her long, luscious thigh.
“That’s not what I meant. Can we go fast?”
He tied the reins of Thor to his saddle, and pressed his heels to Demeter. She didn’t care to have two people on her back, and did a little dance of annoyance that he quelled with a muttered imprecation about females.
“Who, now?” Io asked.
“Huebe, not who.”
The look she gave him by rights should have dropped him dead on the spot, but of course, he couldn’t die. Not anymore.
“Take a look at my face. Do you see my expression? Does it scare you? It should, because this is the expression of a woman who’s fallen off a horse too many times to put up with more shenanigans of the verbal variety. Got that? Good. What female, exactly, were you muttering those bad things about?”
“Demeter. Although I was also close to speaking my thoughts about your thighs, but I felt that, given the present circumstances, you would not care to hear them.”
She blinked again at him. “Hear my thighs?”
“My thoughts. You can’t hear thighs. Not unless they were wrapped around one’s head rubbing against the ears.” And just the thought of that was enough to almost bring him to his knees. Metaphorically speaking.
Io froze for a moment, her fingers tight on his jacket front. “Why, oh, why did I leave my pink penguin at home?”
Nikola wasn’t sure how to best answer that question, but being in a somewhat benevolent mood despite the insistent throb of his personal parts, he made an attempt at answering it. “Perhaps penguins were not allowed on the ship that you sailed on to Europe. However, I will admit that I have never seen a pink penguin, and I take quite an interest in natural history. The only descriptions I’ve read all state that they are in shades of white, black, and gray, some of which have slight touches of color around the head.”
“No, it’s not…er…it’s not a real penguin.” For some reason, Io seemed flustered by this turn in conversation. He was more than intrigued by that phenomenon. “It’s my Tingleator. It’s shaped like a penguin, you see.”
He frowned, but not because they were approaching a shaded section of the road into the valley below. He had no difficulty seeing the road even in the darkest of nights. No, his was a frown of incomprehension, and that was something he disliked intensel
y. He hated feeling left out of knowledge. “I am unfamiliar with a Tingleator. You will describe it to me.”
“Sorry, that may have been too regional. It’s my hoe, you know?”
His frown deepened.
“My hoe for the ladygarden.”
Perhaps she was mad. Her conversation certainly didn’t make too much sense. “You wish to discuss gardening?”
“No, it’s not that kind of garden. Oh, god, you’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you?” Her breath teased his cheek again as she sighed. “Because my life couldn’t be any more embarrassing than sitting on some strange man’s lap talking about vibrators.”
“Woman! You are doing this deliberately!” Nikola had reached the end of his patience. He stopped the horse, shifting Io slightly so as to be able to reach into one of his coat pockets.
“Huh? What have I done? Eek! Stop moving like that or I’ll fall again, and I’ve reached my limit of daily falls from a horse!” She wrapped both arms around him, her eyes huge as he struggled to extract his hand from his pocket. “Oh my god you’re going to shoot me!”
“I’m not, but I will admit that it is a tempting thought. Cease struggling or Demeter will object. If you release my arm, I can move it.”
Her eyes narrowed on his. “You’re just going to pull out a gun or Mace or something and get revenge on me because…because…well, hell, I don’t know why you’d want revenge on me. I’m the one who’s been dumped on the ground all night long.”
By sheer dint of superb horsemanship, Nikola managed to keep control not only of his mount and the interested Thor, who kept bumping his back in hopes of treats, but the wildcat in his arms. “I am simply tired of you flaunting your knowledge at me,” he snapped, pulling his hand from his pocket. In it was a small memorandum journal.
“I’m what? What knowledge?” Io stopped struggling and watched with curiosity as he flipped open the journal, and wrote with a small pencil that had seen better days.
“Your words. You are using them deliberately to show me that I am inferior to you, and that I will not have. Is ‘ladygarden’ one word or two? And this ‘vibrator’—is it a proper noun?”
She started to laugh, causing Demeter to lay back her ears in warning. Nikola, with one eye on his annoyed horse, tucked away his journal after making a few notes, and sent Demeter into a fast trot.
Io stopped laughing, eeped, and clung to him in a highly gratifying manner for a few minutes before evidently realizing he wasn’t going to allow her to fall.
She loosened her hold on his arms and gave him a long look from those lovely eyes. “You seriously think I’m using words you’re not familiar with on purpose?”
“I have told you that I have an excellent grasp on the English language. I have not been to the colonies, but I understand that English is spoken there. You seem to have no difficulty in understanding my speech; therefore, you are deliberately attempting to confuse and belittle me linguistically.”
“I can assure you, Nikola,” she said with a telltale twitch of her lips, “that I am not trying to do either. I don’t play the superior game with people, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t with someone for whom English isn’t a first language. I’m horrible at languages, so honestly, I’m impressed with anyone who can speak more than one.”
“I will accept your apology for making me feel inferior,” he said magnanimously.
“I didn’t apologize—”
“But only because you will now proceed to explain the phrases I do not understand. Let us commence with ‘ladygarden.’”
She started laughing again, but after a few false starts, and quite a number of blushes, he was finally able to store the words ‘ladygarden,’ ‘vibrator,’ and ‘love rocket’ away in his mental dictionary.
“Do women from the colonies use phalluses frequently?” he was driven to ask as they neared the outskirts of town.
