“Her daddy?” He almost choked on the next swallow of beer. “You’re kidding.”
Dallas frowned. “I didn’t know what to say to the teacher.”
“What did you say?”
She leaned against the bar and wiped it with a bar mop. “I said . . . I told her you were my boyfriend.” She met his gaze. “I didn’t know what to say.”
Now Aedan didn’t know what to say. A part of him liked the idea that Dallas would say he was her boyfriend. It had been a long time since anyone had claimed him; he liked to feel needed, like any other guy. But now she wasn’t talking about casual sex. She hadn’t told the teacher he was “a friend with benefits.” She was making a reference to a relationship, which scared him in more ways than he could count.
“At least she didn’t draw me with fangs,” he quipped.
Dallas frowned. “She doesn’t know about that,” she whispered. “At least I hope she doesn’t.”
Aedan grabbed her hand as she started to turn away. “What’s that supposed to mean? You didn’t tell her—”
“Of course not,” she interrupted him, withdrawing her hand. “What kind of mother would terrorize her child with stories of vampires, even if they are true?”
He held up a finger. “And no witch hat on your head.”
“There but for the grace of God,” she muttered under her breath. She began to hang wine glasses on a rack that hung above the bar.
Tat walked over to stand beside Aedan. “That’s the last ones,” he said, indicating the patrons walking out the door. He glanced at his watch. “It’s a little early, but I say we pull the plug and call it a night. An hour of cleanup and we’ll be out of here.”
“Sounds good to me.” Dallas slid the last two clean glasses into the rack. “But why don’t you go on home? Kitchen’s already closed. We’ll finish up here.” She nodded in Aedan’s direction.
Aedan had been studying the tattoos on one of Tat’s arms. Every time he looked, he found something he hadn’t noticed before amid the curlicues and vines. Tonight he was checking out a whale swallowing a man on Tat’s left forearm. Whoever had done the tattoos was a true artist. The depiction was eerily realistic, and when Tat moved his arm, the water around the whale rippled.
“You sure?” Tat asked, tugging on his ear. The gauge of his earring was so big that you could see his thumb through the hole in his ear. “I don’t mind staying.”
Aedan eased off the barstool, taking another long pull on his beer. He didn’t mind that Tat didn’t like him. In fact, he liked the idea that the guy was looking out for Dallas. Tat would still be here when Aedan went back to work in Paris, or Barcelona, or wherever he’d be sent next. “I’ll lock up behind you.”
“I got my keys.” Tat touched a long chain on his belt from which various keys dangled. “Night.”
“Good night,” Dallas and Aedan echoed.
She came around the bar and started wiping down the tables and turning the chairs upside down on top of them. Aedan went to the front door behind Tat and unplugged the neon sign in the window, officially closing Brew for the night.
Aedan and Dallas chatted as they worked. He didn’t mind at all, helping her out. It sure beat his usual work, which involved dark alleys and bad men. He brought a broom and a dustpan from the kitchen and started at one end of the barroom, sweeping toward the other.
“Tell me about being a witch,” he said.
She chuckled. “Pretty direct, you vampires.”
He shrugged and continued to sweep, occasionally stopping to push the dirt and stray French fries and pieces of napkin into the dustpan, which he dumped. “As I said before, I haven’t known many witches and the ones I did know, I had no desire to sleep with. I mean, what if she didn’t deem me decent in the sack? She might shrink my willy or something.”
Dallas burst out laughing. “Shrink your willy?”
“You know, with a spell.” He made an abracadabra motion with his hands, then took up the broom again. “They can do that, you know. Witches. Cast spells.”
“I’m not the spell kind of witch. I don’t think I’m really a witch at all.” She was refilling salt and pepper shakers. Corey had left early to take care of her sick kid, so Dallas was finishing up her work for her. “It’s just what people said. You know, people who knew I saw things.”
“Like who?” he asked.
She shrugged. “People. My dad. You know how it is; we’re scared of what we don’t know.”
