“I imagine brown and gold would look delicious on you.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Come with me.”
She grasped it and he hauled her to her feet. “Where are we going?”
“Shopping.” He picked up his keys from the shelf next to the door. “I suspect you’ll find Rodeo Drive utterly fascinating, if you let it.”
He drove her to a street in Beverley Hills that was lined with shops, and led her into one of them. He stopped just inside the door and waved his hand to encompass the mannequins wearing dresses and separates and rails of hanging clothes. There were displays of jewelry, handbags, and shoes at the far end of the store.
“What catches your eye?” Rick asked.
At the end of the store, where all the shoes were on display, Ilaria saw a pair of flesh colored pumps. They had very high, very thin heels. Stilettos. “Those,” she murmured, pointing. They had such a graceful arch. The heels were something she rarely wore, for on most occasions, she needed to be able to run, kick and fight, or else walk quickly to evade detection. High heels didn’t help with any of those functions.
“Shoes. Why didn’t I think of that?” Rick muttered. He led her through the store to the table holding the shoe and picked it up. “Interesting choice,” he said. “What size do you take?”
“Five.”
He waved over an assistant, who beamed as she approached. He held up the shoe. “Could we please get a size five to try on?”
The assistant hurried away. Rick turned back to Ilaria. “What else speaks to you, here?”
But Ilaria already had that answer. She found her gaze held by one of the mannequins. It wore an oversized shawl that looked more like a cape or poncho. It was made of what looked like butter soft suede, and the edges were trimmed in a thick, luxurious fur. The inside of the wrap could be glimpsed where it hung longer behind the dummy. The inside was lined in a purple paisley silk.
It was glorious.
Rick moved to the mannequin and picked up the edge of the wrap. “This?” he asked.
She nodded.
He pulled the wrap off the mannequin, which caused two of the sales assistants hovering nearby to draw in their breath and hurry over.
“Can I help you?” one of them asked, almost but not quite reaching for the wrap to take it back.
Ilaria saw irritation flicker across his face. It was a split-second change in his expression. He was looking at her so the sales assistant didn’t see it. But Ilaria did. Then he turned to face the assistant with a warm, charming smile. “I’m quite sure you can help us. My friend wishes to try this on.”
His smile and soothing tones calmed the assistant, but she was still looking at the wrap, her gaze moving from the wrap to the denuded mannequin.
“We’ll be buying it, of course,” Rick said, hefting the wrap in his hands.
Ilaria drew in her own shocked breath.
The assistant beamed, her perfectly made-up face lighting up. “There is a suede skirt that matches the wrap, too,” she offered. She glanced at Ilaria. “Shall I bring you the right size to try on?” Her gaze settled back on Rick, the money-man and final word in her eyes.
Ilaria could feel her temper rise at being dismissed that way.
Rick looked at her. “Would you like to try the skirt?”
She nodded, a smile tugging at her mouth.
The assistant was smart. She immediately turned to Ilaria. “I have a shirt that goes with the lining, too. Would you like to see it?”
“Yes, please,” Ilaria told her and watched the assistant hurry away, feeling winded.
In the next four hours, Ilaria acquired a wardrobe made up of clothing, shoes and accessories that she liked. The pants, skirts and tops were all of colors she liked, that she had chosen for herself, using the lesson the first sales assistant had unwittingly taught her about matching garments to each other by color or texture or both. Her confidence grew as she and Rick moved from store to store, and she took in the various displays.
It helped that every time she emerged from a dressing room to show Rick what she was trying on, there was a glitter in his eyes that she knew from long experience. He liked what she was wearing. He liked what it did to her figure. He would not say so because he wanted her to choose for herself, not to please him. But pleasing him was a very nice side benefit, anyway.
The clothes were all highly impractical and the shoes matched, but they made her image in the mirror look oddly different. She puzzled over the difference as they moved from shop to shop, until Rick commented on her preoccupation. “Is shopping for clothes not to your taste?” he asked.
“I could do this forever,” she confessed. “I am trying to classify what type of clothing it is that you’re buying.”
Rick had insisted on paying for everything. “You still have to justify what you spend your money upon, even if you could afford it. I answer to no one. Consider these a gift.”
He had looked at her over the coat he was holding up for her inspection. “Sophisticated, is the word you’re looking for. You have a surprisingly sophisticated natural style.”
“Why surprising?”
“It usually takes time and a lot of experience to develop a mature taste like yours. You haven’t been given that option.”
She remembered something from the dim past. “I used to love buying clothes when I was—” She caught herself, remembering the sales assistant a few feet away. “From before,” she added. Before she became a vampire and a slave in one horrible day. She lifted up the sleeve of the leather and brocade coat he held. “But fashion was nothing like this.”
Rick smiled, and it was the same rich, joyful smile he had been using to bring the sales assistants to their knees. “I’ve seen far more bizarre fashions than this. I’ve worn them, too. Worse, I wore them in public.” He smiled. “Ignorance is bliss.”
She gave a short laugh and tugged the coat toward her. “Let me try this one. It looks nice.”
