Читать книгу Dead Is The New Black - Harper Allen - Страница 10

I nearly blew it right then and there. “What total merde, to borrow a phrase of Kat’s,” I said with a disbelieving laugh. “Heath Lockridge, one of the most dangerous vamps in existence? The man’s a dream come true—polite, gorgeous, and that adorable kind-of-English accent he has is a whole lot sexier than some I could mention.” I glanced scornfully in Dmitri’s direction before returning my attention to Megan and Kat. “Sorry, ladies, you’ve obviously made a huge mistake. Even if you’re right and Lady Jasmine’s in Maplesburg, there’s no way Heath’s her first lieutenant.”

“And how would you know?” Megan asked in the new I’m-a-Daughter-so-don’t-fuck-with-me tone of voice she’d been using way too often lately.

I gave her a pitying smile. “Because I—” I stopped, choking back the met him part of my sentence and realizing I’d just walked into a trap.

Although I suppose if you’re going with the definition of a trap being something that’s set by someone, it wasn’t actually a trap, since a few seconds ago Meg and Kat hadn’t had a clue that I’d actually made the acquaintance of the dishy Heath Lockridge. In other words, I guess you could say it was more like me opening my big mouth without thinking first, which is something I’ve been doing from about the age of eleven months, apparently. According to Grammie, the day her three granddaughters learned to talk, Megan’s first word was “Mama,” Kat spoke a moment later by uttering “Da-Da” and I went redfaced with rage at the attention being lavished on my sisters and bellowed “Ka-Ka!” at the top of my lungs. And that’s pretty much how I’ve been ever since, Meg and Kat being such tough acts to compete with.

But this time my talk-first-think-later impulse had potentially direr results than usual, like possibly leading Megan and her ever-handy stake to Heath. I had to go into damage-control mode, and fast.

“Because I’m a patriot,” I said icily. “I refuse to believe that anyone noble enough to fight for our country’s independence would have switched their allegiance to some titled English vamp-tramp.”

“Nice save, sweetie,” Kat said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “But how do you know this Heath Lockridge is gorgeous and polite? Come to that, how do you know how he sounds when he speaks?”

She had me there. I had no alternative but to use my most infallible weapon, the one that always defeats Meg and Kat—my dumb-Tash act. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Hello, you saw the movie when I did, right? The one where all the Colonials were sexy and good-looking and wore loose, white shirts unbuttoned down to their six-pack abs, and all the Britishers were haughty and really mean and sweated a lot in red wool? Do you think Holly-wood just makes up that stuff?”

The suspicion in Kat’s gaze was replaced with amusement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Megan’s grip on her stake relax, and when she spoke her tone was tinged with exasperation. “News-flash, brat—the movies aren’t real life. And just because Lockridge fought on the right side when he was human doesn’t mean all bets weren’t off once he became undead, courtesy of Jasmine.” She turned to Darkheart. “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. If Kat or I could pass ourselves off as part of the vamp community and infiltrate Lady Jasmine’s inner circle to find out where her daytime lair is, we would, but we can’t ask Tash to. We’ll just have to keep hoping we run across a vamp informant who can tell us what we need to know.”

Kat nodded. “Meanwhile, I think I should attempt a Heal on her. We all agree this situation’s gone far enough, no?” Her gaze swept my apartment, taking in the haphazard clutter of shoes, the cream Chanel jacket festooned with dust bunnies that Megan had slung over the back of a chair, the half-devoured box of Mallomars on my kitchenette counter.

“Heal will not work,” declared Darkheart decisively. “Is only possible if Natashya has completely turned into vampyr, and that is not yet case. Da, Granddaughter?” he asked, his salt-and-pepper brows drawing together as he turned his eagle gaze on me. “Liz says she saw you yesterday at mall. You still have no trouble with daylight?”

“None at all,” I said swiftly, if not entirely truth-fully, sending a silent vote of thanks to Liz Dixon, a fifty-something local art gallery owner who’d become my grandfather’s girlfriend when she’d aided us in the fight against Zena (note to self: must try to see Darkheart having a girlfriend as healthy and positive instead of ooky). Liz had obviously neglected to tell him that when she’d seen me I’d been wearing enormous D&G sunglasses that covered half my face, a flowing silk scarf tied Jackie Kennedy-style around my head and neck and a long-sleeved Prada blouse with linen slacks. Not exactly bundled up in multiple layers like the derelict Brooklyn had called Crazy Joe, but I’d certainly made sure that no part of my skin was exposed to the light. Merely as a precaution, of course, and the slight tingle I’d felt as I’d hurried from my car’s window-tinted interior to the mall’s entrance doors had probably been my imagination.

