by Molly Harper
A curious, slack expression crossed Nik’s face. He reached for me, tracing the curves of my face with his hands like a blind man. His thumbs ran rings around the moonstone earrings at my lobes, and his eyes went hazy. It looked like his zombie phase, only his pupils retained their color. I scrambled back across the couch, perching on the arm, just in case he was phasing into zombie Nik. I could make the ten-foot dash to the door as long as he was stumbling around.
This was a really weird relationship.
“Cal did not threaten that boy.” His voice was odd, as if he was just remembering the words as he spoke them.
“Yes, we have established this,” I agreed.
“Cal did not threaten that boy. I did.”
I nodded, pursing my lips. “Once again, this is not exactly news.”
“Cal knew I was in the area, on a job. He called me, said he needed a favor, and asked me to visit your college campus. He gave me your schedule and told me that you were not to see me. He did not want you to know he was interfering. He told me the boy’s name and the nights when he would be walking around campus. I tracked him down and told him that if he so much as looked at you in a way that you found discomforting, I would remove the parts he held most dear.”
“You would have done it, too, wouldn’t you?” I asked, unsure whether I really wanted the answer to that question.
He nodded, a precise and decisive movement. “Without a second thought. One, because it was a favor for Cal. And two, because he was bothering you. And that made me angry enough to want to see him hurt, very badly hurt.”
I slid back into my seat and crossed my arms over my chest. “Suddenly, everything makes sense.”
“That was the first time I saw you,” he said. He looked so pleased, scooting closer to me and shoving the throw out of the way so he could pull me into his lap.
“How are you remembering this?”
“I do not know,” he said.
He kissed me, once and then twice, my breathy little laugh lost against his mouth as he sealed his lips over mine. I’d dreamed of him as a historical hero, but there was nothing chaste about this kiss. Nik wanted me—badly, if the hardening bulge against my thigh was any indication. And the only thought my brain—a brain my professors touted as brilliant and innovative, I might add—could cobble together was Naked, yay!
“You were walking across a courtyard, with a friend, and you were smiling.” He slid his hand into my hair and made a makeshift bun at my crown. “Your hair was piled up on top of your head. I heard you laugh. It sounded like music that only I could hear. It made the hair on my arms stand up.” Another kiss, lingering and open, teasing his tongue against mine. “And all I wanted to do was follow you so I could hear more. I have been on this earth for hundreds of years, but I have never wanted something so much in my whole existence as I wanted to make you laugh.”
Speechless. For the first time in my short but relatively remarkable life, I was speechless. He remembered me. He’d admired me. And my laugh. No man, living or dead, had ever said anything so magical or sweet to me.
“But I knew that following you would make Cal unhappy, so I left.”
That was less magical. “It would also make me unhappy, because that would be very creepy behavior,” I murmured against his mouth, before leaning away from him and adding testily, “Also, it didn’t keep you from following me when I came home for the holidays. You just kept popping up at random times, like a vampire Where’s Waldo?”
“I came to the Hollow over Christmas to discuss the position at the Council. I did not mean to see you. In fact, I was trying to avoid you.” With every sentence, he sounded more and more excited, and his speech sped up. He pulled me closer, tracing the lines of my collarbone with the tip of his nose. “But then you came to the Council office, for your interview, I suppose, and there you were. I knew I should not have followed you. I did not mean to scare you. But I could not find a way to talk to you without sounding like a madman.”
He licked a soft, wet path up the hollow of my throat, kissed my chin, and claimed my mouth. I threaded my fingers through his hair and ground my hips down.
He moaned, pulling away, staring up at me with wide, shocked eyes. “I have kissed you before.”
“Of course you have. Earlier this week, in fact. If you tell me you don’t remember that, I will be very hurt.”
“No, I have kissed you before!” he exclaimed. “It was cold. And your cheeks were bright pink. And you were looking at something in a window that made you smile . . .” He glanced up at my ears and cupped my jaw. He let out a long breath, and his forehead crinkled in concentration. “I kissed you.”
