Vampire in Paradise (14 page)

“Whaaat?”
Yolanda? Oh Lord! She must have thought someone was giving away her products while she was getting a massage. There goes a repeat customer!
“First, that ‘for my sins’ repeat nonsense, now bats in hell, I don’t understand half of what you say.” Just then, she noticed that his towel had slipped and was in danger of falling off. “Fix it,” she gurgled, motioning toward his lower region.

“Sorry,” he said, not at all sorry, if the grin on his face was any indication, as he redid the knot at his hip.

“Listen, are you here for a massage? If not, I have better things to do than—”

He hopped onto the table and swung his legs like a little kid. “I’m game if you are.”

“Game? Game? My work is not a game. I’ll have you know—”

“I pick number five. Full body massage,” he said, pointing to the sign on the wall.

“Why?”

“Why not? Methinks I have a kink in my . . .” He waggled his eyebrows, then said, “. . . shoulders.”

“Oh, just lie down. And shut up, I don’t want to hear anything more about ‘our’ problems.”

He lay down face first, his feet extending over the bottom of the table, his face resting on his folded forearms, but then he raised his head. “Shall I take off my towel first?”

“No!” She gave him a very unprofessional shove to his fool head.

“This should be fun,” he said.

At least he hadn’t added, “For my sins!”

M
ichael was going to have a fit.

Sigurd’s intentions had been noble—well-intentioned, leastways—when he’d come looking for Marisa this morning. He needed to end this whole situation regarding Marisa and Harry Goldman and cleanse her sin taint so that he could move on to other more demanding matters, like destroying demon vampires in paradise.

But what did he do instead? Set himself up for a massage. A massage, for the love of a troll! Angels did not get massages, nor did vampires, as far as he knew. Vikings, on the other hand, would be game for anything with even a hint of sex. And the rubbing of bare skin betwixt a man and woman implied sex, in Sigurd’s sex-deprived opinion, no matter what Marisa claimed.

First thing this morning, he’d resolved to seek out the bothersome woman and explain in alarming detail if need be that she was in dire danger and must get off the island. Barring that, he must remove her himself.

To his dismay, she was already gone from her sleeping quarters when he arrived just past dawn. At work, massaging, he was told by her Norse friend, Inga, with a wide yawn. He’d awakened the woman from a sound slumber by transporting himself into the bedchamber and just barely prevented her from shrieking her head off by clamping a hand over her mouth. Furthermore, Inga had informed him, once he’d calmed her down by stating emphatically that he meant no harm to her or her friend, that Marisa would go from massaging to waitressing, all day long.

“Is there no time when Marisa will be free?” he had asked.

“Not if she can help it,” was Inga’s irksome answer.

Well, if Marisa wouldn’t fit into his schedule, he would fit into hers. With a massage! Not that he really intended to get a massage. Just the thought of it turned his blood hot, and he had been thinking on it a lot since the idea had first entered his fool head hours ago. He’d performed routine medical duties in his office all morning, and this was the first chance he had to get away. A lunch break, he’d told Karl, who snorted his opinion.

And now here he lay on her massage table, almost naked. His face rested on a small pillow, his arms dangling over the sides of the table. His raging enthusiasm was a painful lump under him, a reminder that this seemingly innocent activity was forbidden fruit to a long celibate vampire angel.

Still, he was tempted.

Behind him, he heard Marisa snicker and say something under her breath about donut holes. He had been thinking about fruit,
forbidden
fruit, not sweet treats, like donuts. Same thing, he supposed.

“Marisa, I did not really come here for a massage.”

“You could have fooled me. You’re lying on my massage table, naked except for a little towel over your butt, and about five miles of muscles waiting to be rubbed.”

“Um,” he barely choked out.

“What are those scars, or bumps, on your shoulder blades?” she asked. “Were you in an accident?”

He muttered something about “Run-in with an archangel. Would you believe me if I said that I might grow wings there someday?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was a mermaid and I forgot to bring my tail with me?”

“Sarcasm again!” he complained. “I need to talk with you about something important.”

“Talk, talk, talk! What is it about your need for lecturing me?” He could hear her sigh from the other side of the room where she was fiddling with the dials on a sound system that burst into the most inappropriate, or was it appropriate, song of all. “Sexual Healing.” Hah! It would take more than the savage beats of modern music to heal his sexual needs. “You scheduled a massage, and that’s what you are hot damn going to get. I’m tired of hearing about the need for talk.”

“Marisa! If you lay your hands on me, just a little bit, my half cockstand will be standing tall. And you do not want to witness
that
.”

