Fangs for Nothing (9 page)

“Okay,” Drake said, once recovered from the idea of wearing Zelda’s clothes. “Josie Lynn and I will go do that. While you figure out the best way to get Zelda to the hospital.”

“Don’t you think maybe Josie Lynn should stay here?” Stella said, giving Drake a look Josie Lynn didn’t quite understand, but she wondered if the redhead somehow knew he thought she was a part of last night’s debacle. Although Josie Lynn didn’t know how she would know. Drake couldn’t have told her. Maybe nerves were just getting to her.

“You know she’ll be fine with me,” Drake said again with that haughty air.

Stella looked like she wanted to argue, but then just shrugged. Clearly she knew that it would be a waste of breath to argue with him. Josie Lynn had already figured that out about him, too.

“Just be careful. Waldo is a little cranky.”

Not just Waldo, all gators,
Josie Lynn thought reluctantly following Drake to the door, but not before grabbing a bungee cord that dangled down from the bottom of the sex swing. She didn’t know what it was for on the swing, but she knew it just might come in handy when facing Waldo.

Chapter Seven

LOVE BITES, LOVE BLEEDS

D
RAKE
hesitated just slightly before he opened the door. He wasn’t scared about the alligator for himself. Shit, he was a vampire. He could take his knocks, even from a wannabe dinosaur. But Josie Lynn was another story. Being human, one bite could be fatal. And that scared him. A lot.

More than he really understood, actually. Sure, he wouldn’t want to see anyone maimed and killed by an alligator, but the idea of Cupcake getting hurt. That really bothered him.

Because you want to see her brought to justice in a way Captain Morgan never had been,
he told himself. This was about a lying woman getting what she deserved. This was about comeuppance.

Or so he would tell himself.

Slowly he opened the door, and there Waldo lay, his back to them, looking more like a stuffed gator than the real McCoy. Unfortunately he was dead center in the hallway, making it hard to stay to one side of him. They were going to have to get pretty damn close to him to make it past.

So that meant one thing; he was going to have to go first. That way if Waldo decided to go all prehistoric, he’d hopefully attack Drake first, while Josie Lynn fled to safety.

“Follow me,” he said, whispering, though he wasn’t sure why. Did alligators even have ears?

“Maybe I should go first,” Josie Lynn suggested, and Drake shot her an astonished look. Was she crazy? That would be like sending old Waldo an appetizer.

“No way.” He stepped out the door, staying to the left of the hallway, since that seemed to be the side with the most space between the wall and the animal. He walked carefully, being as quiet as he could. Which was very quiet. That whole vampire thing.

Behind him Josie Lynn was being quiet, too, although he could hear the soft pats of her feet on the bare wood. He just hoped his vampire hearing was more acute than the alligator’s.

Once he reached the beast, he debated where the best place to step was. It was like a bizarre game of Twister, except in this game if you didn’t pick the right spot, you didn’t collapse into a tangled pile of limbs and laughter. In this game, you just lost a limb.

He carefully took a step over the curve of the gator’s tail. Then another over his back leg. So far, so good. Waldo hadn’t even twitched. He took another small step, bringing him up to Waldo’s front leg. At this point the best bet seemed to be to quickly step over that front leg, then run as fast as possible past his head and the long snout.

He looked over his shoulder to tell Josie Lynn his strategy, and that was the exact moment he heard the swish of Waldo’s scaly skin on the floor and a noise that was somewhere between a snarl and a hiss.

Then Drake was on the floor right beside the beast. Shit, the damn thing had swung its head and knocked him down. Now he was right near that huge mouth, stuck between the animal’s side and the wall.

He lay still for a second, debating at this angle if he could shove himself backward fast enough to avoid those teeth. His vampire abilities made him very fast, but this was a weird position.

But before he could do anything, Josie Lynn was on top of the gator, her bare legs straddling its back. She lay down on the beast, pressing both her forearms down as hard as she could on the alligator’s snout.

“What the hell are you doing?” he cried.

“Shut up,” she yelled back. “Take this cord and wrap it around his snout.”

Drake didn’t argue, taking the bungee cord from her and circling it quickly around the alligator’s long nose and mouth.

“Higher up,” she said, still using all her strength to keep his huge jaws shut. “That’s it.”

When it was secured, Josie Lynn sat up, still straddling the beast, her legs bare and her coffee-colored hair tangled around her face. Her chest rose and fell as she struggled to catch her breath.

Holy shit, she was sexy.

