“Hey, Drake,” he said. “There’s an alligator in the hallway, so be careful. We’re going to head out and look for Saxon and the key to these handcuffs.” He gave the cuffs a more thorough inspection. “They look like titanium to me, which will make this more of a challenge. Stella and Katie are on their way to get Zelda dressed and off to the ER.”
Drake just nodded, like none of that was particularly strange.
“An alligator?” Josie Lynn asked. “Are you freaking kidding me? What kind of a weirdo fun house is this?”
“If this is a fun house, it’s a terrible one,” Lizette said, sounding put out. “I think it’s time to leave. Has anyone seen my shoes?”
Johnny gave a cursory glance around the room. There were a few whips and ball gags strewn about, and the sex swing dominated the center of the room, but he didn’t see any clothes or shoes. He had a hard time picturing Saxon spending hours of pleasure in here with Zelda, who was actually much smarter than Saxon. The woman ran her own business and had raised two kids, so she clearly had more than cotton between her ears. Saxon, on the other hand? He wasn’t so sure.
Johnny had to admit he was ready for some fresh air. This was all just a little too much togetherness and more of a glimpse into his friends’ private lives than he needed. “I don’t see your shoes. We can see if Zelda has flip-flops. You shouldn’t be walking around the quarter barefoot.”
“Oh, heavens, no.” Lizette gave a delicate shudder. Her fingers fluttered over her chest.
It was then that he realized she was in fact far too classy for him. Here she had woken up in a strange place surrounded by sex paraphernalia and people she didn’t know in various states of undress, and she was completely holding it together. In fact, she was buttoning her blouse one-handed, and despite their being attached at the wrist, she was assessing him coolly, like nothing was out of the ordinary whatsoever. Johnny did not have that kind of self-control. He’d never had that. Most likely he never would, given that he was damn near a century old and it hadn’t happened yet. Which meant Lizette was out of his league.
Which suddenly pissed him off.
Chapter Six
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA
L IZETTE didn’t want to admit it to Johnny, but she was terrified of the alligator. So while she knew intellectually that it couldn’t kill her, she still couldn’t help but imagine that teeth crushing her flesh and bones would not feel particularly wonderful. So she was hiding her fear under an aristocratic veneer. It was something her mother had taught her back when she was a child in France. Her mother had frequently been afraid in the tumultuous days of the Terror but she wouldn’t let her tormentors have the satisfaction of seeing they had made her so. Lizette wasn’t going to let Johnny see that she was quite possibly on the verge of having a complete meltdown.
It was becoming more and more clear that she was attached to Johnny for at least the next hour or so, when all she really wanted to do was run away to her hotel room to take a long shower, before putting on her most demure panties and business suit, so that she could pretend none of this had ever happened. It was a little hard to pretend nothing untoward had happened, when the evidence was a living male attached to her wrist.
She supposed that she only had one option: She needed to get past the alligator so they could proceed with their lives outside of this windowless room.
Johnny pulled a riding crop down off the wall.
“What are you doing with that?” She was simultaneously horrified and just a teensy bit aroused, which then horrified her all over again. What on earth was she thinking? One night in a sex dungeon and she was willing to be spanked? Her cheeks heated as she wondered what exactly had transpired between her and Johnny. And had there been witnesses? It didn’t bear considering.
“I’m going to give the alligator a whack if I need to.”
“Oh.” Right. Of course. He was thinking about their safety, not about the sexual escapades they might have engaged in. Lizette cleared her throat and put her purse firmly over her shoulder. “Bonsoir,” she called to Josie Lynn and Drake. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and please extend my felicitations to Zelda when she awakens.”
Johnny just stared at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Drake waved and gave her a smile. Lizette kept her eyes firmly above his waist as she waved in return, then she nodded to Johnny. “I’m ready. What is our plan?”
“The plan is to run past the alligator. If he snaps, I whack. That’s it. Nothing fancy.”
“In other words, you do not really know what to do.”
“Exactly.”
Well, she supposed she could appreciate his honesty. “Understood. Shall we? On the count of three?”
“Let’s just go.” Johnny pulled open the door and they both ran.
Which was something of a challenge, given that they were attached at the wrist and they both tried to squeeze to the left, out of the path of the alligator’s jaw. They were stumbling and bouncing, Johnny’s free arm swinging with the crop even though the alligator wasn’t doing a damn thing. He just sat there looking like they were a couple of complete idiots. He was probably right.
Johnny was dragging her down the hallway and he opened the first doorway on the right. It was the bathroom. “Shit!” he said. He kept dragging her, and the next door was a bedroom. They ran in and Lizette slammed the door shut. Then locked it. She’d seen Jurassic Park. Who knew if an alligator could figure out how to push open a door?
They stood there, both moving away from the door before Johnny burst out laughing. Lizette couldn’t help but smile with him. It was more than a bit absurd.
As was Zelda’s bedroom. Lizette felt like she’d fallen into Barbie’s dream house. There was hot pink everywhere and lots of shiny surfaces and crystal, from the chandelier to the candlesticks on the dresser, to the gigantic crystal-rimmed mirror. Where there wasn’t bling, there was pink, and as Lizette turned, she could see six of herself in the many mirrors and reflective surfaces.
