Fire Song (City of Dragons) (27 page)

I rolled my eyes. “You know what, I’m about to just leave you alone down here and go to bed.”

“But there’s no TV,” he whined. “You’re going to replace that, right?”

“I am,” I said. “See, I’ve been so busy with this case that I’ve been letting things slide. If I hadn’t been hunting a murderer, I would have bought a TV.”

“I can buy the TV,” said Connor. “Just give me the money, and I’ll go pick it up tomorrow.”

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I want to be useful.” I eyed him. “Actually, you know what? You take the rest of the night off. I’ll watch the lobby.”

“No way,” said Connor. “If I tried to go out right now, everyone would already be trashed, and I’d never catch up. Besides, it’s a weeknight in March. Nothing’s going to be open for much longer. Just forget about it. I’ll be fine here. Go to bed.”

I sighed.

*

But when I did get to bed, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and went over every single recent conversation I’d had with Lachlan. I started to realize that I might have been putting words in his mouth, and I felt like maybe Felicity was right. Maybe I did owe him an apology.

I began drafting apologies in my mind, lying on my back and whispering them to the ceiling.

Tomorrow, I would call him, and I would tell him I was sorry.

But as the hours crept by and I couldn’t stop thinking of things to say to him, I eventually began to feel as if I wasn’t going to be able to sleep unless I called him.

It was late, nearly two in the morning, but I snagged my phone and dialed his number.

It rang.

And rang.

What was I doing? This was stupid. I was going to hang up.

“Penny?” said Lachlan’s voice. He didn’t sound like himself.

“I woke you up, didn’t I?”

He laughed. “No. No, I’m awake.” His voice was slurred. He sounded like he’d been drinking.

“I, uh, this is a bad time, but I just wanted to apologize.”

“You want to come over?” he said.

“Come over?”

“I’ll give you my address,” he said. “Plug it into your GPS and come over. I would come see you, but I don’t think I can drive.” He laughed again.

“Are you okay?”

“Great,” he said. “Better than great. Come over. I have whiskey.”

Well, it wasn’t as if I was sleeping, anyway. But drunk Lachlan sounded strange. I wasn’t sure if it made any sense at all to go see him. I should have told him no.

But I got his address, and I drove over.

He met me at the door. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. “Penny,” he said.

“Um, listen, I should just make you some coffee and help you sober up.”

He grabbed me and pulled me inside. He shut the door and pushed me back into it. And then he pressed his body into mine, his lips into mine.

I was stunned. I went rigid, letting him kiss me, but not responding.

His lips were soft against mine. His tongue pushed into my mouth, and it tasted sweetly of liquor and promise.

A jolt of goodness went through my body. I let my tongue touch his.

He sighed. And then he pulled back. He laughed, looking sheepish. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have…” He stumbled away.

I looked around his apartment. We were in the living room, but he didn’t have any furniture. It was just an empty room. Bare walls. Carpet.

He wandered through the doorway, away from me.

I followed him.

We emerged into the kitchen, which was similarly bare. There was a card table in the middle of the floor, flanked by one metal folding chair. There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting in the middle of the table.

He seized it and handed it to me.

I took it. I took a drink. Why not? The liquor burned down my esophagus. “Are you okay?”

He reached out a hand for the whiskey bottle.

I handed it back.

“You asked me that on the phone,” he muttered. “You asked me if I was okay. And I told you. I’m great.” He looked around for the folding chair to sit down. But he missed it completely and landed sprawling on the floor, his hand with the bottle in the air. He burst out laughing. “Saved!” he declared, scooting the whiskey back onto the table. He doubled over, laughing and rolling on the floor.

I knelt down next to him. “You really
don’t
have much tolerance, do you?”

He lay flat on his back and looked up at me. “You’re upside down,” he told me.

I rocked back so that I was sitting. “I’m going to go.”

He scrambled into a sitting position. “Don’t go. You just got here.”

“You’re… very drunk.”

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry about that. I’ve been trying not to drink lately, trying so hard.”

“Do you have a problem with drinking? Because when we were at the bar, you said you didn’t drink, but was that because—”

“I’m not an alcoholic, Penny.” He sighed. “I’ve just been having a hard time lately. I keep feeling all this… pain, keep remembering that everything in my life is fucked. Drinking helps. I keep thinking about…” He tried to reach the whiskey but couldn’t. He stared at the palm of his hand instead. “Thinking about her. ”

I waited.

He didn’t say anything.

“Thinking about who?” I finally said, but I was fairly sure I knew.

“Hallie.” The name was charged with emotion. His voice cracked. He reached on top of the table. This time, he managed to get the bottle of whiskey. He took a big gulp of it. Grimaced. Shivered. Took another gulp. Another grimace.

“Your daughter?” I whispered.

He nodded. He set the bottle down and wiped at his mouth.

“Because I made you talk about it the other day? I brought it all back up, didn’t I?”

“It isn’t your fault. I don’t need to talk about it for it to start…” He tapped his temples. “All kinds of things bring it up. Sometimes, I see the moon, and I remember this book we had when she was tiny, and how she’d point to the picture of the moon until I said, ‘Mr. Moon.’ And then she’d giggle.” A ghost of a smile on his face. “The way it sounded when she laughed…” The smile faded. He crawled over to the other side of the room, grabbed the kitchen counter and hauled himself to his feet.

I stood up and went to him. “Lachlan—”

“Don’t.” He put his finger against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about her.”