“You’d tell us if the situation started to change, wouldn’t you, brat?” Megan asked, giving me a hard stare. “You haven’t always been all that forth-coming in the past, but this isn’t like the time you were seeing that hot guy with the Harley and hiding it from Kat and me, or when you tried to change your biology grade on your report card. We need to know how far along Vamp Avenue you’ve come, because at some point Kat is going to have to attempt a Heal on you.” She’d switched from her Daughter tone of voice to her big sister one. In the mood I was in, they were both equally irritating.

“I get it, all right?” I said waspishly. “Gawd, Meg, give it a rest. I know I should have told you I was starting to have cravings and I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did, but it’s not like you caught me with my fangs sunk into someone’s neck. I was buying from a legitimate butcher, for heaven’s sake. In some parts of the world they eat blood sausage on a regular basis, so I don’t see that my little snack tonight was such a big deal.”

“Is true. In Russia is called krvavica and many people like taste. My mother used to make often for breakfast.” Dmitri had been silent for so long I’d almost forgotten him. I gave him a surprised glance, although I wasn’t totally sure whether my surprise was over the fact that he was defending me or because I couldn’t imagine him as a little boy with a mother. His blue gaze darkened. “Still, was blood,” he said, his chiseled-from-permafrost features tightening in distaste. “To me was disgusting.”

“Really? Mikhail loves krvavica,” Megan said thinly.

“Is because he is oboroten,” Dmitri replied with a shrug of his linebacker shoulders that briefly stretched his black T-shirt over the tectonic plates of muscle that made up his torso. “As you say in America, a manimal, da?”

This time my glance locked with Kat’s, and I saw she was stifling the same unworthy impulse to laugh as I was. Dmitri couldn’t know it, but as far as Megan was concerned he’d just used the single worst term he could have chosen to describe her occasionally fur-bearing boyfriend.

“As we say in America, a shapeshifter,” she corrected coldly. “And speaking of Mikhail, if we’re finished here I think we should rejoin him and Jack on patrol. Kat, you coming?”

“Yes, but some nights I don’t know why I bother,” Kat drawled. “When I was a ballbreaking bitch, men were falling over themselves to take me up on my offers, but now I’ve gone all altruistic Healer-chick and just want to save them from an eternity in hell, most of the time they’d rather take their chances with your stake. Still, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, no?” She began strolling to the door, but then turned back to me. “Sweetie,” she said firmly. “The shoes. Get them out of the garbage bag, okay?”

“And if my Dolce sweater that you didn’t borrow is somewhere here underneath all this mess, have it dry-cleaned and give it back to me,” Megan added. “Grandfather, do you want to accompany us on patrol for a few more hours?”

“Nyet, is late for old man like me. Also, Liz asked me to drop by her apartment tonight for glass of wine. I may stay over, so do not worry if I am not home tomorrow morning,” Darkheart said complacently while I tried to forget the Bed, Bath & Beyond shopping bag overflowing with black satin sheets I’d seen Liz carrying when we’d run into each other at the mall. “I will collect garlic wreaths first and then leave.”

“You go, tovaritch. I will collect wreaths,” Dmitri offered, which I suppose was nice of him but not what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately for me, however, Darkheart accepted with alacrity and within minutes I was alone with Russia’s answer to Paul Bunyan, watching him de-festoon my apartment of wild garlic while I tried not to breathe in the, to me, nauseating scent of the small white flowers.

“You lie to sisters and grandfather,” Dmitri said without preamble as he deftly wound Darkheart’s garland lasso around one pumped forearm. His Siberian-blue gaze flicked to me before he turned his attention back to his task. “You have met Jasmine’s lieutenant, da?”

Now, along with the speaking-before-I-think thing I’ve developed growing up with Megan and Kat, I also credit them for my ability to lie at the drop of a hat. It’s a necessary talent, believe me, when you’re saddled with a sister who feels it’s her moral duty to force you to confess when you’ve had some unfortunate accident like breaking Grammie’s favorite Lladro figurine, and another sister who doesn’t see why she should take the heat for said Lladro breakage when she didn’t do it. So if Dmitri had thought he could startle me into the truth with his unexpected accusation, he was sadly mistaken.