Johnny laughed even harder. “Wow, when you’re on the bed, you can see yourself getting plugged from every angle. That Zelda. What a fun gal.”
“Plugged …” Lizette suddenly realized what Johnny meant. “Why I’ve never even considered …” Then she cut herself off. Johnny Malone didn’t need to know the details of her sex life, or lack thereof. Even if she had slept with him the night before.
“Maybe you should,” he said mildly.
That annoyed her. “Can we just get some shoes please and get out of here?”
“Of course. Though looking at your feet, Zelda isn’t going to have much you can wear. What size are you?”
“I don’t know American sizing.” Lizette went with him to the closet, because of course, she had to go wherever he went.
“You are size teeny weeny. Zelda is American-basketball-player size. But maybe these will work.” He held up a pair of heels with pink poufs on the ends.
“I’m not wearing those!” Those were stripper shoes. She did not wear her sexuality so blatantly on her feet. She just didn’t.
“How about these?”
They were flats, a big improvement, but they were bedazzled. “I am going to look ridiculous if I wear those. Everyone will be staring at me.”
“So?”
“So the point is to blend in, not to stand out. We’re vampires already, with odd habits. If we draw attention to ourselves, we’re at risk.”
Johnny scoffed at her and pulled out a pair of boots that had a mouth painted on the front. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t want to argue with you about this again. That is how I feel.” And she was right.
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“I could be killed! I don’t want to die!” What was difficult for him to comprehend about what she was saying? Lizette grabbed the boots out of his hands and tossed them back in the closet.
“Well, I want to live,” he told her emphatically. “What’s the point
of being here if we have to be afraid of our own shadow? I’d rather die than live forever as a pale, boring, zero-fun version of myself slinking around in the dark.”
“That’s not what I’m doing,” she insisted, though she had to admit, there was something about his statement that stung. She lashed out at him, unwilling to admit he could be right. “And I was never fun!”
Wait a minute. That wasn’t what she’d meant to say.
What she meant was that she had seen horrible things done to first her parents, then Jean-Baptiste, and it had changed her forever. She wasn’t carefree, and that wasn’t a crime. There was nothing wrong with exercising caution.
So why did she suddenly feel so terrible?
Lizette lifted her right hand and eyed the handcuffs. “We should try to get these off now.”
“You want me to yank? There’s going to be blood. And then we’ll still both have a handcuff ring around our wrists. Is that really what you want?” He eyed her. “Cause I’ll do it. If that’s what you want.”
Why did he sound so belligerent? She was the one being put in an impossibly awkward position of jeopardizing her job at the VA. Speaking of which, she needed to call Dieter and see if he had any idea what had happened the evening before. She was torn between wanting answers and not wanting Dieter to know anything out of the ordinary had happened.
“Yes, that’s what I want.” Blood would wash off, and unattached to Johnny she could at least go back to her hotel and shower off the remnants of the tawdry whore that seemed to be clinging to her. Every time she shifted, she smelled a man’s cologne wafting off her blouse and other areas.
Johnny lifted his hand and then dropped it again. “Shit. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Once again, Lizette found herself among the many women who were mystified by men.
“I can’t hurt you. I just can’t.”
“I’m asking you to.” Yes, it would hurt, but she was an aging vampire, and would heal fairly rapidly. She wasn’t looking forward to the pain, but of course, she would live. “It will be easier to move around.”
“Sorry.” Johnny bit his fingernail, a habit she found both disgusting and endearing. “I don’t want to see you bleed. It’s not right. We’ll find another way.”
Suddenly aware of how close they were standing, Lizette averted her gaze. It was far too easy to stare at him, far too easy to imagine the power he would have in his thighs as he rose over a woman. Over her. These weren’t things she thought about particularly often, but now that she was almost positive she had slept with him, she couldn’t keep her mind from straying in that direction. It was embarrassing, yes, to think that she had done whatever it was she had done, when she didn’t know him at all, and was supposed to be in New Orleans in an official capacity, but at the same time, it was even more upsetting to think that if she had done such things, she couldn’t even remember them. Shouldn’t she at least be afforded the right to have her curiosity appeased? It had been nearly fifty years since she had taken a lover, and that had been something of a letdown.
Her body seemed pleased to have been reawakened the night before, and she found herself wanting to touch his arm, his chest, wanting to slide her tongue across his bottom lip. It was disconcerting.
“That’s very gentlemanly of you,” she told him, because it was. There was something pleasing about his discomfit with causing her pain.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of that before, but I suppose you might actually be right. Maybe I’m improving.” He grinned. “Now let’s find a shoe that fits, shall we? Or at least something that isn’t going to fall off of you.”
What they settled on were little stretchy slippers that women were supposed to put on when their feet hurt from wearing high heels. Because of their stretchy nature, they weren’t as huge as other options would have been, and they were black, which was a relief to Lizette. It was not a relief that Johnny had to help her put them on, lifting her leg up with his hand, his flesh cool and smooth on her calf as he helped guide the slipper. Lizette held on to his shoulders and tried not to think about her body or his body or any bodies, just on getting her foot into the fabric. Except that she was acutely aware of the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties, and that vampires had excellent powers of scent. If she could smell his cologne on her, what else could he smell? Besides, it was not her imagination that his hand was lingering.