His dick shot straight up against his stomach, painfully hard and swollen, but fortunately she didn’t seem to notice.

“How—how the hell did you learn to do that?” he asked, struggling to catch his own breath.

She smiled then, the first time he’d seen her genuinely smile.

“I’m Cajun. This is what we do.”

Damn, he was in love.

* * *

JOHNNY WAS PUSHING
his luck, and he knew it. But Lizette looked so disheveled and sexy that he couldn’t resist. Besides, the fact that she had said she wasn’t wearing panties had him hard in two seconds. All he could think was that his dick was currently so close to her pantyless deliciousness, and all it would take was a little tug of her skirt and he’d give her something she wouldn’t forget this time. He could take her wrist that was attached to his, raise it above her head on the hot pink wall behind her, and make her sore all over again in the best way possible.

Before he could do something that would get him slapped though, there was a knock on the door, causing Lizette to jerk away. “Yeah?” he called out.

Drake opened the door. “I thought I’d see if I could borrow some pants from Zelda.”

“Please do.” There was just far too much of Drake hanging around lately. “Where is the alligator? Is it watching TV or something?”

“Josie Lynn tied off his snout. She’s Cajun,” he said, like that explained everything. “She made it look easy, and basically made you look like a pussy.”

Great. “I was trying not to show off.” He turned back to Lizette. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Is Zelda awake yet?”

“No, but she’s definitely breathing. And just so you know, I don’t think Katie and Stella came bearing metal cutters.”

Johnny hadn’t really thought they would. They were undead musicians; they had stuff like guitar picks and guitar strings, drumsticks and plasma bags lying around, not tools designed to slice through metal. Although it might not be a bad idea to get some, given how this evening was going.

“Still no word from Saxon?” Drake asked

“Nope. Keep in touch, man. Somebody let me know how Zelda is doing and I’ll let you know if I find Saxon.” Normally Johnny would have clapped Drake on the back or something as he passed, but he’d just as soon keep his hands to himself at the moment.

Heading into the hallway, he glanced back toward the dungeon and was amazed to see that the alligator was on a leash hooked to the bathroom doorknob, his snout tied shut with the bungee cord from the sex swing. Josie Lynn was tossing her hair back and tugging Drake’s pirate shirt down toward her knees.

Wow. Impressive. He waved and continued in the opposite direction. He had to say, he was done with the freak factor for the night. He just wanted to find Saxon, make sure the little idiot was okay, and go home to his apartment that he wasn’t allowed to go home to. Damn it. This was going to be a long night, and he was really starting to be confused about his feelings toward Lizette. He alternated between extreme irritation and total horniness. Maybe the night before would work in his favor though. She had seemed really embarrassed by what happened, so maybe she wouldn’t argue if he said he wanted to go home. After they separated their cuffs, that is.

When they stepped out the front door of Zelda’s and paused on her front stoop, he realized Lizette was very quiet again, her lips pursed, bag clutched tightly against her chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just looked in my purse.”

“Yeah?” Johnny couldn’t even imagine what would put that look on her face. Actually, he could think of a lot of things, each more bizarre than the last, starting with dildos and ending with sherbet vomit.

She opened it up for him to see and he to admit, he was a little surprised. There was a thick stack of dollar bills. “I take it you didn’t have those before last night?”

“No! There must be several hundred dollars in small bills in here. Where did I get those from?”

He couldn’t even begin to guess. “I have no idea.” It was then he realized that the back of her shirt was darker than the front. “Hey, turn a little bit for me.” He studied the spot and realized that was why he was feeling so thirsty. Lizette had dried blood on her shirt.

“What, what is it?”

Crap. She wasn’t going to like this. “You have blood on the back of your shirt. A lot of it.”

“That’s why I keep smelling blood. I thought it was just Josie Lynn.”

“Huh.” Because really, what else could he say? “It’s only a couple of blocks to Saxon’s. Hopefully he just got cold feet last night or forgot where Zelda lived or something.”

“How could he forget where his fiancée lives?”

“Trust me, Saxon could.”

She bit her lip. “I’m going to call Dieter. Maybe he knows what happened last night.”

“Who is Dieter?” Johnny asked, even though he knew exactly who her beefcake assistant was. He just wanted to hear her say yet again that her relationship with him was strictly platonic.

“My assistant.”

“He has a thing for you,” Johnny told her, just to hear her protest, and because he was suddenly feeling particularly ornery.

“He does not!” Lizette actually starting walking faster than him, like she could walk ahead of his questions, even though she had no idea which direction they were going in.