“It’s no longer a colony…. Oh, skip it. Yes, women in the U.S. use lots of vibrators. And…er…other things. Nonvibratory ones.”
“Why?”
She blinked at him again. He was beginning to find it a wholly endearing gesture. “Why do they use a vibrator?”
“Yes, why? Are there not enough men in the colonies?”
She took a deep breath. He enjoyed the effect that action had on her chest, one breast of which was pressed against him. He began sorting through conversational gambits to pick out the ones that would continue to make her take deep breaths. “Some women,” she said with obvious emphasis, “don’t need a man in their life. Some of us are quite happy as we are, and like to be in control of our sexual needs and gratification, rather than leaving it to a man who may or may not get his jollies in two minutes flat and leave us lying there unfulfilled and so frustrated we could scream.” She took another deep breath, and his penis commended the action. “Not that I’m speaking from experience, you understand.”
“You are a virgin?” He found that difficult to believe, not because he had first assumed she was a prostitute, but because she was so clearly meant for male delight, he didn’t believe any man would be so foolish as to leave her alone.
She sat bolt upright in his lap, her eyes spitting annoyance. “That, sir, is none of your business.”
“You are a virgin?”
“No, of course not! I’m in my thirties, for heaven’s sake. What do you think I am, some sort of nun or something? Sheesh.”
“Ah. Good. I dislike virgins. They tend to weep, and wring their hands, and recoil in horror from the sight of an erect penis, and nothing disturbs a man’s peace of mind more than a weeping, hand-wringing virgin shrieking about his penis up and down the house.” A thought occurred to him at that moment, an unpleasant thought. If she wasn’t a virgin, then she must have been with a man. He gritted his teeth at the thought of some man, probably one of those rough, unkempt colonials, sating his manly lust upon her.
“I think a wee chink in your research armor is showing, Nikola,” she said softly, turning her back to him.
He wanted to demand she tell him the name of the lusty colonial who took pleasure in her tempting body. He also wanted to tell himself he didn’t care one infinitesimally small jot about how many men had touched her body, but he knew that thought wouldn’t even complete itself satisfactorily before it was dismissed as irrelevant and untrue.
“In the history books I’ve read,” she continued, just as if he weren’t suffering untold torment envisioning the dirty, slovenly, no doubt ale-addled wastrel as he touched her with his filthy paws, “men were always super big on virginity for their women.”
His fingers itched for the rapier he’d left at home. He’d teach that odious, woman-defiling colonial a thing or two about sullying innocent, silky-thighed maidens!
“I hate to say it, but your Google-fu must not be very strong if you missed turning up that fact.” She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled.
He bared his teeth in return. “This monster who deflowered you—he isn’t on the continent, is he?” Oh, how he hoped for an answer in the affirmative.
Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed as she thought through what he had asked. “My first boyfriend? You mean Tony? A monster? You know, I’d point out yet again that you’re way over the line as far as what’s politically correct by asking about him—”
“First?” He pounced on the word. “Good god, woman, how many defilers have there been?”
Her jaw dropped a little. “I can’t believe you just asked—no. You didn’t. In the interests of U.S.-Austrian relations, I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me how many men I’ve slept with. In fact, I think I’m just going to pretend I don’t know you.”
She turned her back on him again, sitting rigidly upright, careful not to touch him any more than she had to.
He didn’t like that at all. He liked the idea of her having multiple lovers even less. And most of all, he didn’t like just how much it mattered to him to find each and every man who had touched
her, so he could lesson them within a hairsbreadth of their lives.
“Google…fu…” he growled, pulling out the journal and making another note. Then he added the name Tony, and a reminder to investigate the nearest ship sailing for the colonies.
He could have sworn she giggled, but she kept her back turned to him, and said nothing when they entered the outskirts of town. The silence lasted until she got a good look at buildings they were passing, and then all hell broke loose.
“What the—no!” she wailed, pushing herself off his thighs, almost pulling him off the horse as she struggled to the ground. “No, no, no! This can’t be! It just can’t!”
“The day I understand women is the day that I turn back into a normal man,” he told Demeter, watching as Io ran first to one side of the road, then the other, yelling at the top of her lungs at the small houses that staggered in a drunken line toward the town square. “I suppose I should stop her before she wakes up everyone.”
With a martyred sigh, he dismounted. Io was spinning around the square, her hands clutching her hair, her eyes huge with genuine fear, visible to him even in what remained of the moonlight.
Something in him stirred at the sight of the fear. She didn’t strike him as the type of woman who backed down from any challenge, and yet there she was, looking every inch the madwoman she claimed she was on the verge of becoming.
“Cease this noise,” he said sternly, striding toward her, the horses following him. He stopped and spun around to face them. “Stay there,” he said, pointing to the ground.
Demeter lipped his finger and nickered at him. Thor bit her flank, and received a swift rear hoof to the chest in response.
“Stay,” he repeated before turning back to Io. The horses followed him, just as he knew they would. He sighed yet another martyred sigh. When had anyone, his horses included, ever done as he ordered? “What is the matter now, woman?”
“The town is the matter!” Io wailed, her lower lip quivering. “It’s not right! It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, and even if you guys were some weirdo reenactment group, you couldn’t duplicate an entire town, could you? I mean, I can see that it’s right where it’s supposed to be, but it’s not right, not right at all!”
A Tale of Two Vampires Page 8