“Oh puh-leeze! I don’t know what a cockstand is, but I can guess. Do you think you’re the first man to make a crude suggestion during a perfectly unsexual massage?”

Unsexual? She is demented.
“All I know is, if you even breathe on my bare skin, I will be roaring my enthusiasm.”

“Roar away! It won’t get you anywhere.”

“Are you really that daft to challenge me so? I tell you true, m’lady, if you stand close enough that those pointed nipples are anywhere near my face, I will surely take a nip, and I do not mean a fanging.”

She came closer, the lackwit woman! “I do not have pointy nipples.”

He turned his face on his still folded arms and opened one eye to stare at said breasts. “Definitely pointy,” he concluded.

She shook her head as if he were a hopeless case.

He was. “If I inhale one more whiff of your honey-ginger woman scent, I will probably swoon like a girling.”

He could swear she giggled. “You’re teasing me.”

“Teasing, am I? Woman, if this need I have of you grows any bigger, I will be compelled to lift you up onto the table, under me, and I will surely have to swive you three ways to Muspell.”

“What is Muspell?”

“Norse Hell.”

There was an extended silence in the room then. He turned his head this way and that and could not see her. So he sat up and saw that she was propped up against the door a short distance from the bottom of the massage table. On her face was an expression of . . . He could not tell for sure. Interest? Or outrage?

It did not matter. He could not stay in this small, confined space with her much longer without doing something he would later regret. Well, mayhap not regret so much as have to repent. Michael would know, and Michael would punish, sure as sin.

He stood and dropped the towel.

She swallowed.

“Do not worry. I am just donning my outer garments so you will no longer be tempted by my assets.”

“Egotistical buffoon,” she muttered, but he noticed that she did not turn her face away to avoid looking at his nakedness.

Once he was dressed in denim braies, an old Navy SEALs T-shirt that Trond had left behind at the castle last year, and athletic shoes, he said, “Bottom line here, Marisa. You obviously need money, or you would not be here on this bloody island.”

“Bloody?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Bloody, blasted, damn, whatever.”

“You know that I need money?”

“Of course. Why else would you consider spreading your thighs, your toes pointing to the high heavens, for such a man as Harry Goldman? And yes, nipples and toes can both point.”

She bristled. “It’s none of your business who I open my thighs for, you crude sonofabitch.”

He was the one who bristled now, at her crudeness. He might be a Viking, crude as any man, but he did not appreciate such traits in his women.
I mean, any woman. Not mine. Definitely not mine. It was a slip of the tongue, Michael.
“If it is bloody lucre that will lure you away from this island, then I will get it for you,” he conceded with ill grace. It went against the grain for him to bribe the woman.

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“How much? What would it require for you to go home?”

“Seventy thousand dollars.”

That much? She prizes her body highly, I must say.
But what he said was “A pittance.”

“What?” she repeated. “You consider seventy thousand dollars a pittance? I thought you said that you aren’t a wealthy man.”

“I am not.”

“Listen, this is a pointless conversation. I hardly know you, and I’m beginning to find your constant interfering in my life insulting, if not a bit on the stalkish side.”

“I am a protector, not a stalker.”

“Oh really? And what would you expect for that amount of money?”

Under normal circumstances, everything. But it has been a long, long time since I was normal, if ever I was.
“Nothing.”

“Bullshit! At least with Harry, I would know the cost. With you, it would be an open-ended nightmare.”

“That is a ridiculous assumption. Even if you are right, why would a deal with Harry be more palatable than one with me?”

“I don’t know. It just feels that way. Do you really have that kind of cash on hand?”

“Well, not on hand, precisely . . .”

“That’s what I thought.”

“. . . but I could probably get it.”

“Probably?” She laughed. “This conversation is over.”

“This conversation has not nearly begun.” He inhaled and exhaled for patience. Time for the hard truth. “If you must know, I am not really a doctor.”

“Surprise, surprise. I told you from the beginning that you didn’t look like any doctor I’ve ever met.”

“Well, I
am
a doctor, but more important, I am a vampire.” He flashed his fangs, just for emphasis.

She should have jumped away, or shrieked with shock. She did neither. “Ho-hum! That trick is getting old.”

He crossed his eyes at her stubbornness. “A vampire angel, to be more precise.”

“Is that a fact? No offense, big boy, but you are the farthest thing from an angel I have ever seen. Not that I’ve come in contact with many angels.”

“I’ll give you facts, you stubborn wench. This island is teeming with demon vampires. Lucipires. We call them Lucies, for short.”