“Ran across the street and kissed me, like some thief in the night,” I told him, as his hand slipped under the tail of my shirt. His thumb stroked the base of my spine, making my hips jerk toward him. “A—a kissing thief. And then you ran away, and I never saw you again. Until you jumped me in the parking lot. You really hurt me. It hurt that you didn’t remember me.”
His eyes cleared to their usual golden brown, and he pressed his forehead just over my heart. “I wish I had. Really and truly.”
“Do you remember why you didn’t just talk to me then?”
“Because I was not supposed to,” he said. His hands worked their way around my waist, tugging my shirt loose and pulling it over my head. I might have objected, but at some point, I seemed to have unbuttoned his shirt, too. And I was pushing it from his shoulders, revealing smooth white skin and a muscled torso that tapered down to narrow hips.
I was not intimidated by his marble-toned damn-near-perfection. I was not self-conscious about my body. I’d always been athletic, but training with Cal’s people had put a considerable amount of muscle on my frame. I actually had abs and definable tone in my thighs, not to mention a rack I was pretty darn proud of. As far as I was concerned, Nik and his godlike physique could bring it on.
“Cal asked me not to contact you directly because he did not want you to realize you were being followed,” Nik said, pushing me back onto the couch and cradling my legs around his hips.
He trailed his lips from the lace connecting my bra cups, down my stomach to ring my belly button.
“But when you returned from school, I found that I missed seeing you. I tried to keep you from seeing me. But you have solid instincts for a human; you picked up on my cues. That is all I remember, admiring your ability to sense me, even when you could not see me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, resting his chin on my sternum. “Probably because you have spent a lot of time around vampires and do not let fear cloud your ability to process the environment around you.”
“No, not that!” I cackled. “Why wouldn’t you just ignore Cal and come to see me anyway? It would have saved us some drama. Also, I wouldn’t have spent months thinking I was nuts and had imagined the whole thing, which would have been nice.” I pulled him closer, looping my legs around his and locking them in place.
He frowned and tried to sit up, but I held fast, and he took me with him. We landed against the beige upholstery with a thud. “You will not pull away from me that easily. Consider me the giant squid of potential romantic partners.” When he snickered, I said, “It’s an unsexy but illustrative thought.”
He let out a long breath and pressed his ear against my heart, listening to its erratic beat. “I told you, I killed my sire. I did not have any supervision as a young vampire, and I enjoyed my adolescence a little bit too much. I have done things, Gigi, that make even other vampires uncomfortable. I have killed many people, and in some cases, I enjoyed that killing very much. And I make no apologies for that. I am what I am.”
“You’re the vampire Popeye?”
He groaned, dropping his forehead against the hollow of my throat. “You make it easy to forget you are so young, and then you say something like that. Even though I want y
ou for myself, I am sure that I am no good for you. And even more sure that I do not care.”
“News flash, Skippy, everyone on earth is young compared to you,” I told him, digging my knuckles into his ribs. He yelped, and I cupped my hand around his jaw. “So you get that noble, self-sacrificing bullshit out of your head right now.” I traced the lines of his pecs with my fingertips, barely brushing over his nipples. “I have seen more in my short lifetime than a lot of vampires you know. I’ve lost people I loved.” I skirted my hands down his ribs and settled them over his hips. “I’ve been threatened and seen people hurt because of my bad choices. I’ve loved someone enough to put their happiness before my own comfort. I am walking into this with my eyes wide open. I have accepted the risks and am really, really looking forward to the rewards.” I popped the button on his jeans and slipped my hand against the sensitive skin over his pelvis. He gasped and thunked his forehead against my collarbone. “Now, admit that I’m a very mature person, or by all that’s holy, I will give you a purple nurple.”
His smooth white shoulders were shaking, but I wasn’t sure if it was because he was laughing or because I was still teasing my fingers just under the band of his shorts. My free hand skimmed up his torso and mercilessly tweaked his nipple. “Ah!” he yelled. “You are a very mature person!”
