by Lisa Olsen
“The night’s barely getting started,” he grinned, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain. “How about something sweet? There happens to be an ice cream parlor right around here. I saw the perfect flavor for you to try.”
“Oh really?” My brows rose with interest, and he was right. Thirty-One Flavors had a brand new flavor that was right up my alley – Snacknado. Salty caramel-flavored ice cream loaded with chocolate-covered potato chips and pretzels, all swirled together with candy pieces and chocolate fudge and salted pretzel ribbons. It sounds like kind of a mess, but it was pretty tasty. Not as good as Chocolate Explosion, but pretty darned good.
We kept walking with ice cream in hand (he had mint chip), and before I knew it, we found ourselves in front of my favorite comic book store, open late for the weekend. “You planned this, didn’t you?”
Bishop shrugged, but I caught the twinkle in his eye as he pulled the door open for me. It felt like forever ago that I’d last been there, and the place hadn’t changed much in the year or more since I’d last stopped in looking for an Agent Coulson bobblehead. “Do we have time to look around or do you have something pressing planned?” I asked, checking out a sweet set of Star Wars ships on display.
“We don’t have to be at our next stop until midnight, and it’s only a few blocks away, so look around to your heart’s content.”
“Midnight, huh? What happens then?”
“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he teased, and I arched a brow at him.
“You think you could? I’ve been training with Carter, you know. I think I could hold my own.”
“Oh you do, do you?” He edged into my personal space with an amused tilt to his lips, and I backed up, finding the wall behind me.
“As long as no weapons were involved, I feel pretty good about my chances.”
“We might have to test that out sometime.”
“Why, do you want to kill me?” I said with a nervous laugh.
He was close enough that I could feel his t-shirt barely grazing the fluff on my sweater. Another millimeter and I’d feel his hard body pressed up against mine, but he kept that tiny cushion of space between us. “No, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what you’ve got.” His eyes dipped to my lips and dragged back up again to meet my gaze.
What were we talking about again? “What I’ve got?” I breathed, mesmerized by the cool amusement in his eyes, the sure knowledge that he knew exactly what it did to me to get so close.
“Skills-wise, I mean.”
“Right, of course.”
“I could always give you a few pointers, you know, if you’re interested.” He leaned past me to prop his arm on the wall over my head, and his t-shirt rode up to reveal a tantalizing flash of toned abs, and the hint of his tattoo. I had a brief but almost uncontrollable urge to lick it, before he spoke again. “Carter’s good, but I’m better.”
I had no doubts there. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
A furrow appeared on his forehead. “Why not?”
“Because I have a feeling that if we end up rolling around all sweaty together, it’s going to turn into a different kind of workout.”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there?” He still hadn’t touched me, but I felt his presence all around me like an electrical field, crackling with current.
“I guess it depends on what kinds of skills you wanted to evaluate me on.”
“I’m more than happy to assess any skills you care to show me.”
The little curve of a smile on his lips was so tempting, and he knew it was too. He knew exactly what he did to me, and I felt the primal urge to surrender to it, but I had power too. Maybe he needed a reminder of that. My palm slid against his, and his fingers opened to thread between mine, but instead of holding his hand, I spun his wrist into a painful lock, using the element of surprise to force him down onto his knees before me.
“How about that?” I smiled down at him with a challenge. “How do I rate?”
“Sneaky, I like it,” he replied with a good-natured grin. Instead of trying to break my hold, he seemed content to stay down there. “Is this where you want me, on my knees?”
“It might be a good place to start,” I pretended to consider with a flippant toss of my hair, and he gave a half shrug.
“I can work with that.”
“I bet you can,” I laughed, sobering when I saw the earnest look on his face.
“I’ll do what it takes to make things up to you, Anja. If you want me on my knees, you just have to say so.”
I released the hold I had on his wrist, threading my fingers through his. “You don’t have to do anything like that.”
“Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.” He shook his head, and when he found my gaze again, there was an intensity there I hadn’t seen in a long time. “But we belong together, and I’m not going to walk away from this again. I want…”
“Anja?” I tore my gaze away from his to see a familiar face. “Hey, it is you. Long time no see.”
Chapter Eight
“Oh, hey, Kyle,” I blinked, my brain taking an extra moment to come up with his name. Jeez, it hadn’t been that long, had it? Okay, so I hadn’t hung out with any of my gamer buddies since I’d joined the undead club, but he used to be one of my best friends. Why did it feel so weird to see him again? “Yeah, long time no see,” I managed to get out with an awkward smile.
“You’ve been pretty busy, huh? I haven’t seen you in any of the forums in ages. Lei thought you’d died.”
She wasn’t wrong. “No, I’ve been good, super good. I started a new job about a year ago and it’s kept me pretty distracted.”
“Yeah? Oh, I think I heard something about that. You joined a touring company or something, right? Are you in town for a performance? I could get the gang together and maybe we could hang out together afterwards.” He looked so hopeful, like a lost puppy, and I stared back at him, out of practice lying on the spot.
