Bitten in Two

An unmarked key.

I took it out. Held it up for him to see. “What does it open?” I asked.

He grinned again. I should probably tel him to stop that.

If he did it in front of kids there would be screaming.

He picked me up and carried me to the top of the stairs, where he set me down. Grasping his cane in one hand and the rail with the other, he looked at me with—holy crap, was that actual mischief in his sky- blue eyes?—and said, “I wil race you to the street.”

I bolted down the steps like the riad was on fire. He tried to pass me, but I snagged his arm and yanked him backward. He laughed out loud. “Cheater!” he cal ed as he grasped me around the middle and carried me down to the first landing.

I managed to wrap my legs around his waist and grab his shoulders, so that I did the next flight riding him piggyback. And then I pul ed out my secret weapon. I blew in his ear. He stopped. Then came the tongue, right around the rim of his earlobe and, just lightly, into the center. He shivered.

I jumped off and sprinted to the door.

“Vixen!” he cal ed, fol owing so close I could feel his fingers flicking my curls.

“Al ’s fair in love and birthday pres—” I skidded to a stop. Clapped both hands to my mouth, which did nothing to keep the tears from leaping into my eyes. “Vayl,” I whispered. “How…”

He leaned around to look into my face. He must’ve liked what he saw, because again with those fearsome fangs. A couple of pedestrians shrieked and bolted. I hardly noticed them. I felt like I’d hurtled into a dream.

He stepped to the curb and ran his hand along the hood of the gleaming black car that had not been parked there when we’d walked into the riad half an hour before. He said, “It is a—”

I interrupted him, “1963 Ford Galaxie 500XL

Convertible 406 CID 385 horsepower with a V8.” Vayl nodded. “It also has a four-speed manual transmission.”

I blinked. I might’ve been crying by now. But I real y didn’t care. “It’s just like the one Granny May used to have.

She drove us to church in it. To the store. Everywhere.” Vayl waited until I’d torn my eyes from the beauty on the street to look at him again before he said, “It is the one your grandmother used to drive.”

I lost it. Right then and there, I just, wel , I kind of hate to say this, but I sat down on my ass and bawled on the sidewalk in Marrakech, Morocco. During which time I had to assure Vayl this was a good thing. And also during which he had to explain to me how Gramps Lew had sold the car to a neighbor of theirs, a farmer who’d always meant to restore it but never had. So it had stayed in the old guy’s barn until his son had opened his front door to find Vayl there with a shitload of cash in his hand and a trailer hooked to his rental truck.

When I final y pul ed myself together I said, “But, Vayl, she’s mint. I mean, I don’t see any rust. The interior is the same shiny red I remember. If I pop the hood—”

“It wil sparkle,” he assured me.

I shook my head. “That kind of work takes time. A lot more than we’ve been a couple.”

He had sat down on the sidewalk beside me, laying his arms across his upraised knees in that way he has of making himself comfortable in any position. Now he looked at the classic parked on the street and admitted, “I bought it soon after we met. I… had hoped someday I might have this chance.”

I pointed to the Galaxie. “You can’t possibly have felt like that for me then!”

He turned to gaze into my eyes, laying his chin on my shoulder as he said softly, “I have loved you with everything in me from the moment I saw you.”

I wrapped my arm around his leg, careful y avoiding his wound. “Damn,” I whispered.

He leaned forward, his lips like the breath of life itself, bringing my soul back into the dance every time they touched mine. He took his time, his tongue brushing against mine so gently it was like a second declaration.

When he pul ed back he said, “Every moment with you has been a revelation. I would not trade a second. Come, my pretera.” His eyes glittered as my inner girls screamed ecstatical y while they threw paper airplanes at each other to celebrate hearing him cal me Yaz-mee-na and his little wildcat both in the same day.

I managed a breathless, “Yeah?”

He said, “Let us gather the crew. It is time to ride.” Morocco’s medina is ful of streets so narrow sometimes you’re lucky to get a couple of donkey carts past each other. But the new city is ful of wide, wel -lit boulevards just made for a bunch of cruising assassins. I drove my Granny’s car with the top down and the radio blasting, my hair flying out behind me like a kid’s kite.

It was fucking awesome.

Vayl sat beside me, never taking his eyes off my face, his lips stuck in that semi-smile that let me know he was perfectly satisfied with the world and everything in it. If we had been living a movie, that’s where it would’ve ended.

Happily ever after, baby. Which, of course, is why it lasted less than fifteen minutes.

We pul ed up just down the street from the Musee de Marrakech and just sat, listening to the engine purr.

“I can’t believe you did this for me,” I said, rubbing the steering wheel like it was the soft fur of my