The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire (16 page)

I smiled. That did sound like Nik. I lay there, snuggled against my pillows, trying to think of a saucy but appropriately hard-to-get reply. But my eyes were so heavy that I was on the verge of falling asleep. It was just after midnight and I was struggling to stay awake. It might have seemed like a sad, lonely way to spend a Saturday night. But after weeks of being crammed into my office with three other people, plus the joys of being smothered by a large, loud vampire clan, the solitude was almost blissful. And quiet, so very quiet. I was drifting into that twilight haze between sleep and waking.

I started awake at the sound of tapping on glass. I lifted my head from the pillow, blinking rapidly. The rapping sounded again, and I opened the curtains to find Nik sitting on the planter box outside my window. And he had a bunch of sunflowers in his hand, tied with a blue gingham ribbon.

Definitely an upgrade from creepy serial killer.

“What are you doing?” I asked, as he climbed through the window casing and dropped into a dramatic kneel. He presented the flowers with a flourish.

“I figured if we were going to impersonate Romeo and Juliet, we should give it our all.”

“Yeah, 'cause their story ended well.” I snickered, pressing my face against the waxy petals. Thanks to growing up with Iris, I knew that giving someone sunflowers symbolized adoration and warm feelings, and that knowledge made my heart race.

“I know that you are surrounded by blossoms,” he said, gesturing out the window toward Iris's garden. “But I thought you should have flowers of your own, something that bloomed in the sun. And if your sister asks, you received them from a computer-­software company that is trying to seduce you into their ranks.”

I shivered a little when he said the word “seduce.” I couldn't help it. I dare any card-carrying red-blooded woman to hear Nikolai Dragomirov pronounce the word “seduce” without giggling and blushing. “That's very cute,” I told him, as he nuzzled my neck. “I can't believe I just snuck you into my room like a fifteen-year-old. Again. This is becoming a terrible habit.”

“Believe it or not, my Gigi, I have never done this for another girl.”

“You're right, I don't believe you've never done this before.”

“Well, my experience is more related to escaping down a trellis while an unsuspecting husband or father came through the front door,” he admitted, gently dropping the flowers to my desk.

My head dropped to his shoulder. “Why do you tell me these things?”

“It never occurred to me not to,” he said, sliding his fingertips along the waistband of my pajama pants.

“And that's what frightens me.”

He turned me so my back was pressed against his chest, toying with the tie of my pants.

“Why are you here, Nik?”

“I thought I had just made that pretty clear,” he said, nipping at my lips. I smacked his shoulder. “I wanted to see you. I have missed you desperately, to the detriment of my dignity. It is shameful. All of the other vampires have been mocking me.”

“That's very sweet,” I said, kissing him. “And since you were so shamelessly honest about your motives, there is this one really dirty fantasy I've always had.”

His tawny eyes went wide and, dare I say it, hopeful. “What is that?”

“Having sex in my own bed,” I said, running my lips along the hollow of his throat. “In my own house.” I bit his collarbone lightly, barely enough to make a mark on his skin but enough to make him moan and clutch at my back. “Without worrying about being quiet.”

He frowned. “In terms of fantasies, that is not terribly dirty.”

“Well, you try living on nothing but furtive backseat gropings and stolen moments in communal dorm rooms. Being as loud as you want on an actual mattress will sound downright decadent.”

He laughed but cut it short when the implication of what I'd said landed. “So I take it you have done this before?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

There was no way I was going to answer that, because I didn't want my ex-boyfriend dead.

“And as a subquestion, am I asking you questions about the legions of ladies who rolled through your sheets over the years?”

“No, you are not,” he acknowledged. “So I suppose it would be petty of me to begrudge you an inexperienced and no doubt inadequate partner.” He cleared his throat, glancing at Ben's picture. “It is just the one inexperienced and inadequate partner, right?” He winced as I elbowed him in the stomach and immediately changed his tone to one of cheerful interest. “So how does this fantasy of yours start out?”

“With some white-hot, hard-core . . .” I paused to nip at his chin. “Making out.”

“That I can do.”

Nik pressed me back on the bed, trailing his fingers down my ribs over my tank top. His mouth skimmed between my breasts and down the line of my bared stomach, leaving a cool, wet line of sensation in its wake. He nibbled a ring around my belly button while tugging down my pajama pants. Then he worked his way back up my body, pausing to trace the inner curve of each breast with his tongue before latching on to my mouth. He kissed me over and over until my lips were swollen and tender, never once letting his fangs scrape my flesh.