“Of course I haven’t met him!” I said, putting a hefty amount of outraged virtue into my tone. “I don’t believe your nerve! What gives you the right to accuse me of lying to my family?”

“This is America, nyet? I have right to say truth when is in front of my eyes,” Dmitri replied, seemingly unperturbed by my impressive outburst. He finished winding up the garland and set it on the back of the sofa. “Besides,” he added calmly, “I cannot stand by and see future Gospozha Malkovich take dangerous risks.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did I thought I must have misheard him. “Gospozha? Isn’t that Russian for the missus?” I said dubiously.

His back toward me, he nodded as he untacked the last wreath from the window frame. “Da, is correct. From first time I saw you I had strong feeling inside me that you would lead me to my sud’ba, so must be that you and I will be couple one day. These strong feelings that come to me are never wrong,” he said, turning from the window and laying the wreath beside the garland. “My babushka was cygan and from her I inherit gift of knowing future.”

I held up a hand. “Whoa, nellieski,” I said firmly. “We’ve got a lost-in-translation situation happening here. I still think I must be wrong on the gospozha part, but forget that for a minute. What’s a sud’ba, who’s a cygan, and isn’t a babushka some kind of shawl for old ladies to wrap around their heads?”

“Sud’ba is fate. Cygan means in America gypsy, and babushka is grandmother. You are not wrong on gospozha.” His garlic-gathering completed, Dmitri stood facing me, his jeans-clad legs planted slightly apart on the cruddy carpet covering the living-room floor and his arms crossed over his chest so that his biceps came close to ripping the seams of his T-shirt’s sleeves. I was so rattled by what he’d just said that for a moment all I could think was that when he stood that way he looked exactly like the Jolly Green Giant, if the Jolly Green Giant wasn’t green, but blond and tanned and wasn’t jolly but about to stomp the tiny valley-dwellers by his feet to puree.

Then I got ahold of myself. “So when you first laid eyes on me half an hour ago, you knew you and I would do the till-death-us-do-part thing,” I clarified, “because your grandmother was a gypsy and you inherited her crystal ball abilities. Do I finally have it right?” I asked politely.

“Da, except first time I saw you was not half hour ago, but night of battle against Kane and his army,” Dmitri began, but at that point I dropped my pretence of politeness and let the fury that had been bubbling up inside me boil over in a scalding flood.

“Are you insane?” I yelled, striding toward him and grabbing him by his biceps. I tried to give him a shake, but it was like trying to shake concrete. My anger grew. “I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you! The only connection between you and me is that you’re using your family’s underworld contacts to look for my father and as far as I’m concerned, that’s no connection at all! So screw your sud’ba and the cygan it rode in on, Dmitri—not only won’t I be walking down the aisle with you anytime soon, but I want you out of my apartment right now!”

“Your act is good.” With a quick flexing of his muscles he broke my grip on him. “You shout loudly instead of answering my questions, but your anger is enough answer. You have met with vampyr called Lockridge. What I need to know now is whether he already has hold over you.” His gaze chilled to a subzero blue. “You have slept with him?”

My attempt to slap his face was a purely reflexive action, but his reflexes made mine look like I was moving through molasses. My hand was still inches from his cheek when I felt his grip wrap around my wrist. I glared at him, frustration mixing with my rage.

“Maybe it’s different in Russia,” I snapped, “but here in the good old U.S. of A. when a man deserves what’s coming to him he’s supposed to take it. Let go of my wrist, you lug.”

“Not until you answer, l’ubimaya,” he said evenly. “Is vital I know truth on this matter. Has he had you yet?”

The way he said it made it sound all earthy and raw and uncivilized, and suddenly there was something else mixed in with my anger and frustration.

Dmitri Malkovich was a pain in the butt. I didn’t want him in my apartment, I didn’t want him poking around in my life and I totally didn’t buy in to his crazy assertion that the two of us were bound together by some mystical gypsy fate. But there was no denying it, the man was incredibly hot, I thought as his gaze held mine. Every inch of him was solid muscle. His T-shirt fitted him like a glove, his jeans were taut in all the right places, and even though blond men weren’t usually my type I couldn’t help but appreciate how sexily his hair and eyes contrasted with his dark lashes and eyebrows and the tan of his skin.