A sudden thought occurred to Johnny, one he had to say he didn’t like at all. “How do you know it’s me you had sex with? I mean, we don’t know how long we’ve been handcuffed together.” Maybe he hadn’t had sex at all. Maybe that’s why he felt such an urgent need to hump Lizette. Maybe he’d been blue-balled. No. He couldn’t believe it. He’d made her come three times. That was the only story he was willing to believe.

Apparently Lizette agreed with him on that because she stopped walking, turned around, and slapped him.

Holy crap. His head snapped back and he stared at her, stunned, cheekbone aching. She had some force behind those little hands. “What the hell was that for?” He could honestly say he’d never been slapped before in his whole life. Not even by Bambi, and she had been hot tempered. He had assumed slapping was reserved for eighties soap operas and
Tom and Jerry
episodes.

It was kind of hot, he had to admit.

“For calling me a slut!” she said hotly, eyes flashing, mouth trembling with rage.

Whoa now. “I did not call you . . . that. I was just saying that maybe we were making an assumption, that we don’t know for sure what happened.”

“Why, are you horrified at the mere thought of having slept with me?”

Ninety-some years alive and he still couldn’t figure out women. Why would she get a stupid idea like that? “Of course not! I’m
fascinated
at the idea that we might have had sex. It just seems like the last way things would have turned out last night. You know, since we get along so well. But the very idea of seeing you naked and kissing your cherry lips has me totally hard.” And just to prove his point, he brought her hand with his and ground it onto his cock, which was starting to feel like a rattling pressure cooker.

“Oh!
Mon dieu
!”

“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Johnny assured her.

Lizette made a sound of exasperation, yanked her hand away, then whirled back around and started walking, muttering in French and dragging Johnny along with her.

He had no idea what she was saying, but he could guess it was filled with name-calling and her affronted dignity. “You’re going the wrong way,” he pointed out. “We need to turn left here.”

She practically hissed at him, then followed it up with more rapid-fire French. But she did turn left.

“It’s not my fault I don’t remember,” he told her, because he was feeling a little bitter about that. “I wish I did, trust me. And just for the record, I would be jealous if you slept with someone else.” It was true, and he figured it would win him points. Women liked jealous guys, didn’t they? They did in movies, anyways.

Johnny walked down Dumaine and pondered how it was that he’d never really understood women. His relationships such as they were had been like origami, full of little folds, then when he tugged one piece the whole thing collapsed. Here it was happening already with Lizette and he wasn’t even sure he actually liked her. He was pretty damn sure she didn’t like him.

He really hadn’t been passing judgment, but he knew he was right; they had no way of knowing if they’d really had sex. If she had banged someone else, well, she had been out of her mind. Hell, if she had banged him she had clearly been out of her mind. Not drugged, he was 100 percent positive she would not have come near him. He wouldn’t have hit on her sober either. Because he would have gotten slapped.

Johnny worked his jaw and fought the urge to grin. Yeah, she was hot, there was no doubt about it. The uptight paper-pusher had a fiery side, and he couldn’t help but want to explore that side of her.

Lizette had dug her phone out and was speaking into it in French, which made Johnny wonder if it was Dieter, because he could have sworn her assistant was German, but then again, what did he know? Besides, Germans probably spoke French. He was starting to feel like a real potato farmer next to her, which was stupid. He was a musician and chicks everywhere dug that. He wasn’t a loser. Even if he was walking behind her, attached to her like a disobedient dog.

The submissive lifestyle wasn’t for him, he had to say. He was happy for Saxon if that was his thing, but Johnny didn’t like to take orders. He liked to coax and tease and charm his way to get what he wanted. What he wanted right now was Lizette, naked, below him, quivering, her plump lips parted.

“Hey, brother, what’s up?” A man on the corner of St. Philip and Bourbon Street outside of Lafitte’s gave him a wave and a friendly smile. “Where’s your bucket tonight? My wife loved the picture of her with you guys.”

Okay. What picture might that be? And why the hell would he have a bucket? Johnny figured this was a good opportunity to gather some information. He touched Lizette’s arm so she would stop marching down the street. “That’s awesome. I’d love to see it if you have it on your phone.”

“Sure, sure, no problem.” The guy was wearing a golf shirt with large sweat stains in both pits, and he wiped his forehead with a hankie. “I’ll tell you, it’s hot out here. Okay, let me pull it up on my phone. The wife is inside having a hurricane. Little hair of the dog, if you know what I mean.”