“That’s more like it.” I preened.
“Centuries of spreading terror and bloodshed across the globe, and I think I just became the girl in this relationship,” he muttered.
“Yep,” I said, letting my lips pop over the “p” sound.
Nik let out an indignant snort. “Oh, you think it is funny, do you?” He poked his fingers into my ribs, tickling me at vampire speed.
“Hilarious!” I giggled, trying fruitlessly to push his hands away. “Side-splitting, even!”
My giggles were interrupted by a series of sharp raps on the wall Nik shared with Nola and Jed.
I clapped a hand over my mouth, which barely muffled a whole new wave of laughter. “Whoops.”
“You are a vicious, bloodthirsty creature to treat your vampire so,” he murmured against the skin of my throat, even as his hands teased and plucked at my ticklish places. My pulse skipped at the mention of him being “my” vampire. Nik’s ears must have picked up on the change, because he spread his hand over my heart to feel it thrum.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, though I was still laughing, and he was pulling my slacks over my hips with his free hand. “We’re going to get you kicked out of your apartment.”
“Worth it,” he assured me, while nibbling on my ear. “After what I overheard the other night, they deserve to lose some sleep. It sounded like an obscene nature special over there.”
I shoved his jeans down his thighs with my feet. “Nola and Jed are good people. They just got back from Ireland, and they’re probably just jet-lagged.” Then I gasped and sat up, sending Nik toppling off the couch.
He landed on his hands and knees, because of the whole vampire-reflexes thing, but he didn’t look very happy about it. “You know, if you want to slow down, you just have to say so.”
“Nola!” I yelled. “We need to talk to Nola.”
Nik glanced down at the pants bunched around his ankles. “Right now?”
“Right now!” I insisted, yanking up my slacks.
“No, wait, do not do that,” he said, as I slid into my black shirt. He groaned. “You did it.”
“Put your pants on, and let’s go meet your neighbors.”
• • •
I was careful to make sure that we were both buttoned and zipped properly before we left Nik’s apartment. I felt bad for not having a bottle of wine or a Bundt cake or something while knocking on Nola and Jed’s door in the wee hours with supernatural problems. Then again, we never knocked on each other’s doors in the wee hours with natural problems, so she should expect it by now.
It took a few knocks, but eventually, the porch light clicked on, and an enormous bipedal shark creature opened the door. Rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight from under the creature’s conical nose. Its dead black eyes narrowed as a low, menacing growl rumbled from its humanoid chest. Nik stumbled back, grabbing my arm and dragging me away from the threat.
I rolled my eyes and patted Nik’s hand in a comforting gesture, completely ignoring the walking fish-man.
“Damn it, Nola, I told you not to let him watch Shark Week!” I called over the creature’s shoulders. “You know it gives him weird ideas.”
“Gigi!” Nola’s voice rose from behind evil bipedal Bruce. A slender woman with coffee-colored hair and wide brown eyes appeared in the doorway. She shoved the drooling shark creature aside. “What in blazes are you doing here at this time of night?”
It was always a bit of a shock to hear Nola’s accent, a mix of Irish lilt and nasal Boston drawl, a by-product of her international upbringing. Nola was the last of Dick’s line, the previously unknown granddaughter Mr. Wainwright had left behind in Ireland. She was also the leader of a very large, very talented coven of witches. She’d come to the Hollow a few years before on a sort of supernatural scavenger hunt, searching for magical items that would settle a generations-long interclan feud. But since the late Mr. Wainwright had some hoarding tendencies and Jane had some compulsive organizing tendencies, those items were spread out all over the Hollow, and it took a bit longer than she’d expected, giving her time to be adopted by Jane and Company. She and her boyfriend, Jed, now spent several months each year in Ireland, running her family’s clinic in Kilcairy, and the rest here in the Hollow, working for the local free clinics in both spots.