“You know, I do not think I have ever simply ‘made out' with a human,” he whispered, kissing the tip of my nose. “It has always led to more.”

“Well, then it will be a night of mind-blowing firsts for both of us.”

Waggling his eyebrows, he spread my legs wide, settling between them and wrapping my thighs snugly around his hips. After pulling my tank over my head, he worried the line of my jaw with his blunt teeth. That nagging concern that he would lose control was there, tickling at the corner of my brain. But he was just so damn good with his hands, playing my body like a well-tuned violin, that I was able to willfully ignore that concern.

I unsnapped his jeans and slid them over his hips, pushing them down his thighs with my feet. My eyes went wide at the sight of what had only been hinted at during the previous session on the couch.

Whoa
. Ben had been a pretty healthy size, but this—this was a bit more, well, just
more
. Though I belonged to the One Penis Club, I was proud that I knew how to handle the single “member” I'd had contact with. Still, Nik looked as if he might be a bit outside my skill level. What if I couldn't please him? He'd been with more women than I cared to count over the years, women who probably knew
tricks
,
and all I knew how to do was—

“We will figure it out,” Nik murmured against my neck, as if he could read the apprehensive thoughts bouncing around my head. His hands worked over my body, rubbing and teasing, until I felt like a puddle of melted caramel on the mattress.

Did we have melted caramel in the kitchen? It was an intriguing image.

But all thoughts of dessert-topped vampires were dashed when Nik knelt between my legs, wedging his knees under my tailbone.

“Keep your hands right there,” he told me, curling my hands around the spokes of my headboard. “And make as much noise as you want.”

I snickered, nuzzling his temple. I could feel Nik between my thighs, testing and stroking, spreading the warm wetness that flowed between us over his length. Then he drove into me, smooth and slick, and even though I was ready, the sensation of being stretched made me cry out. He stopped, eyes focused on my face. I nodded, and he very slowly canted his hips.

I tilted my head back against the pillow, settling into the rhythm and enjoying the opportunity to yip, yell, and moan as loudly as I wanted without fear of being overheard. I clutched at his shoulders, clinging to him as he rose to his knees, settling me against his thighs.

I rolled my hips, keening at the delicious friction of this new angle. His forehead pressed against mine, and he panted along with me, even though he didn't need to breathe. I ran my hands along his long, toned back, my fingertips memorizing every vertebra and scar.

His hand slid up my neck, brushing his thumb across my earring. His eyes went smoky blue, and his mouth moved, as if he was trying to speak, but the words wouldn't come. I clasped his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. His eyes cleared as I shook his head slightly. “Nik?”

He ducked his head, kissing me and thrusting up, making me shudder. He moved over me, faster and faster, until I could only hold on as he manipulated my hips. And I took full advantage of being able to scream.

•   •   •

I scampered up the stairs
in Nik's shirt and my socks, a trail of acrid smoke following me to the second floor.

Nik came running out of my bedroom, yanking on his jeans. “Gigi!” he called over the howl of the smoke alarm as I waved the smoldering bag of microwave popcorn around like a smudge stick. “What are you doing?”

“I don't want Iris and Cal to know you've been in the house!” I said, the last word coming out far too loudly as he disabled the alarm. “So I'm employing a little olfactory camouflage.”

“I do not know whether to be afraid or impressed with your level of tactical thinking,” he said, pressing one of my shirts over his nose to protect himself from the smoking popcorn stink-bomb in my hand.

“You should be a little of both!” After waving the bag around my room a few rounds, I took it back downstairs and tossed it off the back porch. I found Nik in my room with his head sticking out the open window. “Sorry, it's a little strong.”

“That is one of the worst smells in the world,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face. “And I lived in an era without indoor plumbing.”

“Ew.” I shook my head as I flopped into my bed. Nik crawled in next to me, pulling me against his side.

“I hate that we have to go to extremes to hide this from your family,” he said, running his thumb along my bottom lip.

“Hey, I almost got Cal to admit that he would be OK with us seeing each other without the threat of you killing me. I consider that progress.”

“You,
sladkaya
, have a low standard for progress.”