She puzzled over the change in Rick’s demeanor. He was much more like a man that one might call Rick because the name suited him, rather than what it had been: A shorthand way around a cumbersome first name. She had heard tales on and off over the decades about how he was a machine. That his brain was bigger than his body and his ego was bigger. Cyneric Pæga was a cold man, they said. Ruthless, and without friends.
But this charming man who was turning sales assistant into warmed putty was nothing like what she had expected to meet. He had changed since that first meeting, when he had been maneuvering always to keep her within reach in case she tried to make a move against him. Why had he changed? It was a puzzle for another time. For now, she was having too much fun shopping.
They arrived back at Rick’s apartment with a dozen bags each, hanging over their arms in four big bunches.
Everything had changed from then on. Instead of sitting on the sofa and worrying about what she wanted, Rick had insisted she train with him. He had cleared the center of the main room of furniture, pushing it up against the walls and out of the way. Then he had rolled up the rug and dumped in on one of the sofas.
After that, he had taken her through a hand-to-hand combat session, testing her and making her practice skills she had mastered long ago. Ilaria had gone along with his direction, still puzzled by him, but willing to find out what he intended. The shopping bags sat on the kitchen counter, silently calling her name.
When it came to combat, it seemed they were evenly matched, so long as Ilaria compensated for her weight and height disadvantage. They grappled and twisted, looking for weaknesses in each other’s stance, in their posture, in the grip they had on each other.
“You’re weak,” Ilaria told him, feeling the shifts and tremors transmitted through her grip on his arms that told her he was just barely maintaining his balance. “You would let a woman best you?”
“You’re strong,” he countered. “But then, you knew that. You’re very good at this, but you’ve forgotten something.”
“W
hat?” she asked, curious.
Instead of fighting her, he unexpectedly flowed forward, inside her grip. His mouth pressed against hers, shocking and firm. Her surprise was just dawning when he picked her up by the waist and dropped her to the tiles on her back.
She lay recovering, breathing hard.
“What is it you want most, right now?” he demanded in a whisper.
“A shower and a mirror,” she said, without thinking.
“Very good,” he told her approvingly. “You are starting to get a feel for it.”
“For what?”
“For what you really want.” He tilted his head to look at her properly. “You do seem to have a fondness for Italian marble. That’s twice I’ve seen you sprawled upon it.”
“That was unfair,” she declared.
“So is life,” he told her and held out his hand to boost her back onto her feet. “Do you intend to quote the rules of Queensbury the next time you’re attacked? Or are you going to react?”
She rolled her eyes as he hoisted her up. “I usually just shoot them from a quarter mile away. It’s easier.”
“It earns you enemies, too, and they don’t know how to shoot straight, so they’ll come at you with fists and teeth and bad attitude.”
She grimaced, knowing he was right. “I just want a shower. I think I’ve earned it.”
After her shower, and after she had donned and discarded a dozen outfits from the bags, and once she had settled on skinny jeans and a cashmere sweater that had cost a casual five hundred dollars, Rick had sat her down on the sofa once more. The room had been restored to order while she was in the shower, and now the television had been set up for internet access once more. Rick picked up the wireless keyboard and put it on her knees.
“Now what?” she asked curiously.
“More shopping.” He moved the wireless mouse and pulled up the Google homepage. “What is the one thing that is missing in your life? Ignore the lack of freedom for the moment. What thing or event or person do you most want?”
Like before, she didn’t let herself think. She let the words tumble out unedited. “My own home.” Then she felt her jaw drop as she considered what she had just said. “Yes,” she added, agreeing with herself. “A tiny house. Very old, with lots of trees and an old fashioned garden out the front. Those windows with the little diamonds in them, you know?”
“Mullions,” Rick told her. He tapped the edge of the keyboard. “Go shopping for your house. You’ve got the greater part of all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips. You just have to narrow down your choice.”
“I thought I was very specific,” she pointed out.
“You’re not thinking big enough,” Rick told her. “You need to think globally and universally. In which country do you want this house? What part of that country? Is there a town or village that you would prefer? What elevation? Do you want the house to face north or south?” He tapped the keyboard with his fingertip once more. “You get to choose.”
“I choose a house and…what? You buy it for me?” She said it dryly. It wouldn’t be her house if he did that.
“You find the perfect house, wherever it is. Or a handful of them.” He gave her a small smile. “One day, not long from now, we’ll go and inspect them, and then you can really decide.”
One day, she realized, when Heru can no longer eavesdrop on my feelings and location, or tell me what I will do each day. She licked her lips. “Very well,” she said and settled the keyboard in a more comfortable position on her lap. “How do I do this?”
Rick moved the mouse, then clicked. A cursor flashed slowly inside the search term box. “Type in your question.” His brow lifted. “Do you know what your first question will be?”
She thought about it. “’What are the best countries to live in?’”
Rick stood up. “That’s a good place to start. You’ve been to more than a few countries on assignment. Think about which of those were appealing, when you weren’t looking at them through a sniper scope. That will give you more options.”
“Where are you going?” she asked as he stepped around the coffee table.
“I’m going to do my work.”
“Your work?”