A couple of hours ago I’d been drooling over the delicious Heath Lockridge. Now I was wondering how it would be with a hard, tall Russian. Not only was I turning into a vampire, I was well on my way to becoming a complete slut, I thought in selfdisgust, and it was all the fault of the man standing in front of me holding my wrist in his viselike grip.

Comrade Malkovich needed to be taught a lesson. Luckily, he’d handed me the perfect weapon for doing just that.

“Of course Heath’s had me, sweetie,” I said, channeling Kat at her most ball-breaking. I widened my baby-blues at him and gave my strawberry-blond curls a careless toss. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, seeing as how you say we’re fated to be an item, but he’s had me standing up, lying down and every which way in between. One thing puzzles me, though.” I tipped my head and scrunched up my nose adorably, as if I were struggling with a problem I couldn’t quite figure out. I felt Dmitri’s fingers tighten on my wrist, and hid my smile.

“What is this puzzling thing?” His tone was clipped. “Is it that you do not understand how you can find attraction to vampyr? Answer is easy. He uses glamyr against you to make you think you like being bedded by him. Is usual trick of undead to seduce—”

“Oh, he didn’t glamyr me into being bedded by him,” I said with a husky little laugh. “I practically threw myself at the poor man. I mean, he’s totally gorgeous and sexy and dreamy, so why wouldn’t I? No, what’s puzzling me is how in the world those Revolutionary War soldiers ever came to be known as Minutemen, because if Heath’s any example I think they should have been called Three-Hour Men. Or maybe All-Night-Long Men. Or—”

“Enough talk about vampyr who should have been dead two centuries ago,” Dmitri said hoarsely. “I show you what it is like having man with heartbeat make love to you, l’ubimaya!”

Okay, I know what you’re thinking and it goes something along the lines of, Girlfriend, how skanky can you get? You totally set up this situation so it would turn out exactly how it did, and to that my answer is, I did not. Not consciously, anyway, although I suppose somewhere in the murky depths of my mind I knew I was striking a match and tossing it into a big, exciting pool of gasoline. I will admit this: when Dmitri pulled me to him with a hoarse Russian oath and his mouth came down on mine, little Tashie Crosse sure wasn’t complaining for the first few minutes.

He kissed with the same single-minded determination he probably gave to bench-pressing small cars, and if that doesn’t sound all that sexy, just think about it. Here was this strapping hunk of blond male and every fiber of his being was concentrated on bringing me to miniorgasm with just his mouth and his tongue. And when I say his tongue, he didn’t use it merely to kiss me.

“First time I saw you, I thought you were warrior princess from Russian fairy tale,” he muttered against my lips. “You were staking vampyr during battle against Kane’s army. Your hair was like Siberian gold and that night you come to me in my dreams.”

He broke off to cover my mouth with his again, his tongue moving masterfully into me while his wide-spread hands slid over my arms to the buttoned vee-opening of my sweater. Before I could say, “Don’t snag the cashmere,” I realized he’d deftly slipped open the first three flower-shaped buttons and was using the same impressive sleight-of-hand to push the pink lace straps of my La Perla push-up bra off my shoulders. I broke off our kiss with a gasp.

“Tell me what happened between us in those dreams,” I said breathlessly, my knees turning to jelly and my top teeth sinking into my lower lip as a kaleidoscope of sensations swirled through me.

Call me psychic, but I bet I know what you’re thinking this time, too. Yes, asking Dmitri to get me all hot and bothered with the details of his wet dream about me didn’t exactly jibe with the fact that I’d been furious with him a few minutes ago.

Confession time, ladies…except if one word of this ever leaks out to Meg or Kat, I’m totally denying this conversation ever took place. So where was I? Oh, right—confessing. Well, the truth is that I’ve never really seen what the big deal is with sex.

And now I’ll give all of you a minute to pick yourselves up off the floor.

Everyone over their shock/hilarity/pity-mixed-with-a-smidge-of-revulsion? Good, because there’s an explanation for my lack of enthusiasm for the horizontal mambo, and that explanation can be covered in two words.

Word one: Todd.

Word two: Whitmore.

Okay, maybe it should be three words: Dr. Todd Whitmore, because even as I stood over the dust pile that had been Toddie on the night before Megan’s wedding-that-never-happened, holding the bedpost I’d just used to stake him with, I realized I’d never really been in love with him, I’d been in love with the idea of marrying an up-and-coming cosmetic surgeon.