“You named a demon vampire Lucy. Like,
I Love Lucy
? Is there a Ricky demon, too, and how about Ethel and Fred?”

“No, you witless female. Lucies, as in L. U. C. I. E. S.”

She crossed her eyes, just to mock him, he supposed.

“You jest, when this is a dead serious matter. There are demon vampires, I tell you. Big, monstrous creatures with scales and red eyes, and tails and, yes, sharp fangs. Creatures that seek out sinners, such as you are determined to be.” There! Let her muse on that for a moment. Let her realize the danger she faced on this island.

She just stared at him for a long moment, and then she burst out laughing.

Not the reaction he was hoping for.

Marisa blinked, then blinked again.

She was back in her bungalow, lying on her bed. How she had gotten there, she had no idea. A second ago she’d been in the massage room with Sigurd and . . .
Sigurd!

Jumping up, she stomped into the living room. Sure enough, there was the doctor himself, bent over, examining the interior of their small fridge. The seat of his jeans stretched tight over a butt that was beyond spectacular.

Holy Levi Strauss!

“You have no beer,” he said, straightening.

“No kidding. We have no food, either, and I’m starving. I didn’t have a chance to eat breakfast, and—” She glanced at her watch, “Yikes! I have only two hours to shower, alter my waitress uniform, make a phone call to my daughter, and . . . What are you doing?”

He was speaking into his cell phone. “Calling for lunch.”

“They don’t do room service to the employee bungalows.”

He arched his brows at her, as in
Watch me!
and continued placing an order. “Don’t forget the beer, Tillie. Yes, Sam Adams will do. Or Heineken. Sure, send both.” Placing a hand over the phone, he asked her, “What do you want to drink with your sandwich? Beer okay with you?”

“No, a diet soda. And I don’t want a sandwich. I want a salad. A Caesar salad with dressing on the side. No anchovies,” she said, just to be contrary.

To her surprise, he repeated the order into the phone, then concluded, “Thank you. A half hour will be fine. I owe you.” Followed by a sexy laugh.

Marisa could only imagine what the person at the other end of the call had suggested. She tilted her head to the side in question.

“That was Tillie—Matilda Thorsson—head chef in the hotel kitchen. I did a favor for her this morning. She forgot to bring her migraine prescription.”

A likely story.
“Thorsson? Another Viking? Are you people everywhere?”

“’Twould seem so.”

“And are all of you vampires or demons or angels?” she inquired mockingly.
And drop-dead gorgeous?

“Hardly. We will continue that particular discussion, and perhaps you will be less inclined to make jests.”

What particular discussion? Oh. He means that nonsense about the danger of fangy creatures on the island.
She’d been distracted by his leaning his wide shoulders against the wall, extending his long legs out, and crossing his Adidas 550–clad feet at the ankles. They were really big shoes.
And, no, I am not going to make that clichéd extrapolation.
“I’ll give you ten minutes, and then you’re out of here.” She glanced pointedly at her watch.

“Pfff! I would only need five minutes if you would listen with an open mind.”

“Pfff! If my mind were any more open, I would be afraid of rain.”

“More jests!” He shook his head at her, then sat down in one of the wicker chairs, despite its being too small and uncomfortable for his large size. He wore a drab green, Navy SEAL T-shirt tucked into jeans that were faded to a pale blue, almost the color of his compelling eyes . . . eyes that were flashing with irritation at her.

Hah! I’m the one who has reason to be irritated.
“How did I get here?” She motioned with her hand to indicate the bungalow. “Last thing I recall was you telling me some ridiculous story about vampires. Did you knock me out or something?”

“Or something. You were laughing so hard I was afraid you would wet your panties. You
are
wearing something under that wanton garment,
aren’t
you?” His eyes locked on her lower region in the revealing white jumpsuit she still wore, where a discerning person could see there was no panty line. And he was obviously very discerning.

“Of course I’m wearing an undergarment,” she said, and walked behind the wicker sofa, which shielded her, somewhat. She wore a thong. Not that he needed to know that. “But you still haven’t answered my question. How did I get here?” She rubbed the back of her head and noticed no bumps that would indicate a sharp blow; nor did she feel any particular ache in her neck. As a doctor, he would know just where to pinch in order to obtain unconsciousness, wouldn’t he? It couldn’t be a drug because she hadn’t drunk anything in his presence.
If he slipped me a roofie, I’m reporting him to the medical board. The Viking medical board. A joke? Me? He’s right. I’m becoming a regular comedian. Must be hunger.