Nola saw Nik standing next to me, and her dark eyes narrowed. A low, threatening hiss issued from the shark’s maw. “Oh, Jed, seriously, can you not be a mutant land shark right now?”
A bluish shimmer of light rippled along the shark’s skin, and the outline of the creature gave way to a handsome, shirtless, shape-shifting redneck who looked like a Greek statue and pouted like a grumpy panda. “You never let me be a mutant land shark.”
“I’m not saying you can’t shapeshift. I’m just saying, why not a giant badger or a were-bear? The shark doesn’t make any bloody sense!” she exclaimed, pulling her robe closed over her skimpy green sleep shorts and tank top. “We’re hundreds of miles inland. How are intruders supposed to be afraid of you when they’re too busy asking themselves how the bloody hell that mutant shark wandered so far from the ocean? Unless there are six-foot-tall, walking shark creatures living in Barkley Lake now, and the local media has neglected to report it because of tourism concerns.”
“Are they insane or magical?” Nik asked, pulling me closer to his side, as if he expected Jed to shift into another scary sea-creature hybrid at any moment.
“A little bit of both,” I whispered back. “Uh, guys? I’m sorry to interrupt the shark debate—Jed, it’s awesome but implausible—but there’s a reason we knocked on your door at this time of night.”
“Also, could he put on a shirt?” Nik asked, pointing to Jed’s broad chest, tanned and well muscled from the construction work he did for Sam.
“You came knockin’ on my door, bud. I’ll wear what I want,” Jed said, snorting, but he did grab a T-shirt from the couch while Nola hustled us inside.
“Is this Nik, then?” Nola asked.
“Nik, this is Nola Leary of the McGavock clan. Nola, this is Nikolai Dragomirov,” I said. Nik beamed at me. “What?”
He shrugged, but the silly smile didn’t fade. “It just sounds nice, hearing you say my full name like that.”
“I think Cal would want me to shift back into the land shark right now,” Jed whispered to Nola. “For the sake of brotherly honor.”
“Jed, please be the one person I know and love who doesn’t threaten my special vampire gentleman friend.”
And there went the pouty-panda face again. Je
d protested, his strange Cajun-meets-backwoods accent growing thicker with every syllable. “Everybody threatened him without me?”
“We have been out of town, sweetie,” Nola said, soothing him.
“But he’s a vampire, and he’s clearly dating Gigi. Cal is going to destroy him!” he exclaimed. “I should get to join in on the hazing. I’ve paid my dues. I’m a full-fledged member of the group!”
“Well, you’ve missed a lot,” I told him. “And for right now, can we maybe not tell Iris that you saw us? Together?” I pulled a spare dollar from my pocket and pressed it into Nola’s hand before she could object. “Also, please consider me a paying client and therefore subject to any confidentiality that as a medical professional and a magical practitioner you would offer any patient.”
“Is that how it works?” Jed asked.
Nola’s eyebrows rose, and she tucked the dollar into her pocket. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
• • •
Nola and Jed’s side of the house was a much more colorful, personalized mirror image of Nik’s apartment. The pictures and tchotchkes that were missing from Nik’s shelves were found in abundance here: a framed photo of Jed and Nola smiling together from rolling green hills, white candles inscribed with Celtic knot symbols, a green glazed ceramic bowl filled with dried herbs, a photo of Jed holding an empty pint glass aloft as two men who bore a stunning resemblance to Nola seemed to be shouting in good-natured protest. Despite being from two wildly different backgrounds, they’d made a comfortable home together. And even though I couldn’t help but feel a little envious of them, it gave me hope that Nik and I could find that kind of common ground.
As far as I was concerned, Nola was the coolest among our little family-friend-undead circle. Sure, vampires and werewolves were all right, but Nola could heal wounds and light candles from across the room. I begged her to teach me how to do stuff, but she said magic was the sort of thing you had to be born with. If I tried the wrong spell, I could permanently remove my eyebrows or something. And I liked my eyebrows right where they were.