Bloody Bones (35 page)

29

R
ONNIE HAD DRAGGED
me into Victoria's Secret. I had pointed out that no one would see my underwear or my nightclothes except other women in the gym locker room. Ronnie had replied, “You'll see them.” The logic escaped me but she had talked me into a robe.

It was burgundy, the color of wine-dark peonies. It glowed against my pale skin and matched some of the bruises blossoming on my back. Nothing like getting thrown into a wall to give you a little color. The bite mark on my back wasn't very deep. Hard for humanoid fangs to sink in from that angle. The fang marks on my wrist were deeper. They were two neat little holes, almost dainty. It didn't hurt as much as it should have. Maybe vampires did have painkillers in their saliva, or maybe it was the fangs.

I still couldn't believe that I'd let him sink fangs into me. Shit.

I pulled the robe closer around me. The material was heavy enough to be cozy on a winter evening, and had wide
silky cuffs, and more silk lining the edges. It looked vaguely Victorian, a little masculine. I looked delicate in it, like a Victorian doll that hadn't gotten completely dressed yet. I put on an oversized black t-shirt under the robe. It ruined some of the effect, but it beat the heck out of wearing nothing but a robe and underwear out to greet the boys.

I retrieved the Browning from the back of the stool where it had sat during my shower. I carried it with me to the bedroom, and hesitated. I always went armed. Hell, I slept with a gun, but I didn't feel like slipping on a holster. I put the Browning away and settled for slipping the Firestar into the robe pocket. Made the cloth hang funny, but if something nasty came through the door I was ready for it.

Jean-Claude was standing at the window when I opened the bedroom door. He had opened the drapes, and was leaning against the window's edge staring out into the darkness. He turned when the door opened, though I knew he'd heard me before that.

“Ma petite,
you look lovely.”

“It's the only robe I own,” I said.

“Of course,” he said. His face had that amused mask on it again; this time I would have liked to know what he was thinking. His midnight blue eyes were very intense; they didn't match the nonchalant expression. Maybe I didn't want to know what he was thinking.

“Where are Larry and Jason?”

“They have come and gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“Jason had a sudden craving, and Larry drove him in the Jeep.”

I just looked at him. “There is such a thing as room service.”

“It is the wee hours of the morning,
ma petite.
The room service menu is somewhat limited. Jason has donated blood twice to me tonight; he needed protein.” Jean-Claude smiled. “It was either take-out, or he could eat Larry. I thought you'd prefer take-out.”

“Very funny. You shouldn't have sent them alone.”

“We are safe from Serephina tonight,
ma petite,
and as long as they stay in town, safe from Xavier.”

“How can you be so sure?” I crossed my arms over my stomach.

He leaned his back against the window and looked at me. “Your Monsieur Kirkland handled himself well tonight. I think you worry unnecessarily about him.”

“One night of heroics doesn't keep you safe,” I said.

“It will be dawn soon,
ma petite;
even Xavier cannot bear the light of day. All the vampires will be seeking shelter. They will have no time to chase our young men.”

I stared at him, trying to read past his pleasant face. “I wish I was as sure as you seem to be.”

He smiled then, and pushed away from the wall. He slid out of his jacket and let it fall to the rose-colored carpet.

“What are you doing?”

“Undressing.”

I jerked a thumb at the bedroom, “Undress in there.”

He began unbuttoning his shirt.

“In the other room, right now,” I said.

He pulled the white shirt out of his pants, working the last few buttons as he walked towards me. The flesh of his chest and stomach had more color than the shirt. He was pumped up and human-looking on blood, part of it mine. The dried bloodstains that had soaked through the shirt marred the pale perfection of his body.

I expected him to try to kiss me, or something, but he walked past me. The back of the shirt was brownish with dried blood. He peeled it off his skin with a sound like tearing. He dropped the shirt on the carpet and walked into the bedroom.

I stood there staring after him. There had been white scars on his back. At least I thought that's what they were. Hard to tell through all the blood. He left the bedroom door open, and in a few minutes I heard water running in the bathtub.

I sat down in one of the straight-back chairs. I wasn't sure what else I was supposed to do. Water ran for a long time, then silence, then sloshing water. He was in the tub. He hadn't closed the bathroom door first. Great.

“Ma petite,”
he called.

I sat there for a minute, unwilling to move.

“Ma petite,
I know you are there. I can hear you breathing.”

I walked to the edge of the bedroom door, very careful not to look inside. I leaned my back against the wall and crossed my arms. “What do you want?”

“There seem to be no clean towels.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“Could you call down to housekeeping and have some sent up?”

“I guess so.”

“Thank you,
ma petite.”

I stomped over to the phone, pissed. He'd known there were no clean towels before he got into the tub. Hell, I'd known there were no clean towels, but I'd been so busy listening to him splash around in the water I hadn't thought of it.

I was as mad at me as I was at him. He was always a tormenting son of a bitch. I was supposed to watch myself around him better than this. I was in a hotel room that looked like a freaking bridal suite with Jean-Claude all naked and soapy in the next room. After what I'd seen with Jason, there shouldn't have been this much sexual tension in the air, but there was. Maybe it was habit, or maybe Larry was right. I just didn't believe that Jean-Claude was a rotting corpse.

