Under a Vampire Moon (30 page)

“Were you listening to me at all?” Christian asked with disgust as he peered out to see if the van he’d sent for had arrived yet. He’d gotten back to the villa, downed blood, showered, changed, and come out of his room to find the rest of the band up and his mother and father there. He’d spent the last half hour telling them about his horrid day and what Carolyn had decided to do, but they didn’t seem to be taking her plans seriously. “She is determined to have an affair ‘to save me.’ I am not allowing that to happen.”

“I’m sure she won’t carry through on it,” Marguerite said at once. “He can’t possibly affect her as much as you do.”

“That won’t make one lick of difference. She isn’t even attracted to the guy. She said there was no spark, but she’s determined. Where the hell is the van?” he added in a mutter and dragged the door open to walk outside.

“I’m sure she wouldn’t—”

“Isn’t that Carolyn?” Santo asked.

Christian glanced around to see that everyone had trailed him outside. He then followed Santo’s gaze to see Carolyn on the road, bent over and fiddling with her shoes. Even as he spotted her, she straightened, brushed herself down, took a step forward, and then suddenly pitched to the side, her eyes and mouth making perfect
O
s in her surprised face.

Cursing, he broke into a run, but his heart nearly stopped in his chest when the edge of the hill gave way beneath her and she toppled over, hit the ground, and immediately began to roll down the side of the mountain.

Christian already knew from having traversed it himself that the slant gave way to a straight fifteen- or twenty-foot drop where the next two roads down had been carved out of the mountainside. Changing his angle, he put on a burst of speed and threw himself forward to catch her legs just as she reached the lip of that drop.

Christian overshot. He landed on his stomach on her lower legs, his head in her lap, and her shoe jammed into his groin. It was not a memory he would soon forget, he decided, a pained groan slipping from his lips.

“Oh,” Carolyn gasped. “Well, that was exciting.”

Christian lifted his head slowly from her lap to find that she’d sat up and was blinking as if just having fallen out of bed onto a soft carpet.

“Hi,” she said and had the temerity to grin at him.

“Are you all right, dear?” Marguerite was suddenly kneeling beside them, brushing Carolyn’s hair away from her face with concern. “You took quite a fall.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she assured her with a smile. “I didn’t really fall far, I just mostly rolled. It was kind of fun.”

“She’s drunk,” Gia said on a laugh.

“It’s probably the only reason she wasn’t hurt,” Santo said quietly. “Too drunk to tense up in the fall.”

“I told you she was drunk,” Christian said grimly, lifting himself off of her with a wince. Damn, he was lucky he wasn’t singing soprano.

“Yeah, I thought maybe a little tipsy or something. But she’s totally zonked,” Gia said on another laugh, helping to brush him down as he straightened.

Christian glanced to Carolyn. His mother had helped her up and was now checking her for wounds. Apparently not finding any, she turned her attention to Carolyn’s face and frowned, then murmured, “Oh dear.”

“What is it?” Christian asked, catching Carolyn’s arm to keep her from instinctively stepping backward off the mountain when she shuffled back. “Did she hit her head?”

“No.” His mother sighed, and then admitted, “But in this shape, you could be right. She could do something incredibly foolish.”

“I told you,” Christian growled.

Marguerite turned to Gia. “Dear, take her up to the villa and find her something else to wear. Her dress is quite ruined.”

Gia nodded and started to lead Carolyn away, but paused when Julius said, “Santo, carry her back to the villa. She isn’t very steady on her feet.”

“I’ll carry her,” Christian growled, but his father caught his arm.

“Let Santo do it,” he said quietly. “We have to discuss this plan of yours.”

Christian hesitated, but didn’t protest when Santo immediately scooped Carolyn into her arms and headed up the hill. His scowl deepened though when Carolyn smiled up at Santo and said chirpily, “Wow, you’re really strong. Do you lift weights?”

Christian and the others began to follow as Santo shook his head. “No. I only lift slightly tipsy, but charming young ladies.”