“Your dad called you a witch?”
“I scared him a couple of times. Before I got smart about keeping my mouth shut and keeping my hands to myself. I think I scared him, as a teenager, when it got pretty strong. He came from an old family in Massachusetts. I think maybe some family member of his was hexed by a witch or something back in the Puritan days,” she joked.
“But you said your mom had it, too. He wasn’t afraid of her?”
“Apparently not. She didn’t get pictures like me, though. Just fuzzy images, a feeling once in a while. She was fascinated by my ability. She wanted me to develop it, whatever the hell that means.” She slid a saltshaker across a table and moved to the next one. “I was a rebellious teen. She didn’t get what she wanted out of me. Then she died. Car crash. Both of them.”
“My mom died, too, about two hundred years ago. I never knew my dad. He died before we were cursed.”
“I thought vampires were immortal, unless they got tangled up in a bunch of garlic or something.”
“We’re not easy to kill, but it’s not impossible.”
The salt and pepper shakers refilled, Dallas went into the pool room, which was more of an alcove than a room, and began to put the cues back in the rack on the wall. “I’m sorry to hear that. About your mom. Sounds like you were close.”
“We were,” he agreed, thinking of her beautiful red hair, her rich, dark eyes. “She was killed on vampire business.”
“Vampire business?” She rested her hands on her hips. “I know we sort of agreed, without actually saying so, that we weren’t going to pry into each other’s business, but . . . vampire business? How does someone’s mom die on vampire business? ”
He leaned on the broom, thinking of how pretty Dallas was. How fresh, clean. Her spirit seemed clean and pure to him. “I can’t tell you what we do, Dallas. You’re not supposed to know about me in the first place.” He leaned the broom against the wall and walked over to her. “We’re not bad people. I can tell you that. In fact, I like to think we’re doing some good in the world with our vampire business.”
She turned around to face him, leaning back against the pool table. “Top secret, is it?”
He smiled, taking a step closer to her. “Something like that.”
“If you told me, you’d have to bite me? Mind-erase me?”
He was still smiling as he rested one hand on each side of her hips, on the pool table. “Something like that.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.
“Mmm,” she murmured. “I’ve been thinking about that all day.”
“Have you?” He teased her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “And how about that?”
She slipped her arms around him and looked up into his eyes. “That, too.”
Their kiss deepened, tongue to tongue, as he explored the sweet coolness of her mouth.
She took his breath away . . . and in its place, it seemed as if she left hope.
Dallas slipped her hands under his T-shirt and stroked his back. When she had to catch her breath, and pulled away, he drew his lips across her cheek. She slid her hands over his broad shoulders, appreciating his trips to the gym.
Grasping the backs of her thighs, just beneath her butt cheeks, he lifted her onto the pool table so that she was sitting, her legs open. He stole one kiss after another, and one thing led to another.
“You want to go upstairs?” Aedan whispered huskily in her ear. Her long, blond hair fell around their faces in a curtain. He loved her hair. It was as bright as sun
shine.
“Very gentlemanly of you.” She stroked his cheek, teasing his lower lip with her thumb. “But I’m kind of comfy right here, if you are.”
His fingers found the bar apron, and he tossed it on the floor. She pulled her T-shirt over her head to reveal her pink, lacy bra. In a few minutes, she’d show him the panties that matched.
“Mmm,” he sighed, pressing his mouth between her breasts.
Dallas threaded her fingers through his hair, encouraging him to kiss the swell of her breasts, the firm ridge of her rib cage. She tugged on his shirt and pulled it over his head. This was exactly what Tat had been warning her against. It was guys like Aedan who made girls like her want to have sex on pool tables.
He unhooked her bra with an ease she didn’t want to contemplate. The air in the room was cool against her naked breasts. She gasped as he closed his mouth over her nipple, and she leaned back on the pool table, wrapping her legs around his. He kissed her again, gently squeezing her breast, rolling her nipple under his thumb.
