actually looked around the room anyway. It made me sad; under “normal” circumstances, they could have—and would have—come. And obviously, no Delk.
I cheered up a little when I saw Carolina! Wait a minute, wha—yep, there she was, standing awkwardly in front of a bowl of potato chips.
I gestured and she came over to me at once, looking almost relieved. Not one for parties, this one. Or nervous aboutthis party. “What are you doing here? I heard you guys were all on a plane out of town.”
“Oh, well.” She shrugged and looked down. “The others were in rather a hurry to get back—the business, you know, and various personal issues. But I—I wanted to see you, when you weren't under so much stress.”
“Well, I'm glad you came.” She smiled uncertainly and I took her hand. “Really, Carolina. I'm glad you're here.”
“Oh, well,” she said again, and looked away with a slightly more real smile. “Really, I couldn't stay away. It's been—it's been many years since I was at a birthday party. And never a surprise one.”
“Yes, lucky me.” I gave Jessica and Sinclair a sideways look. “Well, this one wasn't supposed to be. I remember saying repeatedly—”
“Oh, knock it off, bitch, you know you love it.” Jessica waved my objection away. “Tell me you didn't love it when you saw all the shit on the walls and all these people here foryour birthday.”
“Yeah, well, my birthday isn't until tomorrow.”
“A masterful way to throw you off guard,” Sinclair put in (not that anybody was talking to him). “Which succeeded brilliantly, I might add.”
“This is good practice for our wedding rehearsal,” I told him, which wiped the smirk off his face. The big day was three months away, and I doubted if he knew what time it was or where to show up.
“So, thirty-?one,” Marc said, coming up to our little group.
Carolina laughed out loud, earning mystified looks from my mother. I loved it—the one nice thing about ancient vampires is, they could make you feel young.
“Hey, I didn't not invite you over to my forbidden surprise party to have you insult me. God, look at all that pop. I could really use a big glass of Coke with a ton of ice.”
“And I would get it for you,” Sinclair said, “except that is not what youreally want.”
“Can you step out in the hall with me?” I asked seriously. “I wanted to ask you something about Liam.”
“Oh.” Sinclair looked surprised, then set down his wineglass, took my hand, inclined his head to the group, and said, “Excuse us.”
He led me swiftly to the hall and asked, “What is it? Did he call again? Threaten you?”
“No, dumb ass. It was a ruse. A ploy, a subterfuge.” I slung my arms around his neck and pulled him close. “It's my birthday and I wanted to get you alone.”
“It is not technically… mmmm.” He shut up (finally) and we kissed, made out, groped, and groaned in the hallway like a couple of teenagers sneaking out past curfew.
“Oh, Elizabeth, I do love you. I—ah!” He groaned as my teeth broke the skin on his neck, as I pulled the blood from him in a sweet winey flow, as I fell off the blood wagon with a big old crash. Sinclair was right beside me for the fall.
“I've been thinking,” I murmured, licking his throat, his lower lip, the tip of his right fang. “This fast. It didn't prove anything. It didn't make me a better vampire.” If anything, it made me a bitchier one. “It's not where and when you drink blood, it's—” I couldn't think of the rest of the platitude. How you drink it? Who you drink it from? If you have it in a fancy glass with a cocktail umbrella? Whatever. I was distracted. Possibly because he had bitten me, was sucking on my throat so hard he'd pulled me to my tiptoes. “Anyway,” I managed, trying not to flail and gasp, “I'm going to drink again, but only from you. And you'll drink only from me. Right?”
“Mmmm,” he said, his mouth busy on my throat.
“And we'll have a better life together than most, I bet.”
He pulled back and looked at me. There was a spot of blood just below his lower lip in the shape of a comma. “No one, ever, could have a better life together. Not if they have you, Elizabeth.”
“Well, then, aren't you the lucky fella.” I laughed and kissed away the bloody comma. “Let's see if you say that three months from now.”
“Er, three months?”
“Sinclair!”
“Right. Ah, the magic of three months from now. I await breathlessly.”
“Very funny. We already don't breathe.” I tried to wrestle out of his embrace, but he held fast. “Unf! Ergh! Sinclair: youhave put this on your calendar, right?”
“Darling, it's been there for ages, I swear! Stop wriggling. Our magical, culturally meaningless evening looms before me like a sweet hippopotamus of joy.”
I was soothed by his tone, then digested his words and redoubled my efforts to get away. “Dude! I wouldn't marry you if you begged for it.”
He laughed and let me go. “But I would, you know.” He looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes, that considering look I knew so well. “Beg for it.”
I loved that look. I loved him. I started to step back into his embrace, but he seized me before I could, yanked me to him, and thrust his mouth into my neck with the speed of a striking snake. His teeth were so sharp I barely felt them penetrate. Well, I felt them penetrate, but not in my neck, if you know what I mean.
He had thrust his fingers into my hair and was holding me by the head, the other arm so tightly around my waist it was a good thing I didn't need to breathe. He drank from me like a man just out of the desert, squeezed me to him with desperate hunger, and I loved it, I would have let him hold me like that all day, take from me all night.
We were almost wrestling, moving in a tight little dance in the hallway, and I struggled free enough to bite him back, to feel his cool blood on my tongue like a rich dark wine, to feel it racing through my system, making me stronger, making me better, making me more.
Vampire.
“The party,” I groaned.
“Fuck the party,” he growled back.
“We can't stay out here making out.”
“Exactly so. Let's go to bed.”
I managed to wrench free—mostly because he let me—and stood back, wiped my mouth, and checked my shirt for blood stains. His tongue darted out and caught a rill of blood, and I fought the urge to leap back into his arms and bite it.
I remembered there were more than a dozen people less than ten feet away. Thank goodness for thick doors and walls! Yay, old houses! Like I said. “We'd better get back to the party.”
“In a moment. I wanted to ask you. Will you tell me the entire story? The tale of you and the zombie?”
“Oh. I thought I—”
“You gave Tina and me the Cliff Notes version. And we both pretended not to notice that you nearly had a breakdown—and then there was Alonzo to deal with. But I want to hear everything.”
“You'll laugh at me.”
“Yes, of course.”
I smiled; I couldn't help it. “Okay, but later. And with all the lights on. In our bed. And when I start to freak out all over again, tell me something that pisses me off.”
“I will.”
He picked up my hand—the one with my glorious engagement ring—and kissed it. “With me it's spiders.”
“Really?”
He almost shuddered. Eric Sinclair, badass vampire king, afraid of Charlotte! “All those legs,” he muttered.
I hugged him. “I won't tell a soul,” I whispered. “But for crying out loud, we've got to get back to my party. It's the only thirty-?first birthday I'm going to have, you know.”
I stepped back to straighten my clothes, which didn't last long; he snatched me back into his arms so quickly I couldn't dodge, much less keep away. “Oh, the party. Never mind the party.”