“No, I’m, ah… being completely rude.” I realized Bishop was still on his knees between us, following the conversation with mild interest. “Sorry, Kyle, this is Bishop. Bishop, this is my old friend, Kyle.”
“Hi,” Bishop said with a fair rendition of a friendly smile, rising to his feet and offering a hand.
“Hi,” Kyle started to say, stretching his hand out, but his jaw went slack as Bishop rose to his impressive height. “Wow, you’re… so he’s your…” From the look on his face, I could see he thought maybe Bishop had been proposing or something, having been down on his knees.
“It’s our second date,” I said, my eyes on Bishop, with a teasing smile.
“And you brought him to the comic book store? Brave,” Kyle snorted.
“Actually, it was his idea,” I replied. “He knows what I like.”
“I’m learning, anyway,” Bishop smiled back, the both of us staring at each other, and I couldn’t have said if Kyle was even still there until he spoke again.
“Are you into any books?”
Bishop broke eye contact, turning to reply. “No, I can’t say that I follow any. Though, I did enjoy the Serenity series Dark Horse put out.”
“No kidding, you’re a Browncoat?” Kyle’s brows came up in surprise.
“I guess you could say that,” Bishop replied. “Actually… check this out.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone, skipping through a few screens before he held up the pics of him dressed as Mal for the Halloween ball at Vetis.
“Wow, that’s a great cosplay,” Kyle said, impressed. “You definitely pull off the Captain thing.”
“You should see the replica gun he got,” I chimed in. “It’s a thing of beauty.”
“I’d love to,” Kyle nodded with the beginnings of a man crush, from the look on his face. “Hey, do you think you guys are interested in joining a new LARP we’re trying to get together? BSG, the reboot, obviously. I remember you had a cosplay for that already, Anja.”
Had, being the operati
ng word there. It’d been pretty much destroyed during my first introduction to ACBT, the night Evan had died. Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t put something together again, especially with the resources I had now. “Canon or original characters?”
“Strictly original, Battlestar Whitewolf. I’m thinking we’ll meet up on Saturday nights, since Jay’s still running his Hobbit thing on Fridays.”
If we’d left Bishop in the dust, he gave no sign of it. He at least seemed to know what a Live Action Role-play Game was. “Nice. Can we bring real guns?” he asked, and Kyle’s mouth sagged open.
“Ah…”
“He’s kidding!” I jumped in, smacking Bishop’s chest harder than I probably had to, but he didn’t so much as flinch.
“Oh, sure,” Kyle eased, rolling with it. “You should come down, we meet in Dolores Park after dark.”
“BSG is the one with the Cylons, right?”
“Yes, the ones that pass for people, not the toasters,” I nodded.
“Right,” Bishop replied, looking like he was actually considering it. “I’ll think about it. I work nights, so it can be rough to commit. And of course it depends on whether or not my girl here wants to come along.”
It made me smile to hear him call me his girl, even if we were under the guise of our second date. “I think it could be fun, and I’d love to see some of the old gang again.” Not that I didn’t love my new life, but it was getting harder and harder to remember what it was like to be a normal person who didn’t have to go look at eighteen million dollar mansions and try to figure out the logistics of supplying fresh blood for a dinner party.
Bishop scratched at the scruff on his jaw. “I don’t really have any gear for that sort of thing though.”
“I can help you with that, if you like,” I offered. “No pressure though. I know it’s not really your thing.”
“Running around in tactical gear, trying to uphold the law and save the human race? That’s sorta my thing,” he quipped with a lopsided grin. “Besides, I’m open to trying new things.”
Since when? What’d happened to the guy who hadn’t changed more than his hairstyle for the past three hundred years? “I guess maybe we’ll have to get back to you after we figure out some logistics. How’s that for a definite maybe?” I turned to Kyle with a smile.
“Sounds shiny. Shoot me a text with your new number and I’ll give you the deets later. I’d better run, there’s a set of percentile dice calling my name.”
“Okay, later Kyle. It was great seeing you again,” I said with genuine warmth as he made his way back to the gaming tables. “I think you made a friend for life,” I added in a softer voice, once we were alone.
“He seems like a nice guy.”
“You know, he’d blow a gasket if he found out what you are.”
“What we both are,” Bishop countered, and I conceded that point.
“True. But especially you. A member of a secret vampire Order? He’d probably pee his pants if you showed him one of your guns.”
“I’ll be sure to avoid that then,” he chuckled as we wandered through the tall racks of comic books on display.
“You don’t have to do the LARP thing if you don’t want to, you know. It was never really my thing, I was too self conscious about dressing up in public.”
“Really? You seemed kind of into it, and you had that costume before.”
“I know, I love cosplay. I just always felt weird running around town in it outside of Halloween. That was the old Anja though.”
“And now you’re not self conscious anymore?”
“It’s kind of hard to be self conscious about something like that after having an entire vampire nation looking to me to guide them into the future for the past year.”
“I can see how that would be a confidence booster,” he agreed. “I’m willing to give it a shot, but I can’t guarantee it’ll be my cup of tea.”
“I think it could be fun every once in a while. But it’s hard to commit to a once a week thing, you know? It seems like I end up jetting off to England at the drop of a hat.”