She was eager to feel him inside her. She didn’t want wooing. She didn’t need all that much foreplay. She was already hot for him. Wet. What was it about this man, who wasn’t really a man, that made her feel this way?
Dallas fumbled with the button on her jeans. The zipper. He followed her lead and eased her jeans and panties down. She kicked off her sneakers. Her mouth was hungry for his, and she kissed him again and again as she unbuttoned his jeans and slid them and his boxers down over his hips.
“You sure you don’t want to—”
She silenced him with another kiss.
“We can—”
She grasped his willy in the palm of her hand, and that shut him right up. She stroked and he moaned, kissing her temple, whispering to her. Free of her shoes, her jeans, and her panties, she opened her legs to him. She clung to him as she slid forward, meeting his first thrust.
Maybe it was the naughtiness of it all—having sex in her bar, with the babysitter upstairs watching TV. On the pool table. With a vampire. Or maybe it was just that she needed Aedan. Either way, she didn’t last long. She cried out, burying her face in his shoulder so she wouldn’t make too much noise, her hands on his buttocks, squeezing, pulling him deeper.
Aedan slowed down, and she caught her breath. But she didn’t want her breath. She wanted him. Again. Dallas drew her short fingernails down the small of his back in a bit of a frenzy. She thrust her hips.
When she opened her eyes, his were closed. She raised one hand to stroke his cheek, and he opened his eyes, gazing into hers. For just an instant, as their gazes locked, she felt, far more than she saw, flashes of Aedan. Of the man he had been, the lives he had led. This time it didn’t scare her. She welcomed the images.
She saw a good man. A good soul, desperate to right his wrongs. Her heart went out to him for the curse he bore.
Tears suddenly filled Dallas’s eyes, and she squeezed them shut, embarrassed.
“Dallas,” he whispered. “What’s—”
She pulled him deep, lifting her hips off the pool table, holding him tightly. He groaned, giving in to the moment, and together they rode out the last waves of pleasure.
When it was over, Dallas collapsed forward against him, her cheek to his chest. She didn’t know why she was crying . . . why his pain, and the goodness in his heart, cut her so deeply.
She did know.
Because she wanted to be with this man forever . . .
Aedan didn’t know exactly what was going on with Dallas. He wasn’t used to women crying mid-coitus. She’d seemed to be having a good time, even after the tears started.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, sheepishly, as he stepped back to pull up his jeans.
“Ignore me. I’m an idiot,” was all she said as she slid off the pool table, wiping her eyes, and began to gather her clothing. She pulled on her panties. He offered her her jeans. She slipped her shirt over her head, sans bra.
Aedan found one sneaker on the other side of the table and brought it to her, feeling totally awkward. “You sure you’re okay?”
She brushed her hair, from the crown back, and it fell over her shoulders. “I’m fine. You were . . . fantastic. Seen my other sneaker?” She took the one from his hand.
He found the missing shoe and brought it to her. He watched her as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. He’d left his jacket on the barstool.
“You . . . you want me to go? To stay?” he asked. “Walk you upstairs?”
She sighed and looked up at him. She was no longer crying, but her eyes were red. “You wanna come up? Just . . . to sleep?”
“You mean ’til morning?”
“I don’t know what I mean.” She balled up her bra and stuffed it in the pocket of her apron, which she also balled up. “At least stay a while?”
He was glad to hear he wasn’t getting kicked to the curb. At least not tonight. “Sure.” He glanced around the room. “Should we finish cleaning up?”
She gazed around the pool room. “Nah. I’m beat. I’ll finish in the morning.” She flipped a switch, and the light hanging over the pool table went out.
Aedan grabbed his leather jacket, and they walked through the bar, through the kitchen, turning off lights behind them. Upstairs, Amanda gathered her belongings while Aedan waited for her at the door.
Dallas was in the kitchen, getting a glass of water.
“I’m just going to walk Amanda out and then I’ll be back up,” Aedan called as he held the door open for the babysitter.