“I have things to think about.” He gave a small shrug. “The pattern has shifted in the last few hours. I need to realign my thoughts.”
Chapter Seventeen
Four hours later, her mind reeling with exciting possibilities and endless details, Ilaria climbed the stairs, in search of paper.
It was quite dark in the apartment. Her time sense told her it was near three a.m., and the human cycle was on the furthest ebb. Humans would start to stir, soon, another day begun.
She didn’t bother putting on lights. Neither of them really needed them, and she liked to use her night vision regularly, as practice in case she needed it in an emergency.
Rick had said he was working. He would most certainly have paper and a pen or pencil to spare. She didn’t have his phenomenal memory. Hers was just average vampire perfect, and she didn’t want to work to memorize long lists that would be eventually discarded and useless.
There were three rooms on the second floor. One was the bathroom that she had used earlier. The door on the right, when she peered in, showed an elegant bedroom, elaborately decorated with rich brocades, bead, trims, tassels and more. It reminded her that this apartment was not Rick’s. He was renting it from a friend, he had said. Given the décor, Ilaria guessed it was Roman Adrian Xerus’ apartment. The decorating had a touch of the East that made her think of Constantinople.
Rick had to be in the other room. The door was almost fully shut. She pushed it open, looking inside.
Rick sat upon an armless chair, an office chair with wheels and a single post. He swiveled it slightly sideways as she looked, turning to face another part of the wall. The whole room, all four walls, was covered in a mass of documentation, photos, even small objects. Fine nylon cord in different colors arrowed from dozens of different places to dozens of other places. Mental connections, she guessed. Some of the cord ran down to objects on the floor and she knew that they were symbols for intangible ideas. This, then, was Rick’s version of pen and paper.
Rick was sitting in profile to her, his gaze on the wall ahead of him. It was a very different Rick than the one who had taken her shopping. His expression was grim. His jaw under the closely shaved edge of beard was hard, as if he had it clamped. His whole body was upright and tensed.
She must have made a whisper of sound, for he turned the chair to face her and just for a moment she saw him the way she and the world had expected him to be. The ruthless mind turning over minutiae, with no room in his heart for leniency, for forgiveness. There was no room for flexibility. If he judged you an enemy he would hunt you down and slaughter you without mercy.
Then he smiled and the coldness fled. “Hello there. Have you already spent all your money on a quaint English cottage?”
She felt her jaw sag. “How did you know that Britain was where I had decided I want my house?”
“Simple extrapolation. You wanted a small house and Britain excels in cramped accommodations. You wanted something old, with a little garden out the front. Again, Britain to the rescue. The mullion windows sealed the deal. You don’t find them anywhere but Britain, anymore, especially on old, small cottages.”
“You mean, I could have saved myself four hours of searching and just asked you?”
His smile grew brighter. “You had to figure it out for yourself.”
Ilaria moved into the room, letting herself come very close to him. “You’re different, with me,” she whispered. “I saw you just then, when you were thinking. That’s the Cyneric everyone else sees. But you’re not like that with me. Why not?”
The question didn’t seem to bother him. He remained still on the chair, with no awkward movements of his body or hands that would indicate he was uncomfortable. “Yes, I’m different with you,” he agreed.
“Why?” she insisted.
“I promised I would only tell you the truth.”
She puzzled through the many meanings that might apply to that. “Telling the truth changes one’s behavior?”
“Only if that one normally wears masks and is forced to put them aside to remain truthful.”
She stepped even closer. “Then this is the real you?” she asked.
His chest lifted as he took in a long breath. For courage? “Yes,” he said, his voice as soft as hers.
Ilaria didn’t know where the impulse came from. Perhaps it was because she was looking into his eyes. Perhaps it was the microscopic touch of his knee against her leg. Or perhaps it was the new wants and desires that had been bubbling up inside her ever since the shopping expedition had turned them on? Whatever the source, it prompted her to lean down the scant inch or two she needed to bring her lips against his.
He grew still and silent, as she kissed him. Uneasy that she had stepped over some invisible line, she straightened, ready to make light of the kiss and leave, if necessary.
But Rick caught her face with his hand, keeping her standing where she was. “Why did you do that?” he asked, his thumb stroking her cheekbone with featherweight touches.
“I…because…I suppose I wanted to,” she said.
“Were you following your own wants, Ilaria?” he asked, “or were you following orders?”
Her thoughts were scrambled by the surprise that hit her. It was a cold shock to realize that she hadn’t thought about Danich or Heru, or escape, for several hours. Instead, her mind had been filled with thoughts and ideas that were new and fresh and exciting in a way that bubbled her blood and gave her a boost of energy that made her want to dance.
“This is me,” she told Rick. “The new me,” she added.
“Good.” He drew her face to his once more. “This time,” he added, “enjoy the kiss. Think about how it’s making you feel. Do not think about pleasing me.”
It was another startling idea. As he kissed her, she tried to obey his suggestion by concentrating on the kiss itself. How was it making her feel? Normally, she worried about how the man or woman was reacting. Did they like it? Were they pleased? Were they excited? How could she make the experience more pleasurable for them, so that she could capture their sympathy and attention?
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 19