I Want You to Want Me (4 page)

“I’m guessing you didn’t come up here to discuss our sleep habits.”

Erika’s eyes returned to his, as did the sense of dread she’d been experiencing at the bottom of the stairs. Cool disdain—that was what she was getting. Crap.

“No.” She offered him another small smile. “No, I came up to see how your head is.” She reached forward to brush aside his hair to see the wound, but he caught her wrist, stopping her. His fingers cool, curled a tad too tightly on her skin.

“It’s fine.”

Erika nodded at the clipped response that didn’t invite further questioning. Yet she didn’t move, nor did he release her. Although his hold loosened and she could have sworn his thumb slid on the outside of her wrist like the briefest, faintest caress.

Crazy. She made a small noise in the back of her throat at the silly notion. The soft sound seemed to make Vittorio aware that he still held her, because he promptly dropped his fingers away from her.

Erika fought the urge to touch the place where his hand had been. Instead she stepped back from him. She should leave.

“Okay,” she said feeling disoriented. “I just wanted to check.” Check Philippe’s theory, but as before she seemed to be the only one affected by Vittorio’s nearness. Vittorio’s expression was still remote, hardly filled with overwhelming attraction.

“I guess I should go, then,” she added. She took another step backward, then remembered the plate of treats she still held.

“Oh and I made you these,” she said, shoving the plate toward him. “You know, as a peace offering.”

He stared down at the plastic wrap–covered squares as if he expected them to crawl off the plate and attack, perhaps sticking in his beautiful long hair.

Her fingers held the plate, tightening with the desire to touch the silky-looking locks. Was she utterly mad? This man was not interested in her—in the least—and she was fantasizing about touching his hair.

“I—” He still regarded the cookies with consternation. “I don’t eat—sweets.”

“Oh.” She pulled the plate away from him. “Okay. Well, I did just want to say I’m sorry.”

He nodded, saying nothing.

“About last night, I mean,” she said, watching his expression.

A muscle in his jaw worked as if he was clenching his teeth. “As you’ve already said,” he stated.

Erika nodded, not sure what else to say. It certainly didn’t appear he was any more willing to forgive her tonight than he was last night.

Suddenly that uncharacteristic feeling of irritation swelled inside her again. Why did he dislike her so much? Okay, she had hit him with a cell phone, but it had been in an unusual circumstance. And she did feel truly awful about it.

But instead of just accepting that he wasn’t going to warm up to her, she heard herself saying, “I know this is going to sound weird, but I’m actually trying to figure out if you are someone that my psychic told me I’d meet.”

Vittorio straightened, and the remote look in his eyes shifted, but it wasn’t to an expression she liked any better. His eyes widened with amused disbelief.

“Your psychic?”

Erika had received this reaction before. More than once. And she immediately regretted her honesty.

“I’m sure this sounds a little strange to you.”

He tilted his head. “What did this psychic say?”

She hesitated. Was he genuinely curious, or did he intend to mock her?

“He’s been predicting that I would meet someone who at least physically fits your description.”

He nodded, his gaze leaving hers as if he was considering the idea. She still couldn’t quite decipher what he might be thinking.

“And what else did this psychic say?”

Erika again debated what to tell him. But the lopsided, not altogether kind, slant of his lips made her stop. He just thought she was nuts. And he didn’t appear to like her any better for her nuttiness.

“Forget it.” She raised a hand in a gesture of defeat. “I just wanted to be sure your head was all right.”

She started to leave, when his voice stopped her. “Thanks.”

Erika didn’t bother to turn around. She simply nodded, unsure if he could see it or not. And not really caring. He had a way of making her feel like a blathering idiot. Not a fun feeling when combined with her very irritating, and clearly irrational, attraction to the man.

She headed down the stairs, determined to let Philippe’s prediction go—and to be nothing but polite in the presence of her upstairs neighbor, who she was beginning not only to want to shag, but to hate too. Talk about a doomed relationship.

Philippe had been so wrong.

She entered her apartment, shoving the door open with more force than necessary. And shutting it with the same needless force, although the slam did give her a small measure of satisfaction.