He glanced up at her, his black eyes intense. “Do you think something happened between us last night?” he asked her.
So to the point. Lizette would have blushed if she had been able to, and reminded herself that Johnny had lived in America for a long time. He wasn’t going to dance around a topic for ages with flowery expressions like European men. Clearing the air was definitely advisable. “Well,” she told him, lowering her newly slippered foot to the floor. “I would say that there are indications that something of a sexual nature occurred.”
“Really? Are you sure?” He stood, slowly, and his male presence overwhelmed her as he rose, occupying her space and dominating her thoughts, unnerving her.
“Yes. I’m fairly sure.”
“How do you know?”
She was regretting that he wasn’t beating around the bush with charm and obscure entendres. “I just know.”
“How?”
He was going to make her say it. Irritated with his persistence, she told him, “I seem to have lost my panties. And I seem to be experiencing a certain soreness that is not from sleeping on the floor.”
Understanding finally seemed to dawn on him. “Ooohh. I see. Sucks we don’t remember, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure if it does or not,” she told him truthfully.
Johnny laughed. But his thumb traced across her palm teasingly. “I think it’s a damn shame, actually.”
*
“THAT’S ZELDA.”
Drake glanced back, surprised to see that Cupcake—or rather, Josie Lynn—was following him. Until this moment, she’d seemed like she wanted nothing more than to be far away from him, both last night and tonight. Yet, here she was. Maybe the allure of his bare ass had finally swayed her. Of course.
“You’re right, that is.”
She stopped and wrapped her arms around herself. She worried her full, pretty lower lip. “This is awful.”
He frowned. Yeah, it was definitely awful. Not remembering what happened to you for hours was not a good feeling. But he wasn’t sure why she was particularly worried about Zelda. Personally, he was far more upset that he’d very likely gotten a little taste of Cupcake and had not a single memory about it. He glanced over at the Amazon still sprawled on the floor.
If there had been any Zelda action, he was glad he’d blacked that out.
Josie Lynn stared at the unconscious dominatrix, looking almost—forlorn. Which struck Drake as an odd reaction.
“Listen,” he said, returning to her side, “I know all of this is overwhelming, but it’s really not that bad.”
Josie Lynn spun toward him, that strangely hopeless look in her blue eyes replaced by a flash of anger.
“Not that bad! This is so far beyond bad, I—I,” she threw up her hands. “I don’t even know what to say. You are acting like this is just another wild weekend in the Big Easy. Well, this may be normal for you, but it sure as hell isn’t normal for me.”
Drake looked down at himself. “And you think this is normal for me? I woke up in a sex swing in a dominatrix’s dungeon. I might have had sex with a woman that I just met last night. And now I’m arguing with that very same woman with my schlong hanging out. Believe me, this is not normal.”
She glanced downward, and to Drake’s dismay his dick reacted instantly, bobbing outward. Damn.
“Well I think we both know the part about sleeping with a woman you just met is probably a pretty normal occurrence for you.”
Something about the disgust on her face bothered him, even though he couldn’t really deny that fact. Hell, he was a single vampire in a
band on Bourbon Street. Women just happened. But somehow her expression made him feel—bad. Sleazy, even. But why the hell should it?
Okay, the current outfit really didn’t help.
“You don’t know that,” he finally said, realizing he sounded more petulant than persuasive.
She snorted, a sound that, as much as Drake hated to admit it, sounded cute. “Well I do know that you came into the kitchen while I was working to try to get me to go out with you after the wedding. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean just for drinks.”
“That’s exactly what I meant. To apologize.”
“You mean for the unsolicited kiss?”
“Exactly.”
She gave him a dubious look. “You wanted it to be more than drinks. Admit it.”
“No,” he said. “Because that isn’t true.”
She made another face, one that hinted at dimples at either side of her mouth and made her lips look utterly kissable. His dick hardened more and poked out in front of him like Pinocchio’s nose when telling a lie.
He was telling a lie, too, and they both knew it.
But instead of continuing this conversation, which just appeared to be getting him in more and more trouble, he said, “I need to find some pants.”
To his relief, Josie Lynn let him walk away with as much dignity as his assless chaps would afford him.
But after walking a few feet, he realized he didn’t know where he was going exactly. Where the hell would he find pants—or any clothing—in this room? Now, if he wanted a ginormous purple dildo or a …
He tilted his head to study one of the items hanging on the wall. Was that a mace?
Yeah, he could find any item of sexual torture, but he was pretty sure a pair of size 34 Levi’s was not happening.
He glanced back to Josie Lynn, who stood in the same place, her arms curled around herself again as if she was cold.
Or protecting herself.
He moved back toward her, debating what he could say to her to help. She had that worried, almost defeated expression again, and despite her obvious dislike of him, he felt the need to comfort her. Of course that was all he’d been trying to do before their conversation went badly just moments earlier.
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