“Can I get you girls a drink?” he offered desperately at last.
“Such a gentleman,” said Rochelle, and Christian took that as a “yes.” He went downstairs and retrieved the cans of Coke that he always had hidden over the fridge because Josh had low blood sugar and sometimes required one right away.
He came back up holding the cans and met Bradley at the top of the stairs cradling his pineapple.
“Good call bringing that girl with the eyelashes,” he said. “She dived, but I ducked. Now I think she’s planning to make Josh a man. It’ll be good for him.”
“Er, that’s nice,” said Christian.
Christian’s pamphlet had advised that the correct way to deal with a vampire on the verge of going feral was to report him to the authorities and, in extreme cases, push him into some sunlight and watch carefully as he became a small pile of ashes.
At no point had the pamphlet suggested that smiling and waving a pineapple was an appropriate technique to subdue such a vampire.
“I’m sorry about before. I lost my temper,” Christian said. Apparently, pineapples were more powerful than he had supposed.
Bradley gestured with his pineapple in what seemed to be a peaceful manner.
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m very zen about that sort of thing. You are young, my little fanged grasshopper, but you will learn.”
“Hi, Christian,” said a voice behind Bradley. Christian knew who it was at once because nobody else used his real name.
Bradley shifted aside to reveal Laura, who looked at him with wide startled eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Quite all right, Laura,” said Bradley, waving his pineapple benevolently. “I have to go see if Pez has added something unfortunate to the punch again. It’s not his fault, he actually seems to like the taste of bubble bath …”
Before wandering off, Bradley gave Christian a significant look. Christian chose to completely ignore him.
Laura was haloed by the chandeliers, hair vivid and her dress snow-pale. She drew in close, without Christian pulling her to him, curls tickling the side of his face, and whispered: “You don’t have to dress that way for me.”
Christian looked down at his rugby shirt and jeans.
“You can be your real self,” Laura told him, her eyes intent.
“I am my real self,” Christian said. “I don’t understand.”
He was starting to feel very uneasy, but before he could ask her exactly what she meant, or what she thought of him, Laura leaned in again, warm lips against his ear, and said: “Will you take me to your room?”
Explanations could wait.
“Yes,” Christian said. “Absolutely. I’m sure you will enjoy it. Uh, my room, that is. It’s decorated. Faye hired a decorator to do that.”
Laura laughed at him as if she understood, and he led her back down the stairs, cradled in the corner of his arm. Her heart was beating very fast. His thoughts seemed set to the nervous rhythm of her pulse, leaping around erratically.
“Your bedroom is in the basement?” Laura asked, and then laughed nervously. “No, of course, that makes sense. Obviously.”
Christian opened the door to his room and thanked Faye silently for her good taste in interior design. “Subtle,” Faye had said at the time. “We’re going for subtle.” When Bradley then chimed in, “We don’t want to let it all fang out,” she had beaten him with her Blackberry.
Christian’s room was done all in cream colors, a reproduction of Monet’s
It would all have looked really classy, except for the fact Christian had left his coffin out in the center of the room with the lid on the floor, instead of tucking the whole thing away under the extra bed.
“Er, sorry,” Christian said, and dived toward it.
“No,” Laura said. “It’s fine. Leave it.”
He’d heard that girls liked to set the mood, but he didn’t even like to think about what kind of mood a coffin set.
“We do kind of need to get it out of the way,” Christian pointed out, “so we can get to the—”
Laura looked at him, her face a blank.
“Unless you’ve changed your mind,” Christian said hastily, “which is absolutely, completely fine. I would understand. We could go back to the party—”
He was interrupted by Laura walking into his open arms. He closed them around her almost by reflex, drawing her close because she was warm, because she felt soft and smelled sweet and he wanted her there, wanted her to want to be there so badly.
She turned up her face to his, and he kissed her, light and exploring, letting her breathe, letting her set the pace. Her pulse thundered beneath her skin, singing a song of life and pleasure to him every time he touched her. He kissed her mouth lightly, the corner of her lips, her chin, and then her mouth again. She started, as if she had not expected him to be so tender, and the tip of his fang cut her. Christian tasted blood.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he murmured, drawing back.
“It’s fine,” Laura whispered, her voice trembling a little, but it must have been with excitement because she threaded her fingers through his hair and brought his face down to hers again.
He kissed her again, delicately, mouth lingering against hers with all the gentleness he possessed. He didn’t want to taste her blood. This wasn’t about feeding.
Her mouth opened, yielding and lovely. Her fingers in his hair tugged. He kissed her a little harder, kissed her cheek, her chin, brushing butterfly kisses along her jaw. She pulled his head down again so his mouth slid from her jaw to her throat.
Even then, he didn’t get it. He kissed her there, where her pulse was beating fast but safe beneath her fragile skin.
“Do it,” she said, breathing hard and determined.
He lost the rhythm of her warm heart and breath then, slid back into a cold place.
“Do what?” he asked, but he was already drawing back. He already knew.
Christian stepped away and walked alone to the crimson curtains, stood on the threshold of the door that went nowhere.
“Don’t you want to?” Laura asked, her voice breaking. “My friend Rochelle said that if you liked me, you’d want to.”
“Did she?”
“I thought human blood was best—”
“I don’t care if it is. I do not want to be something who thinks about human beings as food,” Christian said, keeping his voice low.
“That’s really noble,” Laura began.
“No,” Christian told her. “
Laura’s silence made her still. It was the silence of anyone hurt and embarrassed and being shouted at by a stranger.
Christian took a deep breath he didn’t need at all. “No. Of course you can’t. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
He shouldn’t be shouting at her. She wasn’t wrong, after all. He’d threatened to drink Bradley’s blood this very evening. He and Laura were just strangers who didn’t understand each other. It was now they were learning that.
He’d wanted her to be human for him. That was just as insulting.
“I’m sorry that I upset you,” Laura said in a small voice, her eyes combing the corners of the room as if searching for places she could hide. “I don’t quite … I don’t know what I did wrong.”
Christian’s mother had taught him at a very early age that it was wrong to make girls cry.
“You did nothing wrong,” he said as gently as he could. “I guess I’m just not vampire enough for you.”