I called for more towels.

They would be happy to bring some up. No one bitched about the time. No one questioned. You can always tell how much you're paying for a room by how little they complain.

A maid brought me four big, soft towels. I looked at her for a full minute, hesitating. I could have her take the towels into Jean-Claude.

She said, “Ma'am?”

I took the towels, said thanks, and closed the door. I just couldn't let a strange woman see that I had a naked vampire in my tub. I wasn't even sure the vampire part was what made it embarrassing. Good girls do not end up with naked
male anything in their bathtubs at four something in the morning. Maybe I wasn't a good girl. Maybe I never had been.

I hesitated at the bedroom door. The room was dark. The only light came from the bathroom, spilling in an oblong across the carpet.

I crushed the towels to my chest, took a deep breath, and stepped into the room. I could see the bathtub from here, but mercifully not all of it. I had a glimpse of white porcelain and a mound of white bubbles. Just seeing the bubble bath made the muscles in my shoulders relax a little. Bubbles can hide a multitude of sins.

I stopped at the bathroom door.

Jean-Claude lay back against the edge of the tub. His black hair was wet and had obviously been cleaned. Strands of it clung to his bare shoulders. His arms lay propped on the edge of the bathtub, his head resting against the dark tile of the wall. One pale hand was suspended in midair as if reaching for something, but the hand was utterly limp. His eyes were closed, making black half-moons against his pale cheeks. Beads of water clung to his face and what I could see of his body. He looked almost asleep.

His knee came up through the mound of bubbles, a surprising glimpse of bare wet skin. He turned his head and opened his eyes. The midnight blue of his eyes seemed darker. Maybe it was the way the water made his hair seem heavier, blacker.

I took a shallow breath and said, “Here are the towels.”

“Could you place them here, please?” He gestured with that one half-suspended hand.

“Here” was the closed top of the toilet, which was close enough to the tub for grabbing. “I'll put them on the edge of the sink.”

“I'll drip water all over the floor getting them from there,” he said. His voice was neutral, no vampiric tricks, almost no tone at all.

He was right, and I was being silly. He wouldn't grab me and ravish me. If that'd been the plan, he could have done that years ago.

I placed the towels on the stool, eyes studiously anywhere but the tub.

“You must have questions about tonight,” he said.

I glanced at him. The water on his naked torso caught the light like quicksilver. Suds clung to his chest, just under one nipple. I had a horrible urge to brush off the bubbles. I stepped back until I was standing by the far wall.

“It's not like you to offer answers,” I said.

“I am feeling generous tonight.” His voice had that quality that voices get when they are edging towards sleep.

“If you weren't naked in a tub of bubble bath, would you be offering to answer questions?”

He smiled then, a quick, familiar expression. “Perhaps not, but if I must answer your ravenous curiosity, isn't it more fun this way?”

“Fun for whom?”

“Both of us, if you would only admit it.”

That got a smile from me, and I didn't want to smile. I didn't want to be enjoying watching him all soapy and wet. I wanted to be afraid of him, and I was, but I also wanted him. Wanted to run my hands down his wet flesh, wanted to touch what lay under those bubbles. I didn't want intercourse. I couldn't imagine that with him, but I wanted to do a little exploring. I hated that. He was a corpse; surely what I'd seen tonight convinced me of that.

“You're frowning,
ma petite;
why?”

“I asked you if the two rotting vampires were illusion, you said no. I asked if your form was real, you said yes. Both forms are real, you said.”

“That is true,” he said.

“Are you a rotting corpse?”

He settled lower in the warm, soapy water, drawing his arms into it, until only his head showed above the surface of the water. “That is not one of my forms.”

“That isn't an answer.”

He raised a pale hand from the water, a handful of bubbles cupped like a snowball. “There are different vampiric abilities,
ma petite;
you know that.”

“What's that have to do with it?”

He raised his other hand and began to play with the bubbles, trailing them from hand to hand. “Janos and his two female companions are a different type of vampire than I am. Than most of us are. They are much rarer. If you ever see me as a rotted corpse, I will be well and truly dead. They can rot and reform, and it makes them much harder to kill. The only true surety is fire.”

“Volunteering an awful lot of information, aren't you?”

He lowered his hands in the water, washing the soap away. He sat up a little straighter; suds clung to his body. “Perhaps I am afraid you will think that what happened with Jason would happen with us.”

“We will never test that theory,” I said.

“You sound so sure of that,” he said. “Your lust perfumes the air, and yet you truly believe that we will never make love. How can you want me almost as much as I want you, yet be sure we will never know each other's bodies?”

I wasn't sure I had an answer for that one. I slid down the wall and sat with my knees drawn up to my chest. The pocket with the gun in it clunked against the wall. I moved the gun to a better position and said, “We just won't, Jean-Claude, not ever. I just can't.” A part of me regretted that, but only part.

“Why,
ma petite?”

“Sex is about trust. I'd have to trust someone implicitly to have sex with them. I don't trust you.”