“Hopefully those days are past us. I’m not needed in Rome, and you’re not responsible for anyone but yourself anymore.”
He meant Rob. “Not personally, but I am responsible for all of the West, and that takes precedence over fighting off Cylons in Dolores Park.” Even if I did think he’d look amazing dressed up like a colonial warrior. Plus, besides his duties with the Order, there was something else to consider. “And you never know if Carys…”
Bishop cut me off before I could even complete the thought. “I haven’t spoken to her in almost two months. I’m done jumping through her hoops.”
I wanted to believe that in the worst way! “Still, maybe it’s not the best time to be planning an ongoing campaign together.”
“Right, we’re taking it slow,” he nodded slowly, and I could tell I’d hurt him with my doubts. But I wasn’t ready to sweep them under the table and pretend like they didn’t exist.
“Look, our future is incredibly up in the air right now, and that’s okay. We’ll just take this one step at a time.”
“One step at a time,” he agreed, picking up my hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it. “As long as I’m stepping there beside you, I’m good with that. But for now… maybe you’d better shake a leg if you want to look around. We’ll have to leave pretty soon.”
“Oh right, for our secret mission.” I hoped he’d elaborate, but he did a good job of keeping mum while I browsed at the store. There were a few things I wouldn’t have minded picking up, but I felt weird carrying them along on our date. So, I made a mental note to come back on my own time, especially if I wanted to reconnect with Kyle and those guys.
We played twenty questions while I tried to guess where we were headed, but I didn’t have a clue until we strolled up to the Clay Theater for their Midnight Movie Series. The window by the ticket booth showed a poster for a midnight showing of Wrath of Khan.
“Okay, now I know you’re pandering to my interests,” I laughed as we stood in line.
“What? I enjoyed Wrath of Khan,” Bishop protested. “But I think I’d enjoy it a lot more if I got to watch it with you.”
It’d been on the list of movies I’d given him last summer, and we’d spent plenty of time debating the entire Star Trek movie collection through emails and letters. He was right though, it would be more fun watching it together. Still, I had to wonder – was any of this geeky stuff truly to his tastes? I knew he wanted to make things up to me, but I didn’t want him to suffer through things he found boring to make me happy.
“It’s cheesy though. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Maybe I like cheesy.”
I leaned up on my toes and kissed his scruffy cheek for that, hoping like anything it was true. “Let’s go then, I want to get good seats.”
Sitting in the middle of a theater surrounded by fellow nerds saying the words along to the movie (like I did at home), with Shatner up on the big screen overacting his heart out, was a fun experience, and one I wished I’d tried before. How had I never gone to one of these before? Bishop seemed to be having a good time too, laughing in all the right places, and sobering when Spock made the ultimate sacrifice. Say what you will about cheesy eighties movies, they provide good entertainment.
We walked out of the theater hand in hand, and I felt more like a regular girl than I had in a year or more – and I liked it. No political pressure, no life and death situations demanding my attention, not even the lure of pulses all around us. The idea that I could have a semi-normal (albeit nocturnal) lifestyle was bewitching, and maybe it made me a silly girl – but part of me wanted that life again. Part of me missed hanging out with my gamer friends and going to school. I missed dates and movies and holding hands, and I loved Bishop for giving me that.
I tugged him aside, pulling him close for a kiss. Bishop went with it without missing a beat, his hands settling on my hips as we made out in pu
blic, like any other couple after a movie.
“What was that for?” he asked when the kiss drew to a close.
“For knowing a part of me I’d almost forgotten. For knowing what I wanted even better than I did.”
“As long as I’m included in that what you want part somewhere,” he said with a lazy smile, and I nodded up at him.
“You definitely are.” My attention was drawn to the poster in the window behind him. “Oh… they’re doing the Big Trouble in Little China later this month!”
“Is that one we need to see?”
“Jack Burton and Gracie Law? Oh yeah, we can’t miss it!”
“It’s a date then,” he smiled, taking my hand again as we strolled back in the general direction of where he’d left his car. “Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.” As good a time as I was having, I didn’t want to bring hunting into it, not yet. That was a level of intimacy I wasn’t ready to jump into. Besides, I’d made sure to snack before I left the house to remove the temptation of feeding beside him. Unbidden, the memory of sharing blood with him slipped in, and my fangs slid down a fraction, whether I was hungry or not.
Somehow, he sensed the change in me, his brow arching comically high. “Are you sure?”
“Sorry, my imagination ran away with me for a sec there.”
“Nothing wrong with that. Why not run with it?”
“Because you and me in an alley somewhere with hot blood in the mix sounds like a fifth date kind of thing to me.”
“Fifth, huh?” He pretended to consider for a moment. “I can work with that. I have to come out and admit, I’m out of planned activities for the night. We can go hang out at the Hart for a while, find a club somewhere that plays cool jazz, or keep strolling.”
I noticed he didn’t mention taking me home as one of the options, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t want the night to be over either. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got the key for a place Maggie wanted me to check out.”
“What kind of place?”