“Speaking of which, what was that earlier?” I asked. “Your eyes glazed over blue, and you looked a little bit like when you go into your zombie state. But you were still you, and you didn't try to bite me, so again, progress. What did you see?”

He stroked a finger over the moonstones at my earlobes. “I remember buying the earrings. After I kissed you—”

“And ran away like a big coward.”

“You are going to have to let that go.”

I shook my head. “Not anytime soon.”

He cleared his throat. “After I kissed you and you left, I circled back to the store and bought them. Because they made you smile, and I wanted to give you something that would make you smile. In all the time I watched you, I did not think you smiled enough. I went to your house and left them on your porch, where you could find them. My only regret was that I would not be able to see you open them—
mmph
.”

I cut him off, throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him deeply. He remembered! I was practically climbing the man. He remembered the moment that had meant so much to me. It wasn't just in my head. I wasn't alone in this relationship.

“If I had known you would react this way, I would have fondled your earrings much earlier.”

“I thought I was going crazy,” I whispered. “I thought my weird brain had made it all up.”

“You are not crazy,” he promised me. “If either of us is insane, it is the one with the large gaps in his memory.”

“Mmm, good point.” For a moment, I considered telling him about my research into his curse. But I didn't want to get his hopes up, and I didn't want him to warn me away. I didn't want to hear that I was too young, too inexperienced, too human to find a solution to the problem.

He pulled his shirt on and kissed me. “We will talk soon. But for now, I am going to dive out of your window like an Olympic medalist.” When I made another pouty face, he added, “Unless, of course, you would like me to stay, and we can explain this to Iris and Cal.”

I bit my bottom lip for a moment before planting a kiss on his. “Try to clear the rosebushes.”

10

You will be thrown into situations that will shock and unsettle you. It's important to maintain your composure, no matter what you see, hear, or have splattered on your shirt.

—The Office After Dark: A Guide to Maintaining a Safe, Productive Vampire Workplace

I
was not as good at office espionage-slash-witch-hunting as I'd hoped.

I searched every Internet database I could think of for Renarts. I even tried a few not quite legal avenues to government records, suffering the indignities of an Internet café/bait shop's so-called free Wi-Fi because I didn't want the search traced back to me. I even tried searching the descendant database to see if Marie Renart had children with Linoge and they might be listed in our information. No dice. The Renarts had disappeared entirely with Jennifer Renart. I found her birth record, evidence of her high school graduation, and then
nothing.
No college enrollment, no marriage certificate, no death certificate, no evidence that she'd legally changed her name.
Her paper trail disintegrated into nothing, almost impossible in today's world.

Had she gone into hiding? Had the vampires made her disappear? Why was she hiding?

I was stewing over this series of failures when my desk phone rang, and the Council's front desk staff announced that I had a visitor. I pushed up from my desk, a confused frown firmly in place as I marched up to reception. Who would visit me here? Cal and Iris wouldn't be stopped at the front desk. They had high-clearance credentials that let them sail through whenever they felt like it. Maybe it was one of my other vampire friends?

I poked my head through the reception door to find Nola waiting for me. She was wearing her nurse scrubs and carrying a medical bag labeled “Half-Moon Hollow Clinic.” She looked very official, and I was officially confused.

“No—”

Nola launched herself out of the chair and prevented me from uttering anything else. “No, Miss Scanlon, no refusals this time. The doctor
insists
that you get this treatment regularly. And if I have to meet you at work for your convenience, so be it.”

Clipping her visitor's pass into place on her shirt, Nola made a very clear “just play along” face and gave Jerry the front-desk clerk the side-eye. I nodded. “Ohhh, I guess, if the doctor insists.”

“There's a conference room on your floor that you can use for privacy, Gigi,” Jerry said in a helpful tone. “I hope you feel better.”

I made a weird raspberry sound. “It's nothing,
really.”

“Pernicious anemia is hardly nothing!” Nola exclaimed, as the door shut behind her.

“Pernicious anemia?” I asked.

“It's a real thing,” Nola whispered. “And the rumor of your having it will make you very unattractive to any vampires thinking of feeding on you.”

I pushed her into the nearest empty conference room. Why did my workplace have so many damn conference rooms? “Thanks, I think,” I muttered, making a mental note to text Nik a
not really dangerously anemic
message. “And as much as I appreciate visits in the middle of my workday, what are you doing here?”