And part of the reason I’d never been in love with him was that he was an absolute yawn in bed. He didn’t think so, of course. On the two dismal occasions we did it, Dr. Todd flailed away with all the spasmodic jerking of a landed small-mouth bass on a fishing dock until he sweatily collapsed on me. When he finally rolled off me he shot me a confident smile, told me I was one lucky girl and headed for the shower with an over-the-shoulder observation that he’d heard there were classes in oral sex for women these days, and had I ever thought of supplying myself with a couple of bananas and signing up for one.

Shortly after my second mind-numbingly boring encounter between the sheets with my fiancé, I informed him I’d decided our upcoming union was too sacred to be tainted by premarital sex. I realize now that he only let me have my way on that point because he was dropping his trousers for every nurse and female lab technician under the age of fifty in Maplesburg Hospital, and not getting it from me didn’t cramp his style in the least.

So anyway, with the late and unlamented Dr. Todd as my only experience with the wonderful world of carnal knowledge—I’m not counting the few inept episodes in the backseats of cars I had in high school—is it any wonder that lately my most fulfilling sexual encounters involved a vibrating bunny with purple vinyl ears?

Which brings me back to the epiphany I was having while Dmitri’s tongue brought me to the edge of something I’d previously dismissed as an urban legend, at least if we’re talking without Mr. Love-Bunny. That’s right, the Big O.

“Tell me what you did to me in those dreams, Dmitri, and don’t leave anything out,” I gasped. “I want to hear every X-rated detail.”

“X-rated is like Americanic movies with violence or sex, da?” he muttered as he bent his head to the hollow between my breasts. His tongue left a trail of heat where it touched me.

“Da,” I managed to say as I felt myself being swept closer to total surrender. With his head bent in front of me as it was, I could see the muscles of his back rippling beneath his hide like strong underwater currents. A smudge of something dark broke the even tan of his skin just past his hairline at the nape of his neck.

“I understand,” he said hoarsely, his breath against me sending minishockwaves through my nerve endings. “Increases pleasure, nyet? Is also same with me when I think of dream I had. You and I were in forest at dusk making love. I had taken off all your clothing and was standing over you…

“And then what?” I panted.

Dmitri lifted his head, his gaze like blue fire. “And then sun went below horizon and horde of vampyrs set upon us. I snatched up broken branch and used it as stake against them and when I had chance to look I saw you were doing same thing. Your hair was like gold crown around your head and your naked limbs were like palest Karelian marble, and you staked vampyr after vampyr with terrible mercilessness. You were magnificent, l’ubimaya. I woke up with sheets thrown off bed and great throbbing in—”

“What?” I asked, easing my grip on his shoulders and frowning at him.

“I wake up with great throbbing in my heart from knowledge I must see you again,” Dmitri said, his tone low and charged with emotion. He began to bend his head to my breast again, but I yanked up my La Perla bra straps and took a quick step back.

“No, the other part,” I said. “That’s what gets your rocks off about me—that I kill vamps?”

“Da.” He nodded, his eyes still lit with blue fire as he gazed at me. “You are not ordinary woman. You are brave, you are warrior, you are—”

“I’m a vamp,” I said flatly. “Or turning into one, at least. Since you’re so much in favor of staking them, I should be the last woman you’d be attracted to.”

“When time comes sister can perform Heal on you,” Dmitri asserted. “Will not interfere with our destiny, l’ubimaya. Is in your blood to kill vampyrs, just as is in mine. After we destroy Jasmine and her lieutenant we will look for others to wipe out. You and I will be perfectly matched team—both of us strong, both brave, both great fighters.”

“Well-matched, maybe,” I informed him, taking another step back. “Not a perfect match, though.”

He frowned. “I do not understand.”

I widened my eyes. “Well, if the two of us faced off, I doubt the fight would end in a draw. I mean, either you’d beat the crap out of me or I’d beat the crap out of you, right?”

The granite planes of his face relaxed into a faint smile. “We would never be on opposite sides, l’ubimaya. But if such impossible thing did happen, would not be fair fight. You are warrior princess, but I am big and strong man.”

“I guess you’re right, it wouldn’t be a fair fight,” I said, batting my baby blues at him. “Unless you even up the odds with a stake or some holy water, a contest between a vamp and a big Russian lug never is, but I’m still kind of eager to see how badly I can kick your ass, Dmitri.”

Even as his ice-blue gaze narrowed in sudden comprehension, I hauled off and socked him a good one on the side of his chiseled jaw.