Sinking onto the gold sofa, she tugged off the plastic wrap protecting the marshmallow treats and picked the biggest of the bunch. She bit into it, forcing herself to focus on the crunch and the sweetness rather than her anger. But the attempt didn’t last long.

“He is so…infuriating,” she muttered around the cookie.

She took another bite, chewing with frustration.

“He doesn’t know what he just sent away.”

And she was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about her cooking.

V
ittorio didn’t move, listening to Erika’s footfalls on the stairs. Then the jiggle of the old doorknob, then the slam of the door closing.

He’d angered her again, and he tried to find relief in that fact. But he couldn’t dredge up even the smallest hint of anything akin to relief. Instead, he felt like shit.

He even wanted to tell himself she was likely a little crazy after the random announcement that her psychic had described someone in her future who fit his description. But a vampire finding someone nuts because they believed a psychic seemed more than a little paradoxical.

And then add that she made him cookies—or something that kind of looked like cookies. She made him
something
—and no one had done that in a long time. Not since he was a small boy, and Cook had made his favorite biscuits sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. Oh yeah, he felt like shit all right.

Lord, he hadn’t thought of his childhood in years, decades. The last two hundred years had obliterated the good memories of his past. Which brought him to why he was here. And why he had to create a barrier between himself and the sweet, beautiful woman downstairs.

He closed his door, a softer, more regretful mimic of Erika’s door-slamming. He’d been stupid to even give her the very small hint of remorse that he had. Luckily, his “thank you” had done little to repair the damage his rudeness had done. Of course, standing here shrouded in darkness when he could be surrounded by her light didn’t feel particularly lucky. Not in the least.

But he couldn’t risk Erika’s safety because he wanted her. That would be far crueler than his churlish behavior. And maybe, maybe, if he was wrong about being responsible for hurting people in his past, he could try to have some kind of relationship with her.

Even giving himself that much permission caused his body to react. His senses sharpening, his body aching.

“Damn it,” he muttered to himself, frustrated with how easily he could lose control of himself when it came to her.

He was the king of control, having spent many years now controlling his appetites, his emotions, and thus his world. Or so he’d thought. But now he wasn’t so sure. His control seemed to be sliding away—until he wondered if he ever had it at all.

He heard a noise below him. Erika. Her feet padding on the wooden floors, the clack of something, even the low, barely there sound of her voice—the words indiscernible, but the rise and fall of the tone fascinating to him. He imagined what she was doing. How she looked.

“Damn it!”

He strode to where he’d undressed the night before, his clothes a heap on the floor. He snagged his jeans, and changed from his sweats to the worn denim. Then he turned to the canvas satchel on a chair. Rooting around, he found a black T-shirt.

A bang sounded from directly underneath his feet, and he paused, the shirt halfway over his head. He listened for a moment longer, detecting the sound of Erika speaking again—the gentle, lilting tones like a caress all around him.

Longing gathered in his stomach, spreading downward. He wanted to be down there with her, hearing what she was saying—although he didn’t doubt that it wasn’t flattering to him.

Jerking his shirt on the rest of the way, he moved to look for his cell phone. Where the hell was Ren? He needed his brother here. At the very least, Ren and Maggie would provide a buffer between himself and Erika. Not to mention he really needed to talk to his brother about things that couldn’t be discussed over the phone.

He paused in his search. Okay, that was worrisome, when he needed Ren’s opinion on a problem. Even though Ren was older, Vittorio had always been the more rational one, the responsible one. Or at least he’d tried to be. But maybe he needed Ren’s more extreme reasoning now. He definitely needed the one person who understood him and his past.

Finding the silver cell phone on the nightstand, he flipped open the cover and scrolled through his short list of numbers to Ren’s. The line rang several times, before his brother answered.

“You have the worst timing in the world,” Ren stated.

“I try,” Vittorio said wryly, not in the mood for Ren’s complaints. He had one of his own. But he did ask, “Why? What did I interrupt now?”

“Maggie getting naked.”

Vittorio made a noise, not expecting that answer. Although knowing his brother, he probably should have.

“Then why did you answer the phone?”

There was silence on the other end, then a little hitch in Ren’s breath.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Vittorio muttered. “You aren’t actually doing it, are you?”

“Not yet,” Ren admitted. “So I’d appreciate it if you made this quick.”

