Nocturnal Urges (Nocturnal Urges, Book One) (7 page)

“Shit,” she said, and peered through the peephole.

Ryan’s chiseled face appeared in the distorted fisheye view of the peephole.

Isabel’s heart started beating fast. Quickly she unlocked the door, and there he was, looking out of place in her ordinary hallway. “Miss Nelson,” he said, in that warm baritone voice.

“Hello,” she said. “What brings you here?”

Ryan shifted his feet a little. “I just came to see if you were recovering all right,” he said.

Isabel stepped back to give him room to enter, but he didn’t move. “Oh, of course,” she said. “Please come in.”

Ryan stared at her a moment, and burst out laughing. It was a rich, rolling laugh, the kind that inspires half-smiles just from hearing it. “Oh, no,” he said, as he attempted to hide it behind his hand. “No, Miss Nelson, we don’t need to be invited in.”

Isabel felt quite silly, and she knew her face was reddening. “I’m sorry, I don’t know much about…you,” she said, smiling.

Ryan stepped in, and she gratefully closed the door. “It’s all right. The movies have done ridiculous things to us, and we have done little to change that,” he said.

“When you hesitated out there, I thought—”

Ryan nodded. “I was just wondering if your husband was here, and I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

This time it was Isabel’s turn to laugh. She stifled it as quickly as possible. “Oh no, he’s not my husband,” she said, giggling. “He’s my boyfriend.”

“Ah. Forgive me,” Ryan said.

Isabel suddenly felt awkward, standing in her entryway with Ryan. “Please, have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the living room. Ryan inclined his head in an oddly old-fashioned way and walked over to the large white couch.

Isabel moved over by a huge papasan chair, avoiding sitting on the couch with Ryan. Even in this calm, normal environment, she could feel the electricity around him, as though he were touching her from across the room.

The silence grew slightly awkward. “Can I offer you something to drink?” Isabel asked, and immediately felt like an idiot. “I mean… Oh dear.”

Ryan covered his mouth again.

“You’re laughing at me,” Isabel accused, smiling.

Ryan shrugged. “I would be quite happy with a soda, if you have them,” he said.

Isabel quickly retrieved two cans of diet soda and gave him one. “I always seem to be making a fool of myself around you,” she said, opening her soda with a slight hiss-pop that seemed unnaturally loud, even over the music.

“I would hardly say so,” Ryan said. “Any woman who likes the Beatles cannot be a fool.”

Isabel blinked. “You know this music?” she asked.

Ryan nodded. “I saw them in concert, in 1964,” he said. “A powerful experience.”

Isabel shook her head. “You are always surprising me.”

This time, it was Ryan who seemed off-balance. “You are expecting a long black cape and Transylvanian accent,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Isabel shrugged. “The décor at Nocturnal Urges, the stories around…your people,” she said. “What’s real, and what’s just from the movies?”

Ryan leaned back a little. “The club plays up the stereotypes of the urban vampire because that’s what the marks want,” he said. “It is all designed to meet expectations, down to the fingernails.”

Isabel instinctively glanced down at Ryan’s tapered, carefully manicured nails. “They’re not really like that?”

“They grow faster than yours,” Ryan said, extending his hand for a better view. “But they can be trimmed, the same as yours. Fiona requests that we keep ours in their ‘natural state’.”

“I’m being so rude, asking all these questions,” Isabel said. “You ask me something so I’ll feel like less of an ass.”

“Are you truly all right?” Ryan asked immediately. “I have been quite concerned.”

She nodded. “I’m recovering nicely. I’ll even be bite-worthy in a few weeks.”

Ryan shook his head. “That would probably be a bad idea.”

Isabel quashed the sudden surge of disappointment. “It’s my turn to ask a question,” she said, grinning playfully. “What about garlic?”

“My favorite appetizer is garlic bread with cheese,” he said, smiling. “I have grown quite fond of Italian food as well.”

“Your turn,” Isabel said, smiling. She was smiling so much she felt her face begin to grow sore, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

“How old are you?” Ryan asked.