“Okay,” I said.

It was quiet.

I put my hand on his arm. “Well, maybe you should go to bed. Have some water and lie down?”

He tried to smile at me, but he only looked haggard now. Tired and haggard and sad. He shook his head. “No, I can’t. I’m not drunk enough. I’m trying to drink enough that I just pass out, but no matter how much I drink, it doesn’t seem to be enough.”

“Maybe if you lie down, it will be,” I said.

He kissed me again.

It surprised me. I hadn’t been expecting it.

This time, his mouth was more thorough. His tongue swept into my mouth, bold and clever, as if he belonged there.

I clutched his arms. I tried to push him off, but I found myself kissing back, even though this was ridiculous. He was out of his mind, and he didn’t know what he was doing, and if I let him do this, I’d be taking advantage of him. I was the one who was thinking clearly. Or at least I had been before he started kissing me like that.

My body felt weak, felt tender. It was a slow awakening, nothing like the obvious intensity of my arousal with Alastair. This was tentative, but nice. So nice.

His lips left my mouth. He kissed my chin, my jaw, my neck.

Thrills went through me. I gasped.

His hands were inside my shirt.

“Lachlan,” I said again.

He nipped my neck. His teeth—

I slammed my open palm into his chest, pushing him away from me. “No,” I said.

He ran his tongue over his fangs. Then he shut his eyes and closed his mouth. When he opened both his eyes and his mouth, his fangs had retracted. He looked shaken. “I’m sorry,” he said in a dead voice. “I wouldn’t have—”

“Sit.” I pointed to the chair. “Go over there and sit down.”

He rubbed his face. Then he hobbled across the room and fell into the chair. He reached for the whiskey bottle.

I hurried over and swept it out of his grasp. I went back to the sink, unscrewed it, and proceeded to pour it all down the drain.

“Hey,” he protested, but there wasn’t much fire behind it.

“You’ve had enough,” I said.

He hung his head.

I leaned against the sink. For some reason, my pulse was pounding, and I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm it. “What the hell?” I finally managed.

He slowly raised his gaze to meet mine. “I’m sorry.”

I folded my arms over his chest.

“I’m not good at this,” he said.

“Good at what?”

“At…” He gestured at me and then at himself and then back at me. “Look, in the past, when I’ve needed—wanted—a female distraction—”

“
Distraction?
” I said.

He flinched. “That’s not what I meant.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I just mean that I’ve got this face, and women usually…” He cringed. “Look, can I start that again?”

“Women usually fall all over you?”

“I wasn’t going to say it that way.” He sagged in the chair. “Look, I’m drunk, you’re very pretty, and—”

“Shut up, Lachlan.” My pulse was still racing.

“I should have realized that you wouldn’t want to kiss me. That you’re different than all the other women I’ve ever—”

“It’s not about the kissing,” I said, feeling frustrated because I
had
liked kissing him, and I probably
would
have fallen all over him if he hadn’t… I drew in another unsteady breath. “You almost
bit
me.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“You were about to.”

He parted his lips.

I put the empty bottle in the sink. I crossed the room to him. I looked down at him. “Could you stop when I told you to stop? Because last time, I thought you weren’t going to stop.”

He swallowed hard. “Penny,” he rasped. “You can’t…”

My pulse hadn’t calmed down at all. It was crashing away just beneath my skin. “Only a little bit,” I whispered. I moved my hair away from my neck, baring it to him.

He licked his lips. He looked up at me and his eyes were hungry, the way they’d been in the bar.

A little thrill shot through me. What the hell was I doing? It was crazy. Why would I let him—

He stood up and grasped my shoulders.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I could feel his breath on my skin. Then the whisper of his lips. Then a sharp tug of pain.

And then…

Bliss.

That feeling of being one with him, of knowing everything, seeing everything.

It was as if we floated up through the ceiling of his apartment into the apartment above, saw the neighbors sleeping in bed, saw their cat curled at their feet. And then up another floor to a bare apartment, roaches climbing over the linoleum, and then through the roof, into the night air, past the trees, shooting for the sky, everything streaking by me, wrapping me in euphoria as we traveled for the heavens, for the stars, for the—

He let go of me.

We both went sprawling.

And I was just ordinary me again, sitting on the floor of his apartment, and everything seemed dingy, and my head hurt.

He stumbled backwards and stood up. There was red on his mouth. My blood, dripping in the crease of his—

His tongue darted out and licked it up.

Something inside me convulsed in pleasure. What? I liked that? I liked him drinking my blood? No, I was losing it. I was losing my mind.

He help up a finger. “Holy fuck, Penny.” His voice was clear as a bell, no slurring at all.

“You don’t sound very drunk now.” Cautiously, I stood up.

“You shouldn’t have let me do that.”

“I know.” I put my hand to my neck and brought my fingers in front of my face. They were wet with red blood. “Shit,” I breathed.

“Why did you let me do that?”

I looked at the blood. It was so damned red. “It just… It feels…”

He shot across the room and grabbed my wrist. He put my fingers in his mouth, licking them clean.

I let out a tiny noise.

He dropped my hand as if it burned him. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Get out,” he said.

“But…”

“Get out.” His voice was a growl.

I backed away from him.

He turned so that he wasn’t facing me, sinking both of his hands into his hair.

From behind, I could see the muscles in his back rippling beneath his t-shirt. He was stronger than I had imagined, and his body was very nicely shaped, and…