“I’m not young.” Carolyn laughed and then patted his chest and confessed, “But I did feel young tonight when I sneaked out of the villa.”

“Why were you sneaking?” Gia asked.

“Oh!” Carolyn glanced around at the other woman and waved one hand wildly, the action making her roll slightly in Santo’s arms and one leg kick up. “So Bethany wouldn’t catch me and lecture me on playing beard again. Bethany likes to lecture,” she announced with displeasure. “She was always lecturing me in university. I should do this. I should do that. I should get laid. Blah blah blah.” She sighed suddenly and then admitted, “Mind you, I probably should have gotten laid. I might not have married that abusive, gold-digging piece of crap I did if I’d had more experience with men.”

Christian’s eyes widened incredulously at her words, they were just so not Carolyn, at least not the Carolyn he knew. Apparently they were the Carolyn who was uninhibited by overimbibing though. The alcohol had definitely loosened her tongue if she was talking so easily about her marriage. She’d refused to even allow the subject to be brought up before this.

“Never mind though,” Carolyn said, her good cheer returning. “I shall get that experience now. Is over forty too old to turn into a slut, do you think?” she asked and then peered at her feet waving on the other side of Santo’s arms and said, “Where’s my shoe?”

Christian glanced at her feet to see that while one had on it a very sexy, high-heeled sandal in the same shade of royal blue as her dress, the other was waving around bare.

“Zanipolo?” Julius said behind him.

“Shoe. On it,” the young keyboardist responded and dropped away.

“So,” Gia said with amusement, drawing Christian’s attention to the trio in front of him again. “You’re considering slutting around, are you?”

“Well, not as in sleeping with everything that moves or anything,” Carolyn assured her. “But I’ve begun to suspect sex might be more fun than it was with Robert, and I think I should definitely find out, don’t you?”

“Your ex wasn’t good in that area?” Gia asked, egging her on.

“Not!”
Carolyn snorted. “And it wasn’t just that he had a teeny-weeny either.”

“Teeny-weeny?” Santo choked out and she turned to him, nodding.

“It was like a short pencil next to Christian’s cucumber,” she informed him.

Christian was gaping in horror at this announcement when she added, “At least, Christian had a cucumber in my dream. I don’t know if he does in real life because he’s gay and wouldn’t show it to me if I asked, I mean not that I’d ask or anything,” she assured him quickly and then frowned and muttered, “I don’t think I was supposed to tell you he was gay. Or do you know about it too, like Zanipolo?”

“So your husband had a small
pene
?” Gia asked quickly to distract her, and Carolyn rolled slightly in Santo’s arms again to look at her.

“That means penis, right?” Carolyn asked and when Gia chuckled and nodded, she nodded as well. “Oh, yeah. But I suppose that wasn’t the real problem. I mean, they say it’s not the size but what you do with it, right?”

“Right,” Gia laughed.

“Well, he didn’t do much with it,” Carolyn assured her with a sad little sigh. “Or with anything else, for that matter. He didn’t even like to kiss. And I’ve discovered I like kissing. Christian is a really good kisser,” she announced. “He’s hot too. It’s really too bad he’s gay and everything. I could kiss him till the cows come home.”

Christian heard his father ask with confusion, “There are no cows here, are there?”

“It’s just an expression, dear,” Marguerite murmured. “It means a long time.”

“Good,” Julius decided. “They’ll be together a long time.”

“I bet Christian doesn’t have a teeny-weeny in real life either,” Carolyn said suddenly.

“I should say not. He got my genes,” Julius muttered behind him.

“It didn’t look like he did when he came from swimming the other day,” Carolyn announced, and then quickly added, “Not that I was, you know, staring or anything. But his swimsuit was clinging to him and—” She grimaced and confessed, “Oh, all right, I was looking, but I don’t normally look at men’s packages. I only did this time because I was still kind of wound up from the dream Bethany’s call interrupted. He was doing some wonderfully delicious things in that dream, and—Oh right, I’m really sorry about that, Gia, but I think I’ve been dream-raping your poor gay cousin. Not on purpose or anything, of course, but—Are you okay, Santo?” She turned to peer worriedly at the man carrying her into the villa as he began to make choking sounds.