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Isabel replied. “I’m twenty-five. Which probably sounds very young to you, but I’m starting to feel…not like a teenager again.”

Ryan shook his head. “When I was twenty-five, the world was a potato farm four miles from a tiny village in Ireland,” he said. “It seems many worlds from where I am now.”

There was a sadness to his tone, a solemnity that seemed to settle over him. “I’m sorry,” Isabel said softly.

“Don’t be,” Ryan said. “Sometimes we think we leave our pain behind, and sometimes…it follows us. Either way, it must be borne.”

Isabel returned to more casual topics. “Is it true that holy things hurt you? Holy water, crosses?”

“Holy water is meant for reverence, not splashing us. I’ve never recoiled from a cross in my life,” Ryan said. “In my life, I was a devout Catholic. But the church has understandably been reluctant to accept my people.”

“You say that like an activist,” Isabel said.

“Not like Drew,” Ryan said immediately. “I see nothing wrong in the sharing of pleasure without the sharing of souls. But he and I differ.”

Isabel flushed a little, remembering that huge sensation she had brushed against, too much, far too much. “And the sun?” Isabel asked, staring at his pale skin.

Ryan inclined his head somberly. “I will not burst into flames in the sun,” he said. “However, it is not…recommended.”

“What happens?” Isabel asked.

“Sunburn.”

The matter-of-fact answer threatened to set off Isabel’s giggles again. “Next you’ll be telling me you can see yourself in the mirror,” she said.

Ryan shook his head. “That is the one aspect that science cannot explain,” he said. “All else—the blood cravings, our unusual physical attributes—it can all be deduced from our varied physiology. But why light reflections from us do not appear in mirrors… That science cannot explain.”

Isabel cocked an eyebrow skeptically. “You really don’t show up in a mirror?”

Ryan glanced around, and stood up. He crossed over to her fireplace, and stood before the beveled mirror above it. Isabel rose and stood next to him. She saw only herself. Still, she was suddenly very conscious of his presence beside her, and she felt a surging in her blood that she quelled with a physical effort.

“Fascinating,” she breathed, and turned to see Ryan moving back to the couch. “It’s so strange that no one can figure it out.”

Ryan shrugged. “They also don’t know why a duck’s quack doesn’t echo,” he said.

That did it for Isabel. She giggled again, like a young girl, and suddenly she
felt
young, nervous as a virgin, with the same heat beneath her skin that she first felt as a teenager. Ryan hid his smile behind his hand again, and she wished he wouldn’t. She could tell he had a nice smile.

“It is my turn,” Ryan said softly. “Why did you come to me that night?”

Isabel stared at him for a moment, but the honesty in his gaze was too much. She dropped her eyes. “I was alone for the night and I wanted to try it again,” she said.

Ryan was silent a moment. “Both true and not true,” he said. “You are a complicated people.”

“Americans? Humans?” Isabel asked.

“Women.”

Isabel giggled again. “Duane would agree with you,” she said.

Ryan was silent again, as though he were waiting. She sipped her soda, avoiding his eyes. “Is it so unusual to have repeat customers?” she asked.

“Not at all,” Ryan said. “Without regulars, the trade would quickly dry up.”

Isabel shrugged. “Then why am I so unusual?”

“You know why,” he said, and his voice was more intense, not the soothing warm-flannel voice but a penetrating deep heat that was nearly physical.

“No, I don’t,” Isabel said. “I wanted it again, I could do it again, why not?”

“Because that’s not all it was.”

Isabel shook her head, willfully avoiding his eyes. “Yes it was,” she said. “It was great, don’t get me wrong. But it was…”

“It was more,” Ryan insisted. “Something I haven’t…”

Isabel stood up quickly. “No, it was just an orgasm, a good come, that’s it,” she said rapidly. “That’s all. I’m sorry if you thought it was something different, truly I am, because you seem very nice and you’re very kind to worry about me, but it was just another bite, that’s all.”