“You don’t have to walk me out,” the college student said with a shy giggle. She looked up at Aedan, then quickly away. Dallas had warned Aedan, the other day, that both of her babysitters had serious crushes on him. “We took a self-defense class, Ashley and I.”
“Dallas will feel better if I see you get to your car.”
“It’s right outside,” Amanda tee-heed. As she spoke, her ponytail swung back and forth. “I always park under a street lamp.”
Aedan glanced down the hall. He could see Dallas in the kitchen. She was leaning against the counter, glass of water poised, but she wasn’t drinking. She was lost in her thoughts. He knew it was conceited of him, but he wondered if she was thinking about him. He certainly spent a hell of a lot of time zoning out, thinking about her.
“Be right back,” he called again as he followed Amanda out the door.
Chapter 18
I stroll down the dark street off Rehoboth Avenue, the one with the bars and restaurants, blending in as I always do. I am in a good mood this evening, despite the threat of rain I feel in the air and the distant rumble of thunder.
I enjoyed my holiday. I saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I rode the elevator to the top floor of the Empire State Building and stood at Ground Zero where the World Trade Center Towers once stood. The story was so sad, the loss of so many lives to terrorism.
It was a pleasant trip. Not only did I take in the sights of New York City, educating myself, but I managed to take a little pleasure as well. The attacks were, no doubt, cited as random and unconnected, in the local papers. The two young women, in two different boroughs, one still in the hospital with an unfortunate internal injury, would never know that I had just been visiting, or that there were other connected incidences.
Which is the way it is supposed to be. This was the way it had been until the vampire took a personal interest in me. Which now has caused me to take a personal interest in him.
I know I should not care that he is out there looking for me. He won’t find me in time; in less than another phase of the moon, I will be gone again. Asleep again. But it is galling that he believes he is in any way a challenge to me.
So what if I killed his silly little girlfriend in France? She was a harlot. A harlot like all women. She needed to be taught a lesson. It certainly wasn’t my fault that she fought me the way she did, or that she was so weak-willed and died so easily. Had she not struggled so, perhaps she would not have bled out, but m
erely been disfigured. Humans are amazingly frail creatures; it is something I have come to accept over the years.
I walk faster, my pleasant mood fading as I think of the girl named Madeleine in France. The little whore. She had screamed. She had fought me. She bit me!
Obviously, something the filthy vampire taught her.
The street is mostly empty. The businesses have closed. I notice that the OPEN light is off in the window of the establishment across the street. I remember the waitress I saw the last time I walked down this street.
And then, as if by a miracle, I see her. She is at her car.
I stop on the sidewalk and look one way up the street and down the other. The couple I passed half a block ago are gone.
The young woman is alone.
I wonder if I can catch her before she gets into her car, but she is dim-witted, like all women, and makes it easy for me. She stands at her car door, but instead of unlocking it, she pulls her cell phone out of her backpack. She punches buttons by the light of the streetlamp over her head, without checking the area around her.
I sniff. The smell of rain is heavy in the air. I will have to hurry if I don’t want to get caught in the downpour. I cross the street quickly, hands shoved in my jacket pockets, fingers curled around the bone handle of the handy little switchblade I picked up in New York City.
“Thanks for meeting me,” Peigi said. She sat on a beach towel in the sand, staring out into the quiet, dark bay. There was no one else on the beach, as far as the eye could see.
“Thanks for asking.” Mary McCathal eased down onto the towel beside her. “I think.” She smiled with her usual good humor. “It’s been years since I’ve been invited to a clandestine meeting.”
“Weatherman’s calling for rain,” Peigi mused, drawing up her knees to hug them.
Mary looked up into the dark sky, then over her shoulder. “Clouds coming in from the west. But I wore my rain jacket. We won’t melt.”
“That we won’t.”
“And if we get too chilly, you can light a bonfire for us,” Mary suggested. “No matter how many times I see you set things on fire, I still think it’s a good trick.”
Voracious - (Claire Point Vampire 5) Page 19