When Santo didn’t respond, but continued what Christian suspected was stifled laughter, Carolyn swiveled to look at Gia. “Is he all right?”

Gia was laughing so hard she couldn’t answer. But Christian wasn’t laughing as he trailed them inside, and he glared at his mother when she caught his arm to stop him from following them upstairs.

“Let them go,” Marguerite said. “Santo will carry her to Gia’s room and she will help her dress while we talk in the kitchen.”

Sighing, Christian nodded, but watched the trio disappear into Gia’s room before moving again.

“Cheer up,” Raffaele said, slapping him on the back. “At least you know she likes your kisses . . . and other parts.”

“Ha-ha,” Christian muttered as he led the way into the kitchen.

“Right,” Marguerite announced as he entered. “Once Gia has helped her change we’ll all go down to dinner.”

“All?” He scowled. “We were supposed to be alone tonight.”

“Yes, but Carolyn’s very drunk at the moment, dear,” she pointed out.

“So?” he asked, glancing toward the door as Santo entered.

“So in your present state I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone with her until she’s sobered up a bit,” Marguerite said, drawing his attention again.

Stiffening, he asked, “What the hell do you mean
in my state
?”

“I think she’s referring to your cucumber . . . which is rather prominent at the moment,” Santo said calmly, and then eyes twinkling, added, “Not that I normally look at men’s packages.”

Christian quickly sat at the table as his mother and Raffaele dropped their gazes to his crotch. Carolyn’s comments about the delicious things he’d done to her in their shared dream had brought the memories roaring back to his mind. He had a semierection.

“Well, actually I hadn’t noticed his cucumber, prominent or not,” Marguerite said primly. “I was referring to his thoughts.”

“My thoughts are fine,” he insisted.

“Tell me you weren’t thinking of following them upstairs, dragging Carolyn to your room, and leaping ahead with your plan right away,” she challenged.

Christian grimaced. Okay, so maybe the thought had crossed his mind. Now that he’d determined to move ahead with his plan and bed her, he found himself less than patient to commence with it.

Taking his expression as an admission, Marguerite continued, “And if at dinner Carolyn continues with her most frank appraisal of your performance in the shared dreams, I don’t trust that the two of you wouldn’t end up passed out on the beach, or in the nearest public washroom.”

Christian grunted, glad he was sitting when under the table a certain part of his body responded to that suggestion. On the beach, in a public washroom— Hell, even in the bushes at the side of the road, any of them would do, so long as they included a naked Carolyn and his finally sinking himself into her warm, welcoming body.

“Show a little class, Christian,” Julius snapped. “You were raised better than to bed your life mate for the first time in the bushes, for God’s sake.”

Christian stiffened, and then glared at him for reading his mind, and said, “Oh, right, cause in the john of a train on the way to York is so much classier.”

“We didn’t do it there,” Julius responded at once.

“From the memories in your head when you two came out of the bathroom, it wasn’t from lack of trying,” Christian said dryly.

“Boys,” Marguerite said in a pained voice.

Glancing over, Christian spotted her embarrassed blush and immediately felt bad. While he’d been addressing his father, it had, of course, embarrassed her as well which he hadn’t intended.

“Sorry, Mom,” he muttered.

“As I was saying,” she said heavily. “Aside from ensuring you don’t end up passed out and vulnerable in a public location, I suspect that dinner will help sober Carolyn up. By the time you finish your set in the lounge, she should be clearheaded enough that you couldn’t be accused of taking advantage of her inebriated state.”

Christian stilled as he realized that he would indeed be doing that if he didn’t give her time to sober up first.

“Right,” he said on an expulsion of breath. He and Carolyn were having dinner with his family.