An image of what Ren would likely be doing to Maggie moments after hanging up the phone flashed through Vittorio’s mind. Then the image morphed into himself and Erika with her soft, pink lips and stormy blue eyes.

Do not go there.

He gritted his teeth, forcing down a frustrated groan. “Where are you?”

“Maggie and I are in Italy. Vacation, little brother, something you should look into. What’s going on?”

Vittorio had no idea how to explain what was going on. Nor did he really want to—not why he was in New Orleans, nor this crazy attraction to Erika. The intensity of it was irrational. A weird anomaly. Instead he took out his frustration on Ren.

“Why didn’t you mention that Maggie’s friend, Erika, was staying in one of your apartments?”

“Why would I?”

“Because I arrived here last night to stay in the upstairs apartment for a while and ended up scaring the shit out of her. She brained me with her cell phone.”

As Vittorio could have expected, Ren laughed. “Her cell phone? That’s pretty funny.”

“Yeah, it was a laugh riot.”

Ren’s laughter dwindled, although Vittorio could tell he was still grinning. “So she assaulted you with a phone. I’m sure you’re fine, what with being a big ole vampire and all.”

“Yes,” Vittorio admitted begrudgingly, “I’m fine. But I’m not happy about the whole thing. You could have told me she was here.”

“Well, if I’d known you were coming I would have. And why do you care if Erika is there or not?”

Vittorio heard Maggie’s voice in the background. Then Ren said, “You like her, don’t you?”

Vittorio didn’t suppress a growl. “What are you? A teenage girl? I don’t like her—I don’t even know her. I just—I just wanted to be alone.”

“Okay,” Ren said, but Vittorio knew he didn’t believe him. “What do you want me to do about it? I can hardly kick out Maggie’s best friend.” Then he lowered his voice and added, “I’m sure as hell not going to do it with the potential of kick-ass sex in my near future. I don’t think Maggie would be happy with me, if I did that. Not to mention, I don’t want to. Erika is nice. You should talk to her instead of acting like a miserable hermit.”

Vittorio growled again, both irritated with his brother’s assessment of him and his response to getting rid of Erika. He’d known Ren couldn’t, and shouldn’t, make her leave, but…

Ah, hell!

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

“Wednesday.”

Four more days. Hardly a long time in the life of a vampire, yet it felt like an eternity. He considered telling Ren why he was here, but then couldn’t. Ren would be home soon.

And Vittorio could avoid Erika for that short amount of time—and then he’d have his brother and sister-in-law back to run interference.

“Okay,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Okay. So play nice. And we’ll see you then.”

Abruptly, Ren hung up. He obviously had other things on his mind besides his brother being surprised by the harmless mortal woman downstairs.

Except she wasn’t harmless. She had him seriously rattled. And he wasn’t harmless to her either.

That was why he had to stay focused on finding out the truth. He rummaged around the darkness to find his wallet. And he had to start now. The more time away from Erika, the better.

Maksim followed Vittorio, staying a safe distance behind him, weaving in and out of the tourists crowding Bourbon Street. Just because he wasn’t a vampire, didn’t mean that Vittorio wouldn’t sense him. Vampires were very good at detecting other paranormal creatures.

But it was clear Vittorio wasn’t concentrating on anything but his own mission. His walk was fast and focused, his movements lithe and graceful with the inherent agility of the undead.

Irony, that. Zombies were such a clumsy lot, while the undead…poetry on two feet. He liked that about Orabella, among other superficial things. It was her personality that he found lacking. As well as her morals. The lack of morals didn’t bother him as much as her personality either, come to think of it.

Vittorio turned off Bourbon onto a side street. Maksim waited a moment before following, just in time to see him step through street-dirtied plastic curtains designed to keep the cool air-conditioning inside.

AC. Hallelujah!

Maksim pushed aside the plastic, breathing a pleased sigh as a gust of chilled air blew over him. Even the stale scents of cigarette smoke and beer didn’t dampen his pure bliss at the blast of cool air. But he only allowed himself a moment’s joy before searching the dingy darkness of the small bar.

Vittorio was already disappearing into a small back room. Damn. Even though the area didn’t have a proper door, it looked like a private portion of the bar, and was very tiny. Maksim would be noticed if he followed. Not to mention he’d be sensed. Demons had a particularly strong preternatural imprint. Easy to read in a closed space.

Instead he sat down at the bar in the main room, and waited. Vittorio would be out eventually. And Maksim would learn what had him nearly sprinting around the streets of New Orleans with that single-minded look on his almost angelically beautiful face.

“Sherri,” Vittorio greeted the bartender, one of his longtime acquaintances. He hesitated to call her a friend, since they never saw each other outside of this shabby back room. But he supposed in a strange way, they were.

“Vittorio,” she greeted with a smile. Her smiles always held a sardonic quality, as if she knew far more about you than she let on—and in many cases, he was sure she did. In fact, he was counting on it.

“You haven’t been in for a while,” she said, already reaching under the bar for a highball glass to make his drink.

“Been doing some traveling,” he told her. That gave such a pleasant ring to what he’d been doing.

“Nice.” She lifted the bottle of whiskey before pouring. “The usual?”

He nodded, sliding onto a barstool, pleased to see the room was empty. Too early for the type of crowd who came here. Vampires, the occasional werewolf and other forms of shapeshifters—and musicians, a sort of supernatural breed all their own. Ironically, Sherri was the only constant—and she was human.

She slid the whiskey on the rocks in front of him, but he didn’t immediately take a drink. Instead he got right to what he’d come here for.

“Do you remember Amanda?”

Sherri frowned for a moment, searching her memory bank of late-night patrons. “Amanda? The one who fronted that band at The Purple Haze?”

Vittorio nodded. “What happened to her?”

Sherri gave him a surprised look, as if she couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard. After all, Vittorio had once spent plenty of time with Amanda.

“She was found dead in her apartment. God, that must have been at least three years ago now. I think they labeled it heart failure. You know, she had a cocaine problem for years. Well, of course you know that.”

Vittorio nodded. Amanda struggled with drugs for years. When he’d first met her, she hadn’t just restricted herself to coke. She mixed; whatever she could get. But he also knew she was doing a great job staying clean the last time he’d seen her.

But relapses were common. And maybe she had. Maybe she had just gotten careless. Fallen off the wagon, hard.

“But you know,” Sherri added as she absently wiped down the worn bar top, “I recall hearing that they didn’t find any drugs in her system.”

Vittorio’s muscles tensed. “Really?”

“Probably the damage was already done. Her heart just gave out or something.”

Vittorio nodded again, even though he wasn’t sure he agreed. She’d been killed. Possibly like Angela, Jessalynn. God, the list went on and on.

Nausea swelled over him like a warm, salty wave, threatening to drown him. Amanda made number twenty. Twenty women in as many years. Women he’d known. Women he’d helped—or thought he’d helped. They’d all trusted him. And now they were all dead.

Anyone looking at all these deaths, however, wouldn’t necessarily find them unusual—after all, they were all drug users, some were prostitutes, others just living hard and fast lives. Prime candidates for early deaths. But even for a vampire who’d been alive for over two hundred years, the rate of unusual and premature deaths around him was high.

He glanced at his acquaintance on the other side of the bar. Sherri didn’t realize just how lucky she was that they had only remained acquaintances. Friends didn’t fare well around him. Maybe it was the natural course of things, or maybe it was something more.

He was leaning toward something more these days.

“And you remember Julianne, that little short girl from where The Impalers play?” Sherri asked, dragging him out of his thoughts. “I think she started there while you were still playing with the band.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, already dreading what Sherri would say about the sweet girl who’d moved here from backwoods Alabama. A girl he’d lent a sympathetic ear to on a number of occasions when he’d worked with the band. He’d even seen her some months ago while visiting Ren.

“Last April, she was found dead. Jumped out the window of her apartment on Decatur. You didn’t hear about that?”

Vittorio shook his head, feeling numb. That’s when he’d seen her. April. He’d been here for Ren and Maggie’s wedding. He’d sat at the bar, after hours, and chatted with her. Something about her always called to him. She looked a little—lost.

“It was weird too,” Sherri continued. “She was in here the night before she died. With her boyfriend, and they seemed quite happy. All sweet smiles like she always was. She certainly didn’t strike me as someone who was going to hurl herself out a window the following night.”