Ryan was standing behind her, she sensed him, and somehow she sensed uncertainty and turmoil as well, as though she were feeling his emotions. Or were those her own?

“I’m Duane’s girl,” she said desperately.

Ryan’s hand was on her arm, not pulling, just touching with that light electricity that sank through her skin. “No woman belongs to a man,” he said softly.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

Ryan was standing too close.

“Please go,” she said, her voice low.

Ryan hesitated. “Do you want me to go?”

She dipped her head. “No,” she said frankly. “I don’t, and that’s why you should go.”

Ryan stood there for another moment, and then his hand was gone. “Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds,” he said, and a few agonizing seconds later, she heard her front door close gently.

Only then did she turn back to the empty living room, suddenly devoid of whatever had filled it a few moments ago. Only then did she let herself relax, and realized her hands were shaking.

What is this power he has over me?

She suddenly scrambled to take the soda cans into the kitchen, empty the soda down the sink drain and put the cans in the recycling bin. She looked around for any signs of Ryan’s visit, a pillow out of place, a blood smear on the wall…
Oh, very funny, Isabel, you’re completely losing it.

Still, the fact that she was so worried about Duane finding out was a clear sign that Ryan was a lot more than a marital aid with teeth, and if her own confusion wasn’t enough of a deterrent, Duane’s irritability since the night of her bite should be. He had not been directly cross with her, but he had been jumpy, easily frustrated and sometimes she saw him looking at her in a funny way.

I can’t see Ryan again, not for any reason
, she thought.

A sharp knock at the door, and she jumped nearly out of her skin.
It’s Ryan, he’s come back
, she thought, and went to the door, prepared to be firm.

She opened the door, and Duane leaped forward, sweeping her up into his arms. “Duane!” she cried out, half in surprise, half in relief. “You scared me to death!”

“I got the night off,” he said, setting her back down.

“I see that,” Isabel replied. “Jeez, you know how to give a girl a heart attack. Come in, I should have enough stroganoff for two.”

* * * * *

“Mmm,” Isabel said.

“That’s an encouraging mmm,” Duane said. His fingers pressed against the muscles of her shoulders, massaging and relaxing.

“That’s an I’m-tired-and-don’t-want-to-do-the-dishes mmm,” Isabel hinted.

“Don’t do them,” Duane said. “They’ll wait till morning.”

“You got a lot to learn about what turns a woman on,” she teased.

“Oh yeah?” Duane said, trailing his fingers down her back to the places on either side that tickled. “Rubber gloves, huh? That’s what you like?”

Isabel giggled helplessly as he tickled her sides. “Stop, no more,” she gasped. “No fair.”

“Not my fault I’m not ticklish,” Duane said. “Be at my mercy, wench.”

“Never,” Isabel declared, and he kept tickling her until she scrambled away. “Mitts off, evil one.”

“Come now, wench, sit by my foot like a good woman should,” Duane said.

Isabel rolled her eyes. “If I wasn’t so tired, I’d smack you for that one,” she said.

Just as she sat next to him on the couch, the doorbell rang.

“Lord, what now?” Isabel groaned. She got up and walked over to the door, muttering, “This better be good” to herself.

Freitas was at the door, in her work suit and waving her badge. “Sorry to disturb you, Isabel,” she said. “Official stuff.”

“Detective,” Duane said from behind Isabel, and she made a mental note that this time he’d remembered Anne’s rank. “What can we do for you?”

“It’s just the two of you?” Freitas asked.

“Yes,” Isabel said. “Why? What’s going on?”

“Any visitors tonight?” Freitas’ eyes were doing the cop stare again, and Isabel felt herself withering.

“No, just Duane here,” Isabel lied. She felt the lie as if it pasted a banner over her head, as if neon lie detectors glared over her, and certainly Freitas was picking up on it.
I’ll come to your office and tell you all about it tomorrow
, she pleaded mentally with Freitas. But somehow, she knew Duane would go ballistic if he knew Ryan had been there.