She nodded toward one of the chairs. And when I didn't sit fast enough, she pushed me down into a sitting position. Then she rolled up my sleeves and wiped my bicep down with an alcohol wipe.

“I started thinking about what you said at Jane's shop the other night, that your office is full of receptionists and yogurt thieves who want to hurt you,” she said, whispering so softly I had a hard time hearing her. “And I thought it would be best to come by and give some of your coworkers a quick scan for magical residue so you can narrow your suspect list.”

“Aw, that's so sweet!” I cooed, throwing my arms around her.

With me still attached to her, she pulled a rather large syringe from her bag and uncapped it.

“That is less sweet,” I said, pulling away. “What is that?”

“It's a B-twelve shot,” she said quietly. “Perfectly harmless. In fact, it might help boost you up, considering your hours, but it's also a plausible treatment for pernicious anemia. Though, technically, you would need injections on a regular basis.” With no warning, she jabbed the needle into my arm.

“Ow, sonofabitch, Nola!” I yowled. I hissed, “Why would you actually give me a shot? You could have just put a bandage on my arm and faked it!”

“Oh, don't be such a baby!” she shot back. “And I gave you the shot because you're not an awesome liar,
and
I'm worried about you, keeping such weird hours and working so hard and dating a vampire. The B-twelve can only help. Here, have a lollipop.” She waved a big shiny red sucker in my face.

“Don't patronize me,” I whined, as she slapped a Monster High bandage on my arm. Nola shrugged and returned the lolly to her medical bag.

“I didn't say I wouldn't take it,” I said, snatching it out of the bag. I unwrapped the sucker and shoved it into my mouth. “Now what?”

“Now you pretend not to be able to get me out of the office because the floor layout is just so confusing, while I try to get a read on some of your coworkers.”

She took out a tiny brown bottle and unscrewed it to reveal a dropper top. When she squeezed three drops on each palm, the conference room was filled with the sharp, green scent of bay laurel. I wrinkled my nose and waved a hand in front of my face as she massaged the oil into her hands.

“Yeah, I know, it's pungent,” she said, waving her hands around to make the oil evaporate faster. “It's a blend to encourage psychic openness, and the main ingredient is bay laurel. The smell will go away in a few minutes, and this will keep me from having to make physical contact with your coworkers to read them.”

“You are an evil genius,” I said, sticking the sucker into my cheek. “Shall we start with the yogurt thief in accounting?”

•   •   •

We wandered around the office,
and I pretended to be unable to find an exit, as Nola scanned the yogurt thief, who was still pissy but showed no “spectral evidence” of casting spells. She scanned the operations department, including poor Joseph McNichol, who spoke with an exaggerated lisp around his missing fangs. She scanned my coworkers in the coding pit of despair; each one of them was pronounced clean as a whistle. This included Marty, who spent most of Nola's visit explaining how he didn't need modern medicine because he stuck to his mother's holistic diet and medicinal plan.

“Nothing,” Nola said, as we approached Ophelia's office. “Not a thing. This place is completely free of magic . . . and whimsy . . . and colors besides gray. I mean, really, how do you not get seasonal affective disorder the moment you walk in the door?”

“I plan on having a nice case of rickets by the end of the summer. Guys dig rickets, right?”

“So clearly, your next injection will be a massive dose of vitamin D.” She sighed.

“Miss Scanlon, who is this, and why has she been wandering around this office for the past hour?” Margaret asked, bearing down on us like a hall monitor from hell.

“Margaret, this is Nola Leary. She's a representative from my doctor's office. She was providing me with medical treatment, an exception to the no-visitors policy, which is outlined on page thirty-four of the employee manual. I was just escorting her out.”

Margaret's whole face clenched at once. She hated it when people outpolicied her. I had known it would be worth it to peruse the employee manual very carefully. “What sort of treatment? Is your condition contagious?”

“I believe that falls under HIPAA law,” Nola said cheerfully.

Margaret gritted her teeth so hard I practically heard them crunching under the enormous pressure of her jaw. “Just get her out of the office, Miss Scanlon. And I will count this time as your lunch break for the day,” she sniped.

“It was so nice to meet you,” Nola said sweetly. She stretched her hand out to shake Margaret's and let it hang there until it was so socially awkward for Margaret
not
to shake her hand that I felt sorry for Margaret. And I really didn't like Margaret, so that was saying something.

Margaret finally gripped Nola's hand and shook it, giving the biggest cat-butt face I'd ever seen. Nola's grin ratcheted up to crazy Grinch levels, while Margaret tried to yank her hand free.

Just as she did, Ophelia stepped out of the elevator, barking orders into her cell phone in German. She was wearing a slick black silk power suit and a pink sequined T-shirt. She sounded angry. Then again, everything sounded angry in German; maybe I shouldn't judge. She huffed out a question, rolling her eyes and pulling a small Hello Kitty notebook out of her purse. She spied the pen in the tiny penholder in Nola's scrub sleeves and snapped her fingers at her.

Nola lifted one dark eyebrow. Ophelia rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers again, then pointed at the pen. Nola took the pen out of her sleeve and handed it to Ophelia. In the process, she let her hand brush against Ophelia's wrist. She stared at Ophelia intently. But Ophelia just shot her an annoyed glare and marched into her office.

“Well, we will be moving along,” I told Margaret. “Have a nice night.”

“Make it a quick exit!” Margaret called grumpily.

As soon as we were out of earshot, I nudged Nola's ribs. “So?”

“Come see me tomorrow morning,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“Well, that's not cryptic at all,” I muttered.

“Just come see me,” she said again. “I'll put the kettle on for you.”

“Why does my hand smell so weird?” Margaret yelled down the hallway.

•   •   •

I snuck back to my office,
where Aaron and Jordan were hard at work. Marty, on the other hand, was pecking away at a “research paper” we'd asked him to do on potential fonts for our part of the projects. Never mind that the regional management had chosen the fonts weeks before. We didn't trust Marty with anything we would have to undo later.

Marty's work had not improved. He resisted all attempts by us to gently guide him through Basic Programming 101. And when gentle guidance failed, we tried blatantly telling him “You need to do
this
,” which also failed. He was completely immune to correction.

Aaron and Jordan were pretty unhappy about picking up his slack. Marty was friendly and helpful and always engaged, but he was also slow and didn't meet deadlines. He always had an excuse, of course. There was always a perfectly good reason for him not to have completed something he was assigned. But it was starting to get on everybody's nerves, particularly my own.

And no matter how many times I reported the problems to Ophelia or the HR department, nothing happened. We were all given our benefits packages, including Council-leased, environmentally friendly cars and “grand prize showcase” salaries. And I couldn't help but be irritated on my team's behalf. Jordan, Aaron, and I had earned our perks. Marty, not so much.

Marty was our group's “missing stair”—the problem we all knew about but could do nothing to resolve. I wondered if Marty was related to a vampire or had incriminating pictures of Ophelia or something. It was hard to imagine what sort of act Ophelia would be too embarrassed to reveal publicly, but surely there was something she wouldn't do.

Oblivious to our passive-aggressive pack maneuverings, Marty kept trying to take on new areas of the project. He wanted to prove himself with more responsibilities, but we had to keep routing him back to the things he'd already done. He was unhappy and griped constantly about how he could do more, but we were getting pretty good at changing the subject.

“Hey, y'all, how's it going?” I asked.

“I'm three pages into my research,” Marty said, with as little enthusiasm as was humanly or inhumanly possible.

“I hit my benchmark for next week!” Jordan told me with a grin.

“Awesome!” I exclaimed. I jogged over to her desk and gave her an enthusiastic high-five and a gummy candy shark.

“I fixed that issue with the, er, last-name search window,” Aaron called over his partition. I nodded, knowing that he was referring to the spreadsheet of surnames Marty had somehow deleted. Aaron had managed to pluck it from the ether with his magical file-retrieving ways.

“I'd say our technical wizardry deserves a caffeinated reward,” Jordan said, her Rainbow Brite hair peeking out from behind her cubicle. She grinned winsomely. “Hint, hint.”

I laughed. “OK, OK. Sammy's not at his post, though. So it's Perk-U-Later, my treat.”

Aaron's head popped over his cubicle like a groundhog. “Mocha latte, triple shot, with three sugars and extra whip.”

I checked the size of his already-dilated pupils. “It's decaf for you, my friend.”

“Nooo!” He fell to his knees and shook his fist at the ceiling in outrage.

“Maybe some nice chamomile tea